A quick refresher for those perhaps forgetful as to what happened. In 1937, 39-year-old Amelia Earhart was a well-known and record-breaking pilot who sought, as her website puts it, a “monumental and, final challenge.”
Earhart was going to fly around the world. After completing over 20,000 miles of the journey, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran into bad weather on July 2 over the Pacific Ocean. They were en route to the small and uninhabited Howland Island. Earhart and Noonan tried making radio contact with the nearby U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, but after intermittent messages, went silent. An immediate and extensive rescue mission, one that wound up costing around $4 million, sadly proved fruitless and the mystery as to what exactly happened remains a mystery today.
