Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart took her first flight in 1920 at an airshow in California and immediately knew she wanted to become a pilot. Earhart employed a female pilot as her flight instructor and before long had purchased her first plane. Earhart began setting records almost immediately – at the age of twenty-five she set a world record for female pilots by flying to an altitude of 14,000 feet.
Earhart was an early advocate, encouraging women to take up flying. She was an executive at fledgling passenger airline companies. And she continued to break records in her twenties and thirties. She also married George Putnam. They had an unconventional relationship, and unusually for the time, Earhart did not adopt Putnam’s last name.
In 1936 she began planning a round-the-world flight which commenced in 1937. The first attempt was abandoned when an accident damaged Earhart’s plane. It was on the second round-the-world attempt that Earhart’s plane disappeared as she was flying from New Guinea to Howland Island, across the South Pacific. Speculation continues today as to what might have happened to Earhart and her plane.
See the Eugene L. Vidal papers at UW’s American Heritage Center. to learn more.