“Amelia Earhart: Trailblazing Aviator Who Vanished Without a Trace”

Amelia Earhart: Pioneer aviator, shattered records, disappeared mysteriously

Amelia Mary Earhart is one of the highest profile and most mysterious people in aviation. Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897 and her nature as a child foreshadowed the remarkable achievements ahead of her. She only found her true passion for aviation after a stint as a nurse’s aide during World War I and riding in her first plane in 1920.

Earhart got to know flying quickly by training and working several jobs to support what she loved. Five months after her first plane hitchhike, Amelia Earhart set a record for women, flying to a height of 14,000 feet and in 1923, she was awarded her official pilot’s license.

She made a major turning point in her life in 1928 by flying over the Atlantic as the first woman to do it. Even though she was riding shotgun on Wilmer Stultz and Lou Gordon’s plane, the adventure made her famous all over the world. Because of this recognition, she was able to enter aviation which she managed with the help of George Putnam, whom she later wed in 1931. Even so, she chose to keep her name and thought of their marriage as something she shared equally.

Using her recognition, Earhart influenced women in the field, inviting them to look for openings usually reserved for men. Together with some other women pilots, she founded the Ninety-Nines and she was its first president. She wasn’t limited to aviation; in addition, she edited articles for Cosmopolitan and participated in endorsement deals.

Over the first part of the 1930s, Earhart constantly made new aviation accomplishments. In 1932, Earhart became the first woman and the second person in history, to fly solo across a difficult stretch of the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to Ireland in almost 15 hours.

She, in 1935, followed this up with the first solo flight from Hawaii to California, a notoriously dangerous route longer even than the Atlantic crossing. Although she performed many feats, it was this last ill-starred flight that cemented her legends and sparked decades of speculation. Earhart, along with navigator Fred Noonan, left Miami, Florida, on June 1, 1937, for an ambitious attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world on the equator. Their twin-engine Lockheed Electra headed east from Miami, Florida.

On July 2, 1937, with two-thirds of the journey behind them, they left Lae, New Guinea, for the next part of their flight, a difficult and dangerous 2,500-mile leg to Howland Island, a tiny dot in the central Pacific Ocean. As the plane neared the island, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca attempted to help them. However, both the plane and the cutter experienced communication issues, along with overcast skies and low fuel upon approach to the island. Their last confirmed radio transmission from Earhart showed she was running out of fuel and trying to locate the island.

Then, nothing. Despite huge search efforts from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, which would be the most extensive air and sea search in American history at that time, no evidence of Earhart, Noonan, and the plane was ever found. Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939.

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Her disappearance continues to be one of the greatest mysteries in history and has opened the door to multitudes of theories. The most widely accepted theory is that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Other theories entail that they crash-landed on an uninhabited island such as Nikumaroro, which has found artifacts, or that they were captured by the Japanese. Despite ongoing investigations and expeditions, it is certain that we have not concluded this mystery.

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