Today would have been Amelia Earhart's 115th birthday. Seventy-five years after the pioneering airwoman disappeared over the Pacific, people are still hoping to find her body or  wreckage from her plane.

She's less famous for her advertising. When she was alive, she endorsed a luggage line and a clothing line at Macy's.

She was also the face of Lucky Strike cigarettes in the late 1920s. In 1928 and 1929, after her historic transatlantic flight, she claimed she smoked Lucky Strikes throughout the journey from Canada to England.

The copy on the 1928 ad read:

Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the 'Friendship' when she crossed the Atlantic. They were smoked continuously from Trepassey to Wales. I think nothing else helped so much to less the strain for all of us.

The 1929 copy was shorter:

Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the 'Friendship' when she crossed the Atlantic.

Both copies centered around the "It's toasted. No throat Irritation. No cough" message, although the later ad also attempted to appeal more to females mentioning Earhart's "slender figure."

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• BABIES, PUPPIES AND SANTA: These Vintage Cigarette Spokespeople Are Grotesque >
  

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On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished during an attempt to fly around the world. 

Seventy-five years later, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, is dedicated to solving the disappearance of "Lady Lindy." In July 2012, the organization launched an underwater expedition near a remote island in the South Pacific called Nikumaroro in hopes of recovering aircraft wreckage.   

The search was prompted by a photo taken three months after Earhart disappeared, which, according to TIGHAR, appeared to show the landing gear of Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane sticking out of the water on a reef off of Nikumaroro.

The multi-million dollar expedition, which ended early due to rough seas and equipment issues, was initially deemed a failure since no wreckage was found. But the team did return with several hours of high-definition video.

Now, based on a preliminary review of the footage, TIGHAR says it has identified "a scattering of man-made objects on the reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro" that resemble the objects in the 1937 photo. Meaning this "debris field" could be pieces of Earhart's plane.  

Though TIGHAR's Executive Director Ric Gillespie says we shouldn't jump to conclusions. 

"We don't want to oversell this. It's more evidence. It is where it should be, and that is encouraging," Gillespie told Reuters' Malia Mattoch McManus. "If it does appear to be airplane wreckage, it becomes figuring out how to go back and look at it."

Below: Arrows point to possible remnants from Earhart's plane in a screenshot from the underwater video.  

(Click to enlarge). 

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We recently discovered the awesome Twitter feed of historian Michael Beschloss, which is mainly cool historical photos.

Last night, Michael tweeted a great photo of the New York skyline in 1947.

This morning, it's a picture of Amelia Earhart in 1932, just after she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Beschloss says the picture was taken 81 years ago today, as Earhart was getting ready to leave Newfoundland.
 

Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.

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A team of researchers investigating the mystery of aviator Amelia Earhart's 1937 disappearance believe they may have spotted a piece of wreckage from her plane just beyond the shore of a remote Pacific island.

Forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) contends that a sonar image of debris off the island of Nikumaroro — located 800 miles southwest of Honolulu — could represent a wing or part of the fuselage from Earhart's aircraft.

"It is unique, and suggestive of being man made,"TIGHAR Executive Director Richard Gillespie told Reuters. "It is in the right place, but whether it's a fuselage or a wing is difficult to say."

Nearing the end of their quest, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan departed Papua New Guinea on July 2, 1937, on a quest to circle the globe along the equator. They disappeared that day and emergency searches did not locate them.

Gillespie told us that his team is feeling excited, anxious, and determined as they raise sorely needed funds for a potential summer 2014 expedition to authenticate the object.

"There is only one way to authenticate the object — go look at it," Gillespie told us. "We will, of course, continue to seek expert opinions and advice. We also plan to do a complete re-analysis of all the sonar data from the 2012 trip to see if anything else was missed."

Gillespie told Reuters that circumstantial evidence collected on previous trips to Nikumaroro suggests that Earhart ended her days as a castaway, ultimately perishing in the island's harsh conditions.

From Reuters:

Items that have been discovered include what appears to be a jar of a once-popular brand of anti-freckle cream from the 1930s, a clothing zipper from the same decade, a bone-handled pocket knife of the type Earhart carried, and piles of fish and bird bones indicative of a Westerner trying to survive.

