Special Area: Unsolved 

Mysteries
Introductory Questions
Is there a difference between a mystery and an unanswered question?

Are most mysteries solved by individuals, by governments, or by the private sector?

Are some mysteries more worth solving than others?

What distinguishes mysteries that are solved from those that go unsolved?

Why are so many people fascinated by mysteries? What features might make one mystery more
fascinating than another?

Can you think of any mysteries that are better left unsolved?

Do people who solve mysteries have an obligation to share the solution?

How do we deal with questions that we are unable to answer?

Can you imagine a circumstance in which someone would solve a mystery and then decide to
keep the solution secret?

Have you ever had something happen in your life for which you lack an explanation? Do you
want that explanation?

INVESTIGATIVE METHODS
Guesses – to arrive at or commit oneself to
an opinion about (something) without having sufficient evidence to support the opinion  fully: 
to estimate or conjecture about correctly:
Estimations – approximate calculations
Hypotheses – a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence
of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to
guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established
facts.
Theories –a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that
can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena
Inductive vs. Deductive vs. Abductive
ReasoningDeductive and inductive refer to two distinct logical processes. Deductive reasoning is
a logical process in which a conclusion drawn from a set of premises contains no more
information than the premises taken collectively. All dogs are animals; this is a dog; therefore,
this is an animal: The truth of the conclusion is dependent only on the method. All men are apes;
this is a man; therefore, this is an ape: The conclusion is logically true, although the premise is
absurd.
Inductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion is proposed that contains more
information than the observations or experience on which it is based. Every crow ever seen was
black; all crows are black: The truth of the conclusion is verifiable only in terms of future
experience and certainty is attainable only if all possible instances have been examined. In the
example, there is no certainty that a white crow will not be found tomorrow, although past
experience would make such an occurrence seem unlikely.
Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference which starts with an observation or set of
observations then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation for the observations. This
process, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not positively
verify it. Abductive conclusions are thus qualified as having a remnant of uncertainty or doubt,
which is expressed in retreat terms such as “best available” or “most likely”. (Wikipedia)
 

ELEMENTS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Hard Evidence: Forensic Science is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly
—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards
of admissible evidence and criminal procedure.  Forensic scientists collect, preserve, and analyze
scientific evidence during the course of an investigation. While some forensic scientists travel to
the scene of the crime to collect the evidence themselves, others occupy a laboratory role,
performing analysis on objects brought to them by other individuals.
Philosophy of the Unexplained
known knowns | unknown unknowns |

Rumsfeld during a Pentagon news briefing in February 2002.

“There are known knowns” is a phrase from a response United States Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to a question at a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) news
briefing on February 12, 2002 about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the
supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.[1]
Rumsfeld stated:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we
know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are
known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are
also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout
the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the
difficult ones.[1]
Epistemology (How do we know what we know? IB TOK!) – is the study of the nature of
knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much debate in epistemology centres on
four areas: (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such
concepts as truth, belief, and justification,[2][3] (2) various problems of skepticism, (3) the sources
and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and (4) the criteria for knowledge and justification.
Johari window 
 

 
belief vs. knowledge
 

To understand the difference between belief and knowledge we need to understand how each is
defined. Beliefs, are those things that we personally understand to be true but may not actually be
True. As such, our opinions, personal testimony, and anecdotal evidence all fall within this
category. Belief is not a choice. Belief is an involuntary action occurring after our own internal
standard for evidence has been met. In other words, belief is the necessary result of being
convinced. It is important to recognize that our own internal standard of evidence is not
equivalent to scientific (actual) evidence. Lastly, knowledge is a subset of belief.
Knowledge is defined as the small fraction of our beliefs that actually meet the scientific standard
of evidence. As such, knowledge represents the small fraction of our beliefs that are actually
True. Therefore knowledge is by definition “True belief(s)”.
intuition – is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning,
or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired.

CONTESTS TO UNCOVER THE UNKNOWN: EFFECTIVE OR NOT?

Millennium Prize Problems – are seven problems in mathematics that were stated by the Clay
Mathematics Institute on May 24, 2000
Yang–Mills and Mass Gap
Experiment and computer simulations suggest the existence of a “mass gap” in the solution to the
quantum versions of the Yang-Mills equations. But no proof of this property is known.

Riemann Hypothesis
The prime number theorem determines the average distribution of the primes. The Riemann
hypothesis tells us about the deviation from the average. Formulated in Riemann’s 1859 paper, it
asserts that all the ‘non-obvious’ zeros of the zeta function are complex numbers with real part
1/2.

