Amelia Earhart

Do you love to fly in an airplane? Amelia Earhart sure did. This woman aviator took her first pilot lessons at the age of 23. On July 24, 1897, Amelia was born in her grandparents’ home in Kansas. Her little sister was born two years later. Their grandparents had a lot of money, and so Amelia and her sister were sent to private schools and lived a privileged life. Their father, on the other hand, struggled to keep a job and eventually tore the family apart with his drinking. Her mother took the girls and moved to live with friends in Chicago.

Amelia went on to train as a nurse and served in the “Great War” as a volunteer nurse’s aid. Afterwards, she enrolled as a pre-med student at Columbia University. It was in California that she first went to an “aerial meet.” She boarded a plane that flew over Los Angeles. Amelia was in love. She couldn’t get enough of flying.

This desire to fly encouraged her to take lessons from Anita Snook, and she bought her first plane. She began trying to break records. She was asked by George Putnam to try to be the first lady to fly across the Atlantic.

Many years later, Amelia had broken several records. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo and the only person to fly it twice. She also flew the longest non-stop distance flown by a woman and set another record for crossing in the shortest time.