If you recall, I blogged about this as my very first entry last fall.
It looks like Richard Gillespie and TIGHAR are planning another expedition to Gardner Island/Nikumaroro next summer, in 2010. For some reason, this article was published recently on Discovery.com, as if it were already a fait accompli. While I think it’s an exciting idea, I think it is misleading for Discovery to publish an article about an expedition that’s going to happen almost a year from now in which they hope to prove their theory, when there have been previous expeditions which were unsuccessful. They make it sound as if it’s a sure thing that Gillespie’s and TIGHAR’s theory is what happened, but I like to remember that many people have had theories on this subject, and until conclusive evidence is found we won’t know which one is correct. Does it seem likely to me that Gillespie is right and Earhart and Noonan crash landed on Nikumaroro? Sure. But just to be fair to all parties, I want to point out that Mr. David Billings left a comment to my original posting directing those of you interested in this topic to his website, http://www.electranewbritain.com/. Check it out and make your own opinion.
And by the way, does anyone else find the line “A new biopic about Earhart’s life, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, opens this weekend” a little bit strange? I can’t say I would ever have picked either of them to be in a movie about Amelia Earhart.