102 Facts About Amelia Earhart

Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer.

Amelia Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean and set many other records.

Amelia Earhart 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.

Amelia Earhart was born and raised in Atchison, Kansas, and developed a passion for adventure at a young age, steadily gaining flying experience from her twenties.

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

Amelia Earhart was one of the most inspirational American figures from the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.

Amelia Earhart's legacy is often compared to that of the early career of pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, as well as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, for their close friendship and lasting influence on women's causes.

The mysterious nature of Amelia Earhart's disappearance has caused much public interest in her life.

Amelia Earhart's airplane has never been found, which has led to speculation and conspiracy theories about the outcome of the flight.

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

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

Amelia Earhart was the second child of the marriage after a stillbirth in August 1896.

Amelia Earhart was of part-German descent; Alfred Otis had not initially favored the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin's progress as a lawyer.

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

The children's maternal grandmother disapproved of the bloomers they wore, and although Amelia Earhart liked the freedom of movement they provided, she was sensitive to the fact the neighborhood's girls wore dresses.

The Amelia Earhart children seemed to have a spirit of adventure and would set off daily to explore their neighborhood.

In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Amelia Earhart constructed a home-made ramp that was fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St Louis, Missouri, and secured it to the roof of the family tool shed.

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

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

Amelia Earhart later said she was "exceedingly fond of reading" and spent many hours in the large family library.

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

The Amelia Earhart family's finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house and the hiring of two servants but it soon became apparent Edwin was an alcoholic.

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

The Otis house was auctioned along with its contents; Amelia Earhart later described these events as the end of her childhood.

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

Amy Amelia Earhart took her children to Chicago, where they lived with friends.

Amelia Earhart canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science program; she rejected the high school nearest her home, complaining the chemistry lab was "just like a kitchen sink".

Amelia Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1916.

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

In 1918, when the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic reached Toronto, Amelia Earhart was engaged in nursing duties that included night shifts at Spadina Military Hospital.

Amelia Earhart was discharged in December 1918, about two months later.

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 other activities in later life, and sometimes she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.

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

Amelia Earhart asked her father 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 engaged Neta Snook to be her flying instructor.

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

Amelia Earhart cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers.

Six months later, in mid 1921 and against Snook's advice, Amelia Earhart purchased a secondhand, chromium yellow Kinner Airster biplane, 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.

Consequently, with no immediate prospect of recouping her investment in flying, Amelia Earhart sold the Canary and a second Kinner and bought a yellow Kissel Gold Bug "Speedster", a two-seat automobile, and named it "Yellow Peril".

Amelia Earhart tried a number of ventures that included setting up a photography company.

In 1925, Amelia Earhart found employment first as a teacher, then as a social worker at Denison House, a Boston settlement house.

Amelia Earhart flew out of Dennison Airport in Quincy, helped finance the airport's operation by investing a small sum of money, and in 1927, she flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport.

Amelia Earhart worked as a sales representative for Kinner Aircraft in the Boston area and wrote local-newspaper columns promoting flying; as her local celebrity grew, Amelia Earhart made plans to launch an organization for female flyers.

In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane.

Amelia Earhart had no training on this type of aircraft and did not pilot the plane.

On June 19,1928, Amelia Earhart flew to Woolston, Southampton, England, where she received a rousing welcome.

Amelia Earhart later acquired the aircraft and had it shipped to the United States.

Immediately after her return to the United States, Amelia Earhart undertook an exhausting lecture tour in 1928 and 1929.

The money Amelia Earhart made from Lucky Strike had been intended to support Richard Evelyn Byrd's imminent expedition to the South Pole.

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

Amelia Earhart accepted a position as associate editor at Cosmopolitan and used it to campaign for greater public acceptance of aviation, especially focusing on the role of women entering the field.

In 1934, Amelia Earhart interceded on behalf of Isabel Ebel, who had helped Amelia Earhart in 1932, to be accepted as the first woman student of aeronautical engineering at New York University.

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

Amelia Earhart 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, and in this role, she promoted the establishment of separate women's records and was instrumental in persuading the Federation Aeronautique Internationale to accept a similar international standard.

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

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

Amelia Earhart was a vigorous advocate for female pilots; when the 1934 Bendix Trophy Race banned women from competing, Amelia Earhart refused to fly screen actor Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the race.

Amelia Earhart had been engaged to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston, but 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 agreed to marry him.

Amelia Earhart referred to her marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control"; in a letter to Putnam and hand-delivered to him on the day of the wedding, she wrote:.

On May 20,1932,34-year-old Amelia Earhart set off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, with a copy of the Telegraph-Journal, given to her by journalist Stuart Trueman to confirm the date of the flight.

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

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

Amelia Earhart's next record attempt was a nonstop flight from Mexico City to New York.

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

In late November 1934, while Amelia Earhart was away on a speaking tour, a fire broke out at the Putnam residence in Rye, destroying many family treasures and Amelia Earhart's personal mementos.

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

Also 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.

Early in 1936, Amelia Earhart started planning to fly around the world; if she succeeded, she would become the first woman to do so.

Amelia Earhart planned to court publicity along the route to increase interest in a planned book about the expedition.

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

The original plan was a two-person crew: Amelia Earhart would fly and Manning would navigate.

The crew were Amelia Earhart, Noonan, Manning, and Mantz, who was acting as Amelia Earhart's technical advisor.

Amelia Earhart earlier thought the Electra's right tire had blown and the right landing gear had collapsed.

The second attempt began with an unpublicized flight from Oakland to Miami, Florida, and after arriving there, Amelia Earhart announced her plans to circumnavigate the globe.

Amelia Earhart began whistling into the microphone to provide a continuous signal for the ship's crew to use.

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

Amelia Earhart's only training on the system was a brief introduction by Joe Gurr at the Lockheed factory.

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

The US government investigated the aircraft's disappearance and, in its report, concluded Amelia Earhart's plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

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

The New Britain theory assumes Amelia Earhart turned back mid-flight and tried to reach the airfield at Rabaul, New Britain, northeast of mainland Papua New Guinea, approximately 2,200 miles from Howland Island.

In November 2006, National Geographic Channel aired an episode of its series Undiscovered History that supposed Amelia Earhart survived the world flight, changed her name, remarried, and became Irene Craigmile Bolam.

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

The Amelia Earhart Festival has taken place in Atchison, Kansas, every year since 1996.

In 2001, another commemorative flight retraced the route Amelia Earhart flew in her August 1928 transcontinental record flight; Carlene Mendieta flew an original Avro Avian, the same type of aircraft that was used in 1928.

USNS Amelia Earhart was named in her honor in May 2007.

In 2009, Purdue erected a bronze statue of Amelia Earhart holding a propeller in front of the residence hall named after her.

The Earhart Light, known as the Amelia Earhart Light, is a navigational day beacon on Howland Island, where she was due to land before she went missing.

Amelia Earhart was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992.

Amelia Earhart's life has been the subject of many writers; the following collection of examples make no claims of completeness:.

Amelia Earhart was a successful and heavily promoted writer who served as aviation editor for Cosmopolitan 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:.