Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Deb.
And I'm Beth.
And we want to welcome you back to Dying to be Found, a true crime podcast that is what I like to say left open to interpretation of our listeners.
We have a variety of cases that we always talk about where someone is simply dying to be found.
And speaking for myself, Beth, I'm not going to speak for you.
Sometimes I'm dying to find out what happens in these storylines.
Me too.
I'm actually curious.
I do keep my eye on Dateline and 2020 to see if there's any cases that we did with an update.
Have you found any?
No.
That's the cool thing. I think sometimes the older cases that we do, I had mentioned this before.
There's so many times where even if you wait 20, 30 years on the older cases, sometimes there is a lot more to be found.
And actually, we're probably going to be touching on that in today's case.
I'll talk to you about that in just a little bit.
Okay.
But before we get started, I wanted to give a shout out to a very special listener who suggested our storyline today, Beth.
Wonderful.
Yeah, this might be one of the youngest listeners to date.
And I'm told that he's about to turn nine years old.
Get out.
Yeah.
So happy birthday to Cooper.
He really seems to know a good storyline when he hears one.
If you are a new listener here, I want you to just know that some of our episodes are family friendly because sometimes we do documentary style
or just kind of follow up on some mysterious cases.
Today is no different because we do have a little bit of mystery mixed with history.
And I actually like reporting these kind of cases, Beth.
I learn a lot from them.
And to be honest, I haven't heard this case in a really long time.
So it was really kind of neat to look into it.
Wouldn't you believe I watched something on TV not too, too long ago, just a couple months on Amelia Earhart.
Really?
Yes.
Was it a documentary?
I believe it was.
Okay.
Well, we're going to do a little bit of a documentary style here today.
But before we do, I wanted to give you just one more thing about Cooper.
Yes, please.
I want to say a couple months ago, we did a case on DB Cooper.
Do you remember the man that jumped out of the airplane?
Cooper was named after him.
How cool is that?
Oh, Cooper, you have a cool name.
Absolutely.
So once again, Cooper, happy birthday to you.
And I hope that you enjoy this.
Today, we are going to be talking about Amelia Earhart, who, according to Time Magazine,
was the very first female aviator to fly a solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
So Beth, I always start off our episodes with a question.
And I want to know, do you remember your very first airplane flight?
No.
Well, I do, but I remember being a little nervous.
Yes, yes.
Do you know when my first flight was?
When?
When I flew to St. Louis, Missouri to become a flight attendant.
Oh, that's so cool.
Yeah, it really was because I was so mesmerized with the fact that I was above the clouds.
Like, how is that possible?
I still question that.
The whole concept of being on the airplane was really, really neat.
I wonder if Cooper's ever been on an airplane.
I don't know, Cooper.
Right us.
All right, so let me just give you a little bit of history.
And do you even know who was the very first person to put out or to manufacture a fully functional airplane?
Do you remember who invented that?
I want to say, believe it or not, Alexander Graham Bell has something to do with air flight.
Does he really?
Speaking of that, it's the Wright brothers.
Yes, it's Wilbur and Orville Wright.
And they flew their first flight out of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17th, 1903.
Wow.
Do you even know where Kitty Hawk is, Beth?
No, I don't.
It's in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
I have been there.
I have seen the area where the Wright brothers took off for the very first time.
Oh, that's cool.
Right.
Okay.
So obviously I like history.
So let me give you a little bit of history about Amelia.
She was born on July 24th, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas.
She grew up with a socially affluent background and really showed spirit and independence at a very young age.
Amelia was a tomboy and became somewhat of a worldly young woman as she reached her 20s and such.
So I'll get into that in just a minute.
Now, at the age of 19, Amelia visited her sister in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Go Toronto.
Where she decided to stay and become a nurse's aide to help care for wounded soldiers during World War II.
Amelia eventually moved out to California.
I believe her parents said something like it is time to come back here.
