An amazing woman!

Amelia Earhart was a young 10 year old girl from Kansas at her first state fair where she knew that her first sight of that plane was pure love at first sight. In December 1928 Amelia was given her first flight in a plane and she knew that it was destined that she fly air planes. Then in 1921 after her stint in Canada as a nurse during WWI, college, and then a social worker in Boston Amelia got her first flying lessons. In six months she had saved enough money to buy her own plane, a Kinner Airster two seater biplane. It was bright yellow and named Canary. Amelia broke not only the sexual barrier as a woman pilot but also set records with her plane, once setting the women's record altitude which was 14,000 feet. She went on to breaking and setting many records but towards the end of her career there was one final challenge that she wished to conquer. She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world. In 1937 nearing her 40th birthday her wish was to come true. She and her chosen co-pilot Fred Noonan set out in their twin engine Lockheed Electra on June 1st 1937 to conquer this 29,000 mile journey from Miami. On June 29th, they had nearly finished the long journey with only 7,000 miles left to go. They landed in Lae, New Guinea where they were to refuel and head towards. Their next stop was the Howland Islands, a mile and half long by a mile wide island, located 2,256 miles away. In order to make sure that they had enough fuel they stripped out all of the unnecessary items that were in the airplane to add more fuel storage. Along this historical route were three ships, one U.S. Coast Guard cutter named ITASCA and two other U.S. ships. The ITASCA was the radio contact and the other two ships were ordered to 'burn every possible light' to help the crew. On July 2nd the two set out for the Howland Islands and at 8:45am the last radio transmission from Earhart to the ITASCA was made "we are running north and south" then radio silence.....Now the question is, what happened after that?