Deja Vu

June 5, 2012

Out, Damned Spot!

Tags:

Amelia Earhart,

freckles,

mysteries

2012: A recent discovery of artifacts possibly belonging to the vanished aviatrix Amelia Earhart has given researchers new clues as to her fate—and exposed her weakness for beauty products. Discovery News reports:

A small cosmetic jar offers more circumstantial evidence that the legendary aviator, Amelia Earhart, died on an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.

Found broken in five pieces, the ointment pot was collected on Nikumaroro Island by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 75 years ago.

When reassembled, the glass fragments make up a shape identical to the one used by Dr. C.H.Berry's Freckle Ointment. The ointment was marketed in the early 20th century as a concoction guaranteed to make freckles fade.

“It's well documented Amelia had freckles and disliked having them,” Joe Cerniglia, the TIGHAR researcher who spotted the freckle ointment as a possible match, told Discovery News.

2 AD: Amelia Earhart wasn’t the first woman in history to bemoan her freckled complexion—the poet Ovid, writing a guide to love and seduction, offered a simple home recipe for eradicating sunspots:

Pound together also the first horns that fall from off the long-lived stag; of this make there to be the sixth part of a full pound. And when now they have been reduced to a fine powder, then sift them all in the hollow sieve. Add twice six bulbs of narcissus without the skin, which a strong right-hand must bruise in a clean mortar of marble; let it also receive two ounces of gum together with Etrurian spelt, to this let nine times as much more honey be contributed by you. Whoever shall rub her face with such a mixture, she will shine more brightly than her mirror.

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