Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 24 - What Happened to Amelia Earhart?

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24 - What Happened to Amelia Earhart? · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hi everybody, and
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Speaker 1: welcome to hood. What now the history of podcast? That
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Speaker 1: is not your history of class with me? You're the
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Speaker 1: vacious host, Kertie Charlwood, Mardarino extraordinaire and reader of books.
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Speaker 1: It's actually funny because what I realized, I'm just jumping in.
0:34
Speaker 1: What I realized about myself when it comes to true
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Speaker 1: crime specifically, is that I have consumed so much true
0:44
Speaker 1: crime information that I don't remember a lot of specifics
0:49
Speaker 1: until I start tell me, I don't remember a lot
0:54
Speaker 1: of specifics until I go back rereading or rewatching documentaries
0:59
Speaker 1: and things like that. Listen to some more podcasts. The
1:03
Speaker 1: guy was listening to I Think tenfold More Wicked. I
1:07
Speaker 1: was like, I know this story. It's the first season
1:09
Speaker 1: of tenfold More Wicked. Cannot tell you the name of
1:12
Speaker 1: any character in the story that shows you, but I
1:14
Speaker 1: know it. If I were to hear it again, I'd
1:16
Speaker 1: be able to go, ah, yes, I can tell you
1:20
Speaker 1: the relationship to the characters, the characters, the relation to
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Speaker 1: the people who were murdered. I could tell you everything
1:25
Speaker 1: about it. Just names. Names are just not good for
1:30
Speaker 1: me right now. I'm going to blame the manual labor.
1:35
Speaker 1: So a lot of landscaping was done and there's now
1:38
Speaker 1: a driveway around my house. Yeah, so we were planting
1:41
Speaker 1: trees today. But then some of the trees, they had
1:44
Speaker 1: been planted in these sort of thick plastic like rubble sacks.
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Speaker 1: So when I went to actually move them, they'd actually rooted,
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Speaker 1: their roots had gone through the sacks and into the ground.
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Speaker 1: And there I am trying to pull a pear tree.
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Speaker 1: And what do I do but hit my mother in
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Speaker 1: the face with a tree. I poked her in the
2:04
Speaker 1: eye with a pear tree. They're bad eye as well.
2:08
Speaker 1: So then but there was like more than one tree.
2:10
Speaker 1: So when it came to like the fourth tree that
2:12
Speaker 1: I had to move, I was like, maybe step back,
2:17
Speaker 1: because I don't want to get you in the good eye.
2:19
Speaker 1: I mean, as much as I love a good pirate joke,
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Speaker 1: I just I feel like she'd kill me. Oh my goodness,
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Speaker 1: did I mention this last week? Did I mention? I
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Speaker 1: don't even remember? Oh my goodness. Okay, So I hadn't
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Speaker 1: seen my emails for like a week or so, and
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Speaker 1: as it turns out, who did what now? Was charting
2:39
Speaker 1: in Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, and Ireland. I was like,
2:45
Speaker 1: I never chart in Ireland. I was I was very
2:47
Speaker 1: in prey. I was like very excited because this doesn't happen,
2:50
Speaker 1: you know, And so I signed up with Charter Buls.
2:53
Speaker 1: Is not an ad I say. I connected with Charter
2:55
Speaker 1: bol because I wanted to see if I was charting
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Speaker 1: anywhere instead of we had to manually look every week
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Speaker 1: because currently I'm so busy, I just don't have the chance.
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Speaker 1: And so I could actually see a lot of the
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Speaker 1: reviews that I was getting, and I mean I was
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Speaker 1: only in like the top three hundred for like I
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Speaker 1: think Canada, in Mexico or something like that. But the
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Speaker 1: point of the matter is I was charting at all.
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Speaker 1: And that's because of you listeners who have been coming
3:25
Speaker 1: back and who have been or even new listeners from
3:27
Speaker 1: last time who went onto Apple Podcasts and rated and
3:32
Speaker 1: reviewed five stars so adorable, shameless plug And if you
3:37
Speaker 1: say something when you do a review, it actually bumps
3:40
Speaker 1: you up the Apple podcast like funky algorithm. I don't
3:43
Speaker 1: know if Google podcasts have a rating review system, because
3:46
Speaker 1: I just finally got my RSS feed onto that, Like
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Speaker 1: I am so grateful for everybody who's rated, reviewed and commented,
3:55
Speaker 1: like you have no idea. It just boosts you so
3:57
Speaker 1: much and it makes it it makes the point cast
4:00
Speaker 1: more visible for everybody else. It'd be nice if I
4:03
Speaker 1: could actually get some advertisers and stuff like that, because
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Speaker 1: it's not easy. Funds man funds. So like I was
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Speaker 1: charting in like four terrortories, like I just I can't.
