美国人物生平 Amelia Earhart

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   Amelia Earhart

   Born on July 24, 1897, Amelia Earhart wasn’t afraid to break down barriers. In 1928, she was the first woman to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic Ocean. Then, in 1932, she became the first woman to pilot a plane across that ocean. There weren’t many female pilots back then, and her actions inspired other women to follow their dreams. This was especially important because there wee few career choices available to women at that time. Amelia Earhart has inspired generations of women to do things that had never been done by women before.

1，Amelia Earhart Learns to Fly

    Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24,1897. In those days, airplanes were not nearly as common as thy are today. Earhart was 12 years old before she ever saw an airplane, and she did not take her first flight until 1920. Amelia Earhart was so thrilled by her first airplane ride that she quickly began to take flying lessons. She wrote, “As soon as I left the ground, I knew Imyself had to fly.”

   Earhart excelled as a pilot. Her first instructor was Neta Snook, one of the first women to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation. Earhart borrowed money from her mother to buy a two-seat plane. She got her U.S. flying license in December 1921, and by October 1922, she set an altitude record for women of 14000 feet. In 1923, Earhart received her international pilots license- only the 16th woman to do so. At the same time, she was becoming famous for her aviation achievements.

2、Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight

After flying across the Atlantic as a passenger in 1928, Amelia Earhart’s next goal was to achieve a transatlantic crossing alone. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to make a solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. In 1932, exactly five years after Lindbergh’s flight, Earhart became the first woman to repeat the feat. Her popularity grew even more. She was the undisputed queen of the air. Still, she wanted to achieve more.

She decided that her next trip would be to fly around the world. In March 1937, she flew to Hawaii with fellow pilot Paul Mantz to begin this flight. Earhart lost control of the plane on takeoff, however, and the plane had to be sent to the factory for repairs.

In June, she went to Miami to again begin a flight around the world, this time with Fred Noonan as her navigator. No one knows why, but she left behind important communication and navigation instruments. Perhaps it was to make room for additional fuel for the long flight. The pair made it to New Guinea in 21 days, even though Earhart was tired and ill. During the next leg of the trip, they departed New Guinea for Howland
                Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. July 2, 1937, was the last time Earhart and Noonan communicated with a nearby Coast Guard ship. They were never heard from again.

The U.S. Navy conducted a massive search for more than two weeks. Unable to accept that Earhart had simply disappeared and perished, some of her admirers believed that she was a spy or was captured by enemies of the United States. The Navy submitted a report following its research, which included maps of search areas. Neither the plane nor Earhart nor Noonan were ever found. No one knows for sure what happened, but many people believe they got lost and simply ran out of fuel and died. Amelia Earhart was less than a month away from her 40^th birthday.

3、Amelia Earhart files across the Atlantic

In 1928, Amelia Earhart received a phone call that would change her life. She was invited to become first woman passenger to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a plane. “The idea of just going as ‘extra weight’ did not appeal to me at all,” she said, but she accepted the offer nonetheless. On June 17, after several delays due to bad weather, Amelia Earhart flew in a plane named Friendship with co-pilots Wilmer “Bill” Stultz and Louis “Slim” Gordon. The plane landed at Burry
                Port, South Wales, with just a small amount of fuel left.

Today, pilots routinely cross the Atlantic in about seven hours. How long was Earhart’s flight?

Earhart’s first trip across the Atlantic took more than 20 hours. After that flight Earhart became a media sensation. Following the trip, she was given parties and even a ticker tape parade down Broadway in New York City. President Coolidge called to congratulate her on crossing the Atlantic. Because Earhart’s record-breaking career and physical appearance were similar to pioneering pilot and American hero Charles Lindbergh, she earned the nickname “Lady Lindy”.

Earhart wrote a book about her first flight across the Atlantic, called 20 Hrs. , 40 Min. She continued to break records. She also polished her skills as speaker and writer, always advocating women’s achievement, especially in aviation.

 

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