July 2 - Amelia Earhart Disappears

On July 2, 1937, aviatrix Amelia Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in a Lockheed Electra aircraft, never to be seen again. The flight was the last portion of her attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Earhart had achieved lasting fame for her presence on a transatlantic flight in 1928, and for the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight by a woman in 1932, a feat she had timed to occur on the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight. Her 29,000-mile flight around the world had begun in Miami and had advanced to New Guinea, east of Malaysia. From there, she headed for a tiny coral island, Howland Island, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, for refueling. A nearby Coast Guard cutter, Itasca, lost all radio contact with Earhart on the morning of July 2. Recent explorations have claimed to have found evidence of the plane on another Pacific island. But it is likely that Amelia, who had a deeply uneasy relationship with aviation instruments, was lost in the skies, and lost to the ages.