9718/21637
I love a good mystery as much as anyone and the crazy straws that some mystery hunters grab at. Occasionally the crazy straws prove to be correct, like when Richard III was found buried in a car park with an R painted above where he lay (though Turi King who was on that dig told me that that bit isn't true). Hey, it's great if someone finally solves something in that way and I remain excited by that whole tale.
But surely it's slightly more enjoyable when someone comes up with an unlikely bit of evidence or a disputable theory and then is proven to be wrong. Especially if they have invested loads of their time in it and it's taken them ages to get to the place where they thought the evidence lay.
There is some minor evidence that Earhart and that bloke she was with (no one knows his name. Once again, men written out of history) might have landed on Nikumaroro and perished there. But nothing as convincing as a plane. So when a satellite image showed something vaguely plane shaped on the shore of the lagoon, it looked to the willing eye like things were going to get wrapped up.
Some people said that the satellite image looked more like some trees than a plane. And looking at it now, with the benefit of hindsight, it really does look much more like some trees than a plane. But without that hindsight it also did look really like some trees. I thought this as the adventurers were on their way. And as much as I'd really like the mystery to be solved, I slightly more wanted the expedition to get there and find the trees. That they definitely were. Not that I was brave enough to blog this til now in case I was wrong and it was me who looked like an idiot, albeit one that hadn't travelled for days at great expense to discover something that could almost be ascertained from a photo.
Also though, I love that expedition and the hope that fuelled it and them taking a chance. Who dares wins. Sometimes. Often not though. Actually probably on balance, who dares usually loses but occasionally it is actually Richard III.
And if it had been the plane then think of the riches and kudos that would have been bestowed on these people. If it didn't then they get a nice holiday on a presumably inhospitable desert island. Nice to get out. I've just been sitting in my office playing with puppets and contemplating my redundancy.
Turns out I am jealous of the people who travelled for days across the sea to see if some clearly identifiable trees were a decades old airplane that had somehow kept its basic shape, only to discover it was trees, like everyone said.
It's all relative.
The good news is that until we find a body, Amelia and the unidentified man, might still be alive. And I am the man who will rescue them.