She moved out to California in 1920 by airplane, which happened to be her first flight ever riding in an aircraft.
Cool.
Around the age of 23, she really had a spark of excitement for aviation.
Some of that, Beth, comes from an air show that she attended while she lived in Toronto.
Do you remember going to those air shows with dad when we were growing up?
Yes.
Seriously, they were phenomenal.
Now my granddaughters go to them.
Oh, that is so neat.
I will tell you, out, let's just go back up to Virginia here.
I've been to Virginia Beach and they always have the blue angels flying around.
Even if you're on the beach, you could just hear them coming.
They are past you as quick as they come up on you.
It is really neat.
They're loud, but they're always in sync.
You usually see at least two, maybe three flying at the same time.
Cool.
All right.
So Amelia relocates to California.
And what do you think one of the very first things she does when she gets there?
She left Toronto.
She probably signed up for flight school.
Absolutely.
Oh, get out.
Yeah.
She signed up for flying lessons.
Only a year later, Beth, Amelia bought her very first aircraft with the help of her parents.
And a year after that, she received her pilot's license.
Good for her.
Yeah.
I did not know that you watched a documentary on this.
If you have anything more that you want to add to this, by all means.
Okay.
All right.
Given her tomboy nature, Amelia cut her hair short and purchased a leather jacket to give off the persona of that as an aviator.
It was a sign of the times, you know, 1930s and all that.
So it was really, if you ever see pictures of her, she's always wearing a leather jacket.
Yeah.
Amelia spent the next several years perfecting her aviation skills while moving around the United States.
By 1928, women pilots were being recruited to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
And I think this is somewhat of a publicity stunt, Beth.
Something like, hmm, I would compare that similar.
You know how they always have those publicity stunts where people tightrope walk across Niagara Falls?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
They had a publicity stunt where they wanted women to start joining in.
Some speculate that Amelia was chosen to carry out this historical journey because she somewhat resembled Charles Lindbergh,
who was the very first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic just a year earlier.
So I don't know, really, maybe their stature, their physique may have been similar.
She had that pixie haircut.
They both wore leather jackets.
I don't really know if you could do a comparison, but somebody saw a comparison between the two of them.
Interesting.
Well, on June 17th, 1928, Amelia began prepping for her very first solo flight.
She flew out of Newfoundland, Canada as a passenger landing in Wales.
Beth, she was doing a little bit of research, a little bit of homework before that actual flight.
She wanted to assess things like time, distance, altitude, and things like that.
She was just doing some homework along the way.
Now, news media outlets immediately labeled Amelia as a celebrity.
Okay.
Yeah, because that was a big thing back then.
I mean, Lindbergh, he was dubbed a celebrity as well, right?
Yes.
Amelia went on to write a book or two about her experiences while continuing to set records by flying at higher altitudes than ever recorded before her.
That's really cool.
It is.
I mean, I'm just wondering, I know what it's like when you're going up in the airplane and your ears pop.
Oh, yeah.
I don't know.
There's just so much science to this.
I can't even imagine what they would do to keep that from happening.
Amelia flew at 18,415 feet or 5,613 meters in altitude, which I had to go look that up because in my mind, I'm not good with meters versus feet.
Me neither.
Does three and a half miles or five and a half kilometers sound a little bit more sensible?
Whoo, that's high.
Yep.
Well, four years later in May 1932, Amelia made her very first solo interatlantic flight, which also broke records when she flew from Newfoundland, Canada to Northern Ireland in 14 hours and 56 minutes.
I can't even imagine sitting there all that time.
Yeah.
When does she sleep?
I mean, staying awake for that long, that's especially unheard of back then.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I kind of wonder that too.
And I don't think they had autopilot at the time.
But then again, I mean, why wouldn't they put another person in there with her?
Exactly.
I know they're solo flights, but for safety reasons, I think you should go in pairs, right?
Mm-hmm.
