Amelia Earhart

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Amelia Earhart (1897-1937 (probably)) was a famous aviation pioneer in an age when female pilots were extremely rare. She was decorated for her bravery and flying skill, and set many flying records of her time, both for women and for pilots of either sex. In 1932 she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo.

Earhart is probably most famous today for her mysterious disappearance over the central Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, along with second navigator Fred Noonan, during an attempted circumnavigation of the globe. Although the most commonly accepted theory is that Earhart's plane either simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean, or made an emergency landing on an uninhabited island, numerous conspiracy theories abound, everything from failed espionage attempts to secret identities to Alien Abduction. Recent archaeological excavations have most likely found her castaway site, but this will probably do nothing to halt the conspiracy theories.

Less well known is that Earhart was also a successful writer. She wrote many articles for Cosmopolitan magazine, and published two best-seller books on her experiences as a pilot and as a female pilot, 20 Hrs., 40 Min. and The Fun of It.

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Comics

• She is a major character in G. Willow Wilson's comic, Air.
• In issue zero of the British Anthology Comic The Phoenix the character is featured in the strip, "Corpse Talk", which features an interview with a dead famous person.

Film

• Amy Adams plays a wax figure of her that comes to life in the second Night at the Museum movie.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Earhart is one of the abductees appearing at the end.
• Amelia: Biopic sarring Hilary Swank that tries to play it straight and true to the facts.

Literature

• Jane Mendelsohn's 1997 novel I Was Amelia Earhart is a fictionalized first-person account of Earhart's life, including the time after her disappearance.
• A Cahill from the Mardigals branch in The 39 Clues.

Live Action TV

• Star Trek: Voyager: In "The 37s," Voyager's crew discover Earhart and other people from her age preserved in suspended animation on an alien planet. Turns out she was abducted by aliens after all!
  • Earhart is also seen briefly in the intro of Star Trek: Enterprise.
• Ross from Friends is enamored with her in "The one with the lottery ticket". He even planned to build a theme park dedicated to her if he won the lottery.

Newspaper Comics

• A Mandrake the Magician storyline had him solving the disappearance of a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Earhart.

Theater

• The short play Chamber Music is about a mental hospital with a ward full of women who all believe themselves to be famous historical figures. One of them says she's Amelia Earhart, and there are hints that she might in fact be Amelia Earhart, put in the hospital by mistake. At the very least, she seems to be quite rational and normal otherwise, as opposed to the other women, who are all highly paranoid and homicidal.
• The Musical Take Flight tells three parallel stories about the lives of Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, and the Wright Brothers.
• She pops up as a Spirit Advisor to the titular character in the somewhat obscure musical Flight of the Lawnchair Man.

Web Comics

• Her ghost shows up in A Girl and Her Fed.
• This Xkcd comic finally solves the mystery once and for all.

Western Animation

• She's the focus of an episode of Time Warp Trio. Apparently, even in 2105 they still have no idea what happened her.
• In an episode of the Dilbert animated series, Amelia Earhart is found trapped behind a glass pane in a museum exhibit titled "The True Location of Amelia Earhart."