Report: Piece of Amelia Earhart's Plane Found on Island Where She Died
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery claims that a scrap of aluminum recovered from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, belongs to Amelia Earhart's plane. The new purported evidence supports a theory that the doomed pilot made a forced landing on an island in the Pacific Ocean during her trip around the world from which she was never seen again.
The metal patch was first discovered in 1991 on the atoll, according to TIGHAR, and was placed on Earhart's plane during a stop in Miami in 1937. "The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart's Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."
TIGHAR's theory, based on expeditions to and artifacts recovered from Nikumaroro, is that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the atoll and were stranded there until they died.
It should be noted that TIGHAR has long been fanatic about propagating a theory that runs counter to what most historians believe: that Earhart's plane crashed into the ocean after running out of fuel.
Anyway, this is the island Amelia Earhart maybe died on. Seems nice?
