100 Facts About Amelia Earhart

Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and writer.

Amelia Earhart set many other records, was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.

In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane, for which she achieved celebrity status.

In 1932, piloting a Lockheed Vega 5B, Amelia Earhart made a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat.

Amelia Earhart received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for this accomplishment.

In 1935, Amelia Earhart became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to female students.

Amelia Earhart was a member of the National Woman's Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Amelia Earhart presumably died in the Pacific during the circumnavigation, just three weeks prior to her fortieth birthday.

Decades after her presumed death, Amelia Earhart was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1968 and the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.

Amelia Earhart now has several commemorative memorials named in her honor around the United States, including an urban park, an airport, a residence hall, a museum, a research foundation, a bridge, a cargo ship, an earth-fill dam, four schools, a hotel, a playhouse, a library, multiple roads, and more.

Amelia Earhart has a minor planet, planetary corona, and newly-discovered lunar crater named after her.

Amelia Earhart is ranked ninth on Flying's list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation.

Amelia Earhart was born in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis, who was a former federal judge, the president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the town.

Amelia Earhart was the second child of the marriage after an infant was stillborn in August 1896.

From an early age, Amelia Earhart was the ringleader while her sister Grace Muriel Amelia Earhart, two years her junior, acted as the dutiful follower.

Amelia Earhart was nicknamed "Meeley" and Grace was nicknamed "Pidge"; both girls continued to answer to their childhood nicknames well into adulthood.

In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Amelia Earhart cobbled together a home-made ramp, fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St Louis, and secured the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed.

Amelia Earhart emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a "sensation of exhilaration".

The next year, at the age of 10, Amelia Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.

Amelia Earhart's father tried to interest his daughters in taking a flight.

Amelia Earhart later described the biplane as "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting".

Amelia Earhart later recounted that she was "exceedingly fond of reading" and spent countless hours in the large family library.

In 1909, when the family was finally reunited in Des Moines, the Earhart children were enrolled in public school for the first time and Amelia, 12, entered seventh grade.

At about this time, Earhart's grandmother Amelia Otis died suddenly, leaving a substantial estate that placed her daughter's share in a trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would drain the funds.

The Otis house was auctioned along with all of its contents; Amelia Earhart was heartbroken and later described it as the end of her childhood.

In 1915, after a long search, Amelia Earhart's father found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St Paul, Minnesota, where Amelia Earhart entered Central High School as a junior.

Amelia Earhart made an unusual condition in the choice of her next schooling; she canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science program.

Amelia Earhart rejected the high school nearest her home when she complained that the chemistry lab was "just like a kitchen sink".

Amelia Earhart graduated from Chicago's Hyde Park High School in 1916.

Amelia Earhart began junior college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania, but did not complete her program.

World War I had been raging and Amelia Earhart saw the returning wounded soldiers.

Amelia Earhart's duties included preparing food in the kitchen for patients with special diets and handing out prescribed medication in the hospital's dispensary.

Amelia Earhart became a patient herself, experiencing pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis.

Amelia Earhart was hospitalized for pneumonia in early November 1918 and discharged in December 1918, about two months after the illness had started.

Amelia Earhart's sinus-related symptoms were pain and pressure around one eye and copious mucus drainage via the nostrils and throat.

Amelia Earhart's convalescence lasted nearly a year, which she spent at her sister's home in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Amelia Earhart passed the time reading poetry, learning to play the banjo, and studying mechanics.

Chronic sinusitis significantly affected Amelia Earhart's flying and activities in later life, and sometimes even on the airfield she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.

Amelia Earhart quit a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California.

Amelia Earhart asked her father, Edwin, to ask about passenger flights and flying lessons.

Amelia Earhart was booked for a passenger flight the following day at Emory Roger's Field, at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

The next month Amelia Earhart recruited Neta Snook to be her flying instructor.

Amelia Earhart had her first lesson on January 3,1921, at Kinner Field on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard and Tweedy Road, now in the city of South Gate.

Amelia Earhart's mother provided part of the $1,000 "stake" against her "better judgement".

Six months later in the summer of 1921, Amelia Earhart purchased a secondhand bright chromium yellow Kinner Airster biplane, against Snook's advice, which she nicknamed "The Canary".

On October 22,1922, Amelia Earhart flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for female pilots.

On May 16,1923, Amelia Earhart became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot's license by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

Simultaneously, Amelia Earhart experienced an exacerbation of her old sinus problem as her pain worsened and in early 1924 she was hospitalized for another sinus operation, which was again unsuccessful.

The meandering tour eventually brought the pair to Boston, Massachusetts, where Amelia Earhart underwent another sinus operation which was more successful.

Amelia Earhart flew out of Dennison Airport in Quincy, Massachusetts, and helped finance its operation by investing a small sum of money.

Amelia Earhart flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport in 1927.

Since most of the flight was on instruments and Amelia Earhart had no training for this type of flying, she did not pilot the aircraft.

Amelia Earhart reportedly received a rousing welcome on June 19,1928, when she landed at Woolston in Southampton, England.

The United Press was more grandiloquent; to them, Amelia Earhart was the reigning "Queen of the Air".

Rather than simply endorsing the products, Amelia Earhart actively became involved in the promotions, especially in women's fashions.

In 1929, Amelia Earhart was among the first aviators to promote commercial air travel through the development of a passenger airline service; along with Charles Lindbergh, she represented Transcontinental Air Transport alongside Margaret Bartlett Thornton and invested time and money in setting up the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington, DC, the Ludington Airline.

Amelia Earhart was a Vice President of National Airways, which conducted the flying operations of the Boston-Maine Airways and several other airlines in the northeast.

Amelia Earhart's piloting skills and professionalism gradually grew, as acknowledged by experienced professional pilots who flew with her.

