In the 1920s, when Amelia Earhart first took flying lessons, aviation was still new enough that most people considered it far too dangerous a career for a woman to pursue seriously. She worked odd jobs to pay for lessons and flight hours, saving toward a goal most people around her thought was reckless.
In 1928, she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, though on that first crossing she flew only as a passenger, a fact that frustrated her enough that she resolved to make the trip again — this time as the actual pilot. In 1932, she did exactly that, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
She went on to set multiple aviation records, wrote books about her flights, and used her growing fame to actively campaign for the inclusion of women in aviation, helping found an organization for female pilots that still exists today, at a time when female pilots numbered only in the dozens worldwide.
In 1937, attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world at the equator, her plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean and was never found. Her disappearance remains one of aviation's most famous unsolved mysteries, but by then she had already permanently changed what people believed a woman could do in the sky.