The Scoop

I assumed it was clickbait when I saw the social media caption this morning: "Is the Mystery of Amelia Earhart Solved?" Rather than feed that wolf, I opened my browser and searched for myself to see if there was any recent news about the pilot who disappeared nearly 90 years ago. 

To my surprise? There was! 

A joint expedition from Purdue University, Purdue Research Foundation, and the Archaeological Legacy Institute was, at that very moment, aboard a ship anchored off Nikumaroro Atoll in Kiribati to investigate the "Taraia Object." Someone spotted the object in Apple Maps in 2020, and subsequent research has shown images of it in the lagoon of this uninhabited island, on and off, since 1938. According to Purdue News, the team will be ready to announce tomorrow whether it is an airplane. 

My interest was piqued, and further investigation revealed that this atoll has long been considered a likely place where Earhart's round-the-world attempt ended. Over the last nine decades, people have found many artifacts there that can be circumstantially linked to Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, including freckle cream, shoes, a U.S. medicine vial, a 1930s jackknife, glassware, aviation parts, and human bones, but nothing conclusive. 

So, heads up, reader! Tomorrow could be a day like September 1, 1985, when Robert Ballard found the Titanic, and one of the most enduring mysteries of our lifetimes could be solved.