It has been almost 80 years since she vanished, and still they are trying to find her.

Amelia Earhart was on her way to becoming the first woman pilot to circumnavigate the globe when she and the navigator, Fred Noonan, set off from Lae, New Guinea, in a Lockheed Electra twin-engine airplane on July 2, 1937.

But something went wrong en route to Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean, and both of them seemed to vanish.

It was sensational news at the time. Ms. Earhart, then 37, was known not only as an accomplished pilot but also as a writer, a speaker and even a fashion designer during the 1930s, when it was still politically correct to refer to her as an aviatrix.