Maybe she's running on adrenaline.
Likely.
I would probably say likely.
Well, she initially planned to land in Paris, France, but encountered some poor weather, plus some mechanical problems.
Amelia continued to build up her aviation resume and made history by flying another solo flight between Hawaii and California in 1935.
This flight path was 2,408 miles or 3,875 kilometers, which was her longest flight yet.
This trip took 17 hours and 7 minutes.
Wow.
I mean, I guess I've stayed up for 17 hours before.
It's not that big of a deal, is it?
Well, considering I don't have a...
Well, here's the deal.
You sleep for eight hours a day, right?
Yes.
And you still have what, another 16 hours of waking time, truly?
Yes, now that makes sense.
So she's probably working a double shift.
Obviously, Amelia is working her way up to the famous trip that she had been planning.
She continued to live her best life and build up her experience over many years, Beth.
So this didn't really happen overnight, even though for the publicity stunt that they were trying to get out there to get women to do this flying, it didn't happen instantaneously.
It actually took several years for her to build up the caliber and probably the knowledge in what she needed to do to make this flight successful.
And what's really cool about it is that it seemed like the world was really behind Amelia and waiting patiently as she got better and better as a pilot.
So she's perfecting her craft.
On July 2nd, 1937, just before her 40th birthday, Amelia set out to fly the entire globe on a 29,000 mile or 47,000 kilometer journey.
That is just... Wow.
Yeah, well, don't think she's going to do this all in one stop.
You know, she's going to have to stop for fuel, right?
Oh, yes.
I mean, it's kind of neat.
It's like taking one leg and then flying to the next leg and things like that.
Now, like I said, she slowly increased her distance and expertise over the years here.
And it's only 1937, Beth.
And in my opinion, that's still the infancy of aviation here because there's just so much going on, but they don't have the technology like we do today as far as aircrafts.
No, they certainly didn't.
Amelia was finally ready to take a trip around the world.
She took along a navigator by the name of Fred Noonan, who helped guide Amelia's twin-engined Lockheed Electra, which Beth, I'm actually purposefully mentioning here because this is going to come into play in just a little bit.
The twin engine or Lockheed Electra?
All of the above.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know what a twin engine is, right?
It's got like the propellers on both sides where the wings are at.
Oh, yes, yes.
Now I do.
Yeah, so that part is the twin engine and then I think the name of the airplane is a Lockheed or at least the manufacturer is Lockheed.
And then of course, it's like a make it a model.
The make would be Lockheed.
The model is the Electra.
Okay.
So it's a twin-engine Lockheed Electra.
Now, Amelia and Fred took off out of Miami, Florida and made a few refueling stops along the way, like I had mentioned that they would do.
Their flight path led them from Miami to Central America.
Then on to South America, Africa and New Guinea.
And by the time Amelia and Fred flew to New Guinea, they had logged 22,000 miles or 35,000 kilometers in flight distance.
So that's a pretty long track.
Very and I'm sure very tiring too.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, because I couldn't really find how long all of this was taking.
I mean, it's one thing knowing that she can fly up to 17 hours at one time.
Mm-hmm.
But really when I was researching this, all I could find was more so the distance, but not the time.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
All right.
The next leg on their trip was considered to be a little tricky because Amelia and Fred did not have aviation instruments like we do today.
I had mentioned that.
The only thing they had to rely on obviously was at that point in time, Beth, visual observations.
Think about when you are in an airplane and you're just like looking over the horizon and just kind of picking up on whatever it is that you see.
Mm-hmm.
They didn't have instruments to tell them that they were getting close to land or anything like that.
That's kind of scary, isn't it?
Yes, because do you know what came to mind when I was looking that part up?
No.
Do you remember what happened to John F. Kennedy Jr.?
Yes.
That's pretty similar.
I think what happened is in 1999, JFK Jr. was out on a flight and was doing that observation thing.
