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Day 20 - Amelia Earhart
Mar. 21st, 2018 12:28 amAmelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart is most famous for being lost on her around the world flight but she was much more than that. She was an aviation pioneer and an advocate for women pilots as well.
Amelia was born in Kansas and always had a sense of adventure. Her father was an alcoholic and the family was sometimes in financial straits but she and her sister, by all accounts, had a happy child hood. Her mother finally left her father over his drinking and moved her and her sister several times.
Amelia’s academic career was spotty, mostly due to finances.
She worked as a nurse during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and fell very ill herself with the flu and an ongoing sinus problem that kept her down for a year. She ended up having her sinuses drained and had problems the rest of her life with Sinuses and often had to wear a small drain.
She had her first plane ride in 1920 and she later said, “"By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground, I knew I had to fly.”
She did all sorts of jobs to earn enough money for her first flying lesson and then she bought a small plane. After she lost a little inheritance she had on some bad investments, she sold her plane and she and her mother traveled to Boston, where she did lots of different jobs.
She stayed interested in aviation and soon, she had earned a bit of celebrity, she was offered the chance to fly Lindbergh’s route across the Atlantic. She took it even though she was just a passenger on this flight. She later said she was ‘just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.”
She traded on her resemblance to Lindbergh and became quite a celebrity with her own line of products and endorsements. She had always made her own comfortable clothing and now she had a line of clothes for the more active lifestyle like hers. All these endorsements help finance her flying career.
She met and married the publisher, George Putnam and their ‘open marriage’ was detailed in a letter she sent to him on their wedding day. It was sort of a ‘love the one you’re with’ arrangement.
Amelia in formal attie:
She flew solo across the Atlantic in 1934, the first woman to do so but she landed in Northern Ireland rather than France. She also flew solo from Honolulu to California, becoming the aviator to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland.
IN 1937, she made two attempts to circumnavigate the globe. She had to give up the first time because her plane was damaged. Her second attempt in July ended in her being lost at sea. She was supposed to land on Howland Island but she never made it. Several Ham radio operators talked to her or heard her but then the transmissions stopped and she was gone.
There were many idea about what happened to her: she was a spy who defected to Japan, she was a prisoner of the Japanese, she was lost at sea…
IN the last few weeks, Forensic Journal has reported that a bone found on Nikumaroro was porbably that of Amelia Earhart and she basically ran out of gas and crash landed. Several other items have been found on the island over the years that suggest they crashed there, Amelia’s brand of freckle cream, among them.
Though she was no beauty, she was a dashing figure in her leather bomber jacket and aviator hat. I think perhaps that is best how to remember her.
Amelia Earhart is most famous for being lost on her around the world flight but she was much more than that. She was an aviation pioneer and an advocate for women pilots as well.
Amelia was born in Kansas and always had a sense of adventure. Her father was an alcoholic and the family was sometimes in financial straits but she and her sister, by all accounts, had a happy child hood. Her mother finally left her father over his drinking and moved her and her sister several times.
Amelia’s academic career was spotty, mostly due to finances.
She worked as a nurse during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and fell very ill herself with the flu and an ongoing sinus problem that kept her down for a year. She ended up having her sinuses drained and had problems the rest of her life with Sinuses and often had to wear a small drain.
She had her first plane ride in 1920 and she later said, “"By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground, I knew I had to fly.”
She did all sorts of jobs to earn enough money for her first flying lesson and then she bought a small plane. After she lost a little inheritance she had on some bad investments, she sold her plane and she and her mother traveled to Boston, where she did lots of different jobs.
She stayed interested in aviation and soon, she had earned a bit of celebrity, she was offered the chance to fly Lindbergh’s route across the Atlantic. She took it even though she was just a passenger on this flight. She later said she was ‘just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.”
She traded on her resemblance to Lindbergh and became quite a celebrity with her own line of products and endorsements. She had always made her own comfortable clothing and now she had a line of clothes for the more active lifestyle like hers. All these endorsements help finance her flying career.
She met and married the publisher, George Putnam and their ‘open marriage’ was detailed in a letter she sent to him on their wedding day. It was sort of a ‘love the one you’re with’ arrangement.
Amelia in formal attie:
She flew solo across the Atlantic in 1934, the first woman to do so but she landed in Northern Ireland rather than France. She also flew solo from Honolulu to California, becoming the aviator to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland.
IN 1937, she made two attempts to circumnavigate the globe. She had to give up the first time because her plane was damaged. Her second attempt in July ended in her being lost at sea. She was supposed to land on Howland Island but she never made it. Several Ham radio operators talked to her or heard her but then the transmissions stopped and she was gone.
There were many idea about what happened to her: she was a spy who defected to Japan, she was a prisoner of the Japanese, she was lost at sea…
IN the last few weeks, Forensic Journal has reported that a bone found on Nikumaroro was porbably that of Amelia Earhart and she basically ran out of gas and crash landed. Several other items have been found on the island over the years that suggest they crashed there, Amelia’s brand of freckle cream, among them.
Though she was no beauty, she was a dashing figure in her leather bomber jacket and aviator hat. I think perhaps that is best how to remember her.
