On July 24, 1897, Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Judge Alfred Gideon Otis. History best knows her as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1920, Amelia Earhart took her first plane ride with Frank Hawks and became hooked. She began her flying lessons with female aviator Anita Snook and received a pilot’s license in December of 1921 from the National Aeronautics Association. Earhart would go on to set a women’s altitude record of 14,000 feet in October 1922 and receive an international pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on May 16, 1923, becoming the 16th woman to achieve the honor.

In June of 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane, not as the pilot, but as a passenger, famously quipping that she felt like “a sack of potatoes”. She also set a women’s world flying speed record of 181.18 miles per hour on July 5th, 1930, after receiving a U.S. air transport pilot license on May 1st.

On May 20th, 1932, Amelia Earhart would set out to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, earning her the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover.

Unfortunately, on July 2, 1937, when Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan departed from Lae for Howland, they disappeared en route after an unsuccessful attempt to find the island. They would later be declared legally dead on January 5, 1939, in a court in Los Angeles