1937

“Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.” So said Amelia Earhart, the American aviator who lived far ahead of her time. In 1932 she became the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic, and her penchant for breaking records would culminate in a round-the-world trip in a Lockheed Electra, pictured here above the Golden Gate Bridge at the beginning of her first, failed attempt. Three months later, Earhart started out on an epic journey that eventually brought her to Southeast Asia. The diary entries she sent home along the way make for an entertaining read: she marveled at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, lauded Singapore’s newly opened Kallang Airport as “an aviation miracle of the East,” and bought a handmade sheath knife in Jakarta—a gift she resolved to wear on her belt while crossing the Pacific. Tragically, Earhart never made it. Her disappearance en route to Howland Island has spawned theories that she and navigator Fred Noonan died as castaways or were taken prisoner by the Japanese. Though her fate remains a mystery, Earhart still lives on in America’s public imagination.