DONALD Trump has announced he will release Amelia Earhart documents, almost a century after the iconic female pilot vanished.
The Don made the surprise announcement on Friday via his social media platform, Truth Social.
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“Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions,” he said.
“I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all government records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.”
Trump’s announcement comes after a day trip to the Ryder Cup golf competition in Long Island, New York.
He claimed he had been “asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart”.
“Such an interesting story,” he said.
“She was an aviation pioneer, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and achieved many other aviation “firsts”,” he continued.
“Amelia made it almost three quarters around the world before she suddenly, and without notice, vanished, never to be seen again.”
Amelia Earhart, a pioneering aviatrix, was attempting to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in 1937 when she and her plane vanished.
At just 20 years old in 1920, she took her first flight at an air show in Long Beach, California, where her life changed forever.
“By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly,” she said.
Six months later, she had completed an intensive flying course and purchased her first plane, a bright yellow aircraft called Canary.
In 1932, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
She was an A-list celebrity of global fame, dubbed “Lady Lindy” in a nod to another famous aviator Charles Lindbergh.
A report on her disappearance was commissioned and investigated by the US government.
The report concluded she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had run out of fuel during the flight.
It is believed their Lockheed Electra aircraft crashed into the ocean in the South Pacific.
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Earhart was 39 years old when she was last seen.
In 2011, Earhart’s stepson, George Palmer Putnam Jr, told the Palm Beach Post that he believed “the plane just ran out of gas“.
Over the 88 years since she vanished, many theories have surfaced about the true fate of Earhart and Noonan, including being captured by Japanese troops or crash landing onto a different island.
Her plane and her remains have never been recovered.
Earhart remains an icon to women, with Barbie releasing a doll in her likeness to mark International Women’s Day in 2018 – 80 years after she disappeared.
The president’s announcement comes as a bipartisan group of House members will attempt to force a vote on legislation that would order the Department of Justice to open case files related to dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The vote could happen as early as Monday.
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