Remember when Mitt Romney promised to kill Big Bird right before he lost to his scary, pro-Big Bird opponent? The Weather Channel remembers.

The weather-adjacent network has made unlikely political headlines twice in the week leading up to hotly-contested midterm elections. On Monday's edition of Sam Champion's talk show America's Morning Headquarters, Champion and long-time network meteorologist Carl Parker discussed Halloween costumes with each other in between segments. When Parker said that he planned on going as Big Bird, he added that he would "try to irritate Mitt Romney."

Parker's Big Bird comment was a reference to a painful moment in Romney's 2012 presidential campaign when the candidate promised to target PBS as a model for wasteful government spending that he would slash when America elected him president.

Obama's campaign pounced, spinning cuts to PBS into Romney vowing to "kill Big Bird" if elected. According to the Washington Post, the $445 million allotted to PBS in 2012 only accounted for about 0.012% of the year's entire $3.8 trillion federal budget. For someone who makes $30,000 a year, cutting 0.012% out of one's personal budget would equate to saving $3.60.*

The Obama campaign's messaging, combined with the fact that PBS' funding only accounts for a fraction of a drop in the bucket, turned one of Romney's campaign promises into more of a blunder than a serious policy point.

The network's other political headline this week comes from Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman making the rounds on conservative media in recent days claiming that climate change is nothing but a liberal hoax.

Many conservatives are using Coleman's credentials as the co-founder of The Weather Channel to bolster his claims, but the very company he helped to create forcefully disagrees with his views. In a public statement issued back in November 2007, The Weather Channel unequivocally stated that climate change is real.

[Video via The Weather Channel | h/t Raw Story | *edited for clarity]

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A California judge ruled today to dismiss former dictator Manuel Noriega's lawsuit against publisher Activision for including his likeness in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

The suit, filed in July, alleged that Black Ops II's depiction of Noriega was "blatant misuse, unlawful exploitation and misappropriation for economic gain." Activision fought back hard, recruiting former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to help defend them in court.

Today, judge William H. Fahey ruled in Activision's favor, dismissing the lawsuit.

"This ruling is an important victory and we thank the court for protecting free speech," Giuliani said in a press release. "This was an absurd lawsuit from the very beginning and we're gratified that in the end, a notorious criminal didn't win. This is not just a win for the makers of Call of Duty, but is a victory for works of art across the entertainment and publishing industries throughout the world."

After comedian Hannibal Buress brought up at his standup show in Philly last week that 13 women have accused Bill Cosby of rape from the 1970s into the 2000s (accusations that Cosby's PR machine has continually buried), one woman who came forward in 2006 revealed further details of the several times she says Cosby drugged and raped her.

In an interview with the Daily Mail Online, Barbara Bowman said Cosby began manipulating her when she was only seventeen years old, a young model in Denver, Colorado. Bowman said Cosby would fly her to meet him at his stand-up gigs across the country, convincing Bowman to treat him like he was her father, she says.

Via the Daily Mail:

'He wanted me to act completely drunk, wasted, while he stood behind me and stroked my neck and upper chest. He didn't touch me beyond that, on that day, but that's where it certainly started.

'Even though it felt off to do the exercise, I gave it my all. I'd learned from years of acting classes that I had to take direction. After all, I was in the presence of the most powerful man in America at that time. Dr Huxtable chose me!'

Cosby even flew out her mother to shows on Broadway, Bowman says, in order to convince her that she was in good hands. In 1986, Cosby allegedly brought Bowman to his hotel room in Reno, Nevada:

'He turned out all the lights. It was completely pitch black. He laid me down on the couch and started caressing and touching me all over. Then he put my hand on his penis, covering it with his hand. He had me masturbate him. I couldn't see what was going on. When it was over, I ran out of the room and threw up.

'It was so invasive and frightening and humiliating. There was no way I could tell my mother. I couldn't even admit it to myself. I tried to convince myself that I'd imagined it. That it was a one-time thing, that it wouldn't happen again. And I was paralyzed with fear.

Another time, Bowman said Cosby invited her to his apartment in New York for dinner, and though she only drank one glass of wine, she said she woke up later throwing up over a toilet bowl in a man's shirt and her underwear with Cosby holding her hair back.

In 2006, after another woman said she was raped by Cosby, Bowman made plans to testify against the comedian, but by the time she was on a plane to Philadelphia, Cosby's lawyers had settled the other woman's case out of court.

Bowman's full story can be read here.

