Amelia Earhart

Life and legacy

Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1897, the daughter of a railroad lawyer whose alcoholism would later destabilize the family. An adventurous, unconventional child, she kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about women who succeeded in male-dominated fields. Her first airplane ride at an air show in 1920 changed her life. "As soon as I left the ground," she later wrote, "I knew I had to fly." She took flying lessons from Neta Snook, one of the first female aviators, and bought her first plane - a bright yellow Kinner Airster she named "The Canary."

In June 1928, Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, though she was a passenger while pilots Wilbur Stultz and Louis Gordon operated the plane. She was candid about her limited role, comparing herself to "a sack of potatoes," but the flight made her famous and earned her the nickname "Lady Lindy" after Charles Lindbergh. Determined to earn the distinction on her own merits, on May 20-21, 1932, she flew solo from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, to a pasture near Londonderry, Northern Ireland - the first woman and only the second person after Lindbergh to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. The flight, battling ice, mechanical failures, and fierce storms, took approximately fifteen hours.

Earhart set numerous other records: first woman to fly solo nonstop across the United States (1932), first person to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland across the Pacific (1935), and various speed and altitude records. Beyond aviation, she was a visiting faculty member at Purdue University, a fashion designer who launched her own clothing line, a bestselling author, and a vocal advocate for women's rights and equal opportunity. She married publisher George Palmer Putnam in 1931 but insisted on maintaining her independence, writing him a letter on their wedding day declaring that neither should feel bound by "any medieval code of faithfulness."

On June 1, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan departed Miami on an ambitious attempt to circumnavigate the globe at the equator - a distance of approximately 29,000 miles. They completed roughly 22,000 miles, reaching Lae, New Guinea, on June 29. On July 2, they took off for tiny Howland Island in the central Pacific, a refueling stop. Despite radio communications with the Coast Guard cutter Itasca stationed at Howland, Earhart and Noonan never arrived. The largest air and sea search in history at that time found no trace of the aircraft.

Amelia Earhart was declared dead in absentia on January 5, 1939. Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in aviation history, generating theories ranging from crash-and-sink to capture by the Japanese. Whatever her fate, her legacy as a trailblazer who shattered barriers for women in aviation and beyond is secure.

Key accomplishments

• First woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean (May 1932)
• First woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger (June 1928)
• First person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California (January 1935)
• Set multiple speed and altitude records in aviation during the 1930s
• Advocated powerfully for women's rights and equal opportunity in professional life

Quotes

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

From a speech; widely cited in Earhart biographical accounts

Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.

Last letter to her husband George Putnam, 1937

Related figures