In July 2012 the team — prompted by a photo taken three months after Earhart disappeared that appeared to show the landing gear of Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane — launched a $2.2 million underwater expedition around a reef off of Nikumaroro.

High definition video of the work revealed "a scattering of man-made objects on the reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro" that resemble the objects in the 1937 photo.

Now it's just a matter of investigating the sonar images further.

"I'm 100% confident that Nikumaroro is where Earhart ended up, but that confidence is based on many independent lines of investigation that all lead to the same conclusion," Gillespie told Business Insider via email. "High confidence in any single clue that has not yet been thoroughly investigated is a fool's errand. This is a really, really good sonar target."

Only time will tell if the team has solved an enduring American mystery.

Check out the rest of TIGHAR's findings here >

SEE ALSO: See Amelia Earhart's Ads For Lucky Strike Cigarettes

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Join the conversation about this story »

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.

Discovery News reports:

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:

SEE ALSO: Expedition Team Explains How They'll Find Out If This Really Is Amelia Earhart's Plane

Join the conversation about this story »

Washington (AFP) - The quest to solve one of aviation's most enduring mysteries, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, resumes on a South Pacific atoll next week -- with a cruise ship looking on for the first time.

The 11th TIGHAR expedition will be searching for more clues to back up the theory that the celebrated American aviatrix crash-landed on Nikumaroro when she vanished in 1937 during a round-the-world flight.

"The object is to see if we can add to the preponderance of evidence that we have assembled in the course of 27 years and 10 expeditions to the island," said Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR -- the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. 

"If we make a dramatic discovery, that would be great, but I'm not going to predict that that is what we are going to do," Gillespie told AFP in a telephone interview Monday.

In one of aviation's enduring riddles, Earhart, 39, and navigator Fred Noonan, 44, vanished as they were flying from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island on July 2, 1937.

For years it was assumed that they ditched their Lockheed Electra into the sea after running out of fuel, never to be seen again. Some believed they were taken captive by Imperial Japanese forces.

But over the years, TIGHAR has explored the likelihood that the duo survived a crash-landing on a flat reef off Nikumaroro and went ashore to await rescue, only to witness their Electra being swept into the sea.

Nikumaroro lies 360 miles (560 kilometers) south-southeast of Howland Island, a US possession half-way between Hawaii and Australia.

Departing from Fiji

TIGHAR's latest expedition will set off from Fiji on June 8 for the five-day sea journey to uninhabited Nikumaroro, formerly known as Gardner Island and today part of Kiribati.

Plans call for Gillespie and his team of 14 volunteers to remain for two weeks.

Joining them for a few days will be 68 paying passengers on the first cruise ship to visit the island on an Earhart-themed voyage of adventure.

Betchart Expeditions is charging up to $11,000 for the chance to go ashore and see such spots as the place where a 1991 expedition came across a 1930s woman's Oxford shoe of the type Earhart wore.

Participants will also tour the now-abandoned British colonial village, established in 1939, where combs and handicrafts fashioned out of aircraft-grade aluminum have been found.

Speaking from his home in rural Pennsylvania, Gillespie said the upcoming expedition will scour the ocean depths with a remote-operated underwater vehicle equipped with high-definition video and sonar.

Its prime target will be an underwater sonar anomaly, spotted on the 2012 expedition, that could be the expedition's holy grail -- the wreckage of the ill-starred Electra, or at least part of it.

"There is something down there at the base of a cliff at a depth of about 600 feet (180 meters) that is the right size and shape and right location to logically be a big chunk of the fuselage," Gillespie said.

"It could also be an unusual geological feature," he acknowledged. 

"But it's an anomaly. It's something different than anything else we see down there and we need to go look at it."

Survival camp clues

Divers will scope out shallower waters, while an onshore team will probe dense vegetation for any signs of a survival camp that Earhart and Noonan might have set up on the atoll, which has no fresh water.

Internationally known in her lifetime, Earhart entered the history books in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and went on to collect a raft of other aviation records.

Her 1937 flight would have been the first ever to roughly track the equator. When they disappeared, Earhart and Noonan still had 7,000 miles to go before reaching Oakland, California, their starting point.

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The History Channel is about to add a breakthrough development to the mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. The upcoming documentary “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” which premieres on Sunday, July 9, includes photo evidence suggesting Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan survived the plane crash and became Japanese prisoners of war. The photo can be seen by heading to PEOPLE. 

