WHO WAS AMELIA EARHART?

Amelia Earhart was an American aviator who set many flying records and championed the advancement of women in aviation. She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.

Amelia Earhart didn’t flinch. The 21-year-old was attending an air show in Canada in 1918 when a stunt plane dived right toward her. But instead of running out of the way, she faced the plane down  hat wasn’t Earhart’s only brave moment. Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897, she volunteered during World War I starting in 1917, treating wounded Canadian soldiers returning from the European battlefields. Nearby were pilot practice fields, where she discovered her passion for flying.

"...decide...whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying..." said Amelia Earhart, and she lived her life based on her own words. As a child, she was known for her fierce independence, quite uncommon for girls of the era, and was full of adventure traits that would immortalise her, well after her death.

Ironically, when Earhart saw her first aircraft at the lowa State Fair in Des Moines, as a 10-year-old, her father tried to pique his daughters' interest in taking their first flight. However, one look at the rickety thing and all she wanted to do was return to her merry-go-round for she found the plane to be "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting".

However, it seemed she was destined to take to the skies one way or the other for, when she was 23, on December 28, 1920, she and her father attended an aerial meet at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California. After inquiring about flying lessons, she was booked for a passenger flight the following day, and the cost was $10 for a 10-minute flight with Frank Hawks. That ride changed her life forever, and in her book, Last Flight, she reveals how. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly." Not too long after, she bought The Canary, her first plane, a second-hand yellow Kinner Airster.

Take off

On May 16, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman in the U.S., to be issued a pilot's license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Soon after, a series of events led her to live in Medford, Massachusetts. Her interest in aviation strong as ever, she became a member of the American Aeronautical Society's Boston chapter and was eventually elected its vice president. She also flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport in 1927. She donned multiple hats as she penned local newspaper columns promoting flying. And as her interest grew, so did her fame. =

Then, in 1928, Earhart received a phone call from Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her if she was interested in flying the Atlantic. Later, that year, she I was a passenger on a transatlantic flight and became the first woman to do so. Four years later, she set off on her own from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, to Paris. Though she landed in Ireland instead, because of weather conditions and mechanical failure, she was instrumental in setting two records she became the first woman and the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic. For this, she was awarded a gold medal from the National Geographic Society, presented by Herbert Hoover, then U.S. President.

In 1935, she added another feather to her cap, another first to her list of achievements –she became the first person to fly from Hawaii to the American mainland, thus, also becoming the first person to fly solo over the Pacific and consequently, the first to fly solo over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Final flight

Nowhere close to being done, in June 1937, she set forth on a J mission to circumnavigate the earth by air. In short, she aimed to fly around the world at the equator and thus become the first woman in the world to do so. With her new plane, Lockheed Electra, 39-year-old Earhart set off on the journey from Miami, the US, along with her navigator Fred Noonan After multiple stops along the way, including Karachi and Calcutta, on June 29, they landed in Lae, Papua New Guinea, with just 7,000 miles left in their journey, after which they took off on July 2 for Howland Island, about 2.500 miles from Lae. It was deemed the most challenging leg of their trip.

However, after a run-in with inclement weather and fading radio transmissions, all contact with the Electra was lost, for, the plane carrying Amelia and Noonan vanished. Search efforts went on till 1939, within which time, multiple speculations and theories had arisen about her disappearance. However, on January 5, 1939, Earhart was declared dead.

Earhart's impact on women's rights was unmissable, and throughout her life, she doggedly represented what she thought women ought to do and stand for. In 1935, she was an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counsellor to female students, at Purdue University. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She remained an inspiration for women, silently motivating them to fly high, literally, and otherwise, while she lived, and much later too, decades after her death.

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WHAT IS THE MAIN IDEA OF ‘FREEDOM OR DEATH’ SPEECH?

Emmeline Pankhurst was an English political activist and a leading figure in the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Her tireless campaigning in the face of police brutality and failing personal health made her an icon of British politics. Let us look at one of her most influential public addresses titled, "Freedom or Death"

On November 13, 1913, British activist Emmeline Pankhurst gave one of the most influential speeches of the suffragette movement titled, Freedom or Death" at a meeting of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in Hartford, Connecticut. U.S.

On this day, the founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) took the stage to argue that women's liberation could only be achieved by civil war.

Sign of the times

One of the greatest political changes of the 20th Century was obtaining the vote for women; but behind this accomplishment lay decades of refusals by successive governments.

The long-standing campaign for women's suffrage began in 1865 but when years of peaceful protest and innumerable petitions failed to translate into political change, women took to the streets to rally for their right to vote. It was during this time that Emmeline Pankhurst. along with her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, came up with a public campaign of engagement and spectacle to gain media attention change public opinion, and influence the Parliament through (their motto) deeds and not words.

