One of the great mysteries of the 20th Century revolves around the ultimate fate of pioneering female aviator Amelia Earhart.

As I’m certain most people out there know, in 1937 she attempted to be the first female aviator to fly around the world.  However, in early July of that year she disappeared over the central Pacific and, since then, no one knows what has become of her.

Last year there was an intriguing -though ultimately proven very false- “discovery” that she might be in a photograph discovered in the U.S. archives and taken years after her disappearance (I wrote about that here and the fact that it was very quickly proven false here).

Anyway, the latest bit of news involves a re-examination of bones found in 1940, three years after her disappearance, and on a South Pacific island named Nikumaroro, some 400 miles from Earhart’s intended route.  Rachael Leah in an article posted on Salon.com reports on this:

Scientist says bones found on Pacific Island belonged to Amelia Earhart

Here’s the thing, though, and I know I’m spoiling the article but, hey, it is what it is:

The bones found in 1940 have long ago disappeared.  The person who found them who originally examined them thought they belonged to a man but measurements were taken and those notes still exist.

Going by the notes and the measurements within them, anthropologist Richard Jantz in the journal Forensic Anthropology determined that…

The data revealed that the bones have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample.

How did Mr. Jantz come up with this?  By using photographs and the actual clothing of Ms. Earhart to come up with detailed measurements of her size and then compared these measurements with those of the bones found on that island in 1940.

Now, I grant you this: It is a very strong statement to make that the bones found on that island have such a strong similarity to Ms. Earhart.

However…

The fact remains that the actual bones are long gone and we have to assume the measurements used are indeed very accurate (there is no evidence to suggest they are or aren’t).

I feel, though, that with only those measurements as a guide and not the actual bones to examine we’re speculating an awful lot.

Not to degrade those who found and examined the bones back in 1940, but they believed at the time that the bones belonged to a MAN and not a woman.  If they did indeed belong to a woman (or, as Mr. Jantz speculates, Amelia Earhart herself), is it possible other errors were made back then, too?

And if so, it feels like quite a leap to assume we may indeed have her bones.

Last week and to breathless reporting the History Channel presented a documentary centered around the discovery of a photograph, presented below and supposedly a once top secret image…

Which, when one zoomed in on the people in the center of the dock, those same folks at the History Channel felt were Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan…

I’m not going to lie: I found the story as fascinating as most everyone else out there curious about Amelia Earhart and her fate.  In fact, I wrote about it here but noted that I doubted the photo displayed what the History Channel thought it did.

Since it was reported the photograph had once been “classified” and, further, that the person who reportedly took the photograph was eventually executed as a spy (I can’t help but wonder if that part of the story was outright fabrication, considering the below), I suspected that the subject matter was more likely the vessel in the background rather than the few people on the dock.

Now, a few days later, a blogger has burst the History Channel’s bubble and you can read all about it in this article by Ruth Graham and for Salon.com…

A blogger exploded the Hot New Theory of Amelia Earhart with 30 minutes of Online Searching

What did Kota Yamano, the blogger in question find?  From the article:

the History Channel’s analysis now seems to be crumbling under 30 minutes of internet research by one military history buff. Kota Yamano, a Tokyo-based blogger, found the same photograph printed in a Japanese-language travelogue published in 1935, almost two years before Earhart and Noonan disappeared. The caption underneath the photo says nothing about the identities of the people in the photograph, which apparently depicts a regular old harbor, rather than a harbor and two missing celebrities.

Whoops!

Here, presented within an article about the same subject by Yoko Wakatsuki and Ben Wetcott for CNN, is that same photograph as it was shown in the book published two years before Amelia Earhart disappeared, and when she was no-where near the Pacific…

Ah well.

It was fun while it lasted, a whole two or three days.

Yesterday was a big day for news regarding long-time lost aviator Amelia Earhart.  For those who aren’t aware of who she is, she was an aviator who achieved great acclaim during an era when flying was just (ahem) taking off.  In 1937 she and navigator Fred Noonan embarked on what would have been the first attempt by a woman to circumnavigate the world.

