Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her plane were lost over the Pacific in 1937.
Neither were ever found.
But now researchers argue that a chunk of metal discovered in 1991 belongs to Earhart’s vanished Lockheed Electra.
According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 77 years ago, the aluminum sheet is a patch of metal installed on the Electra during the aviator’s eight-day stay in Miami, which was the fourth stop on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe.
Discovery News notes that TIGHAR has been looking into the Earhart mystery for many years.
The piece was found on Nikumaroro, which Discovery News describes as “an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.” Here it is — really the middle of the vast empty ocean that is this part of the Pacific: