Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. In 1918, while working as a Red Cross nurse's aide in Toronto, she attended her first flying exhibition. In December 1920 she took her first airplane ride. Earhart worked as a telephone company clerk and a photographer to pay for her flying lessons. Her first flying instructor was Anita "Neta" Snook, who gave her lessons in a Curtiss Jenny. Earhart soloed in 1921 and bought her first airplane, a Kinner Airster. In 1922 she set her first aviation record, an unofficial women's altitude record of 14,000 feet. In 1923 she became the 16th woman to receive an official Fédération Aéronautique Internationale pilot license. In 1926 she joined the staff of Denison House, Boston's oldest settlement house, as a social worker. In 1928 Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air, although she rode as a passenger on the Friendship while two men flew the plane, and on the final hop from Wales to England she did fly the plane, and she wrote a book about the flight, titled 20 hours and 40 minutes.

In August 1929 she finished third in the first air race across the United States for women. In 1931 she was the first woman to fly an autogiro and set an altitude record in it. In July 1932 she set the women's record for the fastest non-stop transcontinental flight. Earhart was elected the first president of the Ninety-Nines in 1931 and served until 1933, leading a group of women pilots. In 1930 Earhart bought a Lockheed 5B Vega, NR-7952, and she ultimately owned four Vegas and leased two, and she called her bright red Vega the "Little Red Bus." and her Vega was a high-speed cabin monoplane with cantilever wings and a streamlined design, and after a nose-over accident its fuselage was replaced and strengthened to carry extra fuel tanks. In 1930 she set the women's flying speed record of 181.18 mph and earned her transport pilot's license. In 1933 she sold her 5B Vega to Philadelphia's Franklin Institute after buying a new Lockheed 5C Vega, and the Smithsonian acquired the 5B Vega in 1966. As of November 2026 the 5B Vega is on display in the Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Some people think Earhart was the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, but in 1932 she became the first woman, and the second person, to do it, and she flew a Lockheed 5B Vega, which veteran pilot Bernt Balchen prepared and tested, and she left Newfoundland on May 20, 1932, for her solo Atlantic flight, and she departed Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, in the evening and soon ran into poor weather, and the altimeter malfunctioned, so she flew blind for five hours, flames spewed out the side of the engine, and ice formed on the wings and forced her to fly just above the waves. The record-breaking flight took fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes after the departure from Harbour Grace. Earhart touched down in a farmer's field at Culmore, near Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and Paris had been the intended destination of the 1932 flight, but it still counted as the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman, and after landing she said tomato juice had been her only meal since leaving America. The 1932 crossing was her second trip across the Atlantic, making her the first person to cross it twice by air, and the flight made her an international hero.

Her solo flight from Honolulu to Oakland began on January 11, 1935, and she flew a Lockheed 5C Vega alone over the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to California. In 1935 Earhart joined Purdue University as a counselor on careers for women, and she was a two-time winner of the Harmon Trophy. In July 1936 she acquired a new Lockheed Electra airplane that she called her "Flying Laboratory.". In March 1937 she made her first attempt to circumnavigate the globe at the equator, and on June 1, 1937, she began her second world flight attempt from Miami, Florida, flying east with Fred Noonan as navigator. Some people think she tried to fly around the world in one nonstop flight, but the flight was made in legs, and when she and Noonan disappeared they were on the third-to-last leg of their round-the-world flight. In July 1937 Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, in a Lockheed Electra 10E, heading for tiny Howland Island, and it would take more than 18 hours to fly that distance.

The Coast Guard cutter Itasca was at Howland to assist her in an era before radar, and it was waiting there to support her flight. The Itasca's radio log shows Leo G. Bellarts on radio watch from 7 p.m. on July 1, 1937, and communications with Earhart's plane are identified in the log by the call sign KHAQQ, and a message from the plane reported trouble communicating by radio and flying low at 1,000 feet, and another said it was 200 miles from Howland Island, and communication attempts continued through the evening of July 1 and into the morning of July 2, 1937, and because of radio problems, communication between the plane and the Itasca was sporadic and broken, and the Itasca received one of the plane's transmissions but could not get any bearings on the signal. Earhart radioed that they must be on top of the ship but could not see it, and that gas was running low, and in her last message the Itasca recorded, the plane reported being on the line 157 337.

The log records the last communication from KHAQQ at about 8:43 a.m. on July 2, 1937, and radio contact was lost. The Electra never made it to Howland Island, and the 1937 search by the Navy and Coast Guard was an extensive air and sea search, and the official U.S. search ran from July 2 to July 18, 1937, and the Navy battleship Colorado was ordered to depart for the vicinity of Howland Island, and her floatplanes searched an area of 25,490 square miles, and after the plane went missing, ships and planes searched for Earhart, and the search found no trace of the plane or its crew. The National Archives holds the Navy report on the search, July 2-18, 1937, and a copy of the Itasca radio log. As of November 2026 the Electra has not been found, and what happened to Earhart and Noonan remains unknown, with no proof of their fate.

Words to know

• exhibition: a show
• autogiro: rotor aircraft
• altimeter: height gauge
• circumnavigate: go around
• transatlantic: across the Atlantic