Amelia Earhart  Models.

While considerable controversy still surrounds the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in 1937, there is no question that Amelia Mary Earhart was one of the great pioneers of American aviation.

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas in 1897

Amelia Earhart was the daughter of a railroad attorney.

Amelia exhibited an adventurous spirit at a young age, and was able to travel extensively with her parents.

In 1918 at the age of twenty-one, Amelia Earhart witnessed a flight demonstration in Toronto, and this inspired her to take a course in engine mechanics. Three years later she was in New York City studying medicine at Columbia University when she had the opportunity to take her first airplane ride to California.

Immediately she decided to learn to fly, and she remained in California where she obtained a pilot's license in 1921.

During the next few years Earhart worked at many jobs in many locales, but her true love was flying. 

Amelia was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic in 1928, and the fame this generated allowed her to direct her attention at attempting other record-breaking fetes.

Amelia met George Putnam during this time, and he supported her flying efforts. They married in 1931.

In 1932 Amelia became the first woman to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic flying a Lockheed Vega.

Months later she became the first woman to completed a solo flight from Los Angeles to New York.

In January, 1935 Her next major record came when she completed a solo flight from Honolulu to Oakland in a little over 18 hours.

Next in 1936 Amelia Earhart was appointed to the faculty of Purdue University which provided her a Lockheed Electra as a flying laboratory. Having access to the Electra allowed Amelia to begin planning her dream flight, an around the world crossing as close to the equator as possible.

In March of 1937 Amelia embarked on an around the world trip in a westerly direction, but her aircraft was damaged on take off from Hawaii. In June a new route going in an easterly direction, starting from Miami, was mapped out by her navigator, Fred Noonan. Departing on June 1, 1937 Earhart arrived in Lae, New Guinea some 22,000 miles and 146 flying-hours later. The next leg of this record setting trip would cover 2,500 miles over the Pacific with the intended destination being the tiny Howland Island.

When Amelia Earhart and Noonan failed to arrive, a massive search commenced, which was abandoned in mid-July. Presumably lost at sea, the nation mourned the loss of one of its heroes.

The last flight in detail of Amelia presents the various theories about her fate. Among them are that she was on a spy  mission for FDR, that she was captured by the Japanese, that she is alive and well on a South Seas island, and that she crashed in Saipan where she and navigator Fred Noonan were beheaded!

In a Stan Stokes painting entitled Lady Pioneer, Amelia's beloved Model 10E Electra is depicted next to the aviator's Cord automobile. This aircraft was delivered to Earhart in 1936. It was powered by twin 550 HP Wasp S3 H 1 engines, and was equipped with extended range fuel tanks, giving the craft a maximum range of 4,000 miles. The Electra was returned to Lockheed's plant in Burbank in 1937 for repairs following the accident in Hawaii. A new right wing was fitted, and repairs were made to the center fuselage and landing gear. The Civilian Aviation Administration officially canceled the registration of Earhart's NR16020 in July of 1938, approximately one year after her disappearance.

In 1942, with war raging on two fronts and military pilots  in short supply, the U.S. Army Air Force enlisted over 1,000 women to fly  non-combat missions totaling more than six million miles. Yet when WWII ended,  their heroism was left unheralded. In 1961, thirteen women from the "Women in  Space" program passed the same rigorous tests as the Mercury astronauts -  only to have their hopes dashed.

1997 will mark the 100th anniversary of Earhart's birth and the 60th anniversary of her disappearance.

Florence "Pancho" Barnes, who became the first female stunt pilot in Hollywood in 1929, shattered Amelia Earhart's air speed record in 1930, and, in the 1940s and '50s, entertained the best test pilots in the world at her "Happy Bottom Riding Club" ranch (which was immortalized in the Tom Wolfe book The Right Stuff) near Edwards Air Force Base.