2 Aviators’ Flight Plan May Lead to Amelia Earhart

--Tom Willi and Tom Gannon are the driving force behind an expedition that will set out next Monday to seek to solve the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, 52 years ago in the South Pacific. Willi, 62, a former Navy pilot, and Gannon, 69, a former Air Force navigator, both of Ft. Walton Beach, Fla., will join a 20-member team slated to be sent by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery to Nikumaroro Island, south of Fiji, where the two men maintain Earhart and Noonan came down after their fuel supply ran low during their attempt to fly around the world. The former fliers based their thinking on Earhart’s flight plan, as well as other navigational clues. “We’re just amazed that nobody ever figured this out before,” Gannon said. “The whole thing was a navigation problem. I guess it took two navigators to hopefully solve it.” Four days after the Earhart plane vanished, 24 radio transmissions were made in a female voice and on Earhart’s frequency. Willi and Gannon said that the transmissions cross at Nikumaroro and that no search party has ever landed on the island.

--Mother Teresa marked her 79th birthday Sunday but apparently nobody seemed to notice when she said that the occasion should not disrupt her daily routine. Instead, hundreds of visitors seeking her blessings came to her central Calcutta residence, which is next to a food distribution center, a home for poor children and a hospital. She was born Agness Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents and arrived on Jan. 6, 1929, in India, where she set up the Missionaries of Charity organization. “Love one another as God loves each one of us,” Mother Teresa said in her birthday message. “Remember, the work of love is the work of peace.” The 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner plans to leave soon for Leningrad to visit her newly opened missions.

--Ordinarily, the auction of a home in East Derry, N. H., would not engender undue attention. But when the house is the boyhood home of the first American in space, the auction takes on added importance. “It’s a happy day,” said Alan B. Shepard Jr., as he autographed pictures and chairs for winning bidders. The Shepard house was sold for $160,000, although he has not lived there since he entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944. Shepard flew a 15-minute suborbital flight in his Freedom 7 capsule on May 5, 1961, about a year after Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union orbited the Earth. In 1971, Shepard became the fifth person to walk on the moon.