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm very this blew me away and I
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Speaker 1: didn't even see it. And then I hit five thousand downloads.
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Speaker 1: I'm still like, i'man I and I just want to
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Speaker 1: say thank you so much to everybody, everybody who who
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Speaker 1: did it. I just I do thank you, thank you
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Speaker 1: so so much. It's amazing. But I know what you're thinking.
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Speaker 1: You're thinking quite your jibber jabber in fact me and
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Speaker 1: of course I will. But we have to get our
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Speaker 1: source on. So we have Women's History dot Org, Amelia
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Speaker 1: Earhart dot com, History dot com, Biography dot com, Britannica
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Speaker 1: dot Com, and the book Amelia Earhart's Last Flight by
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Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart. So let's get down to business, shall we.
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Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart was born in July twenty fourth, eighteen ninety
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Speaker 1: seven in Attres in Kansas, in her grandfather's house. But
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Speaker 1: it was it. It was the eighteen nineties in her
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Speaker 1: grandfather's house, which was the way of the past. Her
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Speaker 1: mum's family, they all had money, her dad's not so much. Also,
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Speaker 1: Samuel stand In Earhart, who for some reason was known
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Speaker 1: as Edwin. He was a railroad lawyer, a railway lawyer,
5:45
Speaker 1: railroad draw He was a lawyer for the railroad and
5:48
Speaker 1: the railway and one of those things. So yeah, so
5:53
Speaker 1: he was a railway lawyer. And Amelia's family were you know,
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Speaker 1: Amilia's mom, Amelia, that's right, her family were rich. So
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Speaker 1: Emilia Earhart's maternal grandfather was a former federal judge and
6:11
Speaker 1: president of the Savings Bank in Atchison. Like of course
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Speaker 1: he has money. Anyway, Emilia and her young and her
6:20
Speaker 1: younger sister Grace, they're mainly seeing as tomboys, with Amelia
6:24
Speaker 1: being the ringleader because she is the bigger sister. That's
6:26
Speaker 1: just how it works. And the two girls end up
6:30
Speaker 1: staying with their grandparents after their dad gets a job
6:33
Speaker 1: in Des Moines in Iowa, so they stay in Kansas.
6:36
Speaker 1: They get homeschooled, get a governess. The whoshebang. A couple
6:39
Speaker 1: of years later, when they're finally reunited with you know,
6:41
Speaker 1: everybody in des Moines, comes really clear, really quickly that
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Speaker 1: Edwin is an alcoholic, to the point where he drains
6:50
Speaker 1: the family of their finances. He is forced to retire
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Speaker 1: from his job and like he does attempt to like
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Speaker 1: sort himself out, but unfortunately he she never gets that
7:00
Speaker 1: particular drawback. And then, like around about the same time
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Speaker 1: this happens, Amelia's grandparents die and some money is left
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Speaker 1: in trust for a couple of years for the girls,
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Speaker 1: but things like their house and stuff they all get
7:14
Speaker 1: auctioned off because they've got no fucking money. They're fucked.
7:19
Speaker 1: So Edwin he's jumping from pillar to post, going around
7:22
Speaker 1: the railway trying to get jobs as a clerk. So
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Speaker 1: the girls end up moving and they obviously they're going
7:27
Speaker 1: with their dad goes, so they go. So they have
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Speaker 1: a sort of transient school life and Amelia finally completes
7:35
Speaker 1: high school in Chicago, And the weird thing for the
7:38
Speaker 1: time is Amelia got to choose her own school. Like
7:41
Speaker 1: there was a school that was closer, but she didn't
7:43
Speaker 1: want to go to it because the science lab looked
7:46
Speaker 1: like a kitchen sink, and so she went to a
7:48
Speaker 1: school that was further away because it had better science. Basically,
7:52
Speaker 1: the trust from the grandparents comes in and Amelia manages
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Speaker 1: to go to the I'm gonna pronounce this wrong the
7:58
Speaker 1: Oagonte School in Pennsylvania, which is like a junior college,
8:02
Speaker 1: but she doesn't complete the program because during a Christmas
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Speaker 1: vacation in nineteen seventeen, so during World War One, and
8:09
Speaker 1: she goes to visit her sister in Toronto in Canada.
