Researchers Claim Metal "Patch" Found On Pacific Island Is From Amelia Earhart

An anonymous reader writes Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937, but scientists may have now uncovered where she ended up. Researchers have identified a piece of aluminum, which washed up on a remote Pacific island, as dated to the correct time period and consistent with the design of Earhart's Lockheed Electra. From the article: "The warped piece of metal was uncovered on a 1991 voyage to the island of Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has spent millions of dollars searching for Earhart's plane in a project that has involved hundreds of people. 'We don't understand how that patch got busted out of (the plane) and ended up on the island where we found it, but we have the patch, we have a piece of Earhart's aircraft,' TIGHAR executive director Ric Gillespie said."

Comments

I Love the headline

[saloomy]

I had no idea Amelia Earhart was bionic and had metal patches!

Re: I Love the headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The patch was to cover the titanium joint she blew out. Still, sexiest cyborg of her time!

Re:I Love the headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people are able to quit aluminum with the patch.

Re: I Love the headline

[saloomy]

Right? Because, its not like headlines matter anyway. Why should they be well thought out? only thing that needs to be accurate is TFA anyway.... /sarcasm

Re:I Love the headline

[slashmydots]

Once you factor in the aliens, the fact that she was and undercover secret nazi, dark matter, quantum stuff, other dimensions, and the fact that the entire world is a simulation, it makes perfect sense.

Re: I Love the headline

[Anonymous Coward]

oscar the grouch has arrived

Re:I Love the headline

[NotDrWho]

Once you factor in the aliens, the fact that she was and undercover secret nazi, dark matter, quantum stuff, other dimensions, and the fact that the entire world is a simulation, it makes perfect sense.

IT'S IN THE BIBLE, PEOPLE!!

Re: I Love the headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's give her the clamps.

How did they ID the part?

[saloomy]

Was there a serial number? Was there an inscription? Did she leave a palm print?
If I had spent millions of dollars, and involved hundreds of people, I'd sure grab on to even the remotest of possibilities so I didn't have to walk away empty handed!
FTFA:
The piece, which measures about 24 by 18 inches (61 cm by 46 cm), did not appear to be a standard part of a Lockheed Electra, but TIGHAR researchers recently began to look into the possibility it might have been installed on the plane as a patch after a window was removed, he said. On October 7, a TIGHAR team examined a plane at Wichita Air Services in Newton, Kansas, that was similar to Earhart's aircraft. Because the plane was being restored, it was possible to look at its interior and see where the sheet of metal recovered in 1991 would have fit, Gillespie said.

Not conclusive... sorry!

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many photos of Earhart's Electra, surely one of them shows such the patch if this one is indeed from her aircraft. This is how I would gather evidence, but it would still not be conclusive, especially if it turned out that patching windows was a common modification on Electras.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

They mention the plate was found in a photo in another article.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10942529/Amelia-Earhart-mystery-1937-photograph-could-be-clue-to-fate-of-aviator-who-disappeared-on-round-the-world-flight.html

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like they ID'ed the play through a little thing called hope. After you spend that much money and only get a small piece of aluminum you have no choice but will it to be what you are looking for.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[saloomy]

The link from your article to the photograph hosted on the Miami Herald website is 404 Not Found. Surprising. What "Imaging Specialists" are they using? How can a 1937 photograph ID a particular piece of metal that is deformed and found at sea? The shape is... well... deformed! Surely its discolored.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[saloomy]

Which is why the imaging analysis needs to be independently verified.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Charliemopps]

The linked article sucks, doesn't even show it.
Check this out:
http://news.discovery.com/hist...

Looks pretty good to me.

Also, Amelia Earharts crash site was never a mystery in the first place. They found her body in 1940, on this very same island
http://news.discovery.com/hist...

A woman's shoe, an empty bottle and a sextant box whose serial numbers are consistent with a type known to have been carried by Noonan were all found near the site where the bones were discovered.

So what are the odds that a white woman of earharts build, along with western womans shoe, and a sextent would be found on an island a few hundred miles from where earhart went missing and a piece of aluminum that would fit the window of her plane?

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so sick of these stories. Every year or two there will be a story about "Earhart Found!", but of course none have panned out. Just like BigFoot, Nessy, Elvis, Chupa, etc. This has become part of national folklore. The press shouldn't report it until there is substantial proof.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[saloomy]

Bullshit.