[Image via AP]

Yesterday, the New York Times revealed that the CIA and FBI used "at least" 1,000 Nazis as informants and spies during the Cold War. Many of the Nazis were allowed to live in America, as if they were not Nazis but upstanding American citizens, thus revealing what many of us have long known to be true: There are Nazis among us.

Luckily, the great Dorothy Thompson, one of the most badass, under-appreciated journalists in the history of journalism, long ago created a game called "Who Goes Nazi" to help us identify the Nazis in our midst, both actual and potential. She published an account of one night of play in the August 1941 issue of Harper's—you can find the whole thing here—and it's a fantastic read. I trust Thompson on the subject of Nazis because she interviewed Hitler in 1931 (she described him as "the very prototype of the little man").

Here are some salient points in Thompson's guide to the Nazi mindset:

"Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work—a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature. He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline. He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous. His mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected."

"I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony."

"Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded herself that he is a genius, and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion."

"L is the strongest natural-born Nazi in this room. Mr. B regards him with contempt tempered by hatred. Mr. B will use him. L is already parroting B's speeches. He has the brains of Neanderthal man, but he has an infallible instinct for power. In private conversation he denounces the Jews as "parasites."

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you'll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Play it at your next dinner party!

A Green Bay man with an AR-15 was arraigned on a felony charge in his Packers jersey after he tried to "defend his property" from a dog, missing it with eight close-range shots from the highly accurate rifle in broad daylight and instead peppering his neighbors' property with hot rounds.

The Green Bay Press Gazette reports that the 33-year-old now faces 12 or more years in prison:

When Nicholas Heyrman heard that a loose dog was acting aggressively in the neighborhood, he rushed his child into the house and got his AR-15 rifle to "defend his property," police say.

Heyrman then shot eight rounds at the animal from 32 feet away, missing it each time but hitting a house and a Jeep, according to police.

To his credit, after spraying and praying with the AR about 2 in the afternoon on Monday, Heyrman called his shots in to the police, who found him kneeling in the driveway, with the weapon secured in the house. "He told police he shot several times but was unsure whether he'd hit the dog," the Press Gazette reports:

Police noticed strike marks in the road from where bullets had ricocheted, a criminal complaint says. Police discovered eight cartridge shells and found a bullet lodged in the siding of a house. They also found dents and a bullet hole in a neighbor's Jeep, the complaint says.

The stray dog, incidentally, was fine.

Cops estimate Heyrman did about $2,500 in damage to the house and Jeep, which is about what he can expect to get for his AR-15 if it's really souped-up, and if he doesn't tell anyone how pathetically inaccurate his particular model is.

[Photo credits: Brown County Jail; Shutterstock]

An Arabian stallion named Stormy, who has free reign of his owner's property, somehow managed to walk into the backyard swimming pool Saturday and found himself unable to escape. As Stormy panicked and thrashed against the deck, his owner's grandson called 911.

Mesa, Ariz. firefighters showed up to rescue the horse, but needed to bring in a veterinarian to tranquilize the frightened animal before they could pull him out. It took half a dozen firefighters using large straps to drag him up into the yard. He was snoring the whole time, and the vet says he's going to be fine.

A horse falls into his private pool, gets drugged, needs friends to bail him out, and doesn't remember what happened? It's like BoJack Horseman changed his name and moved to Arizona.

[h/t AP]

Artisanal curator and actress Blake Lively is going to have a baby with handsome Canadian Ryan Reynolds. Her perfectly-shaped fetus is making her stomach protrude just so. She is glowing. But guess what, Serena: Blair is fertile, too.

Actually decent country singer Leighton Meester tells Nylon this month that she's ready for that next phase of adult life. (She secretly married Seth Cohen in February.) Meester explains:

Most people I know are starting to get married. It'll be kids next. I like the grown-up stuff. I like having a house. I've got dogs.

It'll be kids next. Hear that, van der Woodsen? Other people can have kids. Practically everyone's having kids. Big deal.

Recently, Lively told Us Weekly that having kids is "something that I've always wanted ever since I was a little girl." Real original.

[Photos via Getty]

When Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley first expressed his concerns about "burn rate," the rate at which companies burn through his venture capital, startups started wondering whether they were setting money aflame too fast.

Gurley's canary in the coal mine (of smoldering cash) happened on September 14, 2014. In other words, way too late into the boom to be introducing the concept. It's like teaching addition in the middle of AP Calculus. Some self-reflection and basic advice followed. The term suddenly seemed ubiquitous.