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Speaker 1: Emilia is inspired to care for soldiers who were wounded
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Speaker 1: in the war, and in nineteen eighteen, she leaves junior
8:19
Speaker 1: college to become a nurse's aid in Toronto. She gets
8:22
Speaker 1: trained by the Red Cross and she's working in this
8:25
Speaker 1: voluntary aid detachment in a military hospital. And then, because
8:29
Speaker 1: what happens in nineteen eighteen, the Spanish fucking flew what
8:34
Speaker 1: a pandemic you say, yes, yes, absolutely, unfortunately for Amelia,
8:40
Speaker 1: and while she's working night chefs at the spaed in
8:42
Speaker 1: a military hospital, she ends up becoming a patient because
8:47
Speaker 1: she gets pneumonia and maxillary sinositis. So she gets hospitalized
8:53
Speaker 1: in November of nineteen eighteen because of the pneumonia and
8:56
Speaker 1: she finally gets discharged in December. But and this sinocytis.
9:01
Speaker 1: The problem is, this is an era before antibiotics, This
9:06
Speaker 1: is pre antibiotics. So she had to have these operations
9:11
Speaker 1: which were pretty bloody painful where they have to sort
9:14
Speaker 1: of wash out maxillary sinus, sop up your sinuses, up
9:18
Speaker 1: your nose, and these none of these were actually successful.
9:23
Speaker 1: So basically she had pain and pressure around one eye
9:28
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, if you're eating, don't listen to the
9:30
Speaker 1: next ten seconds. She had a fucked ton of mucus
9:34
Speaker 1: drainage through her nostrils and her throat. Because these procedures
9:39
Speaker 1: were bullshit, she ended up suffering from like horrific headaches
9:44
Speaker 1: and pains for nearly a year. And at this point
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Speaker 1: her sister lived in Northampton and Massachusetts, and so she
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Speaker 1: ends up moving in with her sister while she rests
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Speaker 1: and you know, hopefully gets back on track. Here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: Her sinocytis affects her for the rest of her life,
10:01
Speaker 1: to the point there sometimes she would wear this bandage
10:05
Speaker 1: on her cheek so that she could hide a drainage tube.
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Speaker 1: The cinasirius itself would affect her in the air. Later on,
10:13
Speaker 1: after she's rested up and she's hailed, Amelia enters the
10:17
Speaker 1: pre med program at Columbia University in New York, but
10:21
Speaker 1: her parents want her to live with them in California,
10:23
Speaker 1: so she just leaves in nineteen twenty. And it was
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Speaker 1: in California that she went on her first airplane ride,
10:30
Speaker 1: and she loved it so much that she ended up
10:32
Speaker 1: taking flying lessons. So she gets flying lessons and she
10:36
Speaker 1: learns to fly, and a year later she buys her
10:40
Speaker 1: first plane, a Kinner airstar, and another tears after that
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Speaker 1: she gets her pilot's license, and you're thinking, is she
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Speaker 1: up in the air, Is she going to do her
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Speaker 1: cool stuff? Yet? Nope. In the middle of the Roaring twenties,
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Speaker 1: what does Amelia Earhart do. She moves back to Massachusetts
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Speaker 1: and becomes a social worker and she works at a
11:00
Speaker 1: place called Dennison House, which is like this settlement home
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Speaker 1: for immigrants in Boston. But she's still, you know, keeping
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Speaker 1: her eye on the whole aviation thing. And like probably
11:12
Speaker 1: in the latter half of the twenties, all these promoters
11:15
Speaker 1: are looking for a woman to fly across the Atlantic
11:19
Speaker 1: Ocean because you know, because Let's face it, it's going
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Speaker 1: to look cool, you know what I mean, It's going
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Speaker 1: to be what a woman did a thing. So Earhart
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Speaker 1: gets picked for the job really in April nineteen twenty eight,
11:33
Speaker 1: and some people think it's because she looked a bit
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Speaker 1: like Charles Lindberg, who was like the first dude to
11:38
Speaker 1: fly NonStop across the Atlantic Zulu like a yearboo. And
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Speaker 1: on June seventeenth, nineteen twenty eight, Amelia Earhart departs Newfoundland,
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Speaker 1: Canada as a passenger, mind you, on a seaplane that
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Speaker 1: is being piloted by Wilmore Stiltz and Louis Gordon Lewis Gordon.
