“"After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the esthetic appeal of flying."”
~~ Amelia Earhart, American Icon, aviation pioneer, author and first woman (aviatrix) to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
Happy B-Day to Amelia Earhart female aviation pioneer, famous for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932.
Born on July 24th in 1897, today would have been Earhart’s 115th birthday. Google paid homage to Earhart’s life in a Google Doodle.
It was seventy-five years ago on July 2, 1937 that Earhart flew in her Lockheed Model 10 Electra over the Pacific Ocean en route to Howland Island and disappeared.
All photos courtesy of Wikepedia.org
Resources
►Amelia Earhart: Expedition returns without evidence, BBC News US & Canada, July 24th, 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18972529
► Official Web site of Amelia Earhart - Biography http://www.ameliaearhart.com/about/bio.html
► Latest Amelia Earhart search falls short, CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57478379/latest-amelia-earhart-search-falls-short/
► Amelia Earhart: Why the mystery continues, Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Tech-Culture/2012/0724/Amelia-Earhart-Why-the-mystery-continues
►Searchers find no sign of Amelia Earhart’s plane, MSNBC.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48294366/ns/technology_and_science-science/
►Amelia Earhart museum http://www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org/
► Amelia Earhart Google Logo Honors Pilot’s 115th Birthday, Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/amelia-earhart-google-logo_n_1697782.html
►Ninety-Nines, Inc., International Organization of Women Pilots, Amelia Earhart – A Timeline http://www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/amelia_earhart.htm
►Expedition to find Amelia Earhart begins in Honolulu, CBS News, July 3rd, 2012 http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57465849/expedition-to-find-amelia-earhart-begins-in-honolulu/
Records and achievements
• Woman's world altitude record: 14,000 ft (1922)
• First woman to fly the Atlantic (1928)
• Speed records for 100 km (and with 500 lb (230 kg) cargo) (1931)
• First woman to fly an autogyro (1931)
• Altitude record for autogyros: 15,000 ft (1931)
• First person to cross the U.S. in an autogyro (1932)
• First woman to fly the Atlantic solo (1932)
• First person to fly the Atlantic twice (1932)
• First woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross (1932)
• First woman to fly nonstop, coast-to-coast across the U.S. (1933)
• Woman's speed transcontinental record (1933)
• First person to fly solo between Honolulu, Hawaii and Oakland, California (1935)
• First person to fly solo from Los Angeles, California to Mexico City, Mexico (1935)
• First person to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey (1935)
• Speed record for east-to-west flight from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii (1937)[173]
Books by Earhart
Earhart was a successful and heavily promoted writer who served as aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine from 1928 to 1930. She wrote magazine articles, newspaper columns, essays and published two books based upon her experiences as a flyer during her lifetime:
• 20 Hrs., 40 Min. (1928) was a journal of her experiences as the first woman passenger on a transatlantic flight.
• The Fun of It (1932) was a memoir of her flying experiences and an essay on women in aviation.
• Last Flight (1937) featured the periodic journal entries she sent back to the United States during her world flight attempt, published in newspapers in the weeks prior to her final departure from New Guinea. Compiled by her husband GP Putnam after she disappeared over the Pacific, many historians consider this book to be only partially Earhart's original work.
Memorial flights
Two notable memorial flights by female aviators subsequently followed Earhart's original circumnavigational route.
• In 1967, Ann Dearing Holtgren Pellegreno and a crew of three successfully flew a similar aircraft (a Lockheed 10A Electra) to complete a world flight that closely mirrored Earhart's flight plan. On the 30th anniversary of her disappearance, Pellegreno dropped a wreath in Earhart's honor over tiny Howland Island and returned to Oakland, completing the 28,000-mile (45,000 km) commemorative flight on July 7, 1967.
• In 1997, on the 60th anniversary of Earhart's world flight, San Antonio businesswoman Linda Finch retraced the final flight path flying the same make and model of aircraft as Earhart, a restored 1935 Lockheed Electra 10E. Finch touched down in 18 countries before finishing the trip two and a half months later when she arrived back at Oakland Airport on May 28, 1997. In 2001, another commemorative flight retraced the route undertaken by Earhart in her August 1928 transcontinental record flight. Dr. Carlene Mendieta flew an original Avro Avian, the same type that was used in 1928.[62]
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