However, while flying over the Pacific ocean and near the Marshal Islands and with fuel running low, a series of distress signals were sent out and Ms. Earhart, Mr. Noonan, and their airplane were never seen again.

What happened to them, to this day, remains a mystery.

But yesterday it was announced a new History Channel special will focus on this mystery and, the big “new” piece of information the special is offering is a photograph which the show’s people claim displays both Earhart and Noonan on a dock in a Pacific Island after they crash landed and following them declared “missing”.

The photograph:

Not all that interesting, until you zoom in on two of the people near the end of the dock…

The show’s principles claim the man on the left is Noonan and the figure seated and looking off to the right is Amelia Earhart and, according to their claims, this has been at least potentially validated through the use of photographic analysis (by the way, the article where I got these photographs is by Paige Levin and Eric Levinson and found on CNN.com  You can read the entire article here).

So here’s the deal: At the time of Earhart’s disappearance, things were getting worse between Japan and the U.S., so there is a theory that maybe Earhart and Noonan crash landed in the Pacific, were picked up by Japanese naval forces, and eventually were imprisoned and died…perhaps being executed as spies for the U.S. government.

The above photograph, reportedly taken surreptitiously by a U.S. contact who eventually was executed as a spy by the Japanese, most certainly could be proof of the survival of Earhart and Noonan and the fact that it was held in a “top secret” folder for many years seems to indicate that it was viewed as something important.

However, I suspect it was important not because of the vague figures on it but rather the Japanese vessel in the background.  I suspect that was what the photographer wanted to get, to give U.S. intelligence an idea of where Japanese vessels were rather than take a very hard to see picture of two lost aviators.

On the other hand, the photographic analysis appears to be interesting, even if the photo itself, when blown up, presents only blurry images of the people within.

Still, a fascinating thing to see and discuss, even if I do believe this is far from a slam dunk revelation.

The below video, from the Today show, gives a bit more information on the photograph and how it was determined the two within it could be the lost aviators…

1/1/17 UPDATE!

Over at Gizmodo.com Matt Novak offers this article which claims…

Experts cast doubt on that new photo alleged to show Amelia Earhart

The main gist of the article, for those who aren’t interested in following the link (but you should, it presents some neat photos of the actual photograph!), is that there is a big question as to when the photograph stirring up all this intrigue was taken.

The fact of the matter is that its unknown when it was taken.  The History Channel people claim it was taken in 1937, which would be in/around the time of Ms. Earhart’s disappearance, but it was noted by the National Archives there is no date on the photograph and its description doesn’t give any indication of when it might have been taken.

It is possible the photograph was taken in 1940, which of course would damage the claims it shows Ms. Earhart.

As I said before, I’m a skeptic of this.  It just seems a little too… lucky to have such a picture suddenly appear and show not only Earhart but her Mr. Noonan.

Fascinating video and article from CNN concerning a possible clue to the fate of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft found in a 1937 photograph.  The video of the story is first:

The full article:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/20/reports-new-search-planned-for-amelia-earhart/

Consider me one of those people who are fascinated with the the multitude of “unsolved mysteries”-type stories one can run into.  Perhaps chief among them is the perennial mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart back in 1937 while attempting to become the first female to circumnavigate the globe by aircraft.  Discovering the fate of Ms. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan would be a terrific story and close the book on the enduring mystery and I hope the investigators in this article and video are on the right track.

Having said that, the photograph they say may show the landing gear of the Lockheed Electra protruding from a reef is intriguing but I find it hard to completely swallow.  Why did whoever took that photograph a few months after Earhart’s disappearance not notice a metal protrusion coming out of the water by the island?  Granted, the image takes up a very small part of the photograph, but still, wouldn’t they have noticed something metallic shimmering close to the edge of shore?  Further, and while I freely admit to being absolutely NO expert at the Lockheed aircraft, the amplified image itself looks like something of a Rorschach blotch.  Is it possible the investigators are seeing what they want to see there?

I certainly don’t know, but I sincerley hope their theories turn out to be true and one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th Century is finally solved.