First Woman to Fly Solo Amelia Earhart

Despite everything the world is going through right now, if a year you have great expectations from starts off with a premier air carrier appointing an all-woman crew to fly its longest nonstop flight, hope wells up. Two days later, today, January 11, marks the day aviatrix extraordinare Amelia Earhart famously flew solo from Hawaii to California, in the process registering her name in history books as the first person to do so.

Remembering Earhart's feat isn't just an in-memoriam to the trailblazer's exploits in a field thought in an even greater degree at that time to be reserved for men. It is a necessity for humankind a hundred years after the iconic American pilot first flew. Much like the Wright brothers' first flight three years into the 20th century played a significant role in the shaping of a modernist society, Earhart's pioneering flights must be the example our battered morale must look upto. She became something of a celebrity, first by becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane, and then cementing her reputation four years later, when she broke Charles Lindbergh's record&mdashflying across the Atlantic in under half of Lindbergh's number 33.5 hours.

Two years later, Earhart and her flight companion, navigator Fred Noonan, on their trans-Pacific voyage disappeared near Howland Island. Here's remembering the inspiring pilot through some iconic pictures. 

Amelia Earhart, turning the propeller of the sports plane she bought in 1928. The plane was previously owned by Mary, Lady Heath, a famous Irish aviatrix. Seven years prior to this, Earhart had bought her first plane, the Kinner Airster 

Earhart prepares for her 27,000-mile flight to circumnavigate the globe, in the cockpit of her plane, the Lockheed L-10E Electra

Amelia's husband, George Putnam, with aviatrix Amy Johnson-Mollison and her husband on a beach date circa 1933 

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan photographed on a stop in Brazil during their round-the-world flight together

Amelia Earhart with a Mr & Mrs Laughlin (left), in Culmore, Northern Ireland. The family was the first people she encountered after her solo trans-Atlantic flight concluded in an Irish pasture

AA stamp printed in Romania in honour of Amelia Earhart