85: Earhart

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AMELIA EARHART THEORIES

On this day in 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during her attempted flight around the world. Her Lockheed Electra took off from New Guinea destined for tiny Howland Island over 2,500 miles away. They never arrived. Since the tragedy, many theories have been advanced to explain the disappearance. Here are some of them:

The Crash and Sink Theory - The most obvious theory is that they simply could not locate Howland and ran out of gas and crashed in the Pacific. Noonan was a known alcoholic, so his ability to navigate to a small spot in the Pacific has been questioned.

The Castaways Theory - Similar to above, but when they ran out of gas, Earhart was able to crash land near a deserted island (usually posited as Nikamaroro Island) where they eventually perished from lack of food. Bones were found on the island, but most experts do not believe they were those of a woman. To explain away the lack of bone evidence, some theorists blame the three-foot coconut crabs for consuming the dead body.

The Spy Theory - Some believe Earhart was on a government mission to spy on Japanese bases in the Marshalls or Marianas Islands. If so, she might have been shot down and crashed in the ocean. Or she was shot down and captured. In the most common version of this theory, she was held captive until American forces arrived in the area, whereupon she was executed and buried by her captors. This theory was advanced in the book Lost Star by Randall Brink.

The Irene Bolam Theory - A corollary to the spy theory is that Earhart was actually liberated by the Marines and then secretly returned to the U.S. where she was given the identity of Irene Bolam and became a banker. There was an Irene Bolam and she did look like Earhart, but Irene vociferously denied the theory and sued the author of the book Amelia Earhart Lives (Joe Klass).

The Alien theory - And then, of course, there is the theory that Earhart was abducted by aliens, taken to their planet, cryogenically frozen, revived and allowed to found a race of alien aviators.