P vs NP Problem
If it is easy to check that a solution to a problem is correct, is it also easy to solve the problem?
This is the essence of the P vs NP question. Typical of the NP problems is that of the Hamiltonian
Path Problem: given N cities to visit, how can one do this without visiting a city twice? If you
give me a solution, I can easily check that it is correct. But I cannot so easily find a solution.

Navier–Stokes Equation
This is the equation which governs the flow of fluids such as water and air. However, there is no
proof for the most basic questions one can ask: do solutions exist, and are they unique? Why ask
for a proof? Because a proof gives not only certitude, but also understanding.

Hodge Conjecture
The answer to this conjecture determines how much of the topology of the solution set of a
system of algebraic equations can be defined in terms of further algebraic equations. The Hodge
conjecture is known in certain special cases, e.g., when the solution set has dimension less than
four. But in dimension four it is unknown.

Poincaré Conjecture
In 1904 the French mathematician Henri Poincaré asked if the three dimensional sphere is
characterized as the unique simply connected three manifold. This question, the Poincaré
conjecture, was a special case of Thurston’s geometrization conjecture. Perelman’s proof tells us
that every three manifold is built from a set of standard pieces, each with one of eight well-
understood geometries. – ONLY ONE SOLVED

Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture

Supported by much experimental evidence, this conjecture relates the number of points on an
elliptic curve mod p to the rank of the group of rational points. Elliptic curves, defined by cubic
equations in two variables, are fundamental mathematical objects that arise in many areas: Wiles’
proof of the Fermat Conjecture, factorization of numbers into primes, and cryptography, to name
three.

Loebner Prize – is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to

the computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the
competition is that of a standard Turing test. In each round, a human judge simultaneously holds
textual conversations with a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the
responses, the judge must decide which is which.
The contest was launched in 1990 by Hugh Loebner in conjunction with the Cambridge Center
for Behavioral Studies, Massachusetts, United States. Since 2014[1] it has been organised by
the AISB at Bletchley Park.[2]
 

One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge – was an offer by the James Randi Educational
Foundation (JREF) to pay out one million U.S. dollars to anyone who can demonstrate
a supernaturalor paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. A version of the
challenge was first issued in 1964. Over a thousand people applied to take it, but none were
successful. The challenge was terminated in 2015.
 

Cognitive dissonance – In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort
(psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more
contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.
See Khan Academy
Whodunit – a story or play about a murder in which the identity of the murderer is not revealed
until the end.
 

John/Jane Doe – “John Doe” (for males) and “Jane Doe” (for females) are multiple-use
names that are used when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally
concealed.[1][2] In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used
to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or unconfirmed. Secondly, such names are also
often used to refer to a hypothetical “everyman” in other contexts, in a manner similar to “John
Q. Public” or “Joe Public”. There are many variants to the “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” names,
many others such include “John Roe“, “Richard Roe“, “Jane Roe” and “Baby Doe“, “Janie
Doe” or “Johnny Doe” (for children).
 Fata morgana – is a complex form of superior mirage that is
seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. It is an Italian term named after the Arthurian
sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina,
were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths.
Although the term Fata Morgana sometimes is applied to other more common kinds of mirages,
true Fata Morgana is different from both an ordinary superior mirage and an inferior mirage.
Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, often
such that the object is completely unrecognizable. A Fata Morgana may be seen on land or at sea,
in polar regions, or in deserts. It may involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats,
islands, and the coastline i.e flying dutchman.

Cold case –  A criminal investigation that has not been solved after a considerable time but

remains “on the books” and may be reopened when new evidence appears.
Typically, cold cases are violent or other major felony crimes, such as murder or rape which—
unlike unsolved minor crimes—are generally not subject to a statute of limitations.
Sometimes disappearances can also be considered cold cases if the victim has not been seen or
heard from for some time, such as the case of Natalee Holloway or the Beaumont Children.
About 35% of those cases are not really cold cases at all. Some cases become instantly cold when
a seeming closed (solved) case is re-opened due to the discovery of new evidence pointing away
from the original suspect(s). Other cases are cold when the crime is discovered well after the fact
– for example, by the discovery of human remains. [1] Some cases become classified cold cases
when a case that had been originally ruled an accident or suicide is re-designated as a murder
when new evidence emerges.
The John Christie murders is a notable case, when Timothy Evans was wrongly executed for the
alleged murders of his wife and child. Many other bodies were later found in the house where
they lived with Christie, and he was then executed for the crimes. The case helped a campaign
against capital punishment in Britain
Preternatural vs paranormal – 
Paranormal:

