Rayna Kasabova (
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
: ''Райна Касабова''; 1 May 1897, in
Karlovo
Karlovo ( bg, Карлово ) is a historically important town in central Bulgaria located in a fertile valley along the river Stryama at the southern foot of the Balkan Mountains. It is administratively part of Plovdiv Province and has a p ...
– 25 May 1969) was a volunteer nurse and the first woman in the world who participated in a military flight during the
First Balkan War
The First Balkan War ( sr, Први балкански рат, ''Prvi balkanski rat''; bg, Балканска война; el, Αʹ Βαλκανικός πόλεμος; tr, Birinci Balkan Savaşı) lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and invo ...
in 1912.
On 30 October 1912, at the age of 15, Kasabova was an observer in a
Voisin aircraft that flew over enemy positions in
Edirne
Edirne (, ), formerly known as Adrianople or Hadrianopolis (Greek: Άδριανούπολις), is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, ...
. Kasabova threw out
Turkish language
Turkish ( , ), also referred to as Turkish of Turkey (''Türkiye Türkçesi''), is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 80 to 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Significant sma ...
propaganda leaflets.
Kasabova Glacier on
Davis Coast
Davis Coast () is that portion of the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula between Cape Kjellman and Cape Sterneck. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for Captain John Davis, the American sealer who claimed to have mad ...
in
Graham Land
Graham Land is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula that lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee and ...
on the
Antarctic Peninsula
The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martín in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctic ...
,
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...
is named after Rayna Kasabova.
There is a service road named Rayna Kasabova in Bulgaria
adjacent to the
Sofia Airport
Sofia Airport ( bg, Летище София, translit=Letishte Sofiya) is the main international airport of Bulgaria, located east of the centre of the capital Sofia. In 2019 the airport surpassed 7 million passengers for the first time. The ai ...
.
References
Further reading
*
*
1897 births
1969 deaths
People from Karlovo
Bulgarian military personnel of the Balkan Wars
20th-century Bulgarian military personnel
Bulgarian Air Force personnel
Bulgarian women aviators
Women in European warfare
Women in war 1900–1945
{{Bulgaria-bio-stub