Amelia Earhart, our world famous explorer and adventurer, never completed the final stretch of her around-the-world flight. On July 2nd, 1937 at 7:42 a.m., the Itasca heard Earhart say, "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." They never arrived on Howland Island. The Itasca made an immediate search, but they have never been found for certain.
It is generally presumed they ran out of fuel and crashed. Some believe, however, that they flew without radio signals and ended up on a small island in the Pacific. So far, we don't really know what happened to them. Earhart's legacy as an important figure in women's history, however, means she is gone but not forgotten.
Check out our map of ‘Amelia Earhart’s Flight Around the World.’ Discover the path of Earhart’s journey. Expanding our world view of what is possible, Amelia Earhart was the first woman, and the second person ever, to fly solo across the Atlantic. In 1937, she became the first person to fly from the Red Sea to India, as she attempted to circumnavigate the world around the equator. Jet planes had not been developed in the 1930s, when Earhart took her famous last flight around the equator. Commercial air travel was in its early stages. Only the very wealthy travelled by airplane. Today, at peak travel hours, there are over 5,000 commercial planes in the sky over the United States.
For more about Amelia Earhart, as well as classroom materials and an interactive map, click here.