“para” is Latin for “beyond” – so it literally means “beyond natural”

“claimed occurrence, event, or perception without scientific explanation, such as extrasensory

perception”
“beyond normal explanation; outside normal sensory channels; extrasensory”

“not scientifically explainable; supernatural”

“defies science; against reality”

Supernatural:

“not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or
material”

“attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces”

“attributed to God or a deity; demigod, spirit, or devil”

“preternatural”

“attributed or pertaining to ghosts, goblins, or other unearthly beings”

“an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; related to the realm of the
unexplained”

Preternatural:

“surpassing the ordinary or normal”

“extraordinary”

“transcending the natural or material order; supernatural”

“existing outside of nature”

“another word for supernatural”

From DaphneShadows

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?

 The Pyramids –  The Egyptian
pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt. As of November
2008, sources cite either 118 or 138 as the number of identified Egyptian pyramids. [1][2] Most
were built as tombs for the country’s pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle
Kingdom periods.[3][4][5]
The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found at Saqqara, northwest of Memphis. The earliest
among these is the Pyramid of Djoser, which was built c. 2630–2610 BC during the Third
Dynasty.[6] This pyramid and its surrounding complex were designed by the architect Imhotep,
and are generally considered to be the world’s oldest monumental structures constructed
of dressed masonry.[7]
The most famous Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. Several of
the Giza pyramids are counted among the largest structures ever built. [8] The Pyramid of Khufu at
Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World still in existence.
See Wikipedia for details of pyramids from around the world.

Stonehenge – is
a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of
a ring of standing stones, with each standing stone around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m)
wide and weighing around 25 tons. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most
dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several
hundred burial mounds.[1]
Archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular
earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to
about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were raised between 2400
and 2200 BC,[2] although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC
 Hanging Gardens – were one of the Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World as listed by Hellenic culture, described as a remarkable feat of
engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of trees, shrubs,
and vines, resembling a large green mountain constructed of mud bricks, and said to have been
built in the ancient city of Babylon, near present-day Hillah, Babil province, in Iraq.  The
Hanging Gardens are the only one of the Seven Wonders for which the location has not been
definitively established.[6] There are no extant Babylonian texts that mention the gardens, and no
definitive archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon. [7][8] Three theories have been
suggested to account for this. One: that they were purely mythical, and the descriptions found in
ancient Greek and Roman writers including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius
Rufus represent a romantic ideal of an eastern garden. [9] Two: that they existed in Babylon, but
were completely destroyed sometime around the first century AD. [10][4] Three: that the legend
refers to a well-documented garden that the Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) built in his
capital city of Nineveh on the River Tigris, near the modern city of Mosul.
Zuni language – is a language of the Zuni people, indigenous to western New Mexico and
eastern Arizona in the United States. It is spoken by around 9,500 people worldwide, especially
in the vicinity of Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, and much smaller numbers in parts of Arizona.  Zuni
is considered a language isolate (i.e., unrelated to any other known language). Zuni may have
become a distinct language at least 7,000 years ago.

Nazca Geoglyphs – are a group of very

large geoglyphs formed by depressions or shallow incisions made in the soil of the Nazca
Desert in southern Peru.[1] They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE.  They were
designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.  Because of its isolation and the dry,
windless, stable climate of the plateau, the lines have mostly been preserved naturally. Extremely
rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs. As of 2012, the lines are said
to have been deteriorating because of an influx of squatters inhabiting the lands.

THE MYSTERY OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

Evaluate this suggested explanation for the mystery of the Flying Dutchman. Then, consider with
your team: are there other mysteries that could be attributed to “fata morgana” or other tricks of
light? To what degree should we distrust what we see with our own eyes?

