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New Evidence Indicates Amelia Earhart Survived For a Time on Pacific Atoll
In light of new evidence publicly released Friday showing artifacts believed to have been Amelia Earhart's, the U.S. Navy is prepping a mission to investigate the area where they were found. Next month marks the 75th anniversary of Earhart's disappearance, but the just-announced discovery of personal effects and the evidence of cooking represents the most concrete evidence yet that she did not simply crash into the ocean.
I would mod this up if I could. You win one internets.
The most amazing part is that after WWII she managed to turn an escaped Hitler into not such a bad guy. That's not to mention how she helped Elvis start to eat better. She was an amazing person.
who cares?
I guess the writer assumed, and I would of as well, that every Slashdot user knows at least a little about general history, the history of technology, or has at least watched a little star trek.
She is the most famous pilot ever, and was one back when that it was a huge deal that she was a woman. She eventually wanted to be the first the cross the pacific or something like that and was never heard form again. As as such there are very many myths about her (abducted by aliens, etc.).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A famous aviator, that everyone in the US knows of (if only for the fact that she disappeared). The phrase "needs no introduction" comes to mind. Explaining who she is would have been like starting an article with "Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States during the Civil War". If you don't recognize the name, then you're either a small child or from some other country. If it's the latter, you should accept that American websites will sometimes refer to American celebrities, and in such situations Wikipedia is your friend.
She is the most famous pilot ever
She is in no way Snoopy.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Agree with all of the above, except for:
She is the most famous pilot ever ...
I think "most famous pilot ever" has to go to Charles Lindbergh, not only because of his achievements but also the infamous kidnapping of his baby. And if anyone doesn't know who he was, may I suggest you avail yourself of a search engine before you go getting all indignant?
Why on earth would the US Navy spend taxpayer dollars for this expedition? Unless they have too much money and don't know what to do with it all - which is quite plausible considering the proportion of budget allocated to the military. Meh!
This isn't even a drop in the bucket of the Navy's budget. Hell, this isn't even a fraction of a drop in a bucket. And sailors can always use the practice in honing their skills. Considering that this is truly a national mystery, I don't see the harm in it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
What about the Red Baron? Isn't he a contender for most famous pilot ever (even if most people don't know his actual name)? I think we can agree that Amelia Earhart is _one_ of the most famous pilots ever and that there probably isn't one singular "most famous pilot ever".
Hate to break it to you, but...nobody can survive indefinitely. We all die at some time, for very little reason sometimes.
Yeager was a test pilot. He wasn't the greatest pilot ever, just the last man standing. The greatest pilot ever is and probably will forever remain anonymous.
Saying that pilots made popular by the media are the greatest ever is like saying Justin Bieber is the best singer ever.
The particular island she landed is noted for an extremely poor supply of freshwater.
People have tried to live on this island but failed because water was not at all reliable.
It makes my chuckle that there is a "RECOMMENDED: Are you scientifically literate? Take the quiz" link imbedded into the article, as this 'evidence' from TIGHAR is exactly the opposite of good science. They have been pushing this nonsense for a while. They've decided she was on this island and continue to look only for confirming information to support their hypothesis, rather than attempting to falsify it. They could start by admitting that there have been a lot of people who traveled to and briefly lived on that island throughout the years, particularly many, many pearl divers, and that finding various pieces of junk on the island is completely and entirely consistent with this, and not even slightly compelling evidence that Earhart left this junk.
She is the most famous pilot ever...
Really, the most famous pilot EVAR? More famous than the Wright brothers?
She didn't survive long. She was eaten by giant sized coconut crabs. I kid you not. Google it. Plenty of evidence there that giant crabs ate her. Coconut crabs can be as large as garbage cans.
How the fuck are Americans supposed to know if the rest of the world knows who Amelia Earhart is. Get off your lazy ass and google her.
I've seen some videos of this groups work on this little island. It is no tropical paradise. I don't believe there is any fresh water - so they would need to capture evaporating water somehow. And the island is infested with spider crabs from the size of golf balls to the size of soccer balls. And these crabs are looking for something to eat. You could survive a short time there - long term would be a slice of hell.
Plus we all take modern medicine for granted -- stranded on an island a cut or injury could become infected and that is pretty much game over .... then the crabs eat your body and scatter your bones.
Its not the years, its the mileage
If you can't understand that, you aren't in the Navy. If you are, ask your superiors. They can explain.
