Amelia Earhart: History

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Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Aitchison, Kansas.  Her family lived in Aitchison and by 1907 in Des Moines, Iowa.  Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.  The family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota and later Chicago where she graduated from High School in 1916.

In 1928, Earhart became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane, accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz, for which she achieved celebrity status. In 1932, piloting a Lockheed Vega 5B,  Earhart made a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat.  She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross.

In 1935, Earhart became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to female students.  During a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean.  The two were last seen in Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, on the last land stop before one of their final legs of the flight.

Decades after her presumed death, Earhart was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1968 and the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1973. She now has several commemorative memorials named in her honor around the United States, including an urban park, an airport, a residence hall, a museum, a research foundation, a bridge, a cargo ship, an earth-filled dam, four schools, a hotel, a playhouse, a library and multiple roads.