SUBSCRIBER WOW: JULY WOWMANAC

The Truth is Definitely Out There

Hi, and welcome to the July Wowmanac, in which I offer you amazing subscribers some fun pop culture-y tidbits about the month to come. July’s stories seem to have a lot to do with conspiracies and craziness. Prepare for some rabbit holes!

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July 2

On this day in 1937, U.S. pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe. Earhart had been supposed to land for refueling on an island between Papua New Guinea and the Hawaiian Islands, and radioed the Coast Guard ships in the area to say they were having a hard time finding the island, which has led most to believe they never found it and ended up crashing in the Pacific.

But because her plane was never found, other theories have also circulated, the wildest of which is that she was in fact spying for FDR and was either captured and executed by the Japanese—there are Marshall Islanders who believe they saw her plane on a Japanese barge, and she and her copilot in custody; was captured and became Tokyo Rose, the famous radio voice of Japanese propaganda during the war; or, my favorite, was repatriated after the war and moved to New Jersey under another name.

I wonder if there are any likely candidates for a Jersey woman who was somehow a spy, a pilot, a POW, and then adopted a whole new identity…?

THINK ABOUT IT.

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