Most mysteries, whether they’re revealed at a crime scene or through the scientific process, have perfectly reasonable explanations. It’s just a matter of finding out what that explanation is!
Unfortunately, though, that isn’t always easy to do. Because of this, there are all sorts of whodunits that go unsolved—and when the case goes cold, it usually stays that way.
With that in mind, here are 10 of the strangest unsolved mysteries in human history. From odd medical conditions to suspicious craters, you might just be compelled to grab your magnifying glass and join in on the case!
1. In 1948, a dead man—often referred to simply as “The Unknown Man” or “The Somerton Man”—was discovered on Australia’s Somerton Beach. There was no way of identifying him because no one could find a match for his dental records. And although there was some suspicion that he’d be poisoned, the autopsy didn’t turn up any trace of actual poison in his body. Adding to the mystery was a note sewn to a pocket in his pants, which only read “Taman Shud.”
The words, which literally meant “it is completed,” were from The Rubaiyat, a collection of poetry by Omar Khayyam. The paper itself was actually a page torn from a copy of the book found in a car close to the beach. The police couldn’t decode the hidden message, but there was a phone number of a nurse who, when questioned, revealed that she had given the book to a man named Albert Boxall. With that information, the police initially thought that they had identified the body—but Boxall turned out to still be alive. So who was the dead man on the beach? To this day, nobody knows…
2. In 1987, a man wearing a mask of Max Headroom—the computer-generated host of the 1980s television series The Max Headroom Show—interrupted an airing of Doctor Who on a PBS affiliate station in Chicago to leave a disturbing, weird, and largely unintelligible message.
Nobody ever found out who the mysterious man was.
3. In 1964, a lifeboat—complete with wood, drums, oars, and a copper tank—was found on Bouvet Island, an uninhabited subantarctic island located in the South Atlantic Ocean, despite the fact that it’s one of the most isolated places on Earth. Plant life can’t even grow there, which is probably why it’s never been inhabited.
No passengers were ever found, nor were any marks of identification. Two years later, when another expedition searched the area, the lifeboat had seemingly disappeared.
4. In what came to be known as the Mayerling Incident, the bodies of Prince Rudolf (the Archduke of Austria-Hungary) and his lover, Baroness Marie Vetsera, were found in a rural hunting lodge in Vienna in 1889. They were, apparently, shot to death, though their fates remained shrouded in mystery for many years after Emperor Franz Josef issued an order to cover up the incident.
Rumors went flying, such as one that posited that the archduke had been poisoned. The emperor even suggested to the pope that Rudolf may have killed himself and his lover. Still, the exact circumstances of their deaths remain unknown to this day.
5. In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which carried 12 crew members and 227 passengers, seemingly vanished. An hour after the plane took off, voice contact was lost, and later the plane failed to show up on radar. The search is ongoing, but the truth remains a mystery to this day.
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