Linda Finch flight of Earhart was known as "World Flight 1997." Finch's flight marked the 60th anniversary of Earhart's failed effort as well as centennial of her birth. History records that Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States and first woman to fly from Hawaii to the west coast of California. The whole world was watching Amelia Earhart when she began her global attempt and of course then mourned her when the plane came up missing without a trace. Earhart was lost somewhere in the south Pacific
Claims to the first powered flight Clément Ader's Éole of 1890 was a bat-winged tractor monoplane which achieved a brief, uncontrolled hop, becoming the first heavier-than-air machine in history to take off from level ground under its own power. However his hop is not regarded as true flight because it was neither sustained nor controlled. Ader would later make a false claim of a more extended flight. In 1896, Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had successful flights with several unpiloted models, and his "Number 6" model flew more than . From these successes, in 1898 Langley received grants from the War Department