Amelia+Earhart

Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. As a child Amelia liked to take risks. Her parents suffered financially and her grandparents helped a lot while her parents were working. Her grandparents were very strict, causing her to be very independent and willing to try new things. During World War I, Amelia was a nurse in Canada and after the war was over she went to nursing school at Columbia in New York City. Although Amelia did like nursing, she found a new passion. In 1920 Amelia flew in an airplane for the first time, and she soon fell in love with aviation. In January 1921 Amelia found an instructor to teach her to fly and her name was Neta Snook. After buying her first plane in 1922, Amelia then broke her first record: She was the first woman to fly at an altitude of 14000 feet. She then left nursing to dedicate all her time to her newfound love of aviation. In 1928 she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She accompanied Captain H.H. Railly on June 17, 1928. She was asked to fly with him to keep logs, however when she crossed the Atlantic, the public did not care what she did in the airplane, she was the female version of Charles Lindbergh and a symbol to female revolution all over the world. She became an aviation editor for //Cosmopolitan// magazine and wrote a book about her long flight over the Alantic called //20 Hours, 40 Min//. Amelia married her publisher, George Putnam, and they put together many promotional flights. One was Women’s Air Derby in 1929. She was also founder and president of the Ninety-Nines, a club for women pilots. While doing this she also broke several records setting a women’s speed record of 181 miles per hour and an altitude record of 18, 451 feet. In 1932 Amelia broke another record: the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She started in Newfoundland and ended in Ireland and it only took her 14 hours and 56 minutes, which broke the time record as well. That same year she wrote another book about flying called, For the Fun of It. Later she broke more records becoming the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California and from Los Angeles to Mexico City. She also flew from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey. She received many awards from Congress and met the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. She even started a new career, a counselor at Purdue University. Then came Amelia’s most famous project, her around the world flight. Many tried to map routes before, but none had worked. Now Amelia was determined to try a different more dangerous route. Joining her was Fred Noonan a navigator. She started on March 17, 1937 from Oakland, California and headed west towards Hawaii. However when she went to take off from Hawaii, her plane crashed and she had to postpone the whole trip. Soon she decided to try again and on June 1, she took off with Noonan from Oakland but going east to Miami. By June 30 she got to New Guinea. Her flight had covered over 22,000 miles so far and now she had to accomplish the toughest part of her trip. She had to fly from New Guinea to Howland Island, a small island near the equator. There were no landmarks in the Pacific, so the journey was very difficult to navigate. On July 1, Noonan and Earhart disappeared and no one had ever heard from them again. Amelia Earhart was a true woman pioneer. She went where no woman had ever gone before in aviation. She accomplished many things as a pilot and became a symbol for the woman’s growing independence during that time. She proved to the world that a woman could do anything that a man could do and influenced women all around the world.

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