History

Just A Fragment of Your Imagination

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The news has been too full of war, disease and baseball.

Fortunately, the mystery of Amelia Earhart is always there to distract us when things get a little tedious. And this week the plot thickens with the revelation that a fragment of aluminum that was discovered 23 years ago is pretty much almost certainly identical, nearly, to a piece of metal that was attached to her plane to cover a window that had been removed during a stop-over in Miami in the weeks leading up to Earhart’s disappearance.

Fascinating.

The aluminum was found on a coral atoll called Nikumaroro in the South Pacific, about 400 miles from the place Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were really trying to reach. The theory is that Earhart and Noonan managed to land and were able to send distress signals for a succession of nights until the plane was washed into the sea, where it may still rest, submerged but largely intact.

And if by chance the attention drawn to this battered metal shard should bring a few investors forward, particularly some who have exceptionally deep pockets and would like to finance the next Nikumaroro expedition in the summer of 2015, well, so be it.

If it turns out that the Earhart mystery is really about to end, my condolences to all the people who believed one or more of the vast assortment of other fantastic, fabricated fates for our “First Lady of the Air” – that she survived and somehow lived out her days as a suburban housewife in New Jersey, that she was captured by the Japanese and became Tokyo Rose, or that she was abducted by aliens and still rules a distant Earth-like planet.

The truth is precious, but often boring. That’s what makes imagination so special.

Last call for improbably Amelia Earhart scenarios! Going once … going twice …

25 thoughts on “Just A Fragment of Your Imagination”

  2. My mom is 84 and whenever amilias name comes up she perks right up. Amelia and Eleanor Roosevelt were about the only (mother Theresa was there too but maybe a little too much) examples of women to look up to.
    Amelia liked to fly and that was a big deal in itself but then she decided to do her Charles Lindberg and go get real famous and ……………………nothing………. Forever…………my mom was a good storyteller but she never did an Amelia Earhart story, I think she was affected by her hero disappearing and when I asked as an inquisitive 6 year old what happened she kind of drifted off and said that Amelia likely just crashed and died after waiting for someone to come rescue her. It may have been my first exposure to an unknown ending. I was too young to know all the visions of the headhunter from the Tarzan movies and Talulah Bankhead in lifeboat it’s hard to visualize the reality of a creepy ending when you really want her to survive and do well. I think I had a vision of her opening a restaurant on a desert island and serving lots of fish and coconut dishes to the other folks on the island.then off to. Other fantasizes like turning into a big guy and flying myself. I drive by the little airport by my house all the time and get to relive that one. I have my plane picked out. It’s a mooney with a backwards tail. Kind of the Vw bus of airplanes. I’ll meetip with Amelia and discuss it at a meetup group in the afterlife unless Kurt Vonnegut was right and when I am dead that’s it. Then never mind nice blip on the radar Emilia, I should work harder on my opportunity to live a blip worthy life in my remaining time. Is it still 15% tip on a desert island?

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  3. I have a fuzzy recollection of abook about the Kensington Runestone that posits that the Ojibwe are part viking , which has always tickled my conspiracy theorist nerve. I’d like to think somewhere in some little corner of the world we have no idea even exists, she and Noonan (who I think should get more press-maybe an early feminist who thought it was just as safe to go up with a female pilot as a male?) met up with a friendly group and created a new little culture.

    Me, I’m just wondering how a big ol’travel magazine promoting Colorado got in the backseat. Curently listening to Thursday Next, so I’ve got an idea or two how that got there.

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  4. I’ve been following TIGHER for years and this is the first time they’ve come out and said straightforwardly that some item they have is definitely something of Earhart’s or Noonan’s. I hope this means they are very very certain and not that thye just want more money.

    I read a few books so have heard lots of the conspiracy theories but I don’t think anybody has ever mentioned aliens. Maybe aliens took her and Noonan up into their space shipe and since they didn’t have women in their species, they named her queen of their universe where she still reigns today.

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  6. Didn’t she resurface in drag as Howard Hughes and had a love child with Charles Lindbergh. The love child, a known associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, who under the name Zapruder filmed it. He next directed the operation showing the fake moon landing. He then controlled the robot that ran the country as Ronald Reagan. He finally went senile and walked off the edge of the earth.

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    1. Further research indicates that love child did not walk off the edge of the flat earth. He made contact with the Nazis in Argentina doing eugenic research. They under the code name FUCHS developed morally stunted humans, who they then released on America as an experiment to see if people would still follow the Nazi principles, an experiment so far proving successful.

