Last Sunday, The History Channel aired a new documentary, Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, which followed the legendary last flight of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. On the last leg of their attempt to circumnavigate the globe, the daring duo disappeared, leaving the world to speculate on their fate.
The television special attempted to introduce new evidence to the story — a photograph believed to show Earhart and Noonan on a dock in the Marshall Islands. The History Channel used facial recognition software to conclude it is “very likely” that the photo contains images of Earhart and Noonan.
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Did Amelia Earhart die in captivity?
The only problem is, this photo was published two years prior to Earhart’s disappearance.
The Guardian reports a military history blogger, Kota Yamano, unearthed the image from Japan’s national library in about a half an hour:
“I have never believed the theory that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, so I decided to find out for myself,” Yamano told the Guardian. “I was sure that the same photo must be on record in Japan… “I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared. That’s the first thing they should have done.”
Yamano’s Twitter post drew fresh rounds of speculation and criticism of the documentary.
Aleteia, like the rest of the media that reported on The History Channel’s supposition, remains confounded about the last days of Amelia Earhart. The mystery continues.
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