Te 8 ruscha indd

5 9

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HOME READING
Amelia Earhart: First Woman
to Fly Alone Across the
Atlantic
Amelia Earhart was born in 1897 in 
Kansas. She was not a child of her times. 
Most American girls were taught to sit quiet­
ly and speak softly. They were not permitted 
to play ball or climb trees. Those activities 
were considered fun for boys. Amelia and 
her younger sister Muriel were lucky. Their 
parents believed all children needed physical 
activity to grow healthy and strong. Amelia 
and Muriel were very active girls. Other 
parents would not let their daughters play 
with Amelia and Muriel.
When Amelia was preparing to enter a 
university, World War One began. And Amelia 
was shocked by the number of wounded 
soldiers sent home from the fighting in 
France. She decided she would be more 
useful as a nurse than as a student. So she 
joined the Red Cross.
Amelia Earhart first became interested in 
flying while living in Toronto. She talked with 
many pilots who were treated at the soldiers’ 
hospital. She also spent time watching planes 
at a nearby military airfield. Flying seemed 
exciting. But the machinery - the plane itself
- was exciting, too.
After World War One ended, Amelia en­
tered Columbia University in New York City. 
She studied medicine. After a year she went 
to California to visit her parents. During that 
trip, she took her first ride in an airplane. 
And when the plane landed, Amelia Earhart 
had a new goal in life. She would learn to fly.
One of the world’s first female pilots, Neta 
Snook, taught Amelia to fly. It did not take long 
for Amelia to make her first flight by herself. 
She received her official pilot’s license in
nineteen twenty. Then she wanted a plane of 
her own. She earned most of the money to 
buy it by working for a telephone company. 
Her first plane had two sets of wings, a bi­
plane. On June 17, 1928, the plane left the 
eastern province of Newfoundland, Canada. 
The pilot and engine expert were men. The 
passenger was Amelia Earhart. The plane 
landed in Wales twenty hours and forty mi­
nutes later. For the first time, a woman had 
crossed the Atlantic Ocean by air.
Amelia did not feel very important, 
because she had not flown the plane. But 
the public did not care. People on both 
sides of the Atlantic were excited to meet 
the tall brave girl with short hair and grey 
eyes. They organized parties and parades 
in her honour. Suddenly, she was famous.
Amelia Earhart became the first lady of 
the air. She wrote a book about the flight. 
She made speeches about flying. And she 
continued to fly by herself across the United 
States and back.
In the last years of the nineteen twenties, 
hundreds of record flights were made. A few 
were made by women. But no woman had 
flown across the Atlantic Ocean. She had 
become the first woman to fly across the 
Atlantic Ocean alone.
Purdue University provided Amelia with 
a new all-metal, two-engine plane. It had 
so many instruments that she called it the 
“ Flying Laboratory.” It was the best airplane 
in the world at that time.
Amelia decided to use this plane to fly 
around the world. She wanted to go around 
the equator. It was a distance of forty-three 
thousand kilometers. No one had attempted 
to fly that way before.
Amelia and three male crew members 
were to make the flight. However, a minor 
accident and weather conditions forced a 
change in plans.
Three hours after leaving New Guinea, 
Amelia sent back a radio message. The 
messages began to warn of trouble. Fuel 
was getting low. They could not find Howland 
Island. They could not see any land at all. 
The radio signals got weaker and weaker. 
Then there was silence.
American Navy ships and planes found 
nothing. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan 
were officially declared “ lost at sea.”

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U N IT 8 Painting and sculptures