Women's History Month: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Mary Earheart was born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897.

From an early age, Amelia, or "Meeley," as her family called her, acted as a ring leader to her younger sister, Grace, or "Pidge." Their upbringing was a little unconventional, since their mother didn't believe in raising her daughters to be "nice little girls." For example, Meeley and Pidge wore bloomers because they provided a little more freedom during playtime.

The two loved adventurously exploring their neighborhood. They climbed trees, hunted rats, and sledded down hills. They collected insects amphibians. Many biographers have pinned the young Amelia as a "tomboy" because of this love of outdoors and playfulness. A tell-tale sign of her future to come: she built a roller-coaster-like ramp on the side of her house and launched off of it, gaining some air and earning a bruised lip and torn dress.

Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago in 1916. Throughout her childhood, she continued to aspire to a future career, keeping a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management ,and mechanical engineering.


During World War I, she received training as a nurse's aide and worked in a military hospital in Canada.

She later reunited with her parents in Southern California. In 1920 in Long Beach, Amelia received a ride in an airplane manned by air racer Frank Hawks... Amelia said of the experience, "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly." Afterwards she worked countless odd-jobs to earn $1,000 for flight lessons. Her teacher was Anita "Neta" Snook, a pioneer female aviator.

Amelia bought a sweet-ass leather jacket and slept in it for three nights in order to give it a worn-in look, so the asshole-y male aviators wouldn't judge her. She also cut her hair super short in the style of other female flyers. She eventually bought a second-hand, bright-yellow plane she named "The Canary." In 1922, she flew it up to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for female pilots. And in 1923 she became the 16th woman to receive a pilot's license. BOO YAH!

After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Phipps Guest, expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding the trip was too perilous for her to undertake, she offered to sponsor the project, suggesting they find "another girl with the right image." While at work one afternoon in 1928, Earhart got a phone call from Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?" And she was all FUCK YAH! (just kidding).

It was 20 hour flight across the Atlantic. But technically she actually didn't fly it alone... or fly the plane at all. She was accompanied by two dudes who were sort of in charge of flying because Amelia had never worked with that kind of plane before. Still, she hoped to someday do it on her own.


After her transatlantic flight, she did a lot of celebrity endorsements to earn money to finance her flying career, and was even an associate editor for Cosmopolitan Magazine.

She performed her first long solo flight in August 1928, across the North American continent and back.

During a female aviator race in 1929, one of her BFFs crashed her plane at take-off. Amelia abandoned her own plane to make sure her friend was ok. After making sure she was uninjured, Amelia took off, but finished third in the race. The event was symbolic of Amelia's courageous selflessness.

In 1931, she set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet. Bad ass.

She married her publicist, GP Putnam, in 1931. They had become "intimate" earlier on, when Amelia was engaged to another man (Whoops!).

She had liberal views of marriage at the time, believing both husband and wife should be "breadwinners," and she did not take on his last name. The two had no children together.

In 1932, at age 34, Amelia flew solo across the Atlantic. She intended to land in Paris, but because of strong winds, she landed in North Ireland.

As the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic, Earhart received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.

On January 11, 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. In the final hours of the flight, she relaxed and listened to the broadcast of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Baller!

Early in 1936, Earhart started to plan a round-the-world flight. She wouldn't be the first to circle the globe, but it would be the longest flight, at 29,000 miles, following a grueling equatorial route.

The first attempt was on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1937. Earhart and her crew flew the first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. Due to lubrication and galling problems with the propeller hubs' variable pitch mechanisms, the aircraft needed servicing in Hawaii. Then, because of a faulty takeoff, the flight was called off and the aircraft was shipped by sea to California for repairs.

For the second attempt, she departed from Miami on June 1 and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia, she arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. At this stage about 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would be over the Pacific.

But because of loss of communication, and problems with seeing the island they were supposed to land on next, the theory is that the plane ran out of fuel and was lost at sea. Many search efforts were made by the government and by Amelia's husband, but she was never found. Some say she was really on a spy mission and was captured by the Japanese. Others said it was suicide. I guess we'll never know. Or maybe we will eventually. I have no idea. All I know is she was an awesome lady.

Sources: http://www.biography.com/people/amelia-earhart-9283280?page=7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart