Google doodle celebrates birthday of Kitty O'Neil: The deaf daredevil & rocket-powered vehicle driver

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers. Proceed with caution if you have not watched the show/movie.

Today's Google Doodle is celebrating the 77th birthday of Kitty O'Neil, who was once known as "the fastest woman in the world". She was born in Texas in 1946 to a Native American mother and an Irish father. Her father died in an airplane crash during Kitty's childhood. Her mother, Patsy Compton O'Neil, was a native Cherokee. At five months of age, O'Neil contracted simultaneous childhood diseases losing her hearing. After her deafness became apparent at the age of two, her mother taught her lip-reading and speech, eventually becoming a speech therapist and co-founding a school for students with hearing impairment in Wichita Falls, Texas. However, she didn't let her deafness stop her from achieving her dreams.

Kitty O'Neil loved high-speed sports like water skiing and motorcycle racing. She also performed dangerous stunts like falling while on fire and jumping from helicopters. In 1976, she set a new women's land-speed record by driving a rocket-powered car called the Motivator across the Alvord Desert at over 500 miles per hour. Once she broke the women’s record by a landslide, it became evident that she could likely beat the men’s mark too. Unfortunately, her sponsors did not allow her to break the overall record as it threatened the status quo — they wanted to reserve the feat for a male driver. Legal action to fight this failed and O’Neil was never allowed to break the overall record. However, this didn’t hold her back from going on to break records piloting jet-powered boats and rocket dragsters.

Despite this setback, Kitty went on to set records driving jet-powered boats and rocket dragsters. A movie about her life called "Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neil Story" was released in 1979.

Kitty O'Neil was an inspiration to all of us and showed us that we can achieve anything we set our minds to, no matter what obstacles we face.

Source: Google doodles

Also Read: Marcel Marceau: Google doodle honors life and legacy of actor and master of silence