QUIZ – What Lies Beneath (Amelia Earhart Inspired to Fly)

Our answer is posted after the jump! :)

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We’re heading a little outside of the city today and down to Long Beach! The rest of the game works the same as usual… below is a spot on a google map. Today we’re thinking of a specific *reason* that this location is notable (other than the general business it currently does every day). Within 24 hours we’ll give you the full details… but as usual, we’re going to give you a little time to guess what we’re referring to first. If you know the answer right away please try not to announce it too quickly and ruin the game for the people who don’t. No hints today, either!

Okay… here you go!

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Daugherty Field in Long Beach was where Amelia Earhart (July 24, 1897; missing July 2, 1937; declared legally dead January 5, 1939) first caught the aviation bug which led her to become the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

When Amelia moved to California, she was 23 years old, tall and slim, with waist length hair. Her parents had reunited and her father had already set up a legal practice. Shortly after her arrival, Edwin took her to an aerial meet at Daugherty Field in Long Beach. She wrote of the meet, “The interest aroused in me in Toronto led me to all the air circuses in the vicinity.” She also wrote that she might like to fly.

She asked her father to inquire about a flight and the cost of flying lessons and was booked for a flight the very next day at Rogers Field, an open space on Wilshire Boulevard. The cost was $10 for a 10 minute flight with Frank Hawks. Hawks later became a high speed flight record breaker. Amelia commented of her father, “I am sure he thought that one ride would be enough for me.” But she knew, “As soon as we left the ground I knew I myself had to fly.”

In 1935 Amelia joined the faculty of the Purdue University aviation department as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers and help inspire others with her love for aviation. While attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.