But judging by Google Trends, Silicon Valley is not nearly frightened enough. One could argue that maybe the number of searches for "burn rate," aren't as high because everyone knows what it means, they just needed a reminder that it's important. The rudimentary nature of the "conversations about responsible spending" that followed, however, indicates otherwise.

Fab burn rate was $14 million a month. What were they doing, bathing in caviar at lunch? #TCDisrupt

— Alexia Tsotsis (@alexia) October 20, 2014

When Y Combinator graduate Danielle Morrill said she was burning $200,000 a month, another YC alum reprimanded her: "that's a fucking bubbly burn."

Ouch! OUCH! Talk about burn. I was stuck on this comment for days. Were we really out of control with spending? Hadn't I read everything I could, asked tons of questions, shared numbers and projections and models and plans with smart people with a vested interest in us not fucking this up?

It may not be enough to rely on parties with a vested interest. As Dan Primack pointed out yesterday: "The only people spending cash faster than entrepreneurs are their venture capitalists."

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via Shutterstock; graph via Google Trends]

Jill Duggar's Wedding, a two hour special episode of TLC's 19 Kids & Counting, shocked and rocked me Tuesday night with its utter disregard for sacred tradition.

Jill Duggar – who did not kiss her groom Derick Dillard until they were declared man and wife and had chaperones at her side for every date and Skype conversation during their courtship after her dad fixed them up– made me scream louder than Emily Post at an orgy when she walked into the church on the day of her wedding hand in hand with her groom.

The time-honored custom of the bride and groom not seeing each other until the walk down the aisle was thrown to the winds like so much cheap confetti as the rebellious couple spent their wedding morning getting ready together. An openly defiant Jill even shaved Derick's face for him while alerting her elderly relatives that she truly did not give a fuck what they thought about it.

At the top of the article you can see the "first look" photo session with Derick. Jill thought it would be more romantic for him to see her in her wedding dress for the first time in the back of some parking lot instead of walking down the aisle. I know first look photo sessions are catching on amongst our unruly, shortsighted youth but outré, I call it.

Even setting aside the superstition that seeing each other before the ceremony is bad luck, It's just better theater to make a big entrance with the music cuing and the whole crowd turning and the double doors flying open. My sense of spectacle is truly, madly, deeply offended by all that thunder getting stolen.

But hey, maybe there was already so much anticipation sizzling between these two that escalating it even slightly would have caused their genitals to literally explode in front of their 1,000 guests and 200 volunteer wedding workers. I'm not a medical professional, but they are both virgins, they don't even frontal-hug, and the kiss at the altar isn't just their first kiss together, it's the first kiss ever for both of them. Their bodies were clearly quivering with more than just the fear of the Lord when that smoocheroo came to pass:

Wow, Jim Bob's "you may kiss the bride" pronouncement sent a shiver of revulsion through not just my body but also my soul. Moving on.

The last thing I expected watching this wedding special was to be shocked by something other than Jim Bob or the footwear, so I give you points for surprising me Jill Dillard. Also you looked gorgeous, congratulations to you and your handsome new owner. Now go get that sweet sweet marriage-bed dick, baby girl! Your family is expecting babies in 3-4 months.

[ Videos via TLC]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

Two years ago this evening, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, becoming the second costliest storm in U.S. history behind Hurricane Katrina. The media will talk to you today about Superstorm Sandy. They are wrong. Superstorm Sandy did not exist.

Everyone loves something new—new gadgets, new cars, new clothes. Broadcast media, on the other hand, enjoys new terms even more than material things like new diseases or new royal offspring. The catchier the term the better, and this is especially true in the often hard-to-sell world of weather. The Ohio-D.C. Derecho of 2012 caused six-figure damages and knocked out power to millions of people during a brutal heat wave. It was also the first time most people in the United States heard the word "derecho."

Derechos—lines of severe thunderstorms that produce intense, continuous wind damage over a 200+ mile path—have been around forever, but since they usually affect the unpopulated corn fields that occupy the space between New York and California, the word wasn't a part anyone's vocabulary until that storm struck heavily populated areas and got airtime on the nightly news.

The same goes for the "polar vortex" last winter. Someone mentioned it in writing for the first time back in the 1800s, but hey, nobody outside of atmospheric scientists had ever heard the term, so it was a great new way for the media to describe an intense cold snap.