So what are the odds that a white woman of earharts build, along with western womans shoe, and a sextent would be found on an island a few hundred miles from where earhart went missing and a piece of aluminum that would fit the window of her plane?

Pretty high if you sight the same group as the source but you left out some crucial details:

"We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher recovered a partial skeleton of a castaway on Nikumaroro. Unfortunately, those bones have now been lost," Gillespie said.

So how are you so sure that it was her body? There is no positive ID. Don't feed me the old "well who else could it have been?" line. There is no positive ID. If you had the bones and could do DNA testing with someone who is a relative, that would be a verifiable positive ID.

In both your sources (this article's source and the Discovery News articles you mention, the same group has made both claims. Its not like they are financially invested in finding her or anything.

For years, Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director and author of the book "Finding Amelia," and his crew have been searching the Nikumaroro island for evidence of Earhart ... According to Gillespie, who is set to embark on a new $500,000 Nikumaroro expedition next summer, the two became castaways and eventually died there.

Woops!

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting that they found the one piece that's a patch on the airplane and old photos give you an idea of the rivet pattern, etc because it stood out. Seems a bit, well, convenient. Not impossible, but definitely require more proof than what I've seen reported.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

still not convinced!

Re:How did they ID the part?

[slashmydots]

Well, researchers just discovered that for the last 5 years, she's been hosting a show on CSPAN. She recently confirmed it to the two viewers on the latest episode. There were zero for all previous airings.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.miamiherald.com/new...

Re:How did they ID the part?

[DerekLyons]

How did they ID the part? Through painstaking detective work, as documented in this report.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[91degrees]

Don't feed me the old "well who else could it have been?" line.

Why not? There is a possibility it was Earhart. There's also the possibility it was some other white woman visiting an island a hundred miles away from any other land, with no indication of any means of arrival, and no record of this person. I'd have thought that it would have been quite a remarkable, well known woman to do this in the 1930's, and her disapperance would certainly have been equally remarkable.

Occams razor says Amelia Earhart is by far the most likely option.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[RabidReindeer]

I saw the picture of the plain with the patch on it. Apparently the patch was used to cover up what had been an observation window.

Aluminum doesn't discolor much, but the fingerprint wasn't color, it was the rivet pattern.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

In this particular case it's impossible to distinguish between evidence that was lost, evidence that was misinterpreted and then lost, or evidence that was made up and never existed in the first place. We really have nothing to go on but hearsay.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

The patch was added within 48 hours of when Earhart left on her attempt to fly around the world. So, the opportunity to get pictures of this feature were very rare. The patch was on the starboard side of the plane. Most of the press photographs that were taken of Earhart's plane during the attempted around the world flight were of Earhart and Noonan getting out/in on the port side. TIGHAR has two decent pictures they've been working from that show the installed patch on the plane.

The window that was "patched" was not a common feature of the Lockheed Electra. Earhart had it added to the plane presumably to allow observations for celestial navigation. For some reason, just prior to starting the attempt to fly around the world, she had the window covered over.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[AmiMoJo]

Seems odd that the bones would be found on a part of the island where they were unlikely to have been seen from the air (according to the article you linked to). Seems likely that both Earhart and Noonan would have been aware of that, and made some effort to go somewhere more visible or create some kind of sign visible from the air. Maybe they died before they washed up I suppose.

I'm somewhat surprised they have not found the aircraft yet too. These days with advanced sonar and knowledge of sea currents we are pretty good at tracing back things like washed up bodies, or if they swam the search area couldn't be that big.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Maury Markowitz]

> around the world flight were of Earhart and Noonan getting out/in on the port side

I recently wrote an article on a radar set from WWII and wanted to find images of aircraft with the system. The main antennas were located on the starboard wing. Oddly, almost every image I found, at *least* 80% of them, were taken showing the port side. I found this very odd. In this case, the hatch was on the right, so that doesn't explain it.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Maury Markowitz]

"The rivet pattern and other features on the 19-inch-wide by 23-inch-long Nikumaroro artifact matched the patch and lined up with the structural components of the Lockheed Electra. TIGHAR detailed the finding in a report on its website."

What sort of BS is this? Just look at the images right in the article:

1) they DON'T line up. look at the guy holding the plate in front of the stringers. They're not even close!

