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Amelia Earhart: Google doodles on the aviatrix's birthday

The search engine giant celebrates the 115th anniversary of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Google's homepage today shows an image of a Lockheed Vega 5b with a woman standing atop it, striking a daredevilish pose as her yellow scarf flutters in the air.

With this simple but colourful doodle, the search engine giant celebrated the 115th birth anniversary of the American aviatrix and author Amelia Earhart.

The plane in the doodle, Lockheed Vega 5b, was the one that Earhart flew from Newfoundland in Canada to Culmore in Northern Ireland and become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932 for which she received the US Distinguished Flying Cross.

Earhart was born in Kansas on July 24, 1897 but it was only in 1920 that she began to fly in Long Beach, California. In less than two years however, Amelia Earhart was already setting records.

She wrote about her flying experiences in 20 Hrs., 40 Min and The Fun of It and was also responsible for forming The Ninety-Nines, an organisation for female pilots and was a visiting faculty at the Purdue University's aviation department in 1935.

In two years' time however, as she attempted to circumnavigate the world along with her navigator Fred Noonan, Amelia Earhart's aircraft, a Lockheed Model 10 Electra, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean never to be found again.

75 years after the crash, a $2.2 million expedition launched by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery has recently returned without any conclusive evidence.