Joan Merriam Smith

Joan Merriam Smith (born Joan Ann Merriam, August 3, 1936 – February 17, 1965) was an American aviator, famous for her 1964 solo flight around the world, in which she became the second woman to complete the trip, by following the equatorial route attempted in 1937 by Amelia Earhart. (Jerrie Mock set off the same week on a different route in her Spirit of Columbus, and finished before Smith did.) In doing so she also became the first woman to fly a twin-engine aircraft around the world, and the first woman to fly the Pacific Ocean from west to east in a twin-engine plane. She died the following year when the plane she was piloting suffered structural failure and crashed in California.