July 24th is Amelia Earhart Day. In honor of an icon, pioneer, feminist beacon and genuine celebrity who disappeared July 2, 1937 (aged 39) over the Pacific Ocean, en route to Howland Island, take a look at the final known footage of her and some facts about an incredible, endearing and trendsetting woman.
http://youtu.be/GaMp5SibXRk
• Amelia was named Amelia Mary Earhart after her two grandmothers, Amelia Harres Otis and Mary Wells Earhart — a family tradition.
• Amelia received the nickname “Meelie” from her younger sister Muriel, because as a young child, Muriel couldn’t pronounce Amelia’s name correctly.
• Amelia was initially engaged to be married to a New Englander named Sam Chapman, whom she met while visiting her parents in Los Angeles.
• Shortly after her engagement to Sam Chapman ended, Amelia composed the following poem:
Courage
Courage is the price which life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy you can hear
The sound of wings.
How can life grant us boon of living, compensate,
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair.
• Amelia helped to finance a date fruit farm in Arizona for her former California mechanic who had contracted tuberculosis.
• Amelia was the first female, and one of only a few to date, to receive the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross.
• Upon leaving California to return to the east coast, Amelia sold her first plane, and purchased a 1922 Kissel Goldbug automobile, which she promptly nicknamed “Yellow Peril.”
• Amelia met her future husband, George Putnam, while Putnam was searching for a female pilot on behalf of Mrs. Frederick Guest of London. Their introduction led to Amelia being chosen the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a passenger.
• During her childhood, Amelia invented a tribe of imaginary small black creatures she called Dee-Jays. Described as a cross between a Krazy Kat cartoon and a jabberwocky, the creatures were often blamed for Amelia’s own irresponsible behavior, such as: talking out of turn, eating the last piece of candy, or when something turned up lost.
• Despite having to attend six different high schools, she was able to graduate on time.
• Earhart was called “Lady Lindy” because her slim build and facial features resembled that of Charles Lindbergh.
• Earhart refused to don typical flying gear -she wore a suit or dress instead of the “high-bread aviation togs,” a close-fitting hat instead of a helmet, didn’t put on her goggles until she taxied to the end of the field and removed them immediately upon landing.
• She developed a friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, who wanted to learn how to fly. Earhart had planned to teach her, for which the First Lady even got her student permit.
• Earhart met Orville Wright at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1937, the same year she disappeared.
• Earhart had such an impression on public that people often wrote and told her about naming babies, lakes and even homing pigeons “Amelia.”
• The United States government spent $4 million looking for Earhart, which made it the most costly and intensive air and sea search in history at that time.
• She was the 16th woman to receive a pilot’s license from the FAI (License No. 6017).