Kitty O'Neil

Kitty Linn O'Neil was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on March 24, 1946. 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. As a teenager, O'Neil became a competitive 10-meter platform diver and 3-meter springboard diver, winning Amateur Athletic Union diving championships. She trained beginning in 1962 with diving coach Sammy Lee. Before the trials for the 1964 Olympics, she broke her wrist and contracted spinal meningitis, threatening her ability to walk and ending her contention for a position on the Olympic diving team. She competed in 100m backstroke and 100m freestyle swimming at the 1965 Summer Deaflympics. After recovering from meningitis, she lost interest in diving, and turned to water skiing, scuba diving, skydiving and hang gliding, stating that diving "wasn't scary enough for me". In her late 20s, she underwent two treatments for cancer. ==Racing and stunt career==

By 1970, O'Neil had taken up racing on water and land, participating in the Baja 500 and Mint 400. She met stuntmen Hal Needham and Ron Hambleton while racing motorcycles, and lived with Hambleton, giving up racing for a time. In the mid-1970s, she entered stunt work, training with Needham, Hambleton and Dar Robinson. In 1976, she was one of two stuntwomen, Janet Brady being the other to join Stunts Unlimited, the leading stunt group. As a stuntwoman, she appeared in The Bionic Woman, ''Airport '77, The Blues Brothers, Smokey and the Bandit II'' and other television and film productions. In 1978, her stunt career inspired a Kitty O'Neil action figure, made by Mattel. In filming for a 1979 episode of Wonder Woman, O'Neil was hired to perform a stunt of high difficulty for Jeannie Epper, Lynda Carter's usual stunt double. In the process, she set a women's high-fall record of at the 12-storey Valley Hilton in Sherman Oaks, California. She credited her small size, at 5'-2" and , for allowing her to withstand impact forces. She later broke her record with a fall from a helicopter. In 1977, O'Neil set a women's record for speed on water of , and she held a 1970 women's water skiing record of . ==Land speed record==

On 6 December 1976, in southeastern Oregon's Alvord Desert, O'Neil set the land-speed record for female drivers. She piloted a $350,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) hydrogen peroxide powered three-wheeled rocket car built by Bill Fredrick called the "SMI Motivator". It reached an average speed of , with a peak speed of . O'Neil's runs reportedly used 60% of the available thrust, and O'Neil estimated that she could have exceeded with full power. ==Later years and death==

In 1977 in the Mojave Desert, O'Neil piloted a hydrogen peroxide-powered rocket dragster built by Ky Michaelson with an average speed of . Since the run was not repeated according to NHRA rules, it is not recognized as an official drag racing record. ==Tribute==

On March 24, 2023, Google celebrated O'Neil's posthumous 77th birthday with a doodle. ==Notes==