Amelia Earhart's Final Days...?

Amelia Earhart was an aviation pioneer and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Earhart earned her way as a faculty member of Purdue University in their aviation department in 1935. Her popularity was at a peak by this point due to her connection with Charles Lindbergh. Her celebrity status helped finance many of her aviation adventures back in the 1920s. While at Purdue University she was tasked with counselling women careers options as well as a technical advisor to the Department of Aeronautics. Working at Purdue paid off because their generous donation of a Lockheed airplane allowed Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan to attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The attempt started in Miami, Florida on June 1, 1937, from there she and her navigator travelled east and landed in places such as: South America, Africa, Indian, Southeast Asia, and finally landing in New Guinea where the last leg of the flight was to take place across the Pacific. Somewhere over the Pacific however through broken radio communication it seems the plane ran out of gas and crashed, never to be seen or heard from again.

Speculation on the whereabouts of the flight have been searched by people for years. Recently an expedition was made by Ric Gillespie and the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. There findings took them back to Nikumaroro, a remote uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific. A discovery in 1940 of a partial skeleton that seemed to fit description of Earhart was found there but later lost. This group has been making visits to the island since 1989 and have uncovered numerous artifacts indicating a castaway presence on the island including female products. The group is hoping that DNA evidence will lead them to realize that Amelia Earhart was indeed a castaway on this island for days if not months before she died.

http://news.discovery.com/adventure/amelia-earhart-island-artifacts.html 

Celebrating a Legendary Film - The Godfather

Few films in history have been revered so much as The Godfather. Most people can easily associated quotes such as: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" and "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." Even after forty years The Godfather is considered one of the best movies of all time and the "Holy Grail" of movie making. So many films over the last 40 years have aspired to reach the greatness that is The Godfather. It is strange to think about the classic characters and quotes that come from that movie and how different it could have been. Did you know that the studio was originally pushing for Ernest Borgnine to play the role of Don Vito Corleone, a role which Marlon Brando has immortalized in movie making history. There were some other high profile names that auditioned for the various roles in the movie but did not make the cut: Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Martin Sheen, and Steve McQueen. What an incredibly different film it would have been with any of these individuals in the various roles. When the movie was released on March 15, 1972 critics all over the world praised the film. Even today most critics place The Godfather in the top five to ten of best movies of all time. I know for me it is a great movie and is an important movie in film making history that can not go overlooked.

Controversy or Not?

So at the Gettysburg Military Park gift shop they decided after only one week that it was not a good idea to sell bobble heads with the likeness of John Wilkes Booth. Despite the fact that the bobble heads were selling like hot cakes they apparently got enough complaints from visitors that forced the organization to halt sales of the item. My real question for everyone out there is if this is truly a controversy or not? Are we actually that offended by the individual who shot a President of the United States that we can not have a likeness of him in bobble head form? Frankly I personally would not want to idealize such an individual but I would never put myself in a position to say an individual couldn't buy it. Regardless how you feel I thought it was an interesting story.