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Speaker 1: And when they land in Burryport in Wales on June
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Speaker 1: a eighteenth, Amelia Earhart becomes an international celebrity. She does
12:04
Speaker 1: what every smart woman in the nineteen twenties does. She
12:07
Speaker 1: writes a fucking book called twenty Hours forty Minutes, and
12:11
Speaker 1: she goes on a lecture tour across the US. George
12:14
Speaker 1: Palmer Putnam he is not only the publisher of the book,
12:18
Speaker 1: but he runs the publicity circuit and also is the
12:23
Speaker 1: one who organized this historical flight. And surprise, surprise, three
12:27
Speaker 1: years later they get married. But Amelia when it comes
12:31
Speaker 1: to her career, she keeps her maiden name because yeah,
12:35
Speaker 1: she did, so she breaks a couple of records, so
12:38
Speaker 1: she decides she's going to break a record. So Amelia
12:41
Speaker 1: decides she's going to cross the Atlantic for a second time,
12:44
Speaker 1: except this time she's going to do it alone. So
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Speaker 1: May twentieth, nineteen thirty two, she jumps aboard her Lockhead Vega.
12:53
Speaker 1: So she leaves Harbor Grace in Newfoundland in Canada, and
12:56
Speaker 1: she lands, and she lands in Derry in Northern Ireland.
13:00
Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain it was on a golf course, and
13:03
Speaker 1: so this is actually a record. She does this in
13:07
Speaker 1: fourteen hours, in fifty six minutes, even though there's like
13:09
Speaker 1: a bunch of problems because she was supposed to land
13:12
Speaker 1: in Paris but she landed in Ireland. Yeah, like a
13:17
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff went wrong, mechanical difficulties. There was weather,
13:21
Speaker 1: because of course there was May twenty first, I think
13:25
Speaker 1: when she lands, and so after this, what does she do?
13:28
Speaker 1: She writes another fucking book, of course, she does, called
13:30
Speaker 1: The Fun of It in nineteen thirty two. So she's
13:33
Speaker 1: doing her thing. She's flying across the US and piloting here,
13:37
Speaker 1: piloting there. But also Amelia Earhart not one for gender roles,
13:44
Speaker 1: to be honest, So she was like breakfast rolls, not
13:47
Speaker 1: gender roles. So what she was doing was encouraging women
13:51
Speaker 1: being liberated and going into and to go after opportunities
13:56
Speaker 1: and professions, especially those that were male domin and especially
14:01
Speaker 1: in aviation. Oh my godness. Yeah. Back in twenty nine,
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Speaker 1: she is part of this organization of female pilots which
14:09
Speaker 1: becomes known as the ninety nines, and she is the
14:12
Speaker 1: first president of it. Also, in addition, furthermore, she brings
14:17
Speaker 1: out a clothing line in the thirties which is a
14:23
Speaker 1: functional clothing line designed for and I quote the woman
14:27
Speaker 1: who lives actively. Emili Earhart was a feminist, so Robin.
14:35
Speaker 1: So here we are. Nineteen thirty five, Emily Earhart makes history.
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Speaker 1: She does the first solo flight from Hawaii to California,
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Speaker 1: which is actually a longer route than you know, America
14:49
Speaker 1: to Europe. It's like nearly two and a half thousand
14:52
Speaker 1: miles long. She flies from Honolulu on the eleventh of
14:57
Speaker 1: January and lands in Oakland the next day. And I
15:01
Speaker 1: could tell her what like seventeen hours and seven minutes
15:04
Speaker 1: in total, and then and then near the end of
15:06
Speaker 1: the year, she is the first person to fly solo
15:10
Speaker 1: from LA to Mexico City, first person, not first women,
15:16
Speaker 1: first person. Amelia Earhart at this point is breaking all
15:20
Speaker 1: of these barriers. So in nin yet thirty six, Emilia
15:25
Speaker 1: her heart. She decides she's going to seal her name
15:27
Speaker 1: in the record books because she is going to fly
15:30
Speaker 1: around the world, which is like a twenty nine thousand
15:34
Speaker 1: mile journey. The first attempt doesn't go well. The second
15:37
Speaker 1: attempt in nineteen thirty seven also doesn't go well. So
15:43
Speaker 1: the plan is to circle around the globe and she's
15:45
Speaker 1: gonna like zigzag along the equator, which basically means she's
15:49
Speaker 1: going to have these long hauls over water. The journey
