An image of a Lockheed Vega 5b is currently adorning Google's homepage to celebrate the 115th anniversary of the birthday of the American aviator, Amelia Earhart.

Earhart flew the plane from Newfoundland in Canada to Culmore in Northern Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932.

She became as famous for her disappearance in 1937 over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island as she tried to circumnavigate the world. No traces of her or her aircraft, a Lockheed Model 10 Electra, were found.

Earhart was born in Kansas on 24 July, 1897, but she didn't fly until 1920 in Long Beach, California. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground I knew I had to fly," she said.

Within two years she was already setting records in female aviation but financial difficulties hampered her ambition. However aviators were looking for a woman to cross the Atlantic by air, and in 1928, Earhart crossed the Atlantic but not as a pilot.

The US press were impressed by her and called her Lady Lindy because she resembled the aviator Charles Lindbergh. Earhart endorsed cigarettes and promoted her own line of clothes, allowing her to fund her own aviation projects.