The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, in her Lockheed Vega 5B aircraft and flew for almost 15 hours to Derry, Northern Ireland. In doing so, she became the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Almost three years later, she was the first to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California. Fueled by her success, Earhart began making preparations to circumnavigate the globe — what was supposed to be a 29,000-mile world record. Following a failed first attempt, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan departed from Miami on June 1, 1937. On June 29, they landed in Lae, New Guinea, after flying almost 22,000 miles. They took off from Lea three days later on the first leg of the 7,000-mile journey across the Pacific to the U.S., but Earhart and Noonan tragically disappeared en route to Howland Island.

Despite extensive search parties and millions of dollars in funding, the Lockheed Elektra wreckage has never been found. The most likely explanation is that extreme weather conditions and a lack of fuel forced the plane to crash-land and sink in the Pacific. However, conspiracy theories abound — some say Earhart was taken hostage by the Japanese, while others believe she worked as a spy for President Roosevelt and later returned to the U.S. under an alias. In 1991, an aluminum map case thought to be debris from the aircraft washed up on Nikumaroro, an atoll of the tiny South Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Could Earhart and Noonan have perished on the uninhabited island after living as castaways? The lack of any real evidence only adds to the mysterious legacy of one of the world’s greatest aviators.