Amelia Earhart was one of America’s greatest airplane pilots. In 1937, when she and her navigator, Frederick J. Noonan, were attempting to fly 27,000 miles around the world, their plane suddenly disappeared without a trace.
A radio message was received that said the gas supply was running low, but they didn’t sound worried. The last message was “We are on line of position…” and then stopped without another word. Despite an extensive search, her plane was never found.
Ever since, interested people have tried to track down clues to her possible whereabouts. But every “lead” has fizzled. To this day, what happened to Earhart and Noonan remains a mystery. Earhart was declared legally dead in 1939.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic. A native of Kansas, she served as a nurse’s aide at a Canadian hospital during World War I, after which she became a teacher and social worker in Boston, Massachusetts. She learned to fly in California and made her first solo flight in 1920.
On May 20, 1932, she made her historic trans-Atlantic solo flight in 14 hours, 15 minutes, when she flew from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Londonderry, Ireland. On January 11, 1935, she became the first woman to fly from Hawaii to California.
