As a team of historians and scientists renews a search for answers into Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, Global News looks back at the life of a woman described as one of the world’s most celebrated aviators, even decades after her death.
Who is Amelia Earhart?
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. When she was three, she started living with her grandparents, but still spent her summers with her parents. She moved back in with her parents seven years later.
Earhart had a younger sister named Grace, and while they got along, they didn’t live the perfect childhood. Their father, Sam “Edwin” Earhart, was a lawyer, and an alcoholic, which may have led Earhart to become self-reliant and independent.
While riding a ferris wheel at seven years old, Earhart discovered she was fearless of heights.
She was an imaginative and inventive girl, once creating a roller coaster out of 2x4s, a packing box and wheels from a roller-skate.
Her reading material demonstrated how sophisticated she was for a child – picking up Harper’s Magazine for Young People, and novels by Dickens and Thackeray. Despite this, teachers didn’t take a liking to Earhart because of her independence and disinterest in recitation.
To the dismay of her grandmother, Earhart was also deemed a tomboy because of her sense of adventure and risk taking, as well as her enjoyment of riding ponies, climbing trees, sledding and shooting rats with a rifle. Earhart’s tomboy tendencies continued into high school, where she preferred the basketball team over the cheerleading team.
Earhart first became interested in flying while in Canada. She was in Toronto visiting her sister Muriel, a nurse. Earhart spoke with pilots who were treated at the soldiers’ hospital and became excited at the thought of flying after watching planes at a nearby military airfield.
Get breaking National news
In 1920, Earhart experienced her first airplane ride. After her flight, she said, “As soon as we left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly.” There was no doubt she was serious. Just days after, she took her first flying lesson.
Six months later, with the help of her mother Amy, and Muriel, Earhart actually bought an airplane. It was a yellow Kinner Airster nicknamed “The Canary.” Believe it or not, Earhart wasn’t a naturally gifted pilot, but she worked hard to build her piloting skills.
After her parents divorced, Earhart moved to Boston and worked as a social worker. In 1928, she was chosen to be the first female passenger on a transatlantic flight. That decision was made by her future husband, publisher George Palmer Putnam.
Earhart and Putnam married in 1931. He didn’t just become her husband – but her publicist as well. While organizing Earhart’s flights and public appearances, Putnam even scored his wife an endorsement deal of luggage and sporting wear. He even published two of her books, “The Fun of It” and “Last Flight.”
In 1932, Earhart’s legacy continued to soar, as she became the first woman to make a solo transatlantic flight. She even started designing flying clothes, which Vogue recognized with a two-page spread.
Earhart kept piloting her way into the history books. In 1935, she was the first person to fly from Hawaii to the U.S. Mainland, also becoming the first person to fly solo anywhere in the Pacific Ocean. She was also the first person to fly the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans solo.
That same year, she joined the faculty of Purdue University as a female career consultant. With the university’s help, she bought a Lockheed Electra, a turboprop airliner, so she could fulfill her dream to circumnavigate the world in the air.
In June 1937, Earhart made history once again, this time starting her air journey around the world at the equator. But after travelling over 22,000 miles and nearly two-thirds in to her historic flight, tragedy emerged and one of world’s biggest mysteries began to take shape.
What happened to her?
On July 2, 1937, Earhart and her navigator Frederick Noonan vanished in their Lockheed Electra plane. They left Lae, Papua New Guinea for the tiny Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean (about the same distance of a transcontinental flight across the U.S.), but were never seen again. Searchers weren’t able to track down Earhart and Noonan, and it’s been assumed they were lost at sea.
But to this day, some people around the world don’t buy that theory. Some conspiracy theorists say the Japanese captured them and accused the pair of espionage.
In 1939, Putnam penned Earhart’s biography, “Soaring Wings” in honour of his beloved wife.
In March 2012, experts announced they had performed an enhanced analysis of a photograph taken months after Earhart’s plane vanished. It showed what may be the aircraft’s landing gear protruding from the waters off the remote island of Nikumaroro, in what is now the Pacific nation of Kiribati.
The discovery has historians and scientists from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery heading to Nikumaroro to launch a new search for the wreckage of Earhart’s plane. The team started its expedition on July 3.
The expedition coincides with the 75th anniversary of the ill-fated flight. Previous trips to the island have recovered artifacts that could have belonged to Earhart.
With a file from The Associated Press
View Amelia Earhart’s Final Voyage in a larger map
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.