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ALT: Amelia Earhart portrait (AP Images)
CAPTION:
Inspiring Life, Intriguing Mystery
Her life made her a celebrity. Her disappearance made her a legend.
At a time when most well-bred young ladies aspired to nothing more than marrying well, Amelia Earhart volunteered as a health worker during the 1918 flu pandemic, worked as a social work assisting immigrant families in Boston, taught at a major university and designed her own clothing line.
She also became one of the world’s most celebrated aviators at a time when few women could drive a car.
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ALT: Earhart (with flowers) between Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon (AP Images)
CAPTION: Earhart saw her first flying exhibition in 1918, but did not take her first flight until 1920. Two years later — after soloing in 1921 and buying her first airplane in 1922 — she set a women's altitude record of 14,000 feet (4,267 meters).
Her growing fame earned her an invitation to fly with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon in a trans-Atlantic flight from Canada to Great Britain in the tri-motor Fokker F.VII Friendship in June 1928.
That flight brought her international attention and a chance to earn a living in aviation.
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ALT: Earhart in cockpit of autogiro (AP Images)
Earhart continued her record-setting flights, establishing new speed records for women in 1929 and again in 1930.
In 1931, she experimented with piloting a new piece of aeronautic engineering, the autogiro. This self-propelled aircraft took off and landed like conventional planes but supported itself in flight mainly by unpowered rotating horizontal blades.
Despite some well-publicized crashes — “crackups,” as she called them — Earhart set several autogiro records, including a 1931 altitude record.
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ALT: Small plane surrounded by people (AP Images)
In July 1932, Earhart set a new women’s speed record for transcontinental flight, which prompted admirers to swarm her plane as soon as she landed.
It was a year of many firsts for Earhart, as she became the first woman (and the second person) to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic, the first person to cross the Atlantic twice by air, and the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the United States.
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ALT: President Hoover and Earhart at White House (AP Images)
As the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic, Earhart was the toast of the nation.
She received the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover and the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress. Vice President Charles Curtis said she displayed ”heroic courage and skill as a navigator at the risk of her life.”
Earhart later said the flight proved men and women were equal in ”jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and willpower.”
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Crowds celebrated Earhart's flight from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland in January 1935, the first time anyone had completed the dangerous transit that already had claimed several lives.
Later that year, Earhart made record flights from Los Angeles to Mexico City and from Mexico City to New Jersey. She also set a new speed record flying from Mexico City to Washington.
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ALT: Earhart with Eleanor Roosevelt (AP Images)
Earhart met many times with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, including a March 1935 event at National Geographic headquarters in Washington.
The two found common ground in their strong belief in the capabilities of women.
After flying with Earhart, Roosevelt obtained a student permit, but the first lady never pursued her plans to learn to fly.
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ALT: Earhart receiving Italian medal (AP Images)
Earhart became a global celebrity as newsreels announcing her achievement played in movie houses around the world.
She received a number of awards from international organizations and foreign governments, including the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from France and Italy’s General Italo Balbo Medal.
The May 1935 award ceremony for the latter honor is shown at the left.
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ALT: Senator and Earhart sitting at table (AP Images)
Earhart campaigned tirelessly for greater public acceptance of aviation, especially focusing on the role of women entering the field, and the establishment of commercial air travel.
In 1929, she and Charles Lindbergh represented the Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington. TAT later grew into air travel giant TWA.
By the mid-1930s, Earhart was regularly in Washington to promote aviation, including giving May 1936 testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on aviation safety.
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ALT: Earhart lying in fuselage of plane (AP Images)
Earhart turned heads, and drew some criticism, by her rejection of traditional boundaries on acceptable female behavior.
A scrapbook she kept as a child — with newspaper clippings of women in business, law and engineering — testifies to her early career aspirations.
As a pilot, she cropped her hair and dressed in practical pants and leather jackets. She also became thoroughly familiar with the mechanical systems of her planes.
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ALT: Plane in flight with Golden Gate Bridge in background (AP Images)
As her 40th birthday drew near, Earhart set her sights on another great adventure: circumnavigating the Earth by air. Round-the-world flights had been made, but none had followed the grueling equatorial route that involved long segments over the Pacific Ocean.
A Lockheed Electra 10E was built at Lockheed Aircraft Company to Earhart’s specifications, including extensive modifications to the fuselage to incorporate a large fuel tank.
Test flights, including many in the San Francisco Bay area, began in late 1936.
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ALT: People examining damaged plane in surf (AP Images)
On March 20, 1937, Earhart crashed on takeoff in Honolulu, ending a westbound world flight attempt that began in California.
After extensive repairs to the plane, Earhart began an eastbound round-the-world flight on June 1, 1937, flying from California to Florida with Fred Noonan as her navigator.
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ALT: Earhart and navigator holding map, plane in background (AP Images)
A second attempt, this time flying west to east to accommodate seasonal changes in global weather patterns, began in late May 1937, with navigator Fred Noonan as Earhart's only crew member.
They left Florida June 1, making stops in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Earhart and Noonan left New Guinea July 3, 1937, and flew into the fog of legend.
The mystery of their disappearance has fueled 75 years of speculation and research.
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ALT: Elderly woman with Earhart portrait (AP Images)
The official search by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard lasted until July 19, 1938. The $4 million cost was unprecedented and enormous for the time, but relied on rudimentary technology and very limited information.
Anniversaries of the disappearance came and went, with shrinking attention from the news media.
In this 1947 photograph, Earhart’s mother stands with a portrait of the famous aviator 10 years after that fateful flight across the Pacific and into history.
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ALT: Goggles resting atop Earhart photo (AP Images)
”Please know I am quite aware of the hazards,” Earhart wrote in a letter to her husband before that final round-the-world attempt. ”I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”