Hype or not, terms like derecho and polar vortex are scientifically accurate words used to describe specific types of weather events. "Superstorm," on the other hand, is not scientific. A "superstorm" is nothing. "Superstorm" deserves every redundant quotation mark it gets. To call Hurricane Sandy a "superstorm" is to paint a scary face on the forehead of a monster.

Hurricane Sandy approached a strange weather setup as it moved north, with a ridge of high pressure to its northeast and a trough of low pressure to its northwest. As Sandy interacted with these features, it began a process called "extratropical transition" that is typical of almost every tropical system that moves into the higher latitudes.

An extratropical cyclone is the kind of low pressure system we see on a daily basis in North America—a low that feeds its energy off of the jet stream and has cold and warm fronts extending off of it like tentacles. When a tropical cyclone begins to rapidly move into the higher latitudes, it loses its tropical characteristics and starts to transition into an extratropical cyclone.

The difference between "tropical" and "extratropical" is mostly inside baseball, but the basic idea is that a transitioning hurricane will begin to feed its energy from the jet stream as opposed to thunderstorms around its eye, and it will develop cold and warm fronts.

When storms transition from tropical to extratropical, their fundamental structure begins to change and their wind field increases in size. This is what happened to Sandy. As Sandy transitioned into an extratropical cyclone, it began feeding its energy from the jet stream, allowing it to grow in size and develop cold and warm fronts. By the time Sandy made landfall, it more closely resembled a nor'easter on steroids than a hurricane, as evidenced by the fact that its wind field stretched from Myrtle Beach to Portland and the system dropped up to three feet of snow in the mountains of West Virginia.

The National Hurricane Center officially classified the storm as "Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy" when it came ashore in New Jersey, but the name Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy is nowhere near as sexy to slap on a chyron as Superstorm Sandy.

The effects of the storm's wind and surge and blizzard and their associated death toll of more than 150 people in the United States alone were horrible enough without having to ascribe some mystical name to the system. It was just Hurricane Sandy. Superstorm Sandy did not exist.

[Images: CIMSS, NHC]

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When Reddit quietly announced their new Redditmade project last night, we worried it'd be a quasi-Kickstarter knockoff where titillated teenagers crowdfund the release of hacked nudes. But Redditmade is much, much more pitiful: it simply allows Reddit's moderators to hawk depressing merch to the site's volatile masses.

Combining the excitement of crowdfunding with the fashion sense of Zazzle, Redditmade "is a new place to turn the best designs and products by the community into reality," the company wrote in an announcement:

redditmade gives you the flexibility to create almost anything you want, easily raise money, and support causes you care about. It's also a great way for others to find awesome new products they'll love and support other redditors while knowing their information and money will always be secure.

Reddit thinks that its users will turn artwork into t-shirts. And so far, TechCrunch has been impressed with some of Reddmade's offerings: TC's Jon Russell remarked that a Reddit Secret Santa Sticker Pack "caught [his] eye."

However, that sticker pack was designed by the company itself—presumably shelling out some of their $50 million in investor dollars on a professional design. And that sticker pack aside, Redditmade is mostly full of hideous tees only a Redditor could love.

Thus far, the bulk of Redditmade's products have received no backing, sparing the site the embarrassment of having to print slogans like "cum box."

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

Sometime soon, a grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri will decide whether or not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing black teenager Michael Brown. Local officials are preparing for that moment by buying heaps of military-style riot gear.

Guardian reporter Jon Swaine, who has covered Brown's death and the subsequent Ferguson protests and police recriminations extensively, found that county police have spent lavishly since August on more "teargas, grenades, pepper balls and other civil disobedience equipment," just in case:

St Louis County police made the purchases amid concerns that hundreds of demonstrators will return to the streets if Darren Wilson, the officer who shot dead Michael Brown in August, is not indicted on criminal charges by a grand jury currently considering the case.

A breakdown of the department's spending since August on equipment intended for the policing of crowds and civil disobedience, which totals $172,669, was obtained by the Guardian from the county force.

That tally includes $25,000 for 650 tear gas grenades; "$18,000 on 1,500 'beanbag rounds' and 6,000 pepper balls"; $77,500 for police riot outfits; and $2,300 for plastic handcuffs.

It's not even clear whether the grand jury will decline to indict Wilson on any criminal charges, but the riot-gear purchases certainly suggest police think he may go free—and any ensuing protests may require a militarized response.

A police spokesman downplayed the spending spree, telling Swaine the agency hopes never "to use any" of the goods. But one of the line items Swaine obtained seemed to suggest the contrary:

In addition, an estimated $50,000 has been set aside by the department for repair work for damaged police vehicles. However, in a sign that further clashes are expected, they are in fact "not repairing any vehicles until unrest is over," a department inventory said.