2) the holes in the plate are *clearly* smaller than the rivets. They look smaller than any rivet I've ever seen on any aircraft, and I've seen/flown a lot of aircraft.

3) in order for this plate to detach, it would have to pull out the rivets, which either leaves the rivet in the plate or the stringer. There's none in the plate so it would have to be in the stringer, which would mean the rivet head would have to pull through the plate (this is the normal failure mode BTW). yet this clearly did not happen to this plate, the holes remain perfectly formed.

This is complete BS.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) they DON'T line up. look at the guy holding the plate in front of the stringers. They're not even close!

Fair enough. It does seem a little speculative. Actually the fate of the plane is probably the biggest mystery here.

2) the holes in the plate are *clearly* smaller than the rivets. They look smaller than any rivet I've ever seen on any aircraft, and I've seen/flown a lot of aircraft.

Isn't that kind of how rivets work?

Re:How did they ID the part?

[GrumpySteen]

They found her body in 1940

Maybe, maybe not.

It is, of course, impossible to know whether the bones inspected by Dr. Hoodless in 1941 were in fact those of a white female, and if anything even less possible to be sure that they were those of Amelia Earhart. Only the rediscovery of the bones themselves, or the recovery of more bones from the same skeleton on the island, can bring certainty. What we can be certain of is that bones were found on the island in 1939-40, associated with what were observed to be womenâ(TM)s shoes and a navigatorâ(TM)s sextant box, and that the morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhartâ(TM)s height and ethnic origin.

The bones found might have been from Amelia Earhart's body, but they were identified as male at the time and then lost. Only when the measurements of the bones were looked at in 1998 was it noticed that they could have been Earhart's, but there is no way to know for certain. Unfortunately, the internet being what it is, everyone ignores the parts of the report that stress that the findings are inconclusive and repeats the claim that her body was found as if it were an absolute, unquestionable fact.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Maury Markowitz]

> Isn't that kind of how rivets work?

Not if you pull them out, which would be required if the stringer isn't on the back of the plate. Which it isn't.

Just look at it. That clearly did not "tear off" anything, at least along the lines in the middle. Here's what a piece of metal torn from an aircraft actually looks like:

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/interactive_resources/tutorials/FailureCases/images/CM11ALYP7.jpg

Note that the rivet holes along the tear lines show very clear signs that the rivet was pulled through the metal - they are large and have a somewhat ragged outline - this is especially noticeable on the left side.

Here's another example:

http://www.oocities.org/capecanaveral/lab/8803/p5cyp10a.jpg

Again, you can clearly see where the rivets failed at the left side. The parts where they did not fail still have the circumferential attached on the back.

And although I can't find the image of it any more, when a piece of aluminum actually is riveted to a stringer, it leaves a VERY OBVIOUS mark on the back. This isn't the one I'm looking for, but look at the main image here on the extreme right along the rivet line:

http://www.rense.com/general31/CONFIRM.htm

Do you see the "stripe" where the stringer used to be? And the large size of the holes left behind? You can see the same on the highest part on the left too.

Now compare and contrast this with the image on their web site. Do you see any sign of stress or failure along any of the lines? I don't. And there's no sign of either the rivets or the stringers.

I conclude that this piece of metal was likely not connected to anything, and may have been spare material. Considering it was found *at a 1960s construction site on a pacific island*, water tanks and aluminum motorboats seem like as reasonable guesses as theirs.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[NotDrWho]

The piece, which measures about 24 by 18 inches (61 cm by 46 cm), did not appear to be a standard part of a Lockheed Electra, but TIGHAR researchers recently began to look into the possibility it might have been installed on the plane as a patch

LOL, that's the most pathetic "evidence" I've seen in a while (and I've been the Creationist Museum). Basically, they found a metal plate and thought it might be from her plane. They took it back, found out that it didn't match any standard part on the plane. And then, rather than admit they were wrong, they still tried to pass it off as hers by saying it "could have been used as a patch." Yeah, I guess that's a possibility--just as it would be with any other random piece of metal that happens to be laying around on any island in the Pacific.

Well, case closed, fellas. These guys done solved the mystery. Put it in the history books.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Maury Markowitz]

Your definition of "painstaking" may be different than mine.

Mine is something like "lots of actual work".