The legend of the Flying Dutchman goes back to the late 18th century when sailors allegedly saw
a ghost ship that foretold imminent doom or disaster. Reports of a spectral ship persisted for the
next 250 years despite there being no definitive proof that the ghost ship exists.
The following are famous through history of sightings:

1. Captain Hendrick van der Decken, AKA The Dutchman, departed Amsterdam
for the far East Indies and loaded his ship with spices, silks, and dyes to sell
back in Holland. After making some repairs to his vessel, van der Decken set
about a return course to Amsterdam in 1641.
2. an opera in 1843 that the Flying Dutchman truly became a legend. Richard
Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” opera states that the cursed Dutchman is
eternally damned for flying through the storm. As such, van der Decken’s ship
and crew now roam the seas as a ghost ship with an ethereal crew.
3. Another origin story points to Captain Bernard Fokke or Falkenberg
who sailed for the Dutch East India Company. He was able to sail from
Amsterdam to Indonesia in just three months, which led many sailors to
speculate that he had traded his soul for amazing speed during a game of dice
with the devil. That story served as imagery for Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798.
4. The most interesting written account of the Flying Dutchman comes from
Prince George, the future King George V, on July 11, 1881. He and his older
brother Prince Albert Victor were sailing near Australia as part of a three-year
journey aboard the HMS Bacchante.
5. In 1939, residents of Cape Town, South Africa, claimed to see a vessel under
full sail before it suddenly disappeared. During World War II, a German
 submarine crew supposedly saw a ghost ship in the Suez Canal. British writer
Nicholas Monsarrat also spotted something akin to the Flying
Dutchman during his time with the Royal Navy in World War II.
All of these sightings have a possible scientific explanation called fata morgana. This
phenomenon occurs when light refracts and bend through different temperatures of air.
The surface of the ocean is the perfect medium for this anomaly to happen. This is especially true
if someone sees a shimmery mirage along the horizon. Someone might also witness this along a
hot asphalt road as heat waves rise from the surface. During this phenomenon, shapes form in the
distance due to plays of light.

Giant Spheres of Costa Rica – are an assortment of over three hundred petrospheres in Costa

Rica, located on the Diquís Delta and on Isla del Caño. Locally, they are known as Las
Bolas (literally The Balls). The spheres are commonly attributed to the extinct Diquis culture and
are sometimes referred to as the Diquís Spheres. They are the best-known stone sculptures of
the Isthmo-Colombian area. They are thought to have been placed in lines along the approach to
the houses of chiefs, but their exact significance remains uncertain.
 

Terracotta Warriors – The discovery of the army of warriors was entirely fortuitous. In 1974,
peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of
terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation. Throughout the years the site became so famous
that many of its unusual attributes are now well known, in particular the fact that no two soldier’s
faces are alike.
 

Puma Punku – is part of a large temple complex or

monument group that is part of the Tiwanaku Site near Tiwanaku, in western Bolivia. It is
believed to date to AD 536 and later.  Tiwanaku is significant in Inca traditions because it is
believed to be the site where the world was created. [1] In Aymara, Puma Punku’s name means
“The Door of the Puma”. The Pumapunku complex consists of an unwalled western court, a
central unwalled esplanade, a terraced platform mound that is faced with stone, and a walled
eastern court.
 ULFBERHT SWORDS – ARE A GROUP OF MEDIEVAL

SWORDS FOUND IN EUROPE, DATED TO THE 9TH TO 11TH CENTURIES, WITH

BLADES INLAID WITH THE INSCRIPTION +VLFBERHT+ (AND VARIANTS).[3] THAT WORD IS

A FRANKISH PERSONAL NAME THAT BECAME THE BASIS OF A TRADEMARK OF SORTS, USED

BY MULTIPLE BLADESMITHS FOR SEVERAL CENTURIES. ABOUT 100 TO 170 ULFBERHT SWORDS

ARE KNOWI

WHERE DID THEY GO?

Jack the Ripper -is the best-known name for an unidentified serial killer generally believed to
have been active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district
of London in 1888. In both the criminal case files and contemporary journalistic accounts, the
killer was called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
Attacks ascribed to Jack the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes who lived and worked in
the slums of the East End of London whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The
removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer had
some anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in
September and October 1888, and letters were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard from
a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer. See Histroy Extra for a discussion on the main
suspects.
Dale Kerstetter –
It’s perhaps Bradford’s most well known unsolved mystery: What happened to Dale Kerstetter
and a quarter-million-dollars worth of platinum missing from Corning Glassworks?

The mystery began on Saturday, Sept. 12, 1987. Kerstetter, a maintenance man and security
guard at Corning, went in to work as usual that day. The next morning, another security guard
found Kerstetter’s lunch pail, newspaper and keys on a cafeteria table. His truck was in the
parking lot.  Kerstetter was nowhere to be found.

 
 

Madeline “Mandy” Hampton, Ph.Dis a fictional character from the

American serial drama The West Wing, portrayed by Moira Kelly. She was White Housemedia
consultant during the first season of the show, and the former girlfriend of Deputy White House
Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, with whom she often clashed.  The character appeared only in the
first season, and her appearances became sporadic as the episodes progressed. She departed from
the show without plot explanation after the first season ended. [2][10] Series creator Aaron
Sorkin said that the character was not working out, [10][11] and the decision for Moira Kelly’s
departure from the show was amicable.

