950: Mystery Solved

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Mystery Solved
The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.
Title text: The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.

Explanation

The aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart's plane comes back to land after it went missing in 1937. Earhart was presumed dead and that her plane went down sometime during her journey. But, this comic supposes that it just took her 74 years to fly around the Earth without really aging a day. This means that her average speed was under one mile a day; although she says it's a long flight, her plane was not designed for air-to-air refueling and did not carry enough fuel to complete the trip without landing to refuel.

Another possibility is that she did not just fly around the earth, but flew very fast (near light speed) for 74 years to return without having aged much. This would of course not explain why she thinks it is a long trip around the earth, or how she would accomplish this feat in a twin-engine monoplane. The disappearence gave birth to many conspiracy theories. One of those were explored upon in the TV series Star Trek: Voyager involves her being abducted to another part of the galaxy, where she was left in cryogenic stasis until found by the Voyager crew. Something similar could be the case here, having Earheart frozen by aliens until 2011.

The title text proposed a few more solutions to mysteries including the lost colonists of Roanoke, who were one of the first groups to come to North America, suddenly disappeared, and leaving their colony untouched. The Franklin Expedition was a British voyage in 1845 to study the Northwest Passage that also disappeared somewhere in northern Canada. Jimmy Hoffa was the famous Teamsters Union (currently headed by Jimmy's son, James Phillip Hoffa) leader who went missing in 1975 and declared dead in 1982 (possibly murdered). The comic is implying that Jimmy's "son" is actually Jimmy himself (whose actual name was James Riddle Hoffa).

Amelia Earhart, the Roanoke colony and Jimmy Hoffa are all referenced in 1501: Mysteries.

Transcript

[A twin prop airplane flies high overhead.]
Off-screen person: What's that airplane?
[The plane has landed, and the pilot is walking towards the crowd waving.]
Off-screen person: Holy crap— Is that Amelia Earhart?
[A close up of Amelia Earhart waving.]
Amelia: Hey everyone! My flight was a success!
Off-screen person: But... Where were you!?
[A wide view of Amelia, she stops waving.]
Amelia: I flew around the world!
Off-screen person: But you disappeared in 1937!
[A close up of Amelia Earhart.]
Amelia: Right, to fly around the world.
Off-screen person: It's 2011!
Amelia: The world is big. It's a long flight.
[A wide view of Amelia]
Off-screen person:
But you...
It's not...
I -
Amelia: Can I talk to someone smarter?


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Discussion

The Northwest Passage is a sea route from the North Atlantic to the Pacific, north of the North American continent. It has not been "open" until very recent years; the icepack extends far enough south that it is not generally navigable. 75.103.23.206 16:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Another possible explanation is that the world includes more than just Earth. Amelia might have had to travel at or over the speed of light, which would also explain the time effects. 108.162.246.11 21:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah... I'm pretty sure this can't be looked at with a logical eye. I find this explanation to be lacking and I will probably return to do some re-working. Lackadaisical (talk) 01:44, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

About impersonating your son - that's what all vampires and other long-lived people do. 162.158.90.83 18:20, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

If she flew at near lightspeed for 74 years, it wouldn't have taken her 74 years from our perspective. Maybe she's been living on some unknown island for 70 years? IJustWantToEditStuff (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Added "objective" to that bit, to make it plain it wasn't her years but (within the most handy alternate frame of reference) ours. It has to fit with the non-aging aspect of the whole mystery, so the living-on-an-island answer doesn't replace the lightspeed one that way. (Unless the island had mystically soporific qualities, like Sleeping Beauty's castle!) 172.70.90.117 08:52, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
....someone undid that edit without any attempt at explanation (hello? did that person read this at all?). Possibly a metaphysical issue with there being no absolute objective frames of reference, as I had myself pondered during the insertion of that word, but I'm not sure it was quite so well thought out. So I put "non-subjective" in its place, instead, to perhaps better serve the same purpose but without (the same) problems. Hopefully that will satisfy both you (IJWTES) and them, this time. If not, I'll just let someone else work out the better way to mention/clarify it. 141.101.98.193 09:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

...noting, in passing, the current news story claiming to have found her plane. (Well, a plane, is the most I'd credit it at right now. But future editors will know more.) 172.71.178.95 13:25, 30 January 2024 (UTC)