When aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart roared off into the skies on 1 June 1937, she may have carried a guilty secret with her. She had become the first woman to fly solo from Hawaii to California. Ameli was willing to risk her life to make the first flight around the world by the longest possible route – the closest course to the equator, a distance of 27,000 miles.

The glory

In her eagerness to claim the glory for new achievements in flying history, Amelia had originally wanted to go one step further. She planned to fly the Pacific from east to west and carry out the first mid-air refueling, using specially adapted planes.

The missing

After 8.43 a.m. on 1 June 1937, came Amelia’s final message, frantic and desperate. She gave a confusing, wide-ranging compass position, which could have put her anywhere on a line stretching hundrends of miles both north or south of Howland Island. Then, all contact was lost for good, and soon the massive, but fruitless search began.

Never found

In 1964, two former soldiers, who had served in the Pacific, announced publicly that they had recovered the remains of Amelia Earhart from unmarked graves on Saipan and transferred them back to the United States for burial. But US still refuses to confirm or deny their story.