Kitty O'Neil

Kitty Linn O'Neil ( – ) was an American stuntwoman and auto-racer, often called "the fastest woman in the world" for her various speed records. Her women's absolute land speed record stood until 2019.

An illness in early childhood left her deaf, and more illnesses in early adulthood cut short a career in competitive diving . She appeared in numerous television and film projects, lent her likeness to an action figure, and in March 2023 with a Doodle in the Google search.

Early life Kitty Linn O'Neil was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on March 24, 1946. Although not impossible, smallpox was a highly unlikely disease in 1940s Texas. Smallpox was extremely rare by then, but not quite eradicated. The last endemic case of smallpox in the United States was in 1949, in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. The 1977 People article mentions chicken pox, a much more likely childhood disease. 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,#tag:ref|News articles from the time reported that she was Hambleton's wife, which was not the case 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.

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.