CPOY

CPOY 74 International Picture Story: The Search For Amelia Earhart

The fate of the famed aviator Amelia Earhart has fascinated millions for over 80 years. After setting world records in her plane–most notably her solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1932–Earhart set her sights on the circumnavigation of the globe at its widest point, the equator. On one of the final leg's of her round-the-world flight, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific, somewhere in the Phoenix Islands. Thousands of hours of research and countless dead-end clues have pointed to Nikumaroro island, a small coral atoll, as her final resting place. In August, 2019, a National Geographic expedition led by Dr. Bob Ballard (who famously discovered the Titanic) set out for Nikumaroro. Two teams searched the island and its surrounding waters for two weeks, but found nothing. Expeditions like this one will likely continue until some definitive evidence is found that can lay the final chapter of Amelia's story to rest.

Caption
Slide 8 of 8
August 1, 2019
A telegram sent by British colonial officer, Gerald Gallagher, to his superiors sits in the Kiribati National Archives on August 1, 2019. The telegrams notify the colonial government in Suva, Fiji of a partial skeleton discovered on Nikumaroro Island in 1940 that may have belonged to Amelia Earhart. Controversially, no American authorities were told of the discovery, a fact that may have changed the fate of Amelia's story.
Gabriel Scarlett / Western Kentucky University
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