Amelia Earhart was four hours into a flight that could take her as long as 20. That’s when she realized… she was in trouble. She inched forwards in the pilot’s seat, and craned her neck to look out the windshield. There it was. She could see it clearly now – smoke… flowing up and over the nose of her small plane. Part of her engine was on fire – and she was all alone, flying thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean.

But turning back wasn’t an option. Amelia was an accomplished navigator. When she thought it all through, she didn’t think heading back to Canada was the safest choice. And besides, she had history to make. She sat up straight, and gripped the control stick more firmly. She took a deep breath, consulted her navigation instruments, and confirmed her course: due east. Somehow, some way, she WOULD make it all the way across the ocean. There was no turning back now.

I’m Zara Rutherford. And this is Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls.

A fairy tale podcast about the real-life rebel women who inspire us.

On this episode, Amelia Earhart – airborne icon, fearless hero, and inspiration to adventurers worldwide.

In a white house on a bluff, on a hot Kansas day in late July 1897, future high-flying pilot Amelia Earhart was born. The house belonged to her grandparents – Amelia and her younger sister, Muriel, lived with them during the school year. When she was young, Amelia kept a scrapbook, a collection of stories of accomplished women. How could she know she’d become one herself?

Meelie, as her family called her, and her sister Muriel loved to ride imaginary horses for hours – but don’t worry, they let their imaginary horses out to pasture, too. The two explored caves alongside the nearby river, climbed any tree they could find, and walked on stilts like circus performers.

Doing all of this in a dress proved difficult for Meelie and Muriel. The skirts most girls wore at the time got in the way of their adventuring. So instead, the two wore loose fitting pants called bloomers, just like the boys did. Amelia wasn’t trying to make a statement – she just wanted to be able to climb trees! She didn’t want anything to hold her back from reaching the sky.

Amelia waswasn’t even ten years old yet when her father took the family to the Iowa State Fair. There, in the midst of all the noise, smells, and people, she laid eyes on the first airplane she’d ever seen. At first, Amelia was pretty underwhelmed. She even said, “It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and looked not at all interesting.”

About ten years later, Amelia moved to Toronto to help recovering World War I soldiers. While she was there, she went to a flight exposition with a friend, to watch pilots show off their skills. Seeing the planes soaring through the sky was a completely different experience than seeing one on the ground at the fair. Amelia was mesmerized, watching them dive and swoop.

And then, all of a sudden, a plane was hurtling toward her and her friend – a daredevil pilot trying to give them a scare. But instead, Amelia felt exhilarated. When reflecting on it later, she said, “I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.”

What did it tell her? That Amelia had to get into the air herself.

In 1920, Amelia did just that. She took a ride in a small plane as a passenger, and immediately… she was hooked. The deep rumble of the engine… the thrill of adrenaline as the pilot began to speed down the runway…the feeling of weightlessness, of fully leaving the ground for the first time in her life. Nothing could stop her from learning how to do that herself.

Amelia worked odd jobs to scrape together the money for flight lessons – she was a telephone company clerk, a photographer, a truck driver. Then finally, after many lessons with her flight instructor, Amelia was officially a pilot. Soon after, she bought her first plane – a tiny, yellow, two-seat plane with a big propeller and no windshield. She named it, “the Canary.” The very next year, she flew the Canary up to 14,000 feet high, setting a new world record for a female pilot. And Amelia was just getting started.

Six years later, Amelia moved to Boston, Massachusetts to be closer to her mother and sister. She worked as a social worker with immigrant families, and flew at a local airport in her free time. It was there that she’d be offered a once in a lifetime chance: to fly across the Atlantic. She wouldn’t pilot the plane, but she would be the first woman to make the journey as a passenger. What else could she say, but yes?

That flight, nearly 21 hours long, changed her life forever. Almost overnight, Amelia became a star, a household name.

Amelia used her new fame to advocate for her field – and her fellow women. In the 1930s, she advocated for gender equality between men and women. She lobbied Congress to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment – a change to the US Constitution that would have guaranteed women and men equal rights under the law.

