I've collected model planes, vintage aviator goggles and helmets, and shirts and pajamas with flight themes since I was five. I even begged my parents for a bed shaped like a jet (I didn't get it). All because of Emilia Earhart. To girls like me, she was a bona-fide hero. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She founded the Ninety-Nines for female pilots. She was one of the first advocates for women's rights. She was strong, independent, and, after her disappearance in July 1937, completely mysterious. 

I still have piles of books about her in my attic. Well...they were in my attic. Now they're spread all over my kitchen table - a mess I blame on the History Channel's special "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence”. The show claimed to have solved the 80-year-old mystery of her disappearance: Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were taken captive by the Japanese military after crash landing near the Marshall Islands. The central piece of supporting evidence was a photo of Earhart sitting on a dock with her back to the camera with Noonan standing in the foreground.

Her capture by the Japanese seemed to fit with the idea that Earhart might have been working for the U.S. government. Though she had no official military record, one conspiracy theory still holds a firm grip on the American imagination: Amelia was a spy. The photo seemed to lend credence to the theory, which was exciting to say the least. But two days after the show aired the photo - directly from U.S Naval Intelligence files - was debunked by Ric Gillespie. A lifetime Earhart researcher, Gillespie noticed that the caption had been doctored and went looking for the original. He found it in a tour book in the National Library of Japan - the photo was taken two years before Earhart and Noonan set out to circle the world.

Amelia Earhart Day is celebrated on her birthday (July 24) every year. I thought we'd finally have the answers this year, but as the holiday approaches the truth remains hidden. But maybe that's okay. After all these years, maybe having the mystery is better than solving it.