Former FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry is behind the documentary, which attempts to finally answer what happened to Earhart and Noonan after their plane went down in the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. The photo was discovered by former U.S. Treasury Agent Les Kinney in 2012 and is revealed for the first time in the documentary.

The image shows Earhart and Noonan on a dock, with the duo’s Lockheed airplane aboard a ship. The photo would confirm a popular theory stating Earhart and Noonan survived the crash and were held prisoner by the Japanese on the island of Saipan, where they both eventually died.

“This absolutely changes history,” says Henry. He suggests the Japanese believed Earhart and Noonan were American spies and took them in as prisoners.

The photo was discovered in what was once a top secret file in the National Archives. Independent analysts have told History the photo appears to be legitimate.

“When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that’s been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that’s Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” Henry told NBC News. 

“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence” debuts this Sunday at 9pm on the History Channel.

Watch the report “Today Show” did on Wednesday about the never-before-seen photo shown in the movie below:

SEE ALSO: The 30 most anticipated movies for the rest of 2017

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A lost photo may shed new light on the mysterious death of famous aviator Amelia Earhart.

The photo, which will be featured in a new History channel special called "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,"was discovered in the National Archives more than 80 years after her death. In it, a woman who appears to be Earhart sits on a dock in the Marshall Islands near to a man who resembles her navigator Fred Noonan.

After becoming the first female pilot to fly a plane across the Atlantic Ocean, Earhart set off to circumnavigate the globe in July 1937. Her plane vanished without a trace during the flight and, by 1939, both Earhart and Noonan were declared dead.

But the new photo, which shows figures that appear like Earhart and Noonan, could challenge the common theory that the plane crashed somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI, told NBC News that he's confident the photo is legitimate and pictures Earhart sitting on the dock.

"When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that's been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that's Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan," said Henry. Her plane appears to be on a barge in the background being towed by a large ship.

According to NBC News, the team that uncovered the photo believes that the photo demonstrates that Earhart and Noonan were blown off course. The latest photo could suggest that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, experts told NBC News.

While current Japanese authorities told the news outlet that they had no record of Earhart ever being in their custody, American investigators insisted that the photo strongly suggests that Earhart survived the crash and was taken into captivity. 

"We believe that the Koshu took her to Saipan [the Mariana Islands], and that she died there under the custody of the Japanese," said Gary Tarpinian, the executive producer behind the History project.

SEE ALSO: Researchers Say They've Found A Piece Of Amelia Earhart's Lost Plane

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A lost photo may shed new light on the mysterious death of famous aviator Amelia Earhart.

The photo, which will be featured in a new History channel special called "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence," was discovered in the National Archives more than 80 years after her death.

In it, a woman — who appears to be Earhart — sits on a dock in the Marshall Islands near a man who resembles her navigator Fred Noonan.

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Majuro (Marshall Islands) (AFP) - A photograph supposedly showing Amelia Earhart alive in the Marshall Islands in 1937 that caused a stir earlier this month is from a Japanese book published years before the famed aviatrix disappeared, a military expert said Wednesday.

The blurry image apparently showing a white woman sitting on a Marshallese dock generated worldwide interest when it was included in a History Channel documentary screened last weekend.

It renewed interest in the fate of the legendary American and her navigator Fred Noonan who disappeared over the Pacific in July 1937 while attempting an around-the-world flight.

The programme suggested the undated photograph found in the National Archives in Washington showed Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese forces. 

But military expert Matthew B. Holly​ said he had tracked the original image to a Japanese photographer's travelogue through Micronesia published before Earhart vanished.

Holly said that unlike the Washington photograph, the original -- available at Japan’s National Diet Library Digital collection— is dated.

He said the documents showed the photograph was taken at Jaluit Atoll in 1935 and published as part of the 111-page travelogue in 1936.

"There is no question the photo was taken in 1935," he told AFP.

"The book is a photo collection of a man travelling on (a Japanese) vessel. The table of contents is a travelogue that looks like Saipan down to Yap, Pohnpei, and a number of photos in the Marshalls ending the book."

Holly, an American living in Majuro, has spent decades tracking down the locations of lost US aircraft and the identities of American servicemen killed in action in the western Pacific nation.