Amelia also encouraged other women to join her in the sky. At the time, there were only 285 licensed women pilots in the country. She and 98 of the others got together to start an organization for female aviators called “The Ninety-Nines.”

The sky was the limit for Amelia’s dreams. She wrote a book about her experience crossing the Atlantic as a passenger, and began lecturing about aviation, or the practice of flying. She got a job as the aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine! For a short while, she even had a career as a fashion designer. She got tired of wearing flight suits made for men, so she started to make her own. Soon, she expanded, and began making clothes for women that were better suited to an active lifestyle – wrinkle-free shirts, dresses, and pants – some even made out of parachute silk! Who could have imagined that her time tree-climbing in bloomers would have such a lasting impact!

Throughout all this, Amelia still made sure she had time among the clouds. She competed in races and flight competitions, and was the first woman to fly an autogiro, a kind of helicopter-plane hybrid.

But something was always at the back of her mind. She’d been the first woman to be flown across the Atlantic. Now she wanted to be more than a passenger. She wanted to be the pilot.

On May 20 of 1932, Amelia Earhart took a deep breath as she taxiied toward the sky on a runway in Newfoundland, Canada. She’d be flying all alone – piloting and navigating all at once, heading toward Paris, France. She was fully prepared for what could have been a 20 hour flight! All she had with her was some tomato juice to get her through, and a $20 bill. She wasn’t the first woman to take on this dream. A woman who recently attempted this crossing had crashed, but Amelia couldn’t let that affect her confidence. Things got off to a smooth start…until about four hours in. That’s when she saw the smoke.

In spite of the flames bursting from her engine, Amelia set her shoulders back, and decided to plow on through the clouds – straight towards the storm she could see looming ahead. As she braced for the wind and rain, she noticed something wrong on her instrument panel.  The gas tank – it was leaking! Amelia did some quick math, then crossed her fingers – if all went well, she should have just enough to make it to the far side of the ocean. She flew on, for hours and hours… suppressing her fear and fighting her exhaustion. Amelia didn’t even drink coffee – she didn’t like the taste. Instead, she used strong smelling salts to help her stay awake.

The storm slowed her progress. Buffeted by the wind, she used more fuel than she otherwise would have. And she was so high up in the sky that ice began to form on the wings of her plane. The ice weighed her down, and made the plane plunge down almost 3,000 feet toward the waves!

In spite of it all, Amelia stayed calm and trusted her aviation knowledge. Her confidence never wavered, as she crossed mile after mile. Finally, she saw land ahead after endless water. She brought her plane down in a farmer’s field in Northern Ireland. She had made it to Europe! The farmer, a man named Mr. Gallagher, welcomed Amelia – he even made a cup of tea for his surprise guest from the sky.

Amelia’s successful Transatlantic crossing brought her fame and notoriety to a whole new level. And she just kept going! She became the first person ever, man or woman, to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. Purdue University hired her as a visiting professor in aeronautics and a counselor for women students. The university went so far as to purchase her a brand new plane: a silver, metal, shining airplane that she called her “Flying Laboratory.” Amelia planned to use that plane for her biggest adventure yet – she wanted to fly around the entire world, stopping only to refuel.

And on June 1, 1937, Amelia set off from Miami to do just that. Accompanied by her navigator Fred Noonan, Amelia made stops in South America, Africa, India, and the island of New Guinea. But then… something happened. With only 7,000 miles left to complete their journey, the two lost radio contact, and the plane disappeared.

To this day, no one is quite sure what happened to Fred Noonan, or our record breaking pilot Amelia Earhart.

But what can we be sure of? Amelia’s lasting impact on aviation, and especially women pilots.

Even now, more than eighty years after her disappearance, Amelia and her brave feats of aeronautics are legendary, and her daredevil spirit has inspired generations of pilots around the world. You can follow in her footsteps too, by chasing your dreams, setting your sights high, and always setting your course to the next great adventure.