Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails – Boston

Amelia Earhart was already famous when she set out for her first solo flight across the Atlantic on May 20, 1932. She made headlines as the first woman passenger on a transatlantic flight four years earlier in 1928. The widely publicized event skyrocketed Earhart to international fame, earning her nicknames like “Lady Lindy” and “Queen of the Air”. Book deals, a lecture tour, her own luggage and clothing line and a spokeswomen position with Lucky Strike followed, despite Earhart’s role as merely a guest on the plane. Four years later she’d make the trip again, on her own, exactly five years after Charles Lindbergh’slandmark flight.

On the morning of May 20, 1932, Earhart departed Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in a cherry-red Lockheed Vega 5B bound for Paris, amid strong winds and icy conditions. The flight lasted 14 hours and 56 minutes and was plagued by mechanical problems that caused an unexpected landing in a pasture north of Derry in Northern Ireland: after “scaring all the cows in the neighborhood” she “pulled up in a farmer’s backyard.”

Earhart’s successful solo journey earned her a Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover, and cemented her reputation as a skilled and influential female aviatrix. To her, it also proved that women were equal to men in “jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and willpower.”

We’ll drink to that.

BLUE SKIES
1 oz Applejack
1 oz Gin
.5 oz Lemon Juice
.25 oz Simple Syrup
1 or dashes grenadine

Shake with cracked ice and strain into your favorite vintage cocktail glass.

Cin cin!