Why is the uninhabited tropical island in the Pacific called Nikumaroro in the news?”
Researchers are hoping to find DNA on an uninhabited island in the Pacific, called Nikumaroro Island, that proves Amelia Earhart was stranded there a short time before dying. Amelia Earhart, who vanished in July of 1937 with navigator Fred Noonan, may have landed on Nikumaroro Island and possibly even lived on the island for a short time before she died. Now researchers with the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery are hoping to prove that the famed aviator did, indeed, crash there. Tighar Executive Director Ric Gillespie tells ABC News: “We think we will be able to come back with DNA.” If they do, they’d prove a theory that many still don’t believe. Some even think Earhart staged her death and is still alive today.
AEleather As a new biopic about legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart launches onto movie theater screens this weekend, speculations about her mysterious disappearance over the Pacific on July 2, 1937 have resurged. One of the most plausible theories comes from researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft (TIGHAR). For years TIGHAR experts have been searching Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, for evidence of Earhart. A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR would suggest that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island’s smooth, flat coral reef. According to TIGHAR, who is set to embark on a new $500,000 Nikumaroro expedition next summer, the two became castaways. Abandoned on a desert island where temperatures often exceed 100 degrees, even in the shade, Earhart and Noonan likely eventually succumbed to any number of causes, including injury and infection, food poisoning from toxic