[Photo credit: AP Images]

Seventy-five-year-old Roger Hoeppner's owed the town of Stettin, Wisc. an outstanding fine of $80,000. Earlier this month, 24 police officers descended on his 20 acre property to collect the fine with an armored car in tow. When police arrived, Hoeppner was filing medication into his pill organizer.

According to the Guardian, Hoeppner paid his fine after police escorted him to the bank, where he claims to have drained his 401K. Hoeppner amassed his $80,000 fine from a long-running dispute with the city of Stettin:

The city sued him in 2008 because of the state of his property, which sits off of a major highway and is packed with wood pallets and land equipment. They complained again in 2010, saying he had not complied with an order to clean up the property, at which point a judge intervened. The city did not approve of adjustment he made to his land and in 2011 a judge authorized the town to take away some of his items. A final judgement was issued in April 2013, with Hoeppner receiving a $500 fine every day he did not comply.

According to WSAW, police first knocked on Hoeppner's door to collect the fine. No one answered. Hoepnner did not leave his home until the armored car was driven onto his property.

Police contend that their response, including the armored car, was appropriate. Marathon County police first acquired the armored vehicle, a BearCat, in 2011, calling it MARV, or Marathon County Response Vehicle.

"I've been involved in about five standoff situations where, as soon as the MARV showed up, the person gives up," Marathon County Sheriff's Capt. Greg Bean told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Bean told the paper that the armored vehicle saved time, money, and increased the safety of Hoeppner's arrest. "People may not always understand why, but an armored vehicle is almost a necessity now."

From the Journal Sentinel:

Marathon County sheriff's officials aren't apologizing for their tactics. Sheriff's Capt. Greg Bean said officials expected to have to seize and remove tractors and wooden pallets to pay the judgment — hence the cadre of deputies. He also said what while Hoeppner was never considered dangerous, he was known to be argumentative.

"I just don't understand why a dollar and a half of postage on an envelope that I would have had to pick up at the Wausau post office wouldn't have done the same thing as 24 officers and an armored vehicle," Hoepnner told the Guardian.

Update, 3:51 p.m.: In dashcam footage acquired by WSAW, you can hear Hoepnner argue with police about paying his fine.

[Screengrab via WSAW]

In the 1980s, Bob Lambert, a former officer with London's Metropolitan Police Service, went undercover with a group of environmental activists. Working under the alias Bob Robinson, he attended demonstrations, co-wrote a leaflet that started the longest trial in England's history, and fathered a son.

In an interview with Vice News, "Jacqui," the pseudonymous woman with whom Lambert had a relationship lasting several years, explains what it was like to learn that the man she loved had been a spy. Jacqui, an environmental activist herself, describes Lambert as "my first love, my first pregnancy, my first giving birth." She learned she had been duped when she saw Lambert's photo in the Daily Mail in 2012, two and a half decades after he told her he had to go on the run in 1987 and never returned:

"He always said he'd be in touch as soon as he could; he'd never abandon his own son. And that's exactly what he did," Jacqui said.

Jacqui said she tried to trace Lambert, but her searches turned up nothing. She eventually gave up hope of him coming back. She married again and had another child, but when she was 31, her 36-year-old husband died suddenly.

The interview's most devastating moment comes when Jacqui tells of her realization that what she thought of as moments with her family were simply work time for Lambert. Astonishingly, he was married to and had two children with another woman throughout their relationship:

"What I realize now is that his time with me was his work. When I thought he was at work that was not work. When he was at work was our everyday life," she said. "So he went to family functions with me. My parents treated him as a son-in-law. My sister treated him as a brother-in-law. He was in family photos, stuff like that, and he's a ghost. It turns out he's nothing."

Now, Vice reports, Jacqui is deciding whether to sell the rights to her life story to a movie studio. Lambert works as a university lecturer and says he "genuinely regret[s]" his actions.

[Photo via London Greenpeace]

Disaster officials in Sri Lanka are saying that at least 100 people have been buried alive under a mudslide that was brought on by recent monsoon weathers. According to the AFP, at least 16 are confirmed dead.

A witness reported that the mudslide sounded "like thunder" as a part of a mountain collapsed onto a tea estate in the Koslanda region of Sri Lanka, which ended in many homes being buried in 30 feet of mud. Soldiers had initially begun digging for bodies with their bare hands but then moved on to using excavators.

