Bailey Sarian (123:54)
What? Dah. And most importantly, she was a real woman. What happened to Amelia Earhart? Well, let's talk about it. Okay? Amelia Earhart. Who was she? I don't know. So I had to learn a lot. I had to start from the beginning. Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. Both Amelia and her sister were tomboys growing up, and they loved playing sports, climbing trees, being outside, you know, all that stuff. Even though they were brought up in the early 1900s, their parents were totally fine with this. Them being like, little tomboys, you know, girls had to be girls, all that stuff. But Amelia's mom was pretty progressive for the time and encouraged her kids to do all those things that the boys love to do. But it wasn't until Amelia was 20 years old that she. She really started to get into planes. A friend of hers took her to a stunt flying exhibition. This was essentially pilots showing off stunt tricks in their, in their little planes, you know, flipping upside down, doing twists and turns, diving, all that. Apparently, one of the pilots dove right at the audience in a red plane, and it was like, it scared the bejesus out of everyone in the crowd. But Amelia, she was like, this is everything. This is legit. She was into it. After that, she became obsessed. She would later say, quote, I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by. End quote. I wonder what the plane said to her. Run away, run away, run away. Put stock in. The plane comes by, you look like shit. You look like shit. Did anyone else hear that? From that moment on, Amelia swore to herself that she would one day fly a plane. But she had no idea that this newfound passion would cost her her life. At the age of 20, Amelia goes to a plane show and gets hooked on watching these stunts. She started going to a bunch of these air shows in 1920, when she was 23 years old, her dad took her to a show out in California. He bought her a $10 ticket for a ride in one of those planes, which today it would be like $160. So it was pricey to get on this plane. She said, quote, by the time I had got 2 or 300ft off the ground, I knew I had to fly. Aw, I love that. And she was like very serious about it. Just a month after that show, she started taking flight flying lessons at Kenner Field in California. At just six months after that, she bought her first plane. I know, wow. What'd she do for a living? I don't know. Oh, well, the plane was secondhand. It was a secondhand Kenner brand airster, which was a two seater plane painted bright yellow. She named it the Canary. Ah, that's very special. And to Amelia, it was like the perfect starter plane. I guess the Canary was pretty rickety and old fashioned at that point. So many of her pilot friends actually told her, do not buy this. Amelia's flying instructor even told her, like, look, I'm not flying in this, okay? Nope. Eventually, Amelia sold her starter plane and upgraded to a larger plane that she could take on longer flights. In 1922, with a shaky old Canary, she even set a woman's altitude record by flying all the way up to 14,000ft. You go, girl. In 1928, she set another record when she became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic in a plane, breaking news. It made headlines everywhere. But Amelia honestly had some mixed feelings about it. Obviously, she was like, this is exciting. She was in the paper. She was a pioneer of aviation. She was really making a name for herself. But she'd only been a passenger on that flight across the Atlantic. You know, it was still flown and operated by a man, and he was getting all the credit. She was just the passenger. She called herself, quote, just baggage, like a sack of potatoes. I do feel like that at times, too, girl. I do feel like that. Amelia wanted to start setting her up own records as a pilot, not just as a passenger. Potato sack. So she started entering competitive races. This got the attention of a publicist named George Putnam. Now, I guess George had already, like, knew about Amelia because he was the publicist for the famous 1928 Atlantic flight. He liked Amelia and he saw her potential. He allegedly told her he believed that one day Amelia Earhart could be a household name. As George and Amelia worked together, the relationship got sexual. Good for her and him, I guess. I don't know. But George actually proposed to her six times. Emelia always saying no, not because he was, like a bad guy or anything, but because Amelia didn't love the idea of becoming, like, a traditional wife. And that's what it was at the time. You know, she didn't want to put her career on. On hold when she had so much going for her. One thing I did not know was that Amelia, she was a pilot, yes, but she also worked as a social worker. Apparently, she was even planning on writing a book about social work before leaving for her infamous flight around the world. She was a lecturer and counselor of aviation at Purdue University. She was the first celebrity clothing designer. She had a luggage line and was truly a household name. So then in 1931, George proposed again, and Amelia finally said, okay, fine, I'll do it. When they did eventually get married, Amelia wrote her own vows. And I just want to read them to you because they really capture who she was as a person. Quote, you must know my reluctance to marry. In our life together, I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you. I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all the confinements of even an attractive cage. So romantic. Yeah. That's so special. Feel free to use for your wedding vows. So, yeah, Amelia's wedding vows. You know, she's literally saying, like, I'm not sure about this. We're gonna sleep in separate rooms. Is that cool? As it turned out, Emelia wasn't wrong about what marriage would do to her career. Newsreels at the time started calling her Ms. George Putnam, even though she hadn't taken his last