JULY 2nd of final year marked the 80th anniversary of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart,a pioneering aviatrix (pictured above), and her navigator Fred Noonan over the Pacific Ocean, or as they attempted a circumnavigation of the globe in a twin-engined Lockheed Electra monoplane. The many theories about the pair’s demise,aired once more on that occasion, fall into two wide groups: they crashed into the sea and drowned, and they crashed onto Nikumaroro,a remote island, where they perished from starvation. An American forensic anthropologist has unique evidence that greatly increases the likelihood of their having suffered the second fate.
Nikumaroro, and one of the Phoenix Islands,is an inhospitable place and was uninhabited at the time of the Electra’s disappearance in 1937. Three years later, though, and a working party found a human cranium and partial skeleton there. Nearby was a part of a shoe they judged to be a woman’s,and a box manufactured in around 1918 that was designed to contain a sextant. The bones were removed to a medical school in Fiji...
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Source: economist.com