He was sceptical about the claims made about Earhart's appearance in the photograph from the outset, citing the absence of Japanese flags and soldiers in the image.

Earhart and Noonan vanished after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, and the prevailing belief is that they ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific Ocean near remote Howland Island.

There has long been an oral tradition in the Marshalls that the pair crashed on a small island in Mili Atoll and were later seen at Jaluit.

But the US-based International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery dismisses the Marshalls theory.

It believes Earhart went down at Nikumaroro Atoll in the central Pacific nation of Kiribati and has launched several expeditions there searching for evidence.

SEE ALSO: Amelia Earhart's disappearance may finally be explained with one photo

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• A new study using modern forensic osteology methods reveals that bones found on the the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro are likely to be of the famed aviator Amelia Earhart.
• Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937.

A new analysis concludes that bones found in 1940 on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro are likely the remains of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

The new report is the latest chapter in a back-and-forth that has played out about the remains, which are now lost.

All that survive are seven measurements, from the skull and bones from the arm and leg. Those measurements led a scientist in 1941 to conclude that they belong to a man.

Now University of Tennessee anthropologist Richard Jantz has weighed in with a new analysis of the measurements, published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.

"Some have summarily dismissed these bones as the remains of Amelia Earhart because they were assessed as male by Dr. D. W. Hoodless, principal of the Central Medical School, Fiji, in 1940," Jantz wrote in the abstract of the study.

But forensic osteology was not a well-developed discipline when Hoodless' conducted his assessment, especially concerning the methods and data used to determine the sex of the bones, Jantz wrote. 

Jantz compared "Earhart’s bone lengths with the Nikumaroro bones using Mahalanobis distance," he wrote. "This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample. This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart."

Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937. The search for an answer to what happened to her and her navigator has captivated the public for decades.

SEE ALSO: The 7 best military commanders of all time, according to Napoleon Bonaparte

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• Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous aviators in the world when she vanished in 1937.
• Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time.
• From her being a spy to her having lived in New Jersey under an assumed identity, many conspiracy theories surround her disappearance.

Amelia Earhart was the first female to fly across the Atlantic.

However, 81 years ago the American aviatrix vanished over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe by plane. To this day, the mystery behind her disappearance remains unsolved.

Here's what we know: on July 2, 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from Lae, New Guinea. They were heading for Howland Island, a small island located in the central Pacific Ocean, but they never arrived. By 1939, both Earhart and Noonan were declared dead.

While the case remains unsolved, conspiracy theories abound over the late pilot's fate. Here are five of the most compelling guesses behind what happened to them.

1. Earhart crashed her plane and drowned in the Pacific Ocean.

Crash-and-sink theorists postulate that Earhart ran out of fuel while trying to locate tiny Howard Island, and subsequently crashed into the open ocean and drowned.

This theory is supported by the fact that Earhart and Noonan put in a number of calls to the US Coast Guard ship "Itasca," communicating that they were low on fuel and having trouble finding Howard Island.

Despite the $4 million rescue authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to find the pilots, no trace of the aircraft, Earhart, or Noonan was ever found.

2. She landed safely — but on the wrong island.

We know that Earhart was aware that she was running low on fuel, which means one of two things — she either crashed somewhere, or landed successfully.

One theory suggests that Earhart managed to land her aircraft safely — just not on Howard Island, as anticipated. The International Historic Aircraft Recovery Group believe that Earhart ultimately landed on Gardner Island, a nearby deserted island that is now called Nikumaroro, when she couldn't locate Howard, and then perished as a castaway.

However, since her aircraft was never found this remains nothing but a theory.

3. She was captured and taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Last year a photo was discovered in the National Archives that depicts a woman who resembles Earhart sitting on a dock in the Marshall Islands near a man who resembles her navigator, Noonan.

The discovery of the photograph helps substantiate the theory that Earhart and Noonan didn't crash at all, but instead landed in the Marshall Islands, where they were taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Per INSIDER, retired government investigator Les Kinney told NBC News that the photo "clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese," despite Japanese authorities' insistence that they have no record of Earhart ever being in their custody.

Today would have been Amelia Earhart's 115th birthday. Seventy-five years after the pioneering airwoman disappeared over the Pacific, people are still hoping to find her body or  wreckage from her plane.

