‘Earhart’s Hair’ Actually Thread
Posted by admin on October 22nd, 2009
WASHINGTON – AN AVIATION museum in the US state of Ohio that believed it was displaying a hair sample from famed flyer Amelia Earhart made an unfortunate discovery, after DNA analysis revealed it to be a piece of thread.
‘In a disappointing turn of events,’ as Cleveland’s International Women’s Air and Space Museum described it in a statement, the lock of ‘hair’ in their possession since 1986 was revealed as thread only after they put it on display this year.
Museum officials said they had confidence in the artifact, having been recovered by a maid at the White House after Earhart – a friend of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt – stayed there shortly before her final flight.
‘It was always believed it was her hair,’ Heather Alexander, the museum’s office manager, told AFP.
The museum had lent a small sample of the ‘hair’ to a historian’s organisation hoping to uncover the truth of Earhart’s demise and seeking to match DNA to other artifacts found on the central Pacific island of Nikumororo.
The thread remains on display at the museum as part of an Earhart exhibition that is on show until Nov 15. ‘We’ve changed the sign and explained everything,’ assured Ms Alexander. — AFP
Straits Times