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WTF Fun Fact #12394

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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt became friends with “First Lady of the Air” Amelia Earhart 1932. That was the same year of Earhart’s famous nonstop trans-Atlantic flight.

On April 20, 1933, they attended a formal dinner at the White House when Earhart got a little restless and suggested they go on an adventure. The feminist trailblazers grabbed some friends and slipped out of the event in their ballgowns. Then they hopped on a plane to spice up the evening at Earhart’s suggestion.

The plan was to travel to Baltimore and back before dessert, and they headed to the air hangar at Hoover Field and hopped aboard one of Eastern Air Transport’s twin-engine Curtiss Condor planes.

Two of the airplane company’s pilots had to operate the plane, but the women managed to nudge them aside at some point and took over the cockpit, acting as pilot and co-pilot for at least part of the flight.

After the short trip, the Secret Service ushered everyone back to the dinner.

Of course, Earhart would eventually go on her ill-fated trip around the world in 1937, from which she never returned. Roosevelt continued her humanitarian deeds until her death in 1962.

When speaking about their adventurous evening, Roosevelt told The Baltimore Sun: “It does mark an epoch, doesn’t it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night.” – WTF Fun Facts

Source: Pilots in Evening Gowns: When Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt Took to the Skies — A Mighty Girl

WTF Fun Fact #12393 – An Olympic Medal For Art

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From 1912 to 1952, the Olympics awarded medals for original paintings, sculptures, architecture, literature, and music inspired by athletics.

These were categories throughout the first four decades of the modern Olympics, yet hardly anyone knows about it. The only book on the topic is Richard Stanton’s The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions.

He spent a great deal of time digging through boxes of crumbling files on the interesting piece of history in Switzerland. As it turns out, the founder of the IOC and the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, saw art as a natural part of all-around displays of talent.

As Stanton told Smithsonian Magazine: “He [the Baron] was raised and educated classically, and he was particularly impressed with the idea of what it meant to be a true Olympian—someone who was not only athletic but skilled in music and literature. He felt that in order to recreate the events in modern times, it would be incomplete not to include some aspect of the arts.”

The first time medals were awarded for these talents was at the 1912 Stockholm Games, where 33 artists submitted works. But it wasn’t popular with all artists, some of whom thought competition of this style was crass for true artists to partake in.

WWII and changes to amateur athletics put this chapter of Olympic history to rest. The final artistic medals were handed out in 194 but later stricken from the Olympic record books.

– WTF Fun Facts

Source: When the Olympics Gave Out Medals for Art — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact – First VCR

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The first commercially successful videotape recorder, precursor to the VCR, was made in 1956 and was the size of a piano. The Ampex Corporation developed the VRX-1000 in 1956 and sold it to TV networks and stations for $50,000. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder