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Found make-up kit could be linked to Amelia Earhart

Posted at 8:07 PM, Jul 16, 2012
and last updated 2012-07-16 20:15:38-04

Yet another discovery on a Pacific island has giving investigators more hope that they'll finally find out what happened to Amelia Earhart.

Just a few weeks ago a jar of freckle cream was discovered.

Now the remains of a make-up kit have surfaced. The kit includes a bottle of baby oil, a bottle of hand lotion, and fragments of pink blush.

Earhart disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. A deep-sea expedition launched 75 years after her disappearance in an attempt to solve the mystery of the vanished aviator.

The group is in search of Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan and their Lockheed Electra aircraft.

Once out of the port, the crew will set sail for Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific, where researchers believe Earhart landed, was stranded and ultimately met her death during her doomed attempt at an around-the-world flight in 1937.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery has been investigating the mystery surrounding Earhart's death for 24 years, has launched eight prior expeditions and has developed a comprehensive theory of her disappearance and last days on earth.

"This is the hi-tech deep water search we've long wanted to do but could never afford," the group said on its website. The expedition is funded by corporate sponsors and charitable donations.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery theorizes that Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro Island -- then called Gardner's Island -- after failing to find a different South Pacific island they were set to land on. The pair is believed to have landed safely and called for help using the Electra's radio. And in a twist of fate, the plane was swept out to sea, washing away Earhart and Noonan's only source of communication. U.S. Navy search planes flew over the island, but not seeing the Electra, passed it by and continued the search elsewhere.

"What makes this the best expedition is the technology we've been able to assemble to search for the wreckage of that airplane," Rick Gillespie, executive director for The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, told CNN on Monday. "We have an autonomous vehicle. We have multibeam sonar above the University of Hawaii ship we're on right now. We have a remote-operated vehicle to check out the targets (and a) high-definition camera. We're all set."

At a conference in Washington, D.C., last month, the organization announced its newest study suggesting that dozens of radio signals once dismissed were actually transmissions from Earhart's plane after she vanished. Discovery News reported that the group has discovered there were 57 "credible" radio transmissions from Earhart after her plane went down.

Earlier this year, the organization also discovered what is believed to be a cosmetics jar once belonging to Earhart on Nikumaroro Island.

"All these things we can't explain unless the woman we think was there, was there," Gillespie said.

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