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Amelia Earhart[Ar´hArt] Pronunciation Key, 1897–1937, American aviator, b. Atchison, Kans. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane (1928) and the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic (1932). She was the first person to fly alone from Honolulu to California (1935). In 1937, she attempted with a copilot, Frederick J. Noonan, to fly around the world, but her plane was lost on the flight between New Guinea and Howland Island. In 1992, a search party reported finding remnants of Earhart's plane on Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner Island), Kiribati, but their claims were disputed by people who worked on Earhart's plane, and her fate remains a mystery. In 1964, Geraldine Mock was the first woman to successfully complete Earhart's round-the-world route. Earhart was married to G. P. Putnam (1887–1950) in 1931.
See biographies by M. S. Lovell (1989), D. L. Rich (1996), and S. Butler (1999); T. E. Devine and R. Daley, Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident (1987); S. Ware, Still Missing (1993); C. Szabo, Sky Pioneer (1997); T. C. Brennan and R. Rosenbaum, Witness to the Execution: The Odyssey of Amelia Earhart (1999).
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