He wasn't using instruments, but in his case, I think it was dark.
Let's just say it did not work in his favor.
No.
And that's another story because we could honestly probably do a case on that one.
Amelia and Fred planned to fly to Howland Island, a small coral atoll located between Australia and Hawaii for inquiring minds like me.
Do you have any idea what a small atoll is?
I wanted to ask you, but I didn't want to interrupt.
Okay.
I had to go look this one up, Beth, because it sounds interesting, but I had no idea what a coral atoll is.
I don't know.
You might want to go look this up while we're talking so you can get a visual.
Okay.
It's a coral ring that surrounds something like a small island, like a lagoon.
Think about Gilligan's Island here, right?
Yes.
It's very small, which is why I would say, spoiler alert here, Beth,
experts believe that Amelia had difficulties locating this island by sight alone.
I can imagine.
Yeah.
It was during this leg of her flight that Amelia Earhart communicated with the US Coast Guard that her aircraft was running out of fuel
and she was flying north to south.
So she didn't really have a big picture of the direction she was going, where she was at, anything like that.
I just looked up the atoll.
So she saw one?
No, I think that she was having trouble finding it.
Okay.
It's possible that she found one.
Not going to say it was the one that she was looking for, but it all kind of contributed to her demise, unfortunately.
Oh dear.
Amelia's last radio transmission took place at 8.43 a.m. on July 3rd, 1937.
She and Fred Noonan were never seen nor heard from again.
That's very sad.
There's been lots of different rumors about what happened to her.
Really?
Yeah.
They were saying that she was really living with, you know, the groups that live in the forests.
They have face painting on them.
Yeah.
Well, one story is that she lived with a group like that.
Oh, was that in the documentary?
Yeah.
Okay.
Now I will tell you, I used several reputable resources, but truly for the time purposes,
everything that I read just kind of fell into place in how I'm telling this story today,
but I did not see any of that in my research.
So that's an interesting theory.
Yeah.
I think it's far-fetched.
Well, I mean, there's always theories to be had and stories to be told.
So, especially when you have mysteries, you know.
Scientists believe that Amelia may have gone down somewhere around 100 miles or 160 kilometers
off of Howland Island where she was originally looking to land Beth.
This would have been located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean,
around 1,650 miles or 2,650 kilometers southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So I think that she was a little bit off course here.
Like I said, I think that she was looking for that island to land on,
but she was a little off course.
So she may have landed on another atoll.
I had no idea atolls were out there or how many are there.
So if any of our listeners know that, definitely let us know.
Yeah, when I looked it up, there were certainly a lot of choices to pick.
Really?
Huh.
On January 5th, 1939, just 18 months after Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared,
they were both declared legally dead.
Now here's the kicker, Beth.
After Amelia's sensationalized women's aviation accomplishments and even receiving celebrity status,
Amelia only received one line of recognition in Time magazine when she was declared legally dead.
What do you think of that?
That's because she's a woman.
I mean, and that was the Sun of the Times too.
Yeah.
We've come a long way for sure.
Yes.
Now I want to commemorate Amelia's accomplishments during her lifetime,
which I can guarantee you, Beth, it's going to be a little bit more than one line.
Good.
I'm going to kind of give you just from the beginning a little recap on everything that she did.
Amelia was born and raised in the Midwest and eventually moved to Canada
when she was introduced to aviation at an air show.
While in Toronto, Amelia worked as a nurse's aide, helping with the 1918 flu pandemic
and caring for World War II veterans.
Amelia eventually made her way to California where she began taking flying lessons
and within two years, she acquired her first aircraft,
which by the way, I did not mention she named Canary because it was a very bright yellow color.
Oh.
And she obtained her professional pilot's license.
That's great.
It is.
And two years isn't very long.
It's really not.
Amelia goes on to break records in altitude and distance flights
all while going back to school to study health and medicine.
