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Monday, July 27, 9-10 pm ET
A fragment that may been a piece of Amelia Earhart’s plane; a letter from President Millard Fillmore commuting the death sentence of a Native American; a Colorado home whose supports may have been constructed from a railroad boxcar.
Amelia Earhart Plane - John Ott believes he may have a piece of
Amelia Earhart's airplane, the missing Lockheed L-10E Electra in
which she made her ill-fated around-the-world attempt. Ott says his
grandfather served as a flight mechanic on the airfield in Honolulu
where Earhart had a mishap on her first attempt at the flight. She
crashed during takeoff, destroying the landing gear and damaging
the right wing. Ott says his grandfather took a piece of the plane
that came off during the accident and sent it to his mother as a
souvenir. HISTORY DETECTIVES host Elyse Luray tests the shape and
the metal of the fragment against another Lockheed Electra, and
checks the story against historic records to see if Ott truly has a
piece of Earhart's plane.
Fillmore Pardon - A Portland, Oregon, man inherited what looked to
be a U.S. presidential pardon signed by Millard Fillmore in 1851.
In it, the president commutes the death sentence to life in prison
for a solitary Native American named See-See-Sah-Mah, convicted of
murdering a St. Louis trader along the Santa Fe Trail. Fillmore's
pardon saved See-See-Sah-Mah's life, but why? HISTORY DETECTIVES
host Tukufu Zuberi travels to Kansas City and St. Louis to retrace
the crime and trial. Was See-See-Sah-Mah a murderer or a scapegoat?
And why did this obscure case about an unknown Native American
matter to a U.S. President?
Boxcar Home - When a Lakewood, Colorado, couple found a new home,
they noticed odd supports in the basement ceiling. The husband
loves the railroads, so he immediately recognized the supports as
railroad car rods. Could their home have been made from a boxcar?
HISTORY DETECTIVES host Gwendolyn Wright's search for answers takes
viewers on an excursion from the scarcity of the Great Depression
to the resourcefulness of World War II.
