Earhart, Amelia (âr`härt), 1897–1937, American aviator, b. Atchison, Kans. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane (1928) and the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic (1932). She was the first person to fly alone from Honolulu to California (1935). In 1937, she attempted with a copilot, Frederick J. Noonan, to fly around the world, but her plane was lost on the flight between New Guinea and Howland Island. In 1992, a search party reported finding remnants of Earhart's plane on Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner Island), Kiribati, but their claims were disputed by people who worked on Earhart's plane, and her fate remains a mystery. In 1964, Geraldine Mock was the first woman to successfully complete Earhart's round-the-world route. Earhart was married to G. P. Putnam (1887–1950) in 1931.

Bibliography

See biographies by M. S. Lovell (1989), D. L. Rich (1996), and S. Butler (1999); T. E. Devine and R. Daley, Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident (1987); S. Ware, Still Missing (1993); C. Szabo, Sky Pioneer (1997); T. C. Brennan and R. Rosenbaum, Witness to the Execution: The Odyssey of Amelia Earhart (1999).

Earhart, Amelia (Mary)

Amelia Earhart.

(credit: Culver Pictures)

(born July 24, 1897, Atchinson, Kan. U.S.—disappeared July 2, 1937, near Howland Island, Pacific Ocean) U.S. aviator, the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean. Earhart worked as a military nurse in Canada during World War I and later as a social worker in Boston. In 1928 she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane, though as a passenger. In 1932 she accomplished the flight alone, becoming the first woman and the second person to do so. In 1935 she became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. In 1937 she set out with a navigator, Fred Noonan, to fly around the world; they had completed over two-thirds of the distance when her plane disappeared without a trace in the central Pacific Ocean. Speculation about her fate has continued to the present.

Earhart, Amelia (Mary) (1897–?1937) aviator; born in Atchison, Kans. During World War I, Earhart worked as a nurses' aide in Toronto, Canada. She then attended several schools including two stints at Columbia University, held odd jobs in California, and became a settlement house worker in Boston in 1926. She had first flown in Los Angeles in 1920 and within a year made a solo flight. In 1928 she participated in a transatlantic flight with Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic. In 1932, flying solo, she set a transatlantic record of 14 hours, 56 minutes. In the following year she flew two more record-setting transatlantic flights. In 1937, by now a public favorite, she embarked on an equatorial world trip. She ceased communications on July 2, shortly after leaving New Guinea with her navigator Frederick Noonan. Several extensive searches revealed nothing. Her husband, George Putnam, posthumously published her autobiography, Last Flight (1938).

Earhart, Amelia

(1897–1937?) aviatrix vanished in 1937 amid speculation and gossip. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 819]

See : Disappearance