| Amelia Earhart, born this day in 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, was one of the world's most celebrated aviators and the first woman to fly alone over the Atlantic Ocean. After becoming the first aviator to make a solo flight from Hawaii to California (1935), Earhart set out in 1937 to fly around the world, with Fred Noonan as her navigator, in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. More than two-thirds of the way into the trip, her plane vanished mysteriously in the central Pacific near the International Date Line. |