Freedom or Death

In her 1913 speech, Pankhurst addressed herself as a soldier on leave from the battle, since she was temporarily relieved from her prison sentence on account of what was popularly called the "cat and mouse act"

But her failing health could not derail her from utilising this occasion to speak on the need to fight against the injustices perpetrated on women by society. At the time working women she explained, were earning a meagre amount of two dollars a week: wives had no right on their husband's property and no legal say in the upbringing of their children. Girls were seen as marriageable at the age of 12 and divorce was considered to be an act against God: violence and assault on women rarely received any significant penalty, and above all, there was no legal framework that represented their gender in the constitutional setup. In this political environment, the right to vote, she insisted, was the first step towards getting political equality and attaining full citizenship.

The path to militancy Justifying the rise of the self-proclaimed militant suffragettes, she proclaimed "you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs" The double standard of the society that reveres men as the harbinger of change and women as creatures to be domesticated has forced us down this road. The history of politics is a testament to the fact that one has to be more noisy" and disruptive to gain the media's attention and see their grievances addressed.

Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913

 This 1913 law, also known as the cat and mouse act, was especially passed to suppress the women's movement and allowed for the early release of prisoners who were so weakened by partaking in hunger strikes that they were on the verge of dying. Addressing this legislative move by the Government, she said "There are women lying at death's door... who have not given in and won't give in... they are being carried from their sick beds on stretchers into meetings. They are too weak to speak, but they go amongst their fellow workers just to show that their spirits are unquenched and that their spirit is alive, and they mean to go on as long as life lasts...either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote." (excerpt from Freedom or Death)

World War-l

Less than a year after this speech World War I broke out. The government released all imprisoned suffragists to join the workforce and support the war effort. It was only after the Representation of the People Act was passed in 1918 that property-owning British women over 30 were granted the right to vote.

Key takeaways from the speech

  1. One must never hesitate to fight for social good.
  2.  Women's rights are human rights.
  3.  Equality is the soul of liberty.
  4. It takes courage to challenge the familiar and resilience to succeed.
  5.  Actions hold more meaning than words.

DID YOU KNOW?

  • The colour scheme for the Suffragette movement was purple, white and green which stood for dignity purity and fertility.
  • Pank-a-Squith was a pro women's suffrage board game created by WSPU in the early 1900s. The game's goal was to avoid all the pitfalls of suffragette life and get the right to vote.
  • The Museum of London holds the diary entries, letters and sketchbooks written on toilet paper, passed between imprisoned suffragettes and eventually smuggled out of the prison building.

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WHO IS MALALA YOUSAFZAI AND WHY IS SHE FAMOUS?

Malala Yousafzai, (born July 12, 1997, Mingora, Swat valley, Pakistan), Pakistani activist who, while a teenager, spoke out publicly against the prohibition on the education of girls that was imposed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes called Pakistani Taliban).

October 9, 2012, was a day like any other, when a group of young girls were on their bus ride back home, in Pakistan's Swat Valley, after an exam at school. They were unwinding on the ride, like every other student after an exam. Chit-chat and laughter filled the bus until terror struck. A masked gunman onboarded, and even before the girls could gather themselves and overcome their initial shock, he shouted, "Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all."

Upon being identified, a 15-year-old was shot at While two others were wounded in the shooting, it was the former who was most affected. She was Malala Yousafzai, and had been shot for constantly speaking up for the education rights of girls in the Valley, and opposing the Taliban's draconian rules and their acts of destroying schools and obstructing eduction. It is in honour of this fierce. courageous teen that the United Nations declared July 12. her birthday, as International Malala Day, in 2013, on her 16th birthday, when she spoke at the UN to call for worldwide access to education.

Early days

Daughter of education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala had grown up knowing the importance of education. She was further inspired by the twice-elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and started speaking about education rights as early as September 2008, when she was just 11.

However, Malala's first step towards fame came in late 2008, when BBC Urdu website's Aamer Ahmed Khan and his colleagues, zeroed in on a novel way to cover Pakistani Taliban's growing sway in Swat. They decided to ask a schoolgirl to blog anonymously about her life there. Their Peshawar correspondent, who had been in touch with a local school teacher, Ziauddin Yousafzai, could not find any students willing to report, as their families deemed it dangerous. Finally, he suggested that his own daughter, 11-year-old Malal do it, and on January 3, 2009, her first entry was posted on the BBC Urdu blog. Later, that year, she and her father were approached by a New York Times reporter for a documentary, and interviews on several news channels. By the end of 2009. her BBC blogging identity was revealed.

Danger brews

As her fame rose, so did the imminent jeopardy to her life. Death threats against her were published in newspapers, slipped under her door, and posted on Facebook. It culminated in the attack in October 2012. She was airlifted to the military hospital in Peshawar, then moved to Rawalpindi's Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology, and finally to the UK's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where she underwent surgeries.

Whilst convalescing in hospital, on October 15 2012. UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister, visited her and launched a petition in her name and "in support of what Malala fought for". Under the slogan I am Malala, its main demand was that there be no child left out of school by 2015.

Youngest Nobel laureate

She was discharged from the hospital on January 3, 2013, and continued with her activism soon after. In October 2014, along with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Vidyarthi, she was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education. At 17, she became the youngest Nobel laureate, and the second Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize after Physics laureate Abdus Salam, in 1979. Today, she continues to serve the cause of education and work towards what she truly believes.

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