Hundreds of others in the area were displaced. Via the AFP:

The region's top military official, Major General Mano Perera, said 302 people, including 75 schoolchildren, whose homes were destroyed in the mudslide were being looked after at two schools in the same area.

The mudslide hit at a time when most people were at work and children were already in school, leaving the elderly and the very young at home.

Disaster Management Center spokesman Sarath Kumara spoke with AFP, explaining that at least 130 houses were washed away in the mudslide. The slide began early Wednesday morning and only lasted ten minutes, but disaster officials fear that anyone who is currently trapped under the mud will not be able to be saved.

[Image via AP]

Mike Tyson, of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, was one of the most fearsome Nintendo bosses of any '80s kid's childhood. He hit extremely hard, and it was hard to hit him back. So it's understandable that the real Mike Tyson might be a little nervous to face himself in his 8-bit prime.

"I would get killed, man!" he protests to Tyson-on-Tyson fight promoter Jimmy Fallon. He's only ever met one person, a 10-year-old kid, who claimed to have beaten the NES version of him. But what the hell, he'll give it a try.

And just like in his real life, Tyson gets to win no matter what he does.

Update: Tyson played Punch-Out for the first time just last year.

[h/t The Verge]

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery claims that a scrap of aluminum recovered from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, belongs to Amelia Earhart's plane. The new purported evidence supports a theory that the doomed pilot made a forced landing on an island in the Pacific Ocean during her trip around the world from which she was never seen again.

The metal patch was first discovered in 1991 on the atoll, according to TIGHAR, and was placed on Earhart's plane during a stop in Miami in 1937. "The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart's Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."

TIGHAR's theory, based on expeditions to and artifacts recovered from Nikumaroro, is that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the atoll and were stranded there until they died.

It should be noted that TIGHAR has long been fanatic about propagating a theory that runs counter to what most historians believe: that Earhart's plane crashed into the ocean after running out of fuel.

Anyway, this is the island Amelia Earhart maybe died on. Seems nice?

[Images via TIGHAR and Wikipedia]

The sad thing about life is that one usually dies before so many confounding mysteries are solved. These mysteries keep me going! I'm thinking I'll probably be dead before the world knows who killed JonBenét Ramsey, and that's infuriating because I really want to know who did. So if you're reading this and I'm dead and the mystery has been solved, please text 1-800-TEL-LEAH (secret PIN: Hell).

If any mystery could be solved before you die, what would it be? Here are some thoughts from me and the Gawker staff to get your mystery thoughts flowing.

• What happened to Madeleine McCann?
• Where is MH370?
• Who is/was DB Cooper?
• Did Amelia Earhart "go missing" to get away from her husband?
• What happened with Matt Taibbi and First Look Media?
• What if OJ "did it"?
• Who killed Elliott Smith?
• Who birthed Blue Ivy Carter?

[Image via Getty]

Honey Boo Boo matriarch Mama June will tell her side of the story on E! News tonight, following reports that she's rekindled her relationship with the man who reportedly molested her daughter Anna. June said today, "the protection of my kids is my number one priority" and "we are handling this as a family matter."

A member of the secretive, all-about-the business special operations team that killed Osama bin Laden will participate in an upcoming Fox News Channel documentary and explain how it was him who fired the shots that killed the Al Qaeda leader.

"The Shooter" will also explain "what happened when [bin Laden] took his last breath," according to a press release posted this afternoon on Fox News Insider, "The Official Blog of Fox News Channel":

The two-night presentation will feature an exclusive interview with the Navy SEAL who says he fired the shots that killed terrorist leader Usama Bin Laden. In the special, he describes the events leading up to and during the historical raid that took place on May 1st, 2011.

Revealing his identity and speaking out publicly for the first time, the Navy SEAL, also known as "The Shooter," will share his story of training to be a member of America's elite fighting force and explain his involvement in Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that killed Bin Laden.

Fox promised that the documentary, which airs November 11 and 12, also offers a glimpse at a "secret ceremony" in which Mr. The Shooter "donated the shirt he was wearing during the mission to the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City," pictured above.

Gawker could not immediately confirm rumors that the SEAL is in fact Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Légion d'Honneur, and five-time Purple Heart recipient Petty Officer 1st Class Sweeney "Marine" Todd, who since his final tour of duty has been an Olympic pentathlete, lay preacher, and student of theology and American awesomeness at Every State U.

[Photo credit: AP Images]