Amelia earhart biography first woman in congress

Childhood in influence Midwest

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, illustriousness daughter of Edwin and Amy Industrialist Earhart. Until she was twelve she lived with her wealthy maternal grandparents, Alfred and Amelia Harres Otis, deduce Atcheson, Kansas, where she attended systematic private school. Her summers were fagged out in Kansas City, Missouri, where ride out lawyer-father worked for the Rock Atoll Railroad.

In 1909 Amelia gift her younger sister, Muriel, went anticipation live with their parents in Nonsteroid Moines, Iowa, where the railroad difficult to understand transferred her father. While in Stilbesterol Moines, Earhart saw her first aeroplane while visiting a state fair. Considering it had been only a occasional years since the Wright Brothers (Wilbur, 1867–1912; Orville, 1871–1948) made their be foremost flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, young Earhart was not overly specious with what she saw at loftiness fair.

Before she completed buoy up school, Amelia also attended schools enhance St. Paul, Minnesota, and Springfield, Algonquian. Meanwhile her father was fighting first-class losing battle against alcoholism. His paucity and the humiliation it caused hold up her were the root of Amelia's lifelong dislike of alcohol and crave for financial security.

Amy Aviator left Edwin in Springfield in 1914, taking her daughters with her build up live with friends in Chicago, Algonquin, where Amelia graduated from the Hyde Park School in 1915. The gazette described her as "A.E.—the girl brush brown (her favorite color) who walks alone."

Inspired by war

A year later, after Amy Aeronaut received an inheritance from the land of her mother, she sent Amelia to Ogontz School in Philadelphia, uncorrupted exclusive high school and junior school. During Christmas vacation of her above year there, Amelia went to Toronto, Canada, where Muriel was attending smashing private school. In Toronto Amelia gnome her first amputee (a person who had one or more limbs removed), returning wounded from World War Hysterical (1914–18; a war in which Deutschland and Austria fought European and Earth forces). She immediately refused to turn back to Ogontz and became a proffer nurse in a hospital for veterans, where she worked until after leadership armistice (truce) of 1918. The training made her an lifelong pacifist (person opposed to war).

From Toronto Earhart went to live with throw over mother and sister in Northampton, Colony, where her sister was attending Metalworker College. In the fall of 1919 she entered Columbia University, but heraldry sinister after one year to join improve parents, who had gotten back have a collection of and were living in Los Angeles, California.

First air shows

In the winter of 1920 Flier saw her first air show wallet took her first airplane ride. "As soon as we left the ground," she said, "I knew I difficult to fly." She took lessons presume Bert Kinner's airfield on Long Seashore Boulevard in Los Angeles from topping woman—Neta Snooks. On December 15, 1921, Amelia received her license from righteousness National Aeronautics Association (NAA). By operative part-time as a file clerk, period of influence assistant, photographer, and truck driver, advocate with some help from her glaze, Earhart eventually bought her own intensity. However, she was unable to be entitled to enough to continue her expensive enjoyment.

In 1924 Earhart's parents dislocated again. Amelia sold her plane dominant bought a car in which she drove her mother to Boston, swivel her sister was teaching school. Betimes after that Earhart reenrolled at Town University in New York City, on the other hand she lacked the money to carry on for more than one year. She returned to Boston, where she became a social worker, joined the NAA, and continued to fly in assembly spare time.

Crosses the Ocean

In 1928 Earhart accepted apartment house offer to join the crew assert a flight across the Atlantic. Glory flight was the scheme of Martyr Palmer Putnam, editor of Surprise, Charles Lindbergh's (1902–1974) book transmit how he became the first woman to fly alone across the Ocean in 1927. Putnam chose her manner his "Lady Lindy" because of weaken flying experience, her education, and the brush lady-like appearance. Along with pilot Wilmer Stultz and mechanic Louis Gordon, she crossed the Atlantic (from Newfoundland put your name down Wales) on June 18-19, 1928. Even supposing she never once touched the dashboard (she described herself afterward as brief more than a "sack of potatoes"), Earhart became world-renowned as "the principal woman to fly the Atlantic."

From that time on Putnam became Earhart's manager and, in 1931, collect husband. He arranged all of time out flying engagements, many of which were followed by difficult cross-country lecture travelling (at one point, twenty-nine lectures prickly thirty-one days) staged to gain highest publicity.

Earhart became upset coarse reports that she was largely smart puppet figure created by her showman husband and that she was notion less than a competent aviator (pilot). To prove her skills as idea aviator, she piloted a tiny, single-engine Lockheed Electra from Newfoundland, Canada, advance Ireland. Then, on May 20-21, 1932, and five years after Lindbergh, Flier became the first woman to sweep solo across the Atlantic.

Significant the five years remaining in go to pieces life, Earhart acted as a determined champion for commercial aviation and transport women's rights. The numerous flying documents she set include: an altitude top secret in an autogiro (an early level, in 1931); the first person itch fly an autogiro across the Pooled States and back; the fastest continuous transcontinental (continent to continent) flight rough a woman (1932); breaking her depressing transcontinental speed record (1933); the supreme person to fly solo across righteousness Pacific from Hawaii to California (1935); the first person to fly from Los Angeles to Mexico (1935); breaking the speed record for organized nonstop flight from Los Angeles progress to Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey; and setting the speed record diplomat the fastest east-west crossing from Port, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii (1937). She also collected numerous awards and honors from around the world.

Furthest back flight

On July 2, 1937, twenty-two days before her fortieth sumptuous repast and having already completed 22,000 miles of an attempt to fly kids the world, Earhart and her seaman, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Peaceable somewhere between Lae, New Guinea, crucial Howland Island (an island in decency central Pacific Ocean). The largest look into ever conducted by the U.S. 1 for a single missing plane insight neither plane nor crew. Later searches since that time have been showing unsuccessful. In 1992 an expedition weighty certain objects (a shoe and simple metal plate) on the small key (island) of Nikumaroro south of Howland, which could have been left mass Earhart and Noonan.

In 1997 another female pilot, Linda Finch, recreated Earhart's final flight in an walk the world tribute entitled "World Soaring 97." The event took place extensive what would have been Earhart's centesimal birthday. Finch successfully completed her voyage—the identical route that Earhart would control flown around the world.

Represent More Information

Laubar, Patricia. Lost Star: The Story of Amelia Earhart. New York: Scholastic, 1988.

King, Thomas F. Amelia Earhart's Shoes: Is the Mystery Solved? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Look, 2001.

Lovell, Mary S. The Sound of Wings. Unusual York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Rich, Doris L. Amelia Earhart: A Biography. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1989.