Amelia Earhart
Amelia was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897. She was ten years old when she saw her first plane at the Iowa State Fair and she was not impressed. "It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting," she later said. When Amelia was 23, though, she went to an air show in California with her dad and was suddenly struck with flying fever. She took her first flying lesson, and a few months later had scraped together the money to buy a Kinner Airster Aircraft.
Amelia worked lots of odd jobs (including hauling gravel) so she'd have enough cash to keep flying. After gaining fame for crossing the Atlantic as a passenger in 1928, Amelia decided to fly the same trip solo four years later. She was the first woman to do so, and even set a new record for speed (2,026 miles in 14 hours). Inflight, she used smelling salts to stay awake, and brought only a thermos of soup and a can of tomato juice for food.
But she was unprepared for the public's reaction. Amelia returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, and President Herbert Hoover personally awarded her a medal for her contribution to aviation. She accepted several of her awards on behalf of "all women."
Amelia's plan was to be the first pilot-of either sex-to fly around the world at the equator (the longest way possible). Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan took off from Miami, Florida on June 1, 1937. Flying eastward, they stopped for fuel, repairs, and rest in exotic cities along the way. They completed 22,000 miles of the 29,000 mile trip before they vanished on July 2, 1937. It was a tragic end to such an exciting life, but Amelia left behind a permanent legacy-a generation of women with a new sense of their own potential.
Excerpted from the book Cool Women with permission of publisher, Girl Press.
Learn More About Ameila Earhart
Amelia Earhart Museum
http://www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org/index2.html
Read about Amelia's childhood, her love of flying, and see lots of pictures at this museum's site.
History Channel Biography
http://www.historychannel.com/perl/print_book.pl?ID=35009
Find out more about her life and her famous flights in this biography of Amelia by the History Channel.
Amelia Earhart
http://www.ellensplace.net/eae_intr.html
Read more about Amelia's life, broken into "early years," "celebrity," and "the last flight."
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