15:53
Speaker 1: in total is going to be about twenty nine thousand
15:55
Speaker 1: miles and it should take about forty days. So it
15:58
Speaker 1: starts in California and then it's going to stop in
16:01
Speaker 1: like San Juan, Calcutta, Bangkok, New Guinea. So Amelia Earhart
16:07
Speaker 1: and her navigator, Frank Noonan, they're going to go in
16:10
Speaker 1: this twin engine Lockheed ten Elektra, which is a ten
16:14
Speaker 1: passenger plane. But it's been like I don't want to
16:17
Speaker 1: say retrofitted. Retrofitted seems like the wrong word. So they
16:20
Speaker 1: basically pulled a pimp my ride and filled it with
16:24
Speaker 1: these special tanks that would carry over one thousand pounds
16:28
Speaker 1: a feel instead of the usual two hundred. Because of
16:31
Speaker 1: these larger stretches, she's going to be over water and
16:33
Speaker 1: she's not going to get a chance to refuel. So
16:36
Speaker 1: on the May twenty first, air heart and noon and
16:38
Speaker 1: they get up and get off and fly from Oakland
16:42
Speaker 1: and California. So yeah, they're leaving from Miami and they're
16:46
Speaker 1: heading never each shredded week east and so over the
16:49
Speaker 1: next few weeks they're making all these like different refueling
16:53
Speaker 1: stops and they reach Laye in New Guinea, and on
16:55
Speaker 1: July second, they are what forty two days into the journey,
17:00
Speaker 1: so they're two days over at this point anyway than
17:02
Speaker 1: they're estimated flight time. Yeah, they traveled twenty to those miles,
17:05
Speaker 1: which is what thirty five thousand comers. So when they
17:07
Speaker 1: leave New Guinea, they're heading towards Howland Island, which is
17:13
Speaker 1: two and a half thousand miles away. A bit more maybe,
17:17
Speaker 1: but this Wee Island, it's really really difficult to locate,
17:22
Speaker 1: and because the navigation is so funky, there are two
17:26
Speaker 1: US ships are stationed to mark the route, and these
17:30
Speaker 1: ships are like really really brightly lit to just sort
17:33
Speaker 1: of help guide the way. And this flight should take
17:36
Speaker 1: about eighteen hours in total. There's a US Coast guy
17:39
Speaker 1: Color which is actually near Howland and called the Atasca,
17:43
Speaker 1: And there was a radio operator called Harry Balfour who
17:46
Speaker 1: would send transmissions every hour and knows and he notices
17:50
Speaker 1: that after she departs, the headwinds are really strong, you know,
17:53
Speaker 1: and obviously he's like sending your transmissions being like, hey,
17:55
Speaker 1: it's fucking one day, you know. I mean, she doesn't
17:58
Speaker 1: seem to get the messages. And the thing about these
18:01
Speaker 1: headwinds are they just screw up the whole scenario because
18:05
Speaker 1: they mess with speed, they mess with the sort of
18:08
Speaker 1: the fuel consumption, and basically they ball locks up the
18:12
Speaker 1: length of the flight. And in the afternoon and a
18:14
Speaker 1: bunch of a million air hurts transmissions which were like
18:18
Speaker 1: blocked for some reason, We're finally received by Bulver and late,
18:22
Speaker 1: you know, when she's giving her like altitude or speed
18:24
Speaker 1: or status speed one forty nuts, altitude seven thousand feet
18:29
Speaker 1: status okay, and then over an hour later, her next
18:34
Speaker 1: transmission that the plane has climbed to ten thousand feet,
18:37
Speaker 1: which is really weird because it just burns fuel. So
18:42
Speaker 1: like the idea is that maybe the like there was
18:45
Speaker 1: clouds or she was coming up to a mountain or something,
18:48
Speaker 1: or there was a mountain in view. And you have
18:50
Speaker 1: to remember as well, these transmissions are like delayed, so
18:53
Speaker 1: by the time the plane is getting near Holland Island,
18:55
Speaker 1: the plane was down to like ninety something gallons of fuel.
18:58
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so the task. So it's just off the
19:01
Speaker 1: coast of Holland Island and they could hear Ameliar airt transmissions,
19:06
Speaker 1: so she had to be fairly close to the island,
19:09
Speaker 1: and one of her last transmissions was we must be
19:13
Speaker 1: on you, but cannot see you. And the more worrying
19:18
Speaker 1: one gas is running low and her last transmission says
19:23
Speaker 1: we are running north and south and that she was
19:26
Speaker 1: sounding panicked and frantic, because of course you are if
19:31
Speaker 1: you've got low visibility and you're in a dangerous area.