She's less famous for her advertising. When she was alive, she endorsed a luggage line and a clothing line at Macy's.

She was also the face of Lucky Strike cigarettes in the late 1920s. In 1928 and 1929, after her historic transatlantic flight, she claimed she smoked Lucky Strikes throughout the journey from Canada to England.

The copy on the 1928 ad read:

Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the 'Friendship' when she crossed the Atlantic. They were smoked continuously from Trepassey to Wales. I think nothing else helped so much to less the strain for all of us.

The 1929 copy was shorter:

Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the 'Friendship' when she crossed the Atlantic.

Both copies centered around the "It's toasted. No throat Irritation. No cough" message, although the later ad also attempted to appeal more to females mentioning Earhart's "slender figure."

See more:

• BABIES, PUPPIES AND SANTA: These Vintage Cigarette Spokespeople Are Grotesque >
  

Join the conversation about this story »

On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished during an attempt to fly around the world. 

Seventy-five years later, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, is dedicated to solving the disappearance of "Lady Lindy." In July 2012, the organization launched an underwater expedition near a remote island in the South Pacific called Nikumaroro in hopes of recovering aircraft wreckage.   

The search was prompted by a photo taken three months after Earhart disappeared, which, according to TIGHAR, appeared to show the landing gear of Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane sticking out of the water on a reef off of Nikumaroro.

The multi-million dollar expedition, which ended early due to rough seas and equipment issues, was initially deemed a failure since no wreckage was found. But the team did return with several hours of high-definition video.

Now, based on a preliminary review of the footage, TIGHAR says it has identified "a scattering of man-made objects on the reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro" that resemble the objects in the 1937 photo. Meaning this "debris field" could be pieces of Earhart's plane.  

Though TIGHAR's Executive Director Ric Gillespie says we shouldn't jump to conclusions. 

"We don't want to oversell this. It's more evidence. It is where it should be, and that is encouraging," Gillespie told Reuters' Malia Mattoch McManus. "If it does appear to be airplane wreckage, it becomes figuring out how to go back and look at it."

Below: Arrows point to possible remnants from Earhart's plane in a screenshot from the underwater video.  

(Click to enlarge). 

More Science:

• Film Crew Finally Gets "Impossible" Shot Of A Great White Shark

• Pictures From The Best Meteor Shower Of The Year 

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Join the conversation about this story »

We recently discovered the awesome Twitter feed of historian Michael Beschloss, which is mainly cool historical photos.

Last night, Michael tweeted a great photo of the New York skyline in 1947.

This morning, it's a picture of Amelia Earhart in 1932, just after she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Beschloss says the picture was taken 81 years ago today, as Earhart was getting ready to leave Newfoundland.
 

Join the conversation about this story »

A team of researchers investigating the mystery of aviator Amelia Earhart's 1937 disappearance believe they may have spotted a piece of wreckage from her plane just beyond the shore of a remote Pacific island.

Forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) contends that a sonar image of debris off the island of Nikumaroro — located 800 miles southwest of Honolulu — could represent a wing or part of the fuselage from Earhart's aircraft.

"It is unique, and suggestive of being man made," TIGHAR Executive Director Richard Gillespie told Reuters. "It is in the right place, but whether it's a fuselage or a wing is difficult to say."

Nearing the end of their quest, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan departed Papua New Guinea on July 2, 1937, on a quest to circle the globe along the equator. They disappeared that day and emergency searches did not locate them.

Gillespie told us that his team is feeling excited, anxious, and determined as they raise sorely needed funds for a potential summer 2014 expedition to authenticate the object.

"There is only one way to authenticate the object — go look at it," Gillespie told us. "We will, of course, continue to seek expert opinions and advice. We also plan to do a complete re-analysis of all the sonar data from the 2012 trip to see if anything else was missed."

Gillespie told Reuters that circumstantial evidence collected on previous trips to Nikumaroro suggests that Earhart ended her days as a castaway, ultimately perishing in the island's harsh conditions.

From Reuters:

Items that have been discovered include what appears to be a jar of a once-popular brand of anti-freckle cream from the 1930s, a clothing zipper from the same decade, a bone-handled pocket knife of the type Earhart carried, and piles of fish and bird bones indicative of a Westerner trying to survive.