To be accurate to the article, your definition would have to be something like "We made up some shit in 1992 that turned out to be totally wrong and wouldn't stick when we threw it at the wall. We also had plenty of technical experts tell us we were full of crap, but we conveniently forgot to mention this to anyone. So we kept coming up with new shit for the last 25 years and repeatedly threw that at the wall to see if we can get it to stick. And here we are, with a sum total effort of taking some photos and looking at them, while making up new shit about stuff that we have no evidence ever existed."

One wonders how much they sweat during all this painstaking detective work.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[UnknowingFool]

The experts are not saying that it is 100% from her plane but that it would be consistent with a patch that went into her plane. My best guess would be a metallurgical analysis.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Maury Markowitz]

> The experts are not saying that it is 100% from her plane

You're of course referring to the "experts" from Gillespie's TIGHAR group, which contains no actual experts.

They did, however, contact *actual experts* shortly after they found the piece in 1991.

Those *actual experts* flatly stated it is 100% NOT from her aircraft.

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-03-30/news/vw-278_1_amelia-earhart

"Not by any stretch of measurement or the imagination, they claim, could the piece be from Earhart's airplane."

Re:How did they ID the part?

[EthanBernard]

Mod parent up.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Half-pint HAL]

The bones found might have been from Amelia Earhart's body. When the measurements of the bones were looked at in 1998 was it noticed that they could have been Earhart's. Thankfully, the internet being what it is, everyone knows her body was found, and that this is an absolute, unquestionable fact.

(How your message looks to a True Believer.)

Re:How did they ID the part?

[ganjadude]

Im unaware of what wildlife is on the island if any) but if she died she could have been dragged away by wildlife

also, its possible that she made it to the island, and tried to find shelter ,and died

none of this is proof to me, but its a possibility that makes more sense than she disappeared into thin air.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[DerekLyons]

Your definition of "painstaking" may be different than mine.

Yeah, mine matches the real world - yours and the one you falsely attribute to me... not so much.
 

"And here we are, with a sum total effort of taking some photos and looking at them, while making up new shit about stuff that we have no evidence ever existed."

Please demonstrate where they "made something up" and where their process went wrong. And take into account they have actual photographic evidence the patch existed. And actual comparison to actual aircraft structure. And actual comparison to aircraft repair practices of the day. And... the list goes on.

The vague mudslinging you're indulging in speaks more to your bias and ignorance than to any error on their part. If you can't demonstrate error, you're just full of shit.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Charliemopps]

In this particular case it's impossible to distinguish between evidence that was lost, evidence that was misinterpreted and then lost, or evidence that was made up and never existed in the first place. We really have nothing to go on but hearsay.

No, it's not Hearsay. It's "circumstantial"
Meaning that any one of these facts could be plausibly explained in another way.
But combined, they become very very unlikely.
People get convicted on circumstantial evidence every day.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Charliemopps]

You're assuming she was healthy and able to move when the landed. Or even still alive.

There are giant crabs on the island big enough to drag human body parts around. They assumed they ran off with the rest of the corpse. It's assumed the parts they found were where she died because the other objects were there and there's no reason the crabs would have drug them there.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[Charliemopps]

You're picking apart one point. You're right, they could have been from a male.

But...
There's also many other coincidences there. All have equally plausible explanations. But everything combined? That's when it becomes implausible.

You could tell me that in your life, you've rolled double sixes ten times. I'd believe that, that sounds reasonable. In all the times you've rolled dice? Sure! Then you tell me "All 10 of those times were in the past 5min" and I have to stop and say "No, that's not possible." See the difference?

Re:How did they ID the part?

[ganjadude]

im not making any assumptions, Im just throwing out possibilities, ill admit i have not paid much attention to this in quite some time.

Re:How did they ID the part?

[rpstrong]

Those *actual experts* were qualified only to testify about Lockheed's repair techniques (that the plane would be rebuilt to specs). However, they were not qualified to testify about whether or not the panel came from her specific Electra, as it could have received post factory modifications of which they (the experts) were unaware.

yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[mapkinase]

yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it another 77 years.

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[AK Marc]

People looking for so hard for anything from aircraft anywhere in the flight range of that plane is probably why that was just now found.

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit! I had finally forgotten about it. Why did you remind me now, I hate unsolved mysteries.

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey AC... Where is OBL's body???

