But in 1937, Amelia Mary Earhart also became of one of aviation’s enduring mysteries, disappearing over the South Pacific while on the final leg of a journey to circumnavigate the globe.
Now, some 77 years on, a young woman whose parents named her in honour of Ms Earhart has completed the journey, touching down in Oakland, California, after a 16-day, 28,000-mile mission.
Amelia Rose Earhart, a former television and radio reporter from Colorado, said after landing: “It was an amazing journey. We feel like we had Amelia there with us, symbolically closing her flight plan. So to come back here, it just brings it full circle.”
Helped by her media-savvy publisher husband, George Putnam, the first Ms Earhart was a tomboyish celebrity of her age, pictured in her aviator jacket, scarf and trousers.
A $40 million biopic of her life, Amelia, released in 2009 starred Hilary Swank, Ewan MacGregor and Richard Gere.
Her attempt to fly around the world in 1937 ended in tragedy after she had completed nearly two thirds of her flight with her navigator, Frederick Noonan. They took off from Lae, New Guinea, bound for the tiny Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, but never arrived. A large-scale naval, air and land search failed to locate their twin-engined Lockheed Model 10 Electra and their fate remains unknown, although there is speculation that they might have spent some time as castaways.
This autumn, aviation archaeologists are due to carry out a 30-day search of an uninhabited atoll on which they believe the pair may have landed and survived for a time. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery say they have found a woman’s shoe, part of a woman’s compact containing traces of rouge, and fragme`nts of glass from a 1930s jar of face cream on the island of Nikumaroro.
The second Ms Earhart, 31, was named Amelia by her parents because they wanted to give her “a name that was filled with inspiration, adventure and tenacity”. But as a teenager she resented the expectations she felt came with the name and for a few years preferred to be known as Amy. As an adult, though, she came to feel that her name was “the best gift that my parents could have ever given me”. She took her first flying lessons 10 years ago and last year started the Fly With Amelia Foundation, which awards flying scholarships to girls aged 16 to 18.
One man who saw the landing remembered watching the original flight take off from Oakland when he was a boy in 1937. Elwood Ballard, 84, who presented the younger Ms Earhart with a bouquet of roses, said: “I’ve been waiting 77 years for this. After all these years, I never thought that I would see the day.”
Ms Earhart’s safe return makes her the first woman to fly around the globe in a single-engine aircraft.
