Amelia Earhart's Conspiracy Theories

605 Words2 Pages

It is summer in the year 1937. America is amidst the Great Depression; millions of people have lost their jobs and were suffering from economic hardships. Suddenly news outlet all over the nation spreads that Amelia Earhart, a woman whose accomplishments as an aviator brought hope to countless people across the nation, has gone missing during her solo transatlantic flight. Her disappearance was a mystery to the world, all the American citizens had to go off were her final communications over the radio on her plane yielding very few answers. People wanted answers, so the U.S. government sent search parties looking for the missing aviator to no avail. Unable to get answers from the government people across the nation began dabbling in conspiracy theories in order to find their own answers for Earhart’s …show more content…

As an accomplished aviator, Amelia Earhart broke multiple aviation records during her career. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, to fly across the North American continent and back, and broke multiple speed and distance records (Timeline). July 1937 aviator Amelia Earhart disappeared during her infamous “around-the-world flight” (Legend). Amelia Earhart’s disappearance showed key factors needed for conspiracy theories to successfully spread to the American people. Conspiracy theories can be described in various ways. Walter Bryce Gallie describes it as an “essentially contested rhetorical concept”. (Goertzel) Meaning that the term is generally accepted across many intellectual groups, but the exact definition is not agreed upon. One definition for conspiracy theory describes it as “a secret plan on the part of a group to influence events in part by covert action”(Goertzel). Which essentially means when an influential group is accused of using their power to cover up an action they are believed to have committed is considered a conspiracy. One of the reasons conspiracy theories spread about Earhart’s disappearance was due to the

Open Document