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  7. Completely OT… but Dakota Dave is playing With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm right now. The Anne Boleyn song from LGMS – haven’t heard it for quite a while.

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  8. I like how Clyde combined so many conspiracy theories. I think that she and Noonan were picked up by an ocean liner, and due to both being transsexuals and having a secret longing to go on the stage, became cruise ship entertainers and retired in Cuba. After the revolution they became advisors to Fidel and are buried in Havana under assumed names.

    I think that they probably died in the crash and never were able to get out of the plane, which was washed into the ocean with the tides.

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  9. Don’t you think Lindbergh and Earhart look much alike? One of my favorite historical coincidences.
    Lindbergh was all but a member of the Nazi party and a strong believer in eugenics. He practiced his eugenics for several years with the master race, having a whole other family in Germany and an unknown number of other children there.

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        1. Not just a Minnesota hero, but a national hero – which is probably why nobody in America knows about it (well, except Clyde). Sounds like the German author of a book that came out a couple of years back with details can’t get a US publisher….

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        2. This is not secret. American Experience or somebody on PBS did a show about the kidnapping and they showed his German family and the DNA results and alluded to other children.

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        3. Heck even I knew
          It was the big slap in the face when Jessie Owens went over to Germany and a black man beat the master race on all those races and embarrassed them in two town Olympics
          Kind if the Russia. Story this past olympics

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  10. i see the movie now…. ameila and noonan are flying in te white puffy clouds and instead of coming out into blue sky they discover that they have flown into a large hanger type of set up upon landing and walking through the cotton candy cloud covering the ground they are greeted bu some gentle beings from a far away place who have been watching earth for many years now from afar and have decided to give into curiosity about the inhabitants, they have noticed that not many people fly and those who do must be very brave leaders who will have the rest of the human race following thier lead but upon looking over amelia and noonan they come to the realazation that these are not big strong specimans but instead small freckled woman and a slight round shouldered man are the specimans they find. they conclude that instead of the big strong chest beating kind of leaders who destroy while they slash and burn that this new type of leader who starts with a small burning desire to take manjkind to a better place are the hope of the futrue and proof that the future of mankind is not lost but simply awaiting the small ad meek to come forward with their dreams and do what is right for all and we will be saved. they let amelia and nooan go but discover too late that the side effects of landing in the cotton candy clouds of the hanger in their world leaves earth made devices function in a different way and the plane spins out of control to a certain death but before it does the gentle hands of the beings in the clouds reach out and rescue our heros and bring them back up to the quiet peaceful space they live in and inform amelia and noonan that they are learning as they go along here and what they have discovered is that they have no way of allowing them to return to their people. they are very sorry but they will do their best to make a comfortable situation here for you. now would you prefer to age at the standard rate, to age more slowly or to live for eternity. emelia chose to live for eternity and noonan decided to age but more slowly so that he ,wold age 1 year every 20 or so and the then 44 year old fred noonan is now approaching 48 where he will hang out from 2017 until 2037
    amelia who chose 40 as her landing spot will remain there forever. she has time to catch up on her reading do the research and learn to play guitar and some of the other thigs you have the luxuary to take advantage when things like time money and urgency go away if it would take forever to do that were no longer a problem what would you do? thats what amelia spent the first couple of years contemplating and now that she realizes what the ramifacations of immortality are. sounds good but…. the transition from realizing the feeling of accomplishment because you chose to read or participate in a particular offer of life vs the perception that everything is possible and the only achievement
    variable is the choice of what to do. if she accomplishes her goals she will have the answers the people on earth need to answer some of the small questions. we all romanticize amelia because she was so perky and ambitious and a stereotype buster but we forget that she was just folks in her own way. she had quirks and idiosyncrasies like the rest of the world and to have those made a forever thing is a factor to be dealt with. she realizes that she has to allow a little understanding that we all have bias to allow for and go forward to make the world a better place. we all need to allow for that. small people with big ideas are the hope of the world. amelia and noonan can help but nonan will be getting old in another 800 years. what do we want him to do in themeantime? amelia can carry on the cause but maybe she will have shifted her interests elsewhere by then poetry and abstract expressionism can be a life unto themselves.

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  11. Frankly, I always thought that Amelia E. came out of hiding, shot JFK, then returned to hiding. She re-emerged around 2006 in Hawaii just to fake Barack Obama’s birth certificate, then disappeared again.

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