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Anonymous Coward]

No idea what you are saying... But now you also reminded be we haven't found Jimmy Hoffa's body! Dammit, what happened to Jimmy?

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Anonymous Coward]

The region of South Indian Ocean in which MH370 disappeared is very sparsely traveled (if at all), and has almost no land mass. Amelia Earhart's plane disappeared in the area of South Pacific that is littered with populated small islands.

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Talderas]

Jimmy died, Jim.

Re:yet not a single thing from MH370 was found

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it another 77 years.

Its a hellova delay, idky they just don't cancel the flight.

Briori

[Techmeology]

Must have been knocked off by the Briori tractor beam.[1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Waiting for Service Patch 2

[jfdavis668]

Patch 1 only fixes the big problems.

Earhart Click Bait

[kolbe]

Everything in this article is based on presumption and speculation.

How did they ID the part?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article has additional info including the modification of Amelia's plane. http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/73_StepbyStep/73_Step_by_Step.html

A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[schwit1]

Wasn't there a LARGE conflict in the Pacific during the '40s.
Wasn't there a lot of aluminum used on the ships and aircraft in this conflict?

Thank you for playing ... NEXT!

Re:A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[Anonymous Coward]

they matched it to her plane, as it is a part that was unique to her aircraft, the one she flew not just the type, and photographed in pictures. you just wanted to shout next

Re:A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[u38cg]

Gosh, I'm sure nobody thought of that. You should probably ring them up and tell them personally, I'm sure they'll be very grateful for your insight...

Re:A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[Richard_at_work]

The Pacific is a large place, did any conflicts actually happen within reasonable distance of where this piece was found? If not, its reasonable to rule out that it came from anything involved in WW2.

Re:A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[Talderas]

Reasonable distance would matter based on time you have for the wreckage to drift. What they have is a dating of when the metal was likely produced but not necessarily when it washed ashore. It was discovered in 1991. So you're talking a top end of 46-50 years for debris. Nikumaroro Island rests in the South Pacific Gyre which rotates counter clockwise in the South Pacific between New Zealand and South America. The East Australia current feeds into the southern portion of the SP Gyre.

I'd suspect that the major engagement most likely to lead to debris that could show up on Nikumaroro Island would be the Battle for Coral Sea. Debris from there could have hit the East Australia Current, got fed into the SP Gyre and then ended up on Nikumaruru. I don't know how long that would take.

Re:A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[Maury Markowitz]

> they matched it to her plane

No they didn't. They made up a bunch of crap about how it might be matched to the aircraft if they did this, that, the other thing, none of which is known to have happened. Moreover, they make a bunch of claims about how it was installed, all of which they invented. They also completely fail to explain why the holes show no sign of failure and the stringers they claim were riveted to this metal are not there in spite of there being no evidence they were pulled off.

Now, to put this to bed, I want to point out a very important statement made elsewhere on their web page. This piece of metal was found at the end of a channel that was blasted into the island in 1963. In fact, there used to be a building at that location, and they found it after the building collapsed (if I understand their web page correctly).

So, hmmm. They didn't happen to use common aircraft aluminum for other tasks in the pacific, did they? You know, like a water tank, or something like that? Something that might be located near a building? That might be used in construction efforts?

What twaddle.

Here, go read this: http://web.randi.org/swift/-group-obsessed-with-finding-amelia-earharts-plane

Re:A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[Half-pint HAL]

It can't be water tank -- it's got holes in it, so the water would run out. That only leaves the Earhart theory. Nothing else could be at all possible, no sirree...

False alarm (?)

[Mister Liberty]

I was flying across the foarning ocean
When I spotted one old plane...



with compliments to Joni

Unique part

[n2505d]

The most unique part of this plane happens to be the only part found. Interesting and damn unlikely. Gillespie and friends have been "finding" clues for decades. Nothing new here...

Re:Unique part

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha, yeah, it's like every year for the last 30 years, they've had a "spectacular discovery that finally solves the mystery".

Re:Unique part

[Anonymous Coward]

> The most unique part of this plane

That's not true either, so stop talking.

Re:Unique part

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed - this is more or less a scam to get sponsors to finance what is effectively a vacation for these folks in the beautiful South Pacific through their tax-exempt organization.

Oh - THAT story.

[AndyKron]

Oh. The old-metal-patch-found-on-a-Pacific-island story. Yawn. Put it with the shroud of Turin and some Big Foot fur, and make a road show out of it.

