Amelia Earhart 2.0: Relative To Retrace Ill-Fated Ancestor’s Historic Flight

Amelia Earhart is preparing to fly around the world, and this time, ideally not precipitate one of the modern era’s most enduring unsolved mysteries.

Amelia Earhart is related to that Amelia Earhart, and undeniably inspired by the mark left by her famous relative on womankind and world history.

All of us learned as little girls how brave and fearless Earhart was, embarking on what would be an ill-fated voyage — but clearing a wide path for the rest of us to literally reach skyward. (Sorry, Girl Scouts does that to a woman.)

It was 1937 and at the dawn of modern aviation when the original Amelia Earhart took flight, aiming to circumnavigate the world and landing in history books globally. As we all know now, Earhart would never complete her journey, and to this day we don’t really have a clear idea of her fate — all we know is that she did something that at the time no female had attempted.

Now Amelia Rose Earhart is trying to finish her distant relative’s famous voyage — and the anchor says:

“Amelia Earhart said adventure is worthwhile in itself… I think there’s a new focus on adventure that we’ve only seen in the last five to 10 years. But whatever your version of flying is – it could be starting a business, it could be something entrepreneurial – we want to encourage people to pursue their own adventure.”

As this Earhart sets off, John Norberg, author of the book Wings of Our Dreams, explains that the original Amelia was far more of a pioneer than people today realize:

“First, she was far ahead of her time in talking about the importance of opportunities for women. She said that women should be able to do whatever they wanted to do. That was the message she carried all around the country… It’s hard for us to imagine today how famous she was… She was the first woman, and only the second person, to fly solo across the Atlantic. She was world-famous. She was probably the most famous woman in the world in her time.”

2013 Amelia Earhart is hoping to livestream her flight.