AllMovie

What really happened to Amelia Earhart? Join the award winning Biography series in their search for the truth. Earhart became the first female pilot to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean (the first person to succeed since Charles Lindburgh's legendary flight in 1927). Earhart saw her first plane as a young girl at the 1908 Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, but flying would not spark her interest until many years later. After her parents' separation in 1914, Earhart traveled to Chicago with her mother and sister, Muriel. From there, Earhart traveled to Toronto, Canada, where she trained and worked as a nurses' aide for the duration of World War I. By 1920, she had purchased her first plane and taken her first solo flight. Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928, as a passenger. Earhart's subsequent solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932 set a record for speed. In 1937 she embarked on an equatorial world trip, hoping to be the first woman to successfully circumnavigate the world. Radio contact with the U.S. Coast Guard off of Howland Island, her next stop in the Pacific, was made on several occasions, but Earhart apparently could not hear any of the coast guard's replies. Several extensive searches for Earhart's plane revealed nothing and the incident remains unsolved. Using archival footage, Biography tries to piece together some answers.