Amelia Earhart: Pioneering Aviator and Force for Women's Rights
A Port in A Storm And other emergencieS From the 1940s until the early 1960s Gander Airport in Newfoundland The coast of Newfoundland and Labrador Canada is the most easterly point in North America Because of that it has been a safe haven for transatlantic air travelers for more than a century It has also been the launch point or a port-of-call on at least ten historic flights and flight attempts across the Atlantic including both of Amelia’s transatlantic flights was a final refueling stop for commercial airlines heading overseas After longer-range aircraft were developed flights no longer needed to stop for a fill-up Newfoundland also has a long history of helping aircraft pilots and passengers in emergency situations The best-known example happened following the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11 2001 On that day following the hijackings and crashes of four passenger planes including the ones that resulted in the collapse of New York’s World Trade Center aircraft were forbidden to enter U S airspace More than 200 planes that were already in flight were diverted to airports in Canada Of the 53 that were sent to Newfoundland 38 landed in the small town of Gander More than 6,000 passengers and almost 500 crewmembers were stranded there for a week The people of Gander opened their homes and their hearts to the tired travelers They were supposed to be in Ireland Instead they had set down in the small town of Burry Port Wales Eventually a few curious local boaters approached the floating aircraft When they discovered who was on board news spread like wildfire In no time thousands of townspeople flocked to the seashore They wanted to see Amelia Earhart the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air 66
This was the scene following the landing of the Friendship plane shown on the right in the harbor at Burry Port Wales in June 1928 with Amelia Earhart aboard as a member of the crew When Miss Earhart came ashore she was the recipient of so enthusiastic a reception by the 2,000 inhabitants of this town that it seemed for a few minutes as if she would not outlive her triumph stated a New York Times article Amelia and the two men spent a night in Burry Port before flying to Southampton England for an official welcome to Britain Amelia and a crewmate stand on one of the pontoons with which the Friendship was outfitted for its transatlantic flight 7
Women tAke Flight By the time Amelia Earhart took to the skies women had been flying for more than 100 years Two different French women are credited with being the first female to pilot an aircraft Was it Jeanne Garnerin or Sophie Blanchard Both piloted hot air balloons in France in the early 1800s and both have other claims to aviation fame Jeanne was the first woman to make a parachute jump 1799 and Sophie was the first woman to earn her living as an aviator She was also the first woman in history to be killed in an aviation accident In 1819 her balloon caught fire and crashed and Sophie fell to her death In this illustration from a Parisian fashion magazine published in the 1870s French balloonist Jeanne Garnerin is shown rising above a crowd of spectators in a hot air balloon in March 1802 Several years earlier Jeanne had become the first female to ascend in a balloon without a male pilot The death of French balloonist Sophie Blanchard is shown in one of a series of trading cards that depicted events in ballooning and parachuting in the 1800s 88
A century later another French woman Thérèse Peltier became the first woman to pilot an airplane She only flew 650 feet 200 meters and the plane was only eight feet 2 5 m off the ground But she did it That was in 1908 just five years after the Wright Brothers had invented the airplane Two years later yet another French woman Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman in the world to earn a flying license Over the next 50 years the world witnessed women achieving many firsts in the air the first female to use aerobatic or stunt-flying skills 1915 movie stunt pilot 1929 and glider pilot 1931 the first female commercial airline pilot 1934 military pilots 1942 and helicopter pilot 1947 In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union became the first female astronaut American Sally Ride was the first woman to become a U S astronaut when the Space Shuttle Challenger launched in June 1983 In 1999 Lt Col Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot a Space Shuttle Thérèse Peltier Valentina Tereshkova Raymonde de Laroche Sally Ride Eileen Collins 9
