2 July 2012 Last updated at 13:07

In pictures: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart stands in front of her bi-plane called Friendship in Newfoundland, Canada, on 14 June 1928

US pilot Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, and set a number of other aviation records.

American aviatrix Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1937) with her navigator, Captain Fred Noonan, in the hangar at Parnamerim airfield, Natal, Brazil, on 11 June 1937. Together they are attempting a circumnavigation of the globe.

She disappeared with her navigator, Captain Fred Noonan, in 1937 over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to fly around the globe.

Childhood picture of Amelia Earhart with a dog, a toy sled, and her cousin Otis Balis, taken in Kansas City c. 1904.

Earhart was born in Kansas in 1897. She started learning to fly some 24 years later.

A crowd cheers for Amelia Earhart as she boards her single-engine Lockheed Vega airplane in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, for the trip to London on 22 May 1932.

A crowd cheered as she boarded her single-engine Lockheed Vega airplane in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, for a trip to London on 22 May 1932.

The Lockheed Electra 'Flying Laboratory', piloted by American aviator Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan flies over the Golden Gate bridge in Oakland, California, at the start of a planned round-the-world flight, 17th March 1924. The trip had to be abandoned after the plane crashed on take off in Hawaii.

Earhart and Noonan first tried to fly around the would in 1924 - their plane is seen here over the Golden Gate Bridge near San Francisco. The trip had to be abandoned after the plane crashed on take-off in Hawaii.

An expedition of investigators has now set out to discover whether the aviator may have crash-landed and died as a castaway on a remote South Pacific island.

US & Canada

In pictures: Amelia Earhart

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