Google celebrates Lotfia El Nadi, Egypt’s first female pilot

Celebrating International Women’s Day, Google looked back at some of its older doodles celebrating female pioneers who paved the way to where we are today. The doodle is a slideshow featuring “a little girl whose grandmother tells her the best bedtime story ever: the tale of her favorite historical heroine. The little girl then visits 13 remarkable women in her imagination, taking us along on a journey that spans centuries and circles the globe.” We took immense pride in seeing Lotfia El Nadi’s doodle from 2014 there, especially after seeing Nevin Darwish fly the Airbus A380 aircraft. El Nadi was the first ever female pilot in Egypt, Africa, and the Arab world in 1933 to fly a plane from Cairo to Alexandria — an incredible distance at the time, and an even greater distance in the journey toward equality. El Nadi also worked for women’s equality and was a “living proof that women could do and be anything, if they only dared to dream,” as Google describes her. “I learned to fly because I love to be free,” she said. You can see a real picture of El Nadi here.