On July 2, 1937, the famed aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan took off in a twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra from Lae, New Guinea, headed for Howland Island, 2,600 miles east across the Pacific Ocean where they planned to refuel. Earhart and Noonan had already traveled 22,000 miles on a quest to fly around the world. They had only two more stops to go after Howland Island — Honolulu, Hawaii, and Oakland, California — and just 7,000 miles. The Electra never made it to Howland Island, and a subsequent 16-day search by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard failed to find Earhart, Noonan, or the plane.

Earhart's disappearance remains the biggest mystery in aviation history. But recently uncovered photographs from 1938, a year after her mysterious vanishing, have strengthened invest

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