Consider, for example, the case of the ship Mary Celeste. The ship had left New York for Italy in 1872. Later it was sighted floating east of the Azores. No one was found on board, though everything else on the ship had been determined to be in order, and there was no indication why the Mary Celeste had been abandonned. Apparendy, in fact, tables were set for afternoon tea. One theory speculates that the ship might have been threatened by an explosion that was caused by fumes from its cargo of alcohol. That theory, however, has not been proved.
A second perplexing mystery is that of Amelia Earhart, the famous aviator who in the 1920s and 1930s was considered the best example of a strong woman. Earhart flew across the Atlantic with two men in 1928 and set a record for a cross-Atlantic flight in 1932. In 1937 she embarked on her most ambitious plan, a flight around the world. Earhart began her flight in Miami in June and was accompanied only by Fred Noonan, her navigator. They reached New Guinea and left for Howland Island in the South Pacific on July 1. After that, no radio reports or messages of any kind have been recieved. No remains of her plane have been discovered by naval investigators in the years since then. Did she simply attempt the impossible? Could she and Noonan have been killed when her plane ran out of fuel and crashed? Or could something else have happened? No one really knows.
For the time being, at least, the riddle of the Mary Celeste and the fate of Amelia Earhart will have to remain mysterious. Maybe they should not be solved at all.
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