19:34
Speaker 1: So basically, but amiliar Earhart's plane doesn't arrive in Howland
19:39
Speaker 1: Island on July second, nineteen thirty seven. Famed aviator Amelia
19:45
Speaker 1: Earhart disappears along with her navigator Fred Nna. You know,
19:52
Speaker 1: the task is out. It's searching the waters like it
19:56
Speaker 1: was it. Nearly a week later, a barttleship called the
19:59
Speaker 1: Color comes and starts searching the waters like on the
20:02
Speaker 1: other side of the island. And then an aircraft carrier
20:05
Speaker 1: called the Lexington arrives and it starts searching the waters
20:09
Speaker 1: around the area. So before we get to what happened,
20:13
Speaker 1: we're going to debunk a couple of aies. So the
20:16
Speaker 1: first theory is that they made the plane basically crashed
20:20
Speaker 1: around Howland Island. Firstly where she should have lasted a
20:23
Speaker 1: couple more hours, like fuel wise, like she should have
20:27
Speaker 1: had another four hours before transmission stopped. The second thing
20:32
Speaker 1: is all these ships are looking for the waters surrounding
20:36
Speaker 1: Howland Island are eighteen thousand feet deep, and for fifteen
20:41
Speaker 1: years from two thousand and two to twenty seventeen, this
20:45
Speaker 1: company called Nauricos and teams up like a bunch of people.
20:48
Speaker 1: It uses all this like sonar shit to try and
20:51
Speaker 1: seek scan the ground where they think the plane went down,
20:54
Speaker 1: but they found zero evidence of anything there nid nada.
21:00
Speaker 1: And then there's the capture by the Japanese Empire, which
21:03
Speaker 1: is like based on this photo. But you know, people
21:06
Speaker 1: always talk about the Alienate your Heart photo. Unfortunately that
21:10
Speaker 1: photo actually was taken several years before Amilia Earhart win missing,
21:14
Speaker 1: so that's a no. Another theory is that she is
21:20
Speaker 1: like she was like a spy for President Roosevelt who
21:24
Speaker 1: ended up secretly living the end of her days in
21:27
Speaker 1: New Jersey. It's probably the most unbelievable thing. I mean,
21:31
Speaker 1: who's to say. Maybe she really liked skable and some
21:35
Speaker 1: people who have a little to no imagination decided that
21:38
Speaker 1: she just went fuck this for a game of soldiers
21:41
Speaker 1: on floa plane directly into the Pacific Ocean, because sure,
21:47
Speaker 1: why not. So now let's get to the interesting part.
21:50
Speaker 1: Fifteen year old Bady Clenk is listening to her shortwave
21:54
Speaker 1: radio in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Being a fifteen year old
21:58
Speaker 1: girl in the thirties, teenagers weren't in vin to get
22:00
Speaker 1: She was probably still either a child or woman at
22:02
Speaker 1: that point, I don't know. So she would be sitting
22:04
Speaker 1: on the floor with a me notebook and she'd write
22:06
Speaker 1: down the words to her favorite songs to learn them listen,
22:10
Speaker 1: that's what we used to do before we had eighty
22:12
Speaker 1: Z lyrics. I'm just saying anyhow, because you know, they
22:15
Speaker 1: had the radio. Her dad up this big antenna in
22:17
Speaker 1: the back garden so that she could pick up radio
22:20
Speaker 1: stations from all over. So she's you know, moving the
22:23
Speaker 1: dial across, you know, looking for some funky tunes. And
22:26
Speaker 1: now she's turning the doll. She hears a woman's voice
22:28
Speaker 1: and she sounds upset, so, you know, is this a
22:31
Speaker 1: radio drama? Is this something interesting for her? And then
22:34
Speaker 1: she hears the words this is Amelia Earhart. So at
22:36
Speaker 1: this point, emiliar Earhart is one of the most famous
22:39
Speaker 1: people in the world, and Betty knows all about her
22:42
Speaker 1: because she's a fifteen year old girl in the thirties.
22:45
Speaker 1: So she just starts scribbling down on a notebook whatever
22:47
Speaker 1: she can hear. But the signal is like fading in
22:50
Speaker 1: and out and like sometimes stops and other bits. It's
22:53
Speaker 1: like really distorted, and she just writes down whatever she hears,
22:56
Speaker 1: absolutely everything. She wasn't sure about what word was being said,
23:00
Speaker 1: so she wrote down what she thought it was, which is,
23:01
Speaker 1: you know, probably the best option to be honest. So
23:04
Speaker 1: she hears Amelia. But she also hears like a dude
23:09
Speaker 1: in the background, and as far as she could figure
23:11
Speaker 1: that is that the guy had sustained a head injury
23:15
Speaker 1: and was like concussed or delirious or something, and that
23:18
Speaker 1: they had crash. So what Betty could surmise from this
23:22
Speaker 1: they'd managed to get to land and there was an
23:24
Speaker 1: issue with rising water and so basically the transmissions are
23:28
Speaker 1: continuing for like three hours. So mister Klink he reports
23:33
Speaker 1: all this information to the Coastguard and they're like, ah no,
23:37
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know if they like just weren't
23:40
Speaker 1: taking it seriously or whether they genuinely thought that like,
23:44
Speaker 1: of course this little girl didn't pick up transmissions if
23:46
Speaker 1: we didn't pick up the transmissions because they were getting
23:48
Speaker 1: reports about her, like all across the world. They get
23:52
Speaker 1: informed that the government has ships in the area and
23:54
Speaker 1: that everything's under control, and they even send her letter
23:57
Speaker 1: to Fred Gerner. But the only response, only response she
24:01
Speaker 1: ever got was a not interested one. And here's the thing.
