A woman boarding her aircraft is what the Google logo looked like on Tuesday. The letters or rather the Google logo is written where a mono-engine’s registration number is actually supposed to be.

Celebrating her 115th birthday, search-engine major Google today honoured pioneering American aviator and author, Amelia Earhart, with a doodle on its homepage.

The non-interactive doodle, marking her birth anniversary, shows Amelia climbing up her “Lockheed Vega 5B monoplane”, her yellow scarf fluttering in the wind. The Google logo appears below the aircraft's wings replacing the original registration of her aircraft - NR-7952. Her “Lockheed Vega 5b” is now a part of the collection of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

It was in this mono-engine aircraft (single engine) that she became the first woman to fly (solo) across the Atlantic in 1932; four years after her first flight across the Atlantic - where she was a passenger on a flight piloted by Wilmer Stutz and Louis Gordon.

For her achievements, Earhart was honored with the Distinguished Flying Cross from US Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honour from the French Government and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from US President Herbert Hoover.

Earhart recounted her flying experiences in 20 hrs., 40 min (1928) and The Fun of It (1932). Her flying exploits gave her a star status. She founded an organisation for women pilots called The Ninety-Nines.

Disappearance

However, it was her disappearance in 1937 that has remained one of the greatest mysteries.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart set out to fly around the world in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra along with her navigator Fred Noonan. But the plane vanished in the central Pacific Ocean. At the time of their disappearance Earhart and Noonan had completed more than two-thirds of their intended distance.

One of the most extensive search operations of its time was carried out to locate Earhart and Noonan but in vain.

>abhishek.l@thehindu.co.in

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