The name is familiar, and it looms large in American history books. Here’s specifically what Amelia Earhart did, and why she’s so important and notable.

• In October 1922, six months after purchasing a second-hand two-seater Kinnea Airster biplane she named The Canary, Amelia Earhart climbed to an altitude of 14,000 feet, at the time a record for a woman pilot.
• When Amelia Earhart received her pilot’s license in May 1923, she was only the 16^th woman in the world to do so, granted the documented by the worldwide aviation body at the time, the World Air Sports Federation, or the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.
• In June 1928, Amelia Earhart was onboard a flight piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon that traveled from Newfoundland to Wales, a trip of 21 hours. While she was a passenger, not behind the controls, Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
• Amelia Earhart set multiple speed records for female pilots in 1930, including that of a distance of 100 kilometers without a load, 500 kilometers with a payload, and the women’s speed record on a three kilometer course, reaching 181.18 miles per hour.
• In those early days of aviation, Amelia Earhart flew other kinds of sky-worthy craft, including a rotor-and-propeller-powered object called a gyroplane, or autogyro. In 1931, Earhart became the first woman to ever operate one, and a few months later, set the altitude record for autogyro flight (by pilots of any gender), getting all the way to 18,415 feet up.
• In May 1932 (90 years ago this month) Amelia Earhart became the first female pilot to fly a plane solo, and nonstop ,across the Atlantic Ocean, only the second person to do so following Charles Lindbergh. She departed Newfoundland and landed 15 hours later in Northern Ireland.
• For that achievement, the U.S. Congress awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross to Amelia Earhart, the first American woman to receive that honor.
• Later that year, over a two-day span in August 1932, Amelia Earhart piloted a plane from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, making her the first woman to fly coast-to-coast across the U.S. solo, nonstop, in a mere 19 hours and five minutes.
• Amelia Earhart was a co-founder and president of the Ninety-Nines, the first international society of female pilots.

For much more on the incredible life of Amelia Earhart, check out Amelia Earhart: Pioneer of the Sky, part of Portable Press’s “Show Me History!” series of graphic novels about true life heroes and legends.