Amelia Earhart subsequently made her first attempt at competitive air racing in 1929 during the first Santa Monica-to-Cleveland Women's Air Derby, which left Santa Monica, California on August 18 and arrived at Cleveland, Ohio on August 26.

At Cleveland, Amelia Earhart was placed third in the heavy division.

In 1930, Amelia Earhart became an official of the National Aeronautic Association, where she actively promoted the establishment of separate women's records and was instrumental in the Federation Aeronautique Internationale accepting a similar international standard.

Amelia Earhart had called a meeting of female pilots in 1929 following the Women's Air Derby.

Amelia Earhart suggested the name based on the number of the charter members; she later became the organization's first president in 1930.

Amelia Earhart was a vigorous advocate for female pilots and when the 1934 Bendix Trophy Race banned women, she openly refused to fly screen actress Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the races.

Amelia Earhart was engaged to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston; she broke off the engagement on November 23,1928.

Putnam, who was known as GP, was divorced in 1929 and sought out Amelia Earhart, proposing to her six times before she finally agreed to marry him.

Amelia Earhart referred to her marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control".

Amelia Earhart was especially fond of David, who frequently visited his father at their family home, which was on the grounds of The Apawamis Club in Rye, New York.

Amelia Earhart intended to fly to Paris in her single engine Lockheed Vega 5B to emulate Charles Lindbergh's solo flight five years earlier.

Amelia Earhart played the role of "decoy" for the press as he was ostensibly preparing Earhart's Vega for his own Arctic flight.

On January 11,1935, Amelia Earhart became the first aviator to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California.

Between 1930 and 1935, Amelia Earhart had set seven women's speed and distance aviation records in a variety of aircraft, including the Kinner Airster, Lockheed Vega, and Pitcairn Autogiro.

At Amelia Earhart's urging, Putnam purchased a small house in June 1935 adjacent to the clubhouse of the Lakeside Golf Club in Toluca Lake, a San Fernando Valley celebrity enclave community nestled between the Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures studio complexes, where they had earlier rented a temporary residence.

Amelia Earhart was located at the Burbank Airport, about five miles from Earhart's Toluca Lake home.

In 1935, Amelia Earhart joined Purdue University as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers and as a technical advisor to its Department of Aeronautics.

Amelia Earhart chose Captain Harry Manning as her navigator; he had been the captain of the President Roosevelt, the ship that had brought Amelia Earhart back from Europe in 1928.

Amelia Earhart ended his association with the trip, leaving only Earhart with Noonan, neither of whom were skilled radio operators.

Amelia Earhart used part of the above schedule for the Oakland to Honolulu leg of the first world flight attempt.

The Oakland to Honolulu leg had Amelia Earhart, Noonan, Manning, and Mantz on board.

The radio direction finding station at Darwin expected to be in contact with Amelia Earhart when she arrived there, but Amelia Earhart stated that the RDF was not functioning; the problem was a blown fuse.

Amelia Earhart was unable to determine a minimum during an RDF test at Lae.

Amelia Earhart's only training on the system was a brief introduction by Joe Gurr at the Lockheed factory, and the topic had not come up.

Amelia Earhart began whistling into the microphone to provide a continual signal for them to home in on.

Amelia Earhart acknowledged receiving these but said she was unable to determine their direction.

The last voice transmission received on Howland Island from Amelia Earhart indicated she and Noonan were flying along a line of position which Noonan would have calculated and drawn on a chart as passing through Howland.

Four days after Amelia Earhart's last verified radio transmission, on July 6,1937, the captain of the battleship Colorado received orders from the Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District to take over all naval and coast guard units to coordinate search efforts.

British aviation historian Roy Nesbit interpreted evidence in contemporary accounts and Putnam's correspondence and concluded that Amelia Earhart's Electra was not fully fueled at Lae.

The 2019 National Geographic special Expedition Amelia depicts an August 2019 search for Earhart's aircraft off Nikumaroro's reef conducted by ocean explorer Robert Ballard, who has found several ocean wrecks including the Titanic.

In 2017, a History Channel documentary called Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, proposed that a photograph in the National Archives of Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands was actually a picture of a captured Earhart and Noonan.

The movie helped further a myth that Earhart was spying on the Japanese in the Pacific at the request of the Franklin D Roosevelt administration.

Jackie Cochran, another pioneering aviator and one of Amelia Earhart's friends, made a postwar search of numerous files in Japan and was convinced that the Japanese were not involved in Amelia Earhart's disappearance.

Ric Gillespie of TIGHAR believes that based on Amelia Earhart's last estimated position, somewhat close to Howland Island, it was impossible for the aircraft to end up at New Britain, 2,000 miles and over 13 hours' flight time away.

In November 2006, the National Geographic Channel aired episode two of the Undiscovered History series about a claim that Amelia Earhart survived the world flight, moved to New Jersey, changed her name, remarried and became Irene Craigmile Bolam.

Amelia Earhart was a widely known international celebrity during her lifetime.

In 2013, Amelia Rose Earhart, a pilot and a reporter from Denver, Colorado, announced that she would be recreating the 1937 flight in the middle of 2014 in a single engine Pilatus PC-12NG.

Amelia Earhart completed the flight without incident on July 11,2014.

In June and July 2017, Brian Lloyd flew his Mooney M20K 231 around the world to commemorate Amelia Earhart's attempted circumnavigation 80 years earlier.

Amelia Earhart's life has spurred the imaginations of many writers and others; the following examples are given although many other mentions have occurred in contemporary or current media:.

Amelia Earhart was a successful and heavily promoted writer who served as aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine from 1928 to 1930.

Amelia Earhart wrote magazine articles, newspaper columns, and essays, and published two books based upon her experiences as a flyer during her lifetime:.