It’s long been a mys­tery about what exactly hap­pened to Emelia Earhart on her jour­ney to become the first woman to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the globe. I remem­ber back when I first learned about her in ele­men­tary(?) school. I was fas­ci­nated by how they never knew what exactly hap­pened to her.

A recent story on CNN.com pieces together clues that were never prop­erly inves­ti­gated at the time of her dis­ap­pear­ance. Recent evi­dence sug­gests that she may have actu­ally crashed on a deserted island in the Pacific and survived.

• Was Amelia Earhart a doomed cast­away?

The most fas­ci­nat­ing part of the story for me are the dis­tress calls that were picked up on short­wave radios far away from the crash, but never investigated.

In Rock Springs, Wyoming, Dana Ran­dolph, 16, heard a voice say, “This is Amelia Earhart. Ship is on a reef south of the equator.” Aware that “harmonic” fre­quen­cies in mid-​ocean often could be heard far inland, experts said the short­wave trans­mis­sion was prob­a­bly genuine.

It’s pretty incred­i­ble to me that some­body in Rock Springs, Wyoming heard what appears to have been an actual dis­tress call from Earhart.