She worked as a social worker in Boston, Massachusetts
while continuing to log flight hours on her days off.
Amelia often flew her plane to perform stunts to raise money for charity,
likely inspired by that air show she attended in Toronto years earlier.
Still moving on with her accomplishments here,
a combination of all of her flights caught the attention of George Palmer Putnam,
who authored a book about Charles Lindbergh,
that man who also flew his very first flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
So Charles Lindbergh is the male version.
Noting similarities between Lindbergh and Earhart's physique,
Putnam invited Amelia to become the next Lady Lindbergh to,
according to Time Magazine,
replicate Charles Lindbergh's successful transatlantic flight a year earlier.
So you got your male version, you got your female version.
Something that I found noteworthy here is that Amelia and George Putnam
eventually married while he worked as her publicist.
Amelia took her fateful flight five years after her marriage.
And I believe that obviously she kept her name the same.
She did not change it to his like people did back in the day.
Well, that's great, especially for that time era.
She's just pulling out all the stops.
She sure is.
Yeah, you got a point there.
Before her disappearance, Amelia wrote two books,
started her own fashion line and of course made history
by becoming the very first woman,
actually no, not just the very first woman,
but the very first person to ever fly from Hawaii to California.
Amelia was asked by Purdue University to run a career center for women,
which broke that mold, Beth, during her era
by encouraging women to do more than just become a housewife.
I love it.
Mm-hmm, strong.
So I think this is where we might start seeing more women
getting into engineering and the likes here, Beth.
Have you ever seen that movie Hidden Figures?
The title sounds familiar. What's it about?
Oh my goodness, you have got to go see that.
It's a story of some women who I'm going to say back in the 1950s,
they made history with NASA.
It's about the space program and how that came to be,
but it is a true story about the women behind NASA.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
All right, so here's the tough part.
Amelia Earhart made a conscious decision, Beth,
that this transcontinental flight was going to be her last publicity stunt.
She planned to hang up her aviator jacket
as far as breaking any more records after this flight was over.
Can you imagine?
Oh my.
The purpose of Amelia's mission for this last flight around the world
was to establish commercial air travel
while studying human behaviors when faced with strain and fatigue.
You had mentioned how tired she probably had to be
when she was flying those 17 hours.
Yes.
But think about it though, she really is,
she established commercial air travel.
That's fantastic.
You know, Charles Lindbergh, not to...
Downsize him?
Yes, not to downsize him.
Overshadow him?
Exactly, but look at Amelia and what she's done for the advancement.
Oh, absolutely.
On June 1st, 1937, Amelia began her last journey before her demise
and truly, Beth, no pun intended here,
she landed herself in the history books for the very last time.
That's sad.
Well, there you go.
There's Amelia's accomplishments,
which got a little bit more than one line from me,
so take that, Time Magazine.
Yes, take that.
But I will say this,
I actually got a lot of information from Time Magazine for this episode today,
but 80 years later, giving us her accomplishments.
So I'm just trying to make a point that it doesn't matter who you are
and how sensationalized you are, Beth,
you can be disregarded at the same time.
Yeah, Time Magazine is a good magazine and it's, you know,
it's one that's dependable.
After Amelia's last communication, a mass search and rescue did begin.
Amelia's husband made a plea to the US Navy
and then President Franklin D. Roosevelt to aid in Amelia's search.
So the world was on the lookout for her.
Everyone was on their game, Beth,
because by the time Amelia's husband made that request,
the search and rescue mission had already begun
before that request even made it to the White House.
The average cost for Amelia and Fred Noonan's search
was estimated to be in the ballpark of $250,000 US dollars
or $341,000 Canadian dollars or 203 pounds.
And that was during that era.
That's a lot of money.
Truly it is, because the total cost of the search
reached $4 million US dollars,
5.4 Canadian dollars and 3.2 million pounds.
My gosh.
Mm-hmm. This was one of the most expensive search and rescue attempts
ever made in US history.
