Amelia Earhart Was the First Woman to Fly the Atlantic Solo

Five years after Charles Lindbergh flew alone from New York to Paris, Amelia Earhart matched him. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which holds her airplane, states that on May 20-21, 1932, Earhart became the first woman, and the second person after Lindbergh, to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She took off from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, Canada, and landed about 15 hours and 2,026 miles later in a field near Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The airplane was a bright red Lockheed Vega 5B that Earhart had bought in 1930 and called her Little Red Bus. After an accident that year, its fuselage had been replaced and strengthened to carry extra fuel tanks. The same Vega is now in the museum’s collection, and the museum says Earhart set two of her many aviation records in it.