Earhart, Amelia

Name
Amelia Mary Earhart 

Date of Birth
July 24, 1897 

Date of Death
July 1937 (?) 

Place of Birth
Atchison, Kansas 

Birth Family
Edwin and Amy Earhart 

Marriage/Spouse
George Palmer Putnam 

Children
none 

Education
Graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago, IL. 
Trained as a nurse’s aid
Served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at a military hospital during World War I. 
Enrolled as a pre-med student at Columbia University. 
Moved to California to be with her parents. She and her father attended an “aerial meet” in Long Beach and that is where she became interested in flying.  The next day, given a helmet and goggles, she boarded the open-cockpit biplane for a 10 minute flight over Los Angeles. She immediately began taking flying instructions from pioneer aviatrix Anita Snook.

Career
Pilot and author 

Reason for Fame
In 1928, she was the first women pilot to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1932, she became the first women to pilot a plane across that ocean and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross   

Additional Information
On October 1922, she set a women’s altitude record of 14,000 feet which was later broken by Ruth Nichols.

 On  June 1, 1937, Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan departed Miami, Florida, bound for California by traveling around the world.  On July 2, she took off from Lae, New Guinea.  Her last radio contact  reported she was on a course for Howland Island,  It has been determined that the plane went down some 35 – 100 miles off the coast of Howland Island.  An extensive search was conducted at a cost of over 4 million dollars.  On July 18, the search was abandoned by ships in the Howland area.