Amelia Earhart
On this day in 1897, Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas. Ms. Earhart is most famous for her flying, being the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic in 1932 as well as the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California in 1935. There are many other records, for both solo flying as well as speed records, that Ms. Earhart either set or broke.
Unfortunately, in 1937 just about three weeks before her 40th birthday, Ms. Earhart and her navigator Mr. Noonan disappeared while flying between Lae, New Guinea and Howland Island and were never found or heard from again. To this day it remains a mystery as to what exactly happened to Amelia and her navigator.
Over at the Internet Archive, they have one of the books she wrote available for you to read online: The Fun of It.
![Amelia Earhart standing under nose of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. Photo by Underwood & Underwood (active 1880 – c. 1950) [Public domain]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amelia_Earhart_standing_under_nose_of_her_Lockheed_Model_10-E_Electra,_small.jpg){kind=link}