name. I'm not gonna spend too much time talking about her marriage, but just know that her relationship with George was just as much professional as it was romantic. It turns out being married to your publicist had some major perks. So by now, not only does Amelia have a really good publicist as a whole husband, but she's breaking records left and right. In 1932, she became the first woman to make a non stop solo transatlantic flight. What does that even mean, transatlantic? She did that. She said, another altitude record, became the first person to fly from Hawaii to California, the first person to fly from Hawaii to California, and became the first person to fly solo from Mexico to New Jersey. That's very impressive, huh? She was fearless. The president at the time, President Hoover, even awarded her a gold medal from the National Geographic Society. She was the first woman to earn the Distinguished Flying Cross, which was a big deal because this was a military medal only given to men who had done, quote, acts of heroism, end quote. Amelia would often return from flights to giant parades in her honor. And by 1935, Amelia Earhart was one of the most well known names in the entire world. Not only was she known for, like, flying, right? But she was kind of an it girl in pop culture. She was a great speaker, and she told really, really interesting and fun stories about her flights. After she was forced into an emergency landing on another voyage, she said, quote, after scaring most of the cows in the neighborhood, I pulled up in a farmer's backyard, end quote. Emergency landings and crashes, very common at this time. Apparently, Amelia survived tons of minor crashes throughout her career. But even after all her achievements, there were still doubts about her ability to fly planes. I mean, she is a woman, you know, what if she has her period in the air? What will happen? I mean, couldn't be trusted. What if she got, like, cramps or something in the air? What if she had, like, a mood swing in the air? I don't know. You know, people wondered if she was actually skilled or just like, having a moment in the spotlight, which is so dumb. It's like she flew an airplane to Hawaii and back and stuff. Like, what do you mean? If she's skilled, you do it then, you know. But Amelia was determined to prove herself. So in 1937, just three weeks away from her 40th birthday, she decided to go for a big record, one that would make everyone really appreciate her. Amelia wanted to be the first woman to fly, fly around the world. So Amelia is determined to prove, you know, the haters wrong. She wanted to prove once and for all that she was worth the name that she had built for herself. But she knew it was not going to be easy. I mean, flying around the world is a wild idea. For this flight, it would just be Amelia the plane, and one other person on the journey with her, a navigator. Amelia was working with a navigator named Fred Noonan. They ran in the same circles in Los Angeles, and Fred had a lot of experience working at Pan Am, and he was considered the best of the best. Fred was what's called a celestial navigator. I didn't know this was a thing. That's why I love learning here on Dark History. So a celestial navigator is someone who, like, relies heavily on the stars to tell them, like, where they're going. Pretty cool. On June 29, 1937, Amelia and Fred began their journey from a place called Leh in New Guinea. The plane Fred and Amelia were taking was a Lockheed Model 10E Electra. Maybe you know what that looks like. Apparently, Purdue University sponsored the purchase of this plane. The idea was that Amelia would come home and continue in her position as an aviation lecturer there, which would motivate more girls to come to Purdue and study STEM. Now, this plane, the Electra, was 38ft long, about 10ft high, and had a 55 foot wingspan. Even though that may sound big to us, it wasn't even big enough for Amelia or Fred to stand up in. Doesn't matter though. They just need to fly. During flight, Amelia was the only one in the cockpit. Fred would sit near the back, and they communicated with what was basically cups on a string. Now, one major question many of us had was how did they go to the bathroom? Because there was no toilet on the plane and there was no autopilot. So I'm thinking a good old Gatorade jar situation. It's probably diapers maybe on top of that. What about staying awake? You know, they're going around the world. Well, apparently Amelia didn't like tea or coffee, so she would use the next best thing, smelling salts. Does smelling salt really wake you up? I'm gonna go home and sniff some salt. I'll let you know. I'll report back. They did bring canned food to eat, so at least they had that. And yeah. So go team. So a month in, the trip is going pretty well. The most challenging Part of the journey is the fact that Amelia and Fred have to stop and refuel the plane every 24 hours. That was to be expected. Plus, I bet it was nice to like, get out, stretch, move the body, maybe take a dump if you've been holding it for a while, you know. Amelia and Fred were bracing themselves, for the most part, challenging part of the journey, landing on Howland Island. Now, this was a teeny tiny chunk of land in the Pacific Ocean, and they needed to land on it in order to get more fuel. Now, when I say teeny tiny, I mean this island was about half a mile wide and less than a mile and a half long. So if you need a better visual, it's a little bit bigger than three football fields. Now, if you look at a map of the area, you might actually notice that there are a lot of other islands in the same vicinity, and a lot of them were bigger and probably easier to land on. So why didn't they choose a different island? Well, at this time in the late 1930s, tensions were really high between the US and Japan. And those islands surrounding Howland, called the Mandates, were owned by the Japanese government.