Amelia Earhart –  was an American aviation

pioneer and author.[1][Note 1] Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic
Ocean.[3][Note 2] She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for this
accomplishment.[5] She set many other records,[2] wrote best-selling books about her flying
experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for
female pilots.[6] In 1935, Earhart became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an
advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to women students. She was also a
member of the National Woman’s Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
[7][8]
During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-
funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the
central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her life, career, and disappearance
continues to this day.
Sodder Children 
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder home in Fayetteville, West
Virginia, United States. At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine
of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The
bodies of the other five children have never been found. The Sodders believed for the rest of their
lives that the five missing children survived. [1]
The Sodders never rebuilt the house, instead converting the site into a memorial garden to their
lost children. In the 1950s, as they came to doubt that the children had perished, they put up a
billboard at the site along State Route 16 with pictures of the five, offering a reward for
information that would bring closure to the case. It remained up until shortly after Jennie
Sodder’s death in 1989.[2]
In support of their belief that the children survived, the Sodders have pointed to a number of
unusual circumstances before and during the fire. George disputed the fire department’s finding
that the blaze was electrical in origin, noting that he had recently had the house rewired and
inspected. He and his wife suspected arson, leading to theories that the children had been taken
by the Sicilian Mafia, perhaps in retaliation for George’s outspoken criticism of Benito
Mussolini and the Fascist government of his native Italy.
State and federal efforts to investigate the case further in the early 1950s yielded no new
information. The family did, however, later receive what may have been a picture of one of the
boys as an adult during the 1960s. Their one surviving daughter, along with their grandchildren,
have continued to publicize the case in the 21st century in the media and online.
 Edgar Allan Poe – was an American writer, editor,
and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of
mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United
States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country’s earliest
practitioners of the short story. He is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction
genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. [1] He was
the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a
financially difficult life and career.
On October 3, 1849, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, “in great distress, and…
in need of immediate assistance”, according to Joseph W. Walker who found him. [71] He was
taken to the Washington Medical College where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849 at 5:00 in
the morning.[72] He was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire
condition and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. He is said to have repeatedly
called out the name “Reynolds” on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he
was referring. Some sources say that Poe’s final words were “Lord help my poor soul”. [72] All
medical records have been lost, including his death certificate. [73]
Newspapers at the time reported Poe’s death as “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral
inflammation”, common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism.
[74] The actual cause of death remains a mystery. [75] Speculation has included delirium tremens,
heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, [4] cholera,[76] and rabies.[77] One theory
dating from 1872 suggests that cooping was the cause of Poe’s death, a form of electoral fraud in
which citizens were forced to vote for a particular candidate, sometimes leading to violence and
even murder
Starlite – is a material claimed to be able to withstand and insulate from extreme heat. It was
invented by British amateur chemist and hairdresser Maurice Ward during the 1970s and 1980s,
and received significant publicity after coverage of the material aired in 1990 on the BBC science
and technology show Tomorrow’s World.[1] The name Starlite was coined by Ward’s
granddaughter Kimberly.  Despite interest from NASA and other major technological companies,
Ward, who died in 2011, never revealed the composition of Starlite, which is still unknown. He
once mentioned that his close family knows the fabrication process, but since his death neither his
wife nor any of his four daughters have produced any sample to demonstrate that they know the
process.
The material is believed to be a type of intumescent material and products with roughly similar
properties are commercially available.
 
