Amelia Earhart set records that showed women could fly as well as men. In 1932 she became the second person, after Charles Lindbergh, and the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic. Later that year she made the first solo, nonstop flight by a woman across the United States, setting a women’s distance record of 2,447 miles, and in 1935 she became the first person to fly solo and nonstop from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.
Her influence went beyond records. She was the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots founded in 1929, lectured widely on aviation and women’s issues, advised women students as a visiting professor at Purdue University, and wrote books about her flights. She disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempt to fly around the world.
Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Amelia Earhart