I mean, for good cause though, right?
It is. It is, yes.
Search plans were sent out to look for Amelia's aircraft.
But again, Beth, in 1937,
even military aircrafts did not possess aviation tools like they do today.
Everyone relied highly on visual recognition of land and terrain,
which I'm just thinking, honestly, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The military scanned more than 100,000 square miles
or 161,000 square kilometers for the next two weeks to no avail.
Experts analyzed Amelia's last known location,
the navigation instruments that Fred Noonan brought on board for this flight,
and concluded that there were several factors leading up to the pair's demise.
Fred could have used celestial navigation.
Had to go look that one up too, Beth.
It's a timed measurement between distances.
So here's an example.
Do you know what the two second rule is when you're driving?
No.
Okay. So I want you to imagine there's a car in front of you going down the highway,
and that car in front of you passes the speed limit sign.
What you need to do as a driver, you need to,
as they pass that speed limit sign,
you just say to yourself, one Mississippi, two Mississippi.
So that's two seconds,
and you should not reach that same speed limit sign before you pass it.
Oh.
And truly though, if you think about the measurements there,
that's kind of what celestial navigation is,
is timed distances.
That's kind of what Fred was relying on at the time.
Fred would have been measuring time between passing something to navigate their location.
He also had a compass, a map,
the sun, and radio communications with the US Coast Guard that was anchored to Howland Island.
But here is where some of the problems came in.
Amelia and Fred likely made a fatal decision to leave radios behind when they made room for fuel.
Oh, no.
I know.
Using the sun as one of their navigation tools was not 100% reliable,
because, Beth, I'm sure that you've been in an airplane where it's really cloudy or overcast.
For sure I did.
So they couldn't really rely on the sun to help them around the globe.
No.
Fred was given two dozen powder bombs,
which would have helped him to determine wind drifts while flying over the ocean,
something that would prove to be very critical during this flight,
because all 24 powder bombs were left behind in a warehouse
and were never stored on board the aircraft before Noonan and Earhart departed.
Well, that was a critical miscalculation.
Mm-hmm.
During their flight, and likely at one of their most critical moments,
Amelia failed to turn on her transmitter signals to a specific frequency
that would have helped the Coast Guard locate their aircraft in the event of an emergency.
The reason she failed to do so was because Amelia believed this transmitter would not be useful
and left it behind as well.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, I guess she had some confidence there.
Yeah, you can see that they would not have been missing
had they at least done two of the items, you know?
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like Amelia and Fred just got a little bit turned around
because they were not hitting that atoll like they were hoping to,
and that's when they ended up getting into trouble.
So, I'm actually going to go over just a brief theory here.
It's not a lot. I couldn't really find a ton on this.
So, if you have other theories you want to add, by all means,
as of 2022, scientists believe that they may have found out exactly what happened
to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan during their fateful flight.
At the time of Amelia's disappearance, her husband fully believed that Amelia
would have made an emergency landing on land as opposed to going down into the ocean,
and he believes that this is possible because Amelia was aiming for a coral atoll in the middle of the ocean.
She did not crash into the ocean because the radio batteries,
which were located underneath the wings, did not lose immediate communication
like they would have if they were submerged in water.
There's a lot of people who do believe that they did hit land,
but I told you earlier to remember that Amelia was flying a twin-engine Lockheed Electra
because it's really important here.
Researchers from Penn State's Radiation Science and Engineering Center
discovered metal panels from what appeared to be an aircraft similar to Amelia's
near a remote coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean.
In 1991, the FBI confirmed that part of a twin-engine Lockheed Electra
or something resembling one, they couldn't 100% be sure,
but they found something resembling Amelia's aircraft.
It was discovered on an atoll about 420 miles or 675 kilometers southeast of Howland Island,
which is that atoll that Amelia seemed to be looking for when she disappeared.
So again, she was a little bit off course.
