Eighty-Six Years Ago This Morning, Amelia Earhart and Electra Disappeared Over The Pacific Ocean. The Wreck Was Never Found.

Some claim she was spotted in much later photos (in the 1940s), elsewhere in the South Pacific. Some claim to have found pieces of aluminum off a small Pacific island, but nothing remotely conclusive exists.

She was a heroine, and role model -- for millions of young girls from the 1920s to '50s. So we remember her daring spirit and measured risk-taking, even today. Here's a bit, from her bio:

. . .One afternoon in April 1928, a phone call came for Earhart at work. “I’m too busy to answer just now,” she said. After hearing that it was important, Earhart relented, though she thought it was a prank. It wasn’t until the caller supplied excellent references that she realized the man was serious. “How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?” he asked, to which Earhart promptly replied, “Yes!”

After an interview in New York with the project coordinators, including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam, she was asked to join pilot Wilmer “Bill” Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis E. “Slim” Gordon. The team left Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F7 named Friendship (on June 17, 1928), and arrived at Burry Port, Wales approximately 21 hours later.

Their landmark flight made headlines worldwide because three pilots had died within the year trying to be that first women to fly across the Atlantic. When the crew returned to the United States, they were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception held by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. . . .

This too is what patriotism looks like. Onward, smiling into a rain-soaked Sunday afternoon here (with no NASCAR, thank goodness!). . . .

नमस्ते