24:05
Speaker 1: She kept her notebook at least until the age of
24:10
Speaker 1: seventy eight, as far as I know. So let's skip
24:13
Speaker 1: forward to nineteen forty and partial remains are found on
24:18
Speaker 1: what was then called Gardener Island, which is now Niku
24:22
Speaker 1: Mororo in the Republic of Kiribati. I'm sorry if I
24:25
Speaker 1: pronounced that incorrectly to everyone listening. British Colonel Officer Gerald
24:30
Speaker 1: Gallaher finds the remains of a campsite, a partial human skeleton,
24:35
Speaker 1: the box of the sextant that Amelia was using, and
24:39
Speaker 1: a bunch of other bonds. Also, I can't remember it
24:42
Speaker 1: was a pocket watch or a pocket knife, but it
24:44
Speaker 1: was one of those things with the initial AE on it.
24:47
Speaker 1: And a broken jar of freckle cream. I don't know
24:52
Speaker 1: what Pacific glander needs freckle cream, but okay, in Gerald
24:57
Speaker 1: Gerald's smart man, Gerald thinks, hey, do we think this
25:01
Speaker 1: might be something to do with Amelia Earhart because she
25:05
Speaker 1: was around about this area and all of this seems
25:08
Speaker 1: very fitting. What else about the island is it's also
25:11
Speaker 1: full of coconut crabs. I don't trust coconut crabs like
25:15
Speaker 1: I have now decided sidebark. I've decided that people who
25:18
Speaker 1: are willfully ignorant are basically just three coconut crabs and
25:22
Speaker 1: a trench coat. So Gallaher he gets ordered to, you know,
25:25
Speaker 1: bring the remains back, so he brings them back. And
25:27
Speaker 1: this physician DW. Hitless, was working in a medical school
25:33
Speaker 1: in Fiji. He looks at the bones and he's like, nah, nah,
25:36
Speaker 1: these are a short man's bones. Yep. Absolutely. I think
25:40
Speaker 1: he only really bases it off of like the femur
25:42
Speaker 1: or something and then he's like, eh, whatever, it doesn't
25:46
Speaker 1: matter or not her, so he chucks them away. Modern
25:48
Speaker 1: anthropologists took these measurements and they and they very much
25:53
Speaker 1: match up with the height of Amelia Earhart because the bones.
25:57
Speaker 1: The one thing they could gore on was that the
25:58
Speaker 1: skeleton was of European descent, so yeah, a white woman
26:02
Speaker 1: who was known to be in the area. In nineteen
26:06
Speaker 1: thirty seven, a British expedition went to Nukumurro. I can't
26:11
Speaker 1: say that right. Basically shows this weird thing sticking out
26:15
Speaker 1: of the water and they think it's landing gear, but
26:20
Speaker 1: they can't be sure because you know the photos from
26:23
Speaker 1: the late thirties. Later expeditions to the island found rubber
26:28
Speaker 1: sol shoes, one of a man's size and one of
26:31
Speaker 1: a woman's size, which when bodies disintegrate, the first thing
26:35
Speaker 1: we lose is a foot, so I can kind of
26:37
Speaker 1: see why Nunan's stuff ended up on the shore. Later
26:41
Speaker 1: expeditions again found pieces of the windshield eroded metal, which
26:48
Speaker 1: is not dissimilar to the plane that Amelia was flying
26:52
Speaker 1: that day. But a lot of that stuff's been lost
26:56
Speaker 1: to the sands of time and we'll never get to
26:58
Speaker 1: double jacket. So putting all the evidence together, this is
27:01
Speaker 1: the most likely scenario of what happened Niku Mororo. It
27:04
Speaker 1: is like three hundred and fifty miles south of Howland Island,
27:09
Speaker 1: which is along the line the Earhart last reported flying
27:13
Speaker 1: on and you know, as you know, she's run out
27:16
Speaker 1: of fuel. If she sees the island and the tide
27:18
Speaker 1: is low, she could have tried to use it as
27:20
Speaker 1: an emergency landing strip, but the island is a peculiar shape,
27:25
Speaker 1: so the plane crashes. Nonan is definitely stuck in the
27:28
Speaker 1: plane somehow, but Amelia manages to get out. Whatever happens,
27:33
Speaker 1: they're trying to get They're trying to send transmissions, but
27:35
Speaker 1: the tide is coming in and there's not a lot
27:38
Speaker 1: they can do. Nounan sustains some kind of head injury
27:42
Speaker 1: and he is trapped in the plane. They manage to
27:44
Speaker 1: get the landing gear down enough that they can charge
27:46
Speaker 1: the battery to send transmissions. Eventually, Earhart has to leave
27:51
Speaker 1: the plane and they critically injured Nonan behind, she makes
27:56
Speaker 1: a campsite on the southeast of the island, waiting to
27:59
Speaker 1: be rescued by a saltwater island. You know, you've got
28:02
Speaker 1: rain walls and stuff like that, but so there's signs
28:05
Speaker 1: that you know that small birds and fish were eaten.