Earhart and Noonan missed the island because the chart they had was wrong and the plane's radio receiver wasn't working. They arrived at the spot where the chart said the island was and did everything right to find it.
I'm not from the US but because I've had a basic education I've heard of her. Maybe every word in every summary should link to a dictionary or wikipedia page so even the dumbest visitor understands them?
Crash land into the ocean and die relatively instantly.... or land on a chunk of useless rock, last for a few days eating fish or crabs, then dying a slow horrible death from dehydration and exposure.
He's a pizza. What the hell does that have to do with this thread?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"I'm sure you talk a lot about her in US"
Ummm.. dude. She's, at least, the most famous female aviator of that era. She gets 6 MILLION google hits. She's one of the most famous pilots of all time, among either sex.
You think there's a more famous female pilot of that era, tell us who you think it is, and we'll see. There isn't. It's her. It would be like me saying, "Sure, I'm sure you talk about Yuri Gagarin a lot in Russia, but I'm from the USA, so how should I have heard of him?" Well, the answer is that unless I have no clue at all about history, I know who he is even though I'm not from Russia.
Sheesh. By the way, Emelia has far more google references than Yuri. That should tell you something.
I know a retired cop who fished one too many bodies out of the water. He refuses to eat crab.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
In US, perhaps. I very much doubt that there is a single name that would be equally recognizable regardless of one's cultural background, though. For me, the first name that pops into my head corresponding to "most famous pilot" is probably Chkalov.
Yuri Gagarin? He was the helmsman on Star Trek, right?
No, it's not. It's more like asking who were Alcock and Brown, or Blériot.
By the way, have you the slightest idea who they were?
I think Louis Blériot is Ke$ha's grandfather.
My point was to illustrate that this is highly specific to a particular culture one was born and raised in.
I'm sure that in the English-speaking world, Earhart is much more popular - and, of course, if you use English spellings to search, that's what you're going to get. Searching in Cyrillic, on the other hand, gives (me) 640k hits for Chkalov and 98k hits for Earhart.
And I have no idea what name all the 1.5 billion Chinese would consider first, but I bet it's neither of those. So "world at large" might surprise you as well.
Earhart probably died of thirst. Post-loss radio transmissions suggest that Noonan was seriously injured during the crash landing; if so he probably went before she did. The last credible reception of an Earhart broadcast was on July 7, five days after they disappeared. Niko is hellishly hot, and finding water would've been a real problem. Neither of them understood Morse code, nor had they undergone any meaningful survival training, When seach planes from the battleship Colorado flew over on the 10th they were possibly too weak to get to a clear area in order to wave. That first night encountering coconut crabs must've been truly terrifying. They won't predate you, but if you fall asleep they might think you were carrion....
The Navy DID look for her. They pulled out all the stops, on orders from Roosevelt himself. Earhart shoud've been better prepared for such an endevor-- but neither she nor Noonan could understand Morse code (something that would've prevented their loss) nor did either receive any survival training (something that might've saved their lives on Niko). The Navy sent a battleship and an aircraft carrier to look for her, but her lack of Morse skills doomed her. Even the Japanese navy helped to look for her.
a woman known basically only to English/Americans and aviation freaks
As someone who is male, neither American nor English and not particularly interested in aviation; I second that if you haven't heard of Amelia Earhart, you probably didn't pay attention in school (or live in a country that mostly ignores international history to focus too narrowly on its local history (USA does this too, for reference)); don't watch a lot of movies (even movies not about her may reference her from time to time); don't "wikipedia surf"; and are probably rather uninteresting.
I don't mean that as horribly offensive; just that even if you'd never been exposed to knowledge of who she is (which to me seems extremely unlikely on the assumption you live anywhere outside of the 3rd world - you probably just ignored/dismissed/forgot it); you could have at least done a quick Google search to find out.
and certainly in a completly different league than the Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong or even Lindbergh
I'd put her only slightly under the Wright Brothers and Armstrong for name recognition, and way above Lindbergh (when I read the name, it rang a bell, but wasn't immediately clear to me - quick Google search showed me the text "Spirit of St. Louis" and then I remembered).
Note that I did say "for name recognition" - not necessarily for their achievements/activities)
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Snoopy is the nickname given to Roy Brown, who was famous for shooting down and killing the Red Baron. This was played on by a cartoonist in the US, but ultimately the history is much more interesting.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)