Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She did this in June, 1928. The takeoff was in Newfoundland, Canada. Captain Hilton H. Riley went with her. They landed off the coast of Wales in Great Britain.

Amelia began to think about one more long flight in 1936. She said it would be her last. She wanted to fly around the equator. No one had ever done that. She needed a more powerful plane for the trip. A university set up a fund to by Amelia the plane of her dreams: a Lockheed Model10E Electra.

The plane had two engines. The second engine was like a spare engine. Her plane was named the Flying Laboratory because it was so big and had so many gadgets inside of it. Amelia flew it every day just for practice.

Amelia Earhart was planning to fly around the equator and that took a year to think up.

She flew with one navigator until she went to Oakland, California on May 20,1937, when she switched her navigator for Fred Noonan, a better navigator. She flew everywhere that there was a stop around the equator. Her final stop was in New Guinea. She was flying on her way to Howland Island, but she was never found because she never made it there. Nobody knows what happened to her, but it happened on July 2. Everyone has a different theory. Maybe you can make your own.