28:09
Speaker 1: They think she was there for a couple of days,
28:11
Speaker 1: but she probably would have died of either exposure or dehydration,
28:16
Speaker 1: and then to had insult to injury. She was partially
28:20
Speaker 1: eaten by coconut crabs, and those things are fucking terrifying,
28:24
Speaker 1: by the way. So a week later, when the Navy
28:28
Speaker 1: planes are flying overhead, they see the campsite, but they
28:33
Speaker 1: assumed that the island was inhabited, but this island hadn't
28:37
Speaker 1: been inhabited since eighteen ninety two, So they flew over
28:41
Speaker 1: and there was very much a possibility that she was
28:44
Speaker 1: still alive and they didn't save her. Oh An Amelia
28:48
Speaker 1: Earhart is then declared legally dead in absentia in like
28:53
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, I think, and so ends the tale
28:59
Speaker 1: of a meal heart. So what did we learned today?
29:02
Speaker 1: We learned that pioneering women usually get left to the
29:07
Speaker 1: elements a lot of so called mysteries that surround the world,
29:11
Speaker 1: and they like their heart stories one of the ones
29:12
Speaker 1: they like to use to feel that whole bermuda, dry
29:15
Speaker 1: and goole concept. As well, we learned that more has
29:20
Speaker 1: been written about Amelia Earhart's disappearance than has been written
29:25
Speaker 1: about her life, because mystery of her disappearance is always
29:30
Speaker 1: portrayed as far more interesting than the life she led,
29:35
Speaker 1: this pioneer for women, this advocator of women's rights and opportunities,
29:43
Speaker 1: and she was left to wrote on an island. So
29:47
Speaker 1: if you like today's story, Jesus, if you like the
29:50
Speaker 1: way the story was told, please feel free to go
29:54
Speaker 1: onto Apple Podcasts or Google whatever you listen to and
29:58
Speaker 1: read and review five stars and say something, Say something nice,
30:02
Speaker 1: say your following instructions. Give me your opinions on pajamas
30:06
Speaker 1: year nay, okay, recommendations, recommendations Okay, So we're gonna get recommendations.
30:13
Speaker 1: So I started reading The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osmond.
30:17
Speaker 1: I'm only a couple chapters in, but it's feeling good
30:20
Speaker 1: so far listening I have been. I am so I've
30:23
Speaker 1: been listening to my favorite murder this week. I've been
30:25
Speaker 1: catching up. I tend to sort of binge a couple
30:27
Speaker 1: episodes in a row at the minute, because I usually
30:29
Speaker 1: listen to them when I'm cleaning and doing stuff at
30:31
Speaker 1: home in the house. And then I listen to like
30:34
Speaker 1: crime and sports when I'm chilling out because I'm exciting
30:37
Speaker 1: like that and watching. I just watched The Flight Attendant
30:42
Speaker 1: and Kaylee Coco is fantastic. I am here for it.
30:47
Speaker 1: I want a second season. I want to see or
30:49
Speaker 1: do more stuff because oh it's so good. It's so good.
30:54
Speaker 1: So that is that is this week. That is this
30:57
Speaker 1: week's tale of Aameilia Earhart, who King deserved better. And
31:01
Speaker 1: I shall bid you all good day. Adios au revoir
31:06
Speaker 1: of we isn My Friends, Bye bye,