Quimby
Baum's aviatrix character Orissa Kane had a real-life counterpart. Harriet Quimby arose to notoriety in the same year as the first Flying Girl book appeared. Yet Baum's book appears to have been written before he could have been influenced by Quimby's brief career (she died in a crash in 1912). The coincidence of the actual Quimby and the fictional Orissa Kane seems to have been nothing more than that — coincidence.
Read more about this topic: The Flying Girl