A closer look
Early commercial airlines in the 1930s strictly required all their flight attendants to be registered nurses, unmarried, and weigh less than 115 pounds, operating under the assumption that passengers would need constant medical care to survive the terrifying ordeal of flight. Because early airplanes were unpressurized, incredibly loud, and bounced around like tin cans in a hurricane, the primary job duties included swatting flies, handing out cotton balls for bleeding eardrums, and carrying wrenches to literally bolt the seats back down mid-flight. It really puts things into perspective when you get annoyed that today's flight crew takes too long to bring you a lukewarm ginger ale. Those pioneering nurses were actively preventing people from dying of panic attacks while performing amateur carpentry at ten thousand feet, whereas modern flyers will throw a full tantrum if the complimentary Wi-Fi cuts out during a movie
