Amy Johnson – Google Doodle marks the pioneering British aviator’s 114th birthday
The record-breaking pilot's untimely death at the height of WWII has remained shrouded in mystery for 75 years
THE pioneering British aviator Amy Johnson's 114th birthday is being celebrated by a Google Doodle.
Here's the lowdown on the record-breaking pilot whose untimely death has remained shrouded in mystery for 75 years...
Who was Amy Johnson?
Amy Johnson was a pioneering British aviator who became the first female pilot to fly solo from Britain to Australia.
She was born on July 1 1903 in Yorkshire, and studied at the University of Sheffield, where she got a BA degree in economics.
While working as a solicitor's secretary in London she took up flying as a hobby, gaining her pilot's licence in 1929.
The following year, at the age of just 26, she gained worldwide recognition when she flew alone from Croydon to Darwin, in Australia. It took Johnson 19 days to complete the 11,000 mile voyage.
In 1932, she married Scottish pilot Jim Morrison, who had proposed to her during a co-flight just eight hours after they met.
That year, Johnson broke her new husband's record for a solo flight between London and Cape Town, South Africa.
The couple shared many flights together, breaking the record from Britain to India in 1934, but they ended up divorcing in 1938, the year before World War Two broke out.
During the war, Johnson joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, who transported RAF aircraft around the country.
On January 5 1941, she went off course in adverse weather conditions and bailed out as her plane crashed into the Thames Estuary.
An attempt to save by her the commander of a passing British vessel, HMS Haslemere – which resulted in his death – failed, and Johnson's body was never recovered. She was 37 years old.
In 2016, a historian claimed the pilot's body had been sucked into the ship's propellers, but the claim has never been verified.
There is still some mystery around Johnson's death because the reason for her flight was never revealed, remaining a government secret.
What is a Google doodle?
In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message that they were out of the office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.
The company decided they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.
In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.
Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.
