(AFP) – US President Donald Trump ordered the declassification and release on Friday of any government records about Amelia Earhart, the famed American aviator who vanished over the Pacific in 1937. Earhart went missing while on a pioneering round-the-world flight with navigator Fred Noonan, and her disappearance is one of the most tantalizing mysteries in aviation lore.
“I have been asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions. I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her,” he said.
Earhart’s disappearance has fascinated historians for decades and spawned books, movies, and theories galore. The prevailing belief is that Earhart, 39, and Noonan, 44, ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific near Howland Island while on one of the final legs of their epic journey.
Earhart, who won fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, took off on May 20, 1937, from Oakland, California, hoping to become the first woman to fly around the world. She and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937, after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on a challenging 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometer) flight to refuel on Howland Island, a speck of a US territory between Australia and Hawaii. They never made it.
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