Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) was an American aviator who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Much celebrated during her lifetime, Amelia Earhart is remembered today for her courage and sense of adventure, for her major achievements in aviation, and for championing the cause of women in what was considered to be a man’s world at that time. She was a founder member of the Ninety-Nines, an organization for women pilots set up in 1929, which continues to award Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarships to budding women pilots to this day.

"The Canary"

Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas on 24th July 1897, and moved frequently with her family as a child. She worked as a military nurse in Canada during World War I, then as a social worker in Boston. She took up flying as a hobby in 1921, and bought her first plane, a two-seater biplane that was painted bright yellow. Amelia named the plane "The Canary".

Celebrity

In 1928 Amelia became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She was a passenger, with the duty of keeping the flight log, in a Fokker aircraft piloted by Wilmer Stolz and co-pilot Louis Gordon. She noted that she was merely a "a sack of potatoes". Nevertheless, Earhart became an instant celebrity, feted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception with the US President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. From that time Amelia’s hobby became her professional career.

Setting records

One of the organizers of the transatlantic project was a publisher named George P. Putnam. Amelia Earhart married Putnam in 1931, continuing to use her own name professionally. On 21st May 1932, she completed the first solo flight by a woman across the Atlantic—and only the second successful solo transatlantic flight in history. The flight from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland was completed in a record time of 14 hours and 56 minutes. Her book about the flight, The Fun of It, was published by Putnam.

Earhart wanted to prove that women were equal to men in the world of aviation, and her transatlantic flight was only the first of several record-breaking feats including setting an altitude record, and in 1935 becoming the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

Round the world

In June 1937, Earhart embarked on her most ambitious challenge yet: to become the first woman to fly around the world. Together with her navigator, Fred Noonan, she successfully completed more than 35,000 kilometres (22,000 miles) of the journey. But on 2nd July with only 11,000 kilometres (7000 miles) to go, Earhart’s plane disappeared in the Pacific Ocean. Despite an extensive search, no wreckage was ever found, and the facts of her disappearance remain uncertain, although it is likely that the plane ran out of fuel and ditched into the sea.