Today Mercer learned about famed American aviator and author Amelia Earhart, born July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records,was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, and wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences. Earhart developed a passion for adventure at a young age, steadily gaining flying experience from her twenties. In 1928, Earhart became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane (accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz), for which she achieved celebrity status. In 1932, piloting a Lockheed Vega 5B, Earhart made a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat. She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for this accomplishment.She was known as one of the most inspirational American figures in aviation from the late 1920s throughout the 1930s. During an attempt at becoming the first female to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. The two were last seen in Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, on the last land stop before Howland Island and one of their final legs of the flight. She presumably lost her life in the Pacific during her attempt to circumnavigate Earth by plane, just three weeks prior to her fortieth birthday. Nearly one year and six months after she and Noonan disappeared, Earhart was officially declared dead. Investigations and significant public interest in their disappearance still continue over 80 years later. We then charted the last leg of Earhart's flight from Honolulu, HI, New Guinea to Howland Island. Books and movies have been made about Amelia Earhart. Her disappearance reamins one of history's great mysteries.