In July 2012 the team — prompted by a photo taken three months after Earhart disappeared that appeared to show the landing gear of Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane — launched a $2.2 million underwater expedition around a reef off of Nikumaroro.

High definition video of the work revealed "a scattering of man-made objects on the reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro" that resemble the objects in the 1937 photo.

Now it's just a matter of investigating the sonar images further.

"I'm 100% confident that Nikumaroro is where Earhart ended up, but that confidence is based on many independent lines of investigation that all lead to the same conclusion," Gillespie told Business Insider via email. "High confidence in any single clue that has not yet been thoroughly investigated is a fool's errand. This is a really, really good sonar target."

Only time will tell if the team has solved an enduring American mystery.

Check out the rest of TIGHAR's findings here >

SEE ALSO: See Amelia Earhart's Ads For Lucky Strike Cigarettes

Join the conversation about this story »

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.

Discovery News reports:

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:

SEE ALSO: Expedition Team Explains How They'll Find Out If This Really Is Amelia Earhart's Plane

Join the conversation about this story »

Washington (AFP) - The quest to solve one of aviation's most enduring mysteries, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, resumes on a South Pacific atoll next week -- with a cruise ship looking on for the first time.

The 11th TIGHAR expedition will be searching for more clues to back up the theory that the celebrated American aviatrix crash-landed on Nikumaroro when she vanished in 1937 during a round-the-world flight.

"The object is to see if we can add to the preponderance of evidence that we have assembled in the course of 27 years and 10 expeditions to the island," said Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR -- the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. 

"If we make a dramatic discovery, that would be great, but I'm not going to predict that that is what we are going to do," Gillespie told AFP in a telephone interview Monday.

In one of aviation's enduring riddles, Earhart, 39, and navigator Fred Noonan, 44, vanished as they were flying from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island on July 2, 1937.

For years it was assumed that they ditched their Lockheed Electra into the sea after running out of fuel, never to be seen again. Some believed they were taken captive by Imperial Japanese forces.

But over the years, TIGHAR has explored the likelihood that the duo survived a crash-landing on a flat reef off Nikumaroro and went ashore to await rescue, only to witness their Electra being swept into the sea.

Nikumaroro lies 360 miles (560 kilometers) south-southeast of Howland Island, a US possession half-way between Hawaii and Australia.

Departing from Fiji

TIGHAR's latest expedition will set off from Fiji on June 8 for the five-day sea journey to uninhabited Nikumaroro, formerly known as Gardner Island and today part of Kiribati.

Plans call for Gillespie and his team of 14 volunteers to remain for two weeks.

Joining them for a few days will be 68 paying passengers on the first cruise ship to visit the island on an Earhart-themed voyage of adventure.

Betchart Expeditions is charging up to $11,000 for the chance to go ashore and see such spots as the place where a 1991 expedition came across a 1930s woman's Oxford shoe of the type Earhart wore.

Participants will also tour the now-abandoned British colonial village, established in 1939, where combs and handicrafts fashioned out of aircraft-grade aluminum have been found.

Speaking from his home in rural Pennsylvania, Gillespie said the upcoming expedition will scour the ocean depths with a remote-operated underwater vehicle equipped with high-definition video and sonar.

Its prime target will be an underwater sonar anomaly, spotted on the 2012 expedition, that could be the expedition's holy grail -- the wreckage of the ill-starred Electra, or at least part of it.

"There is something down there at the base of a cliff at a depth of about 600 feet (180 meters) that is the right size and shape and right location to logically be a big chunk of the fuselage," Gillespie said.

"It could also be an unusual geological feature," he acknowledged. 

"But it's an anomaly. It's something different than anything else we see down there and we need to go look at it."

Survival camp clues

Divers will scope out shallower waters, while an onshore team will probe dense vegetation for any signs of a survival camp that Earhart and Noonan might have set up on the atoll, which has no fresh water.

Internationally known in her lifetime, Earhart entered the history books in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and went on to collect a raft of other aviation records.

Her 1937 flight would have been the first ever to roughly track the equator. When they disappeared, Earhart and Noonan still had 7,000 miles to go before reaching Oakland, California, their starting point.

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Cabin pressure and humidity actually affect our taste buds, making tomato juice the ideal drink for high altitudes.

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