Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas (USA) on July, 24, 1897, to Edwin Stanton Earhart, a railroad attorney, and Amy Otis, daughter of a prominent Kansas judge.

Learning to fly in California, she took up aviation as a hobby, taking odd jobs to pay for her flying lessons. In 1922, with the financial help of her sister, Muriel, and her mother, Amy Otis Earhart, she purchased her first airplane, a Kinner Airster.

Amelia atop her Electra L-10

In 1935, Amelia became the first person to fly from Hawaii to the American mainland. Amelia Earhart proved to the entire world that aviation was not just for men.

She planned the first around-the-world flight conducted by a woman. Asked by a journalist why she wanted to make that flight, her answer was:

Because I want!

In June 1937, Amelia embarked upon the first around-the-world flight at the equator. On July 2, after completing nearly two-thirds of her historic flight -- over 22,000 miles -- Amelia vanished along with her navigator Frederick Noonan.

I know that if I fail or if I am lost

you will be blamed for allowing me

to leave on this trip; the backers of

the flight will be blamed and

everyone connected with it. But it's

my responsibility and mine alone.

(As Amelia said to George Putnam (her manager) the night before she left Miami).

During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island on July 2, 1937, when she was 39 years old.