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Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1932 she flew a small red plane from Canada to Ireland - alone, at night, through a thunderstorm.

2 min read
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
THE FULL STORY

Amelia Earhart first saw a plane at age 10 and was not impressed. It took a ride at an air show in her early 20s to change her mind. “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground,” she later wrote, “I knew I had to fly.”

She bought her first plane and started breaking records. In 1928 she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane - though as a passenger. That bothered her. So in 1932 she did it herself, in a small red Lockheed Vega, flying nearly 15 hours through storms and ice to land in a cow pasture in Ireland.

In 1937 she set out to fly all the way around the world. She and her navigator made it three-quarters of the way before her plane vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. People have been searching ever since. The mystery of Amelia Earhart is one of aviation’s biggest puzzles.

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