In 1964, a 38-year-old mother of three from Columbus, Ohio, climbed into a single-engine Cessna 180 named the Spirit of Columbus and became the first woman to fly solo around the world, succeeding where Amelia Earhart had failed. This deep dive reconstructs the life of a record-breaker who never became a household name, from a childhood ride in a Ford Trimotor to a 23,000-mile journey.

We follow the coiled-spring tension of her domestic years, her engineering studies, and the media-fueled race against fellow pilot Joan Merriam Smith. Her 29-day flight swung between the terror of Atlantic storms and the surreal luxury of Moroccan palaces.

• Gutting the Cessna and installing cabin fuel tanks to cross oceans, constantly battling shifting weight
• Navigating by dead reckoning and radio beacons through icing conditions with no GPS
• Her accidental landing on a classified Egyptian military base during the Cold War
• The crowd in Saudi Arabia searching the plane in disbelief for a hidden male pilot
• Breaking multiple records, the FAA Gold Medal, and her ashes later scattered from a Cessna 180