Re:Oh - THAT story.

[Half-pint HAL]

Come on... the Turin Shroud is a unique and genuinely mystifying artefact (and I say that as someone who doesn't believe in any god). This is... a chunk of metal. with some holes in it.

Re: Oh - THAT story.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm shaving some big foot hair now.

Re:Oh - THAT story.

[Anonymous Coward]

what? it's a painting, whats mysterious about a painting?

No, I don't think they have

[wisnoskij]

So they found a piece of her plane washed up on an island. Her plane very well might of crashed on the other side of world.

Re:No, I don't think they have

[Anonymous Coward]

might have crashed, or might've crashed.

Re:No, I don't think they have

[Half-pint HAL]

...and as Earhart and Noonan squabbled over whether a split infinitive was permissible in English, the plane, unguided, descended into a death spiral.

My ass

[Tablizer]

Bender was her copilot, and he wants his shiny metal ass back.

A piece of aluminum was found in the Pacific?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there a LARGE conflict in the Pacific during the '40s.
Wasn't there a lot of aluminum used on the ships and aircraft in this conflict?

Thank you for playing ... NEXT!

Hahaha!

Diminishing Returns

[freudigst]

"millions of dollars searching for Earhart's plane"

Can't people find better things to do with their money in the States besides pointless searches and developing/buying worthless, gadgety bodywear?

Re:Diminishing Returns

[Anonymous Coward]

You're heartless - she might still be alive!

Re:Diminishing Returns

[Half-pint HAL]

Breaking news: Amelia Earhart has been discovered alive and well on a Pacific island. Doctors in the TIGHAR-sponsored search party say the avatrix is doing well. However, due to her advanced years and resultant dementia, Earhart is unable to identify herself. Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, denies that the woman is in fact Mary Montgomery, 74, of New Springs, Idaho, who was reported missing last week after failing to turn up for dinner on board the prestigious cruise ship Pacific Star. Speaking to reporters, Gillespie said "clearly Amelia managed to rig up the components of her radio set into a receiver and heard the story about the missing woman, and due to her advanced cognitive decline, began to associate herself with the news that she heard. Unfortunately, she appears to have lost this radio between hearing the news and our arrival."

so it's movie time!

[swell]

Ah yes, a romantic tale of courage, determination and pathos. The intrepid blonde adventuress and her stunningly handsome navigator forced down on a desolate island, doomed to a slow death of hunger and thirst. And yet with only hours to live, a romance can bloom among the giant crabs and tropical breezes... Hollywood- are you on this?

Uninetersting

[Anonymous Coward]

The real mystery about Amelia was whether she and Eleanor Roosevelt really were muff-diving buddies.

For sale:

[Anonymous Coward]

Today on Craig's List I saw a Lockheed Electra for sale in perfect condition except for one missing patch.

I Love the headline

[slashdice]

that's a typo. She had a metal _snatch_.

Not very reassuring

[oldmac31310]

When someone says things like 'busted out of' I have little confidence in anything else they say. Ric Gillespie don't talk good. He ain't gettin me believin him or nuthin.

A growing preponderance of evidence

[AutumnLeaf]

There are a lot of people who want to believe or not believe in certain outcomes, but this location in the Pacific has more verifiable nuggets of info that point more strongly in this direction than anywhere else.

I hope further experimentation (expeditions) yield a result that either confirms or invalidates the theory convincingly - just like in science! ;-)

I couldn't find the article in my search just now, but did recently read an account of a girl who claims to have listened to Earhart calling for help on her father's radio - and that she thought she heard Earhart say "New York City" repeatedly - which doesn't make sense. But apparently there was a wreck of a merchant ship named Norwhich City on that atol?

I hope they get the money for their next expedition.

Re:A growing preponderance of evidence

[AutumnLeaf]

Ah - here's a better summary....

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

Rick Harrison can help

[dafradu]

There is a budy of his that is an expert on metal patchs done to 1930s Electras.

Wonder if that piece that was put on as a patch in

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder if that piece was similar to the one that was put on as a patch in Miami??

Irrelevant trivia: Kiritibati is pronounced...

[jerel]

...Christmas. Just sayin'.

Was She Found?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep searching for Amelia Earhart on various missing persons websites, but I keep getting "404 - Not Found".