biography
| name: |
Earhart, Amelia (Mary)
|
pronunciation:
[ay(r)hah(r)t]
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1897–1937)
|
| biography:
| Aviator, born in Atchison, Kansas, USA. During World War 1 she worked as a nurses' aide in Toronto, Canada. She then attended several schools, including two spells at Columbia University, held odd jobs in California, and became a settlement house worker in Boston (1926). She had first flown in Los Angeles (1920) and within a year made a solo flight. In 1928 she participated in a transatlantic flight with Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic. In 1932, flying solo, she set a transatlantic record of 14 hours, 56 minutes, and the following year she flew two more record-setting transatlantic flights. In 1937, by now a public favourite, she embarked on an equatorial world trip but ceased communications on 2 July shortly after leaving New Guinea with her navigator Frederick Noonan. Several extensive searches revealed nothing. Her husband, George Putnam, posthumously published her autobiography, Last Flight (1938). |
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