Amelia Earhart

High-altitude fliers made little money. Earhart sold Canary and bought a yellow Kissel roadster which she named "the Yellow Peril".


Earhart walks on White House grounds with President Herbert Hoover, January 2, 1932.Her parents divorced in 1924 and she drove her mother across the United States in the Yellow Peril to Boston, Massachusetts where in 1925 she took employment as a social worker.

Earhart also became a member of the National Aeronautic Association's Boston chapter, through which she invested a small sum of money into airport construction and the sale of Kinner airplanes in the Boston area. She also wrote local newspaper columns on flying and as her local celebrity grew she helped market Kinner airplanes, promote flying and encourage women pilots.

According to the Boston Globe she was "one of the best women pilots in the United States", although this characterization has been somewhat disputed by aviation experts and experienced pilots in the decades since.

After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest, a wealthy American living in London, England expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean.

After deciding the trip was too dangerous to make herself, she offered to sponsor the project anyway, suggesting they find "another girl with the right image." While at work one afternoon in April 1928 Earhart got a phone call from a man who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?"

She interviewed with the project coordinators who included book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam and was asked to join pilot Wilmer Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger. The team left Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland in a Fokker F7 on June 17, 1928, and arrived at Burry Port (nr. Llanelli), Wales, United Kingdom approximately 21 hours later.

She piloted the plane for part of the journey and wrote in the flight log, "If anyone finds that wreck, know that the non-success was caused by my getting lost in a storm for an hour." When the crew returned to the States they were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.

Because of her physical resemblance to Lindbergh, whom the press had dubbed "Lucky Lindy", the American public began referring to Amelia as "Lady Lindy".

Earhart later placed third at the Cleveland Women's Air Derby (nicknamed the "Powder Puff Derby" by Will Rogers). For a while she was engaged to Samuel Chapman, an attorney from Boston.

Meanwhile Putnam took the chance of heavily promoting Earhart, which included publishing a book she authored, lecture tours and using pictures of her in mass market endorsements for products including luggage, cigarettes (she didn't smoke), pajamas and women's sportswear. The extensive time they spent together led to intimacy and after substantial hesitation on her part they were married on February 7, 1931.

Earhart referred to the marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control", and appears to have asked for an open marriage. In a letter written to Putnam shortly before their wedding she said, "I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly". (see [2], [3]).

Later in 1931 she set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet (5613 m) in a Pitcairn PCA-2 autogyro.


Lockheed Vega 5b flown by Amelia Earhart as seen on display at the National Air and Space MuseumOn the morning of May 20, 1932, aged 34, Earhart took off from Saint John, New Brunswick with the latest (dated) copy of a local newspaper. She stopped off in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in her single engine Lockheed Vega, intending to fly to Paris and duplicate Charles Lindbergh's solo flight.

However strong north winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems forced her to land in a pasture near Derry, Northern Ireland.

As the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.

On January 11, 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. Later that year she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, New Jersey.

She held several transcontinental speed records. Earhart joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1935 as counselor on careers for women, exploring new fields for young women to enter after graduation