On the evening of May 20, 1932, a 34-year-old American pilot named Amelia Earhart pulled on a leather flying jacket, climbed into a single-engine red Lockheed Vega, and took off from a grassy field in Newfoundland, Canada. No woman had ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean alone in a plane. Amelia had carried a flask of tomato juice and a tin of soup for the long, cold night ahead.
The flight was anything but smooth. Her altimeter broke. Ice formed on the wings and dropped the plane closer to the waves. Flames flickered from a cracked exhaust pipe outside her window. She had planned to land in Paris like Charles Lindbergh had five years earlier, but exhaustion, weather, and a fuel leak forced her down in a cow pasture in Northern Ireland. A startled farmhand walked up and asked 'Have you flown far?' Amelia, climbing stiffly out of her seat, answered: 'From America.'
The flight made her a global hero. Five years later she would vanish over the Pacific while attempting to circle the globe, but on that May night in 1932 she had already smashed the idea that the sky belonged only to men. Today, statues, schools, and stamps still carry her name.
