Susan notes: I've copied and pasted this biographical information and talk unabashedly from the TED website.

In this TED archive video from 1998, paralympic sprinter Aimee Mullins talks about her record-setting career as a runner, and about the amazing carbon-fiber prosthetic legs (then a prototype) that helped her cross the finish line.

Aimee Mullins was born without fibular bones, and had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was an infant. She learned to walk on prosthetics, then to run -- competing at the national and international level as a champion sprinter, and setting world records at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. At Georgetown, where she double-majored in history and diplomacy, she became the first double amputee to compete in NCAA Division 1 track and field.

Nancy Bird-Walton was born in the New South Wales north coast town of Kew in 1915.

Walton became the first female pilot to get her commercial pilot's licence at the age of 19.

She wanted to fly from the age of four and she was taught to take the controls when she was just 17 by Charles Kingsford Smith.