Amelia Earhart began solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic - May 20, 1932

On this day in 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland on her first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming the first woman to complete such a trip. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi again. Welcome to this Day in History Class,
where history waits for no one. Today is May. The

(00:24):
day was May twentie ninety two. Famed aviator Amelia Earhart
departed Harbor Grace, Newfoundland on her NonStop solo flight across
the Atlantic Ocean. The next day, she became the first
woman and second person ever to complete such a flight.
Just five years later, Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan

(00:46):
were declared lost at sea. While Amelia lived in Toronto, Canada,
working as a nurse's aid, she would visit the local airfield.
There she watched pilots in the Royal Flying Corps train
and her interest in flying grew. In nineteen twenty, while
Amelia was in California with her family, she rode in

(01:07):
an airplane for the first time with pilot Frank Hawks.
It was then she decided that she wanted to learn
how to fly. Amelia began taking flying lessons, and soon
she decided to buy her own plane. In nineteen one,
she passed her flight tests and earned her National Aeronautics
Association license. In nineteen twenty two, Amelion made her first

(01:29):
solo flight and became the first woman to fly solo
above fourteen thousand feet. In April of nineteen eight, after
stints studying medicine and social work, Amelia received an invitation
to go to New York to be interviewed by publisher
George Palmer Putnam. Putnam was looking for someone to be

(01:50):
the first woman to fly in a plane across the
Atlantic as a passenger. She was selected, and she left
on June third, nineteen eight, with a male pilot and navigate.
Later her job on the trip was to keep the
planes log but the feat still got her national attention.
She went on lecture tours, wrote a column on aviation
for Cosmopolitan, and did product endorsements. That same year, she

(02:14):
became the first woman to fly solo east and west
across the United States. In nineteen thirty, ear hearts set
a new speed record for women, and in nineteen thirty
one she set an altitude record in an auto gyro,
an aircraft that was eventually superseded by the helicopter. But
Amelia decided she wanted to fly solo across the Atlantic again,

(02:36):
this time as the pilot rather than a passenger. On two,
Amelia left Harbor Grace in a red Lockey Vega five B.
Though the first few hours of her flight went pretty smoothly,
later she did have some trouble. She ran into an
electrical storm, the altimeter failed, the wings iced, and the

(02:58):
plane went into a tailspin in for three thousand feet,
so she had to land in Northern Ireland rather than
Paris as she had originally planned. Fifteen hours and fifty
six minutes after she took off from Newfoundland, she landed
in a pasture near Londonderry, Northern Ireland. When she got
back to the United States, she got a lot of recognition.

(03:19):
Congress gave her the Distinguished Flying Cross, a military decoration
given to someone for their heroism or extraordinary achievement. While
in a fight. In August of nineteen thirty two, she
set a speed record on a NonStop fight across the
United States from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey. Over
the next few years, Amelia would continue setting records. She

(03:42):
went on to do daredevil stunts, became a visiting faculty
member at Purdue University, and helped form the ninety nine,
an organization for the advancement of female pilots. But Amelia
wanted to fly around the world at or near the equator,
since it had not been done, but four after one
called off attempt to circumnavigate the globe. In March of

(04:05):
ninety seven, Amelia flew from Oakland, California, to Miami in May,
and on June one, she left Miami with Navigator Fred Noonan.
After stops in South America, Africa, and Asia, they reached
Lay in New Guinea at the end of June. They
had already flown tens of thousands of miles, but they

(04:25):
had thousands of miles left to go before they would
get back to Oakland. They departed Lay on July two,
headed for Howland Island. In air Heart's last radio transmission,
she said, we are running north and south, indicating they
were searching for the island, but they did not make
it to the island. A rescue search turned up nothing.

(04:48):
Though there has been much speculation as to what happened
to Amelia on that last faded flight, air Heart and
Noona's disappearance remains a mystery. I'm eaves jeffco in hope
fully you know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. We love it if you left us
a comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook at t d

(05:10):
i h C Podcast, Thanks for joining me on this
trip through history. See you here, same place tomorrow. For
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(05:32):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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