The panels had something comparable to a serial number etched into the metal,
which doesn't quite identify any debris as Amelia's,
although these researchers do believe it very well could be.
The identification codes were too rusted and corroded from being submerged in salt water for so many years,
but I want you to think of a sewing machine, Beth,
and you know how the needle will just punch holes along the material as you go?
Yes.
If you were to take a look at Amelia Earhart's plane,
you would see that there is a very distinct etching on the side of her airplane, kind of like that.
Oh.
And so the pieces of metal that scientists found had that same etching.
I wonder what caused that.
Would that be the plane coming apart?
No, it would actually be part of the plane itself, like a pattern.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, like it was like distinctly patterned so that it just kind of gave the plane itself a unique identification.
Okay.
Human bones were also discovered in 1941 on that Atoll Lagoon where Amelia is to believe to have gone down.
Back then, scientists could not fully determine who the bones belonged to, whether they were male or female.
And remember, Amelia was traveling with Fred, so there was a possibility that it could have been either one of them.
In the meantime, these bones have been lost,
so DNA cannot be performed to determine if they ever belonged to Amelia or Fred.
That's crazy that they were lost.
I mean, that happens more than you know.
Oh, I just can't imagine.
You'd think that there would be very stringent rules and regulations.
Mm-hmm.
But think about how society changes over time and buildings get built and so things get moved.
Yes.
I know you've moved a time or two.
Don't you lose things when you move?
Probably.
Seriously, I can tell you 100% when I moved to North Carolina several years ago.
Holy cow.
I could not find any of my canisters from the kitchen.
Are you serious?
I am.
Wow.
Who knows?
All right.
So here's what scientists believe may have happened.
Amelia and Fred were unable to visually locate the atoll that they were looking for to safely land their aircraft as they were running out of fuel.
The pair likely landed on a reef in the middle of the ocean where their aircraft got hung up and they had nowhere to go.
Given the estimated location, Amelia and Fred would have encountered 120 degree temperatures at that time of year with no fresh water to keep them hydrated.
So ultimately, Beth,
Yeah, I didn't do a conversion like I normally do from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
I'm going to assume that is Fahrenheit.
That would be roughly 30.
I'm going to say 35 degrees Celsius.
Yeah.
And then with no fresh water.
Yeah.
My gosh.
They had everything going against them.
Well, ultimately Amelia and Fred were doomed because there was no way to survive being trapped in that situation.
And that's really the only theory that I could find on the mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance.
So to this day, it remains just that.
Wow, that was very interesting.
Well, that is the story of Amelia Earhart,
the world's first female aviator who lived a life of breaking aviation records and leading the way for what we know today as air travel.
So thank you again, Cooper, for suggesting this storyline.
We appreciate you and all of our listeners here on Dying to be Found.
Yes, Cooper.
Thank you for this suggestion.
So Deb, do you have a teachable moment?
I have a very, very brief teachable moment today, Beth.
Okay.
Pack accordingly.
Don't skimp.
This would mean for any means of travel that you're planning.
But most importantly, if your travel plans are risky.
Beth, we've had several episodes where we've talked about someone who was unprepared.
There's just so many times that you just have to expect the unexpected.
I am in no way discounting Amelia Earhart's expertise here.
Yeah.
But you have to expect the unexpected, which I don't know if you watch Big Brother, Beth.
I'm not even referencing that right now.
No.
No?
Okay.
In the meantime, it's better to be overprepared than underprepared.
And we can't just say, oh, we'll be fine because Beth, it's going to be that moment when we're not.
Agreed.
So that's my teachable moment.
Good one.
Very pertinent to the things that Amelia left behind.
So thanks again, Deb.
You did a very good story.
And you know, I do love these older version stories.
Oh, do I ever have a good one for you the next go round?
You.
Okay.
I look forward to it.
All right.
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Talk to you soon.
And that's a wrap.
That is a wrap.
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