The Roanoke Colony (/ˈroʊəˌnoʊk/), also known as the Lost Colony, was the first attempt at
founding a permanent English settlement in North America. It was established in 1585
on Roanoke Island in what is today’s Dare County, North Carolina. The colony was sponsored
by Sir Walter Raleigh, although he himself never set foot in it.
The initial settlement was established in the summer of 1585, but a lack of supplies and bad
relations with the local Native Americans caused many of its members to return to England with
Sir Francis Drake a year later, leaving behind a small detachment. These men had all disappeared
by the time a second expedition led by John White, who also served as the colony’s governor,
arrived in July 1587. White, whose granddaughter Virginia Dare was born there shortly thereafter
(making her the first English child born in the New World), left for England in late 1587 to
request assistance from the government, but was prevented from returning to Roanoke until
August 1590 due to the Anglo-Spanish War. Upon his arrival, the entire colony was missing with
only a single clue to indicate what happened to them: the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree.
For many years, it was widely accepted that the colonists were massacred by local tribes, but no
bodies were ever discovered, nor any other archaeological evidence. The most prevalent
hypothesis now is that environmental circumstances forced the colonists to take shelter with local
tribes, but that is mostly based on oral histories and also lacks conclusive evidence. Some
artifacts were discovered in 1998 on Hatteras Islandwhere the Croatan tribe was based, but
researchers could not definitively say these were from the Roanoke colonists.
Library of Alexandria – was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient
world. Alexandria came to be regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because
of the Great Library.[11] Many important and influential scholars worked at the Library during the
third and second centuries BC.  Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library was
“burned” once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the
course of several centuries, starting with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC
during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon,
DB Cooper – is a media epithet popularly used to refer to an unidentified man
who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the northwest United States, in the airspace
between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, on the afternoon of Wednesday, November
24, 1971.[1][2] He extorted $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,240,000 in 2018) and parachuted
to an uncertain fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and protracted FBI investigation, the
perpetrator has never been located or identified. It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in
commercial aviation history.

D. B. COOPER
A 1972 FBI composite drawing of
D. B. Cooper

D I S A P P E A R E D November 24, 1971

STATUS Unknown

OTHER NAME

S Dan Cooper

Hijacking a Boeing 727 on November 24, 1971, and parachuting from the
KNOWN FOR plane mid-flight; has never been identified or captured.

A Northwest Orient Boeing 727-100, one similar to the one involved in the hijacking.

HIJACKING

DATE November 24, 1971

SUMMARY Hijacking

SITE Between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, US

AIRCRAFT

AIRCRAFT TYPE Boeing 727

OPERATOR Northwest Orient Airlines

REGISTRATION N467US
FLIGHT ORIGIN Portland International Airport

DESTINATION Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

PASSENGERS 36 plus hijacker

CREW 6

FATALITIES None (hijacker‘s fate unknown)

INJURIES None known

SURVIVORS All 42 passengers and crew

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305
Available evidence and a preponderance of expert opinion suggested from the beginning that
Cooper probably did not survive his high-risk jump, but his remains were never recovered. [6] The
FBI nevertheless maintained an active investigation for 45 years after the hijacking. Despite a
case file that grew to over 60 volumes over that period, [7] no definitive conclusions have been
reached regarding Cooper’s true identity or whereabouts if he survived the jump. The suspect
purchased his airline ticket using the alias Dan Cooper, but because of a news media
miscommunication he became known in popular lore as “D. B. Cooper”.
Mayan Civilization – was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and
noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing
system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar,
and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses
southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El
Salvador. This region consists of the northern lowlands encompassing the Yucatán Peninsula, and
the highlands of the Sierra Madre, running from the Mexican state of Chiapas, across
southern Guatemala and onwards into El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific
littoral plain.
 

Dinosaurs – The discovery that birds are a type of dinosaur showed that dinosaurs in general are
not, in fact, extinct as is commonly stated.[175] However, all non-avian dinosaurs, estimated to
have been 628-1078 species,[176] as well as many groups of birds did suddenly
become extinct approximately 66 million years ago. It has been suggested that because small
mammals, squamata and birds occupied the ecological niches suited for small body size, non-
avian dinosaurs never evolved a diverse fauna of small-bodied species, which led to their
downfall when large-bodied terrestrial tetrapods were hit by the mass extinction even.
The asteroid collision theory, which was brought to wide attention in 1980 by Walter Alvarez and
colleagues, links the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period to a bolide impact
approximately 66 million years ago.[181] Alvarez et al. proposed that a sudden increase
in iridium levels, recorded around the world in the period’s rock stratum, was direct evidence of
the impact
Lost Tribes of Israel – were the ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been
deported from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire circa 722
BCE.[1] These are the tribes
of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh and Ephraim.
Claims of descent from the “lost” tribes have been proposed in relation to many groups, [2] and
some religions espouse a messianic view that the tribes will return .
 

DO THEY EXIST? DID THEY EVER?

Atlantis – is a fictional island mentioned within an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato‘s
works Timaeus and Critias,[1] where it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges
“Ancient Athens”, the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato’s ideal state in The Republic. In the
story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world,
[2] supposedly giving testament to the superiority of Plato’s concept of a state. [3][4] The story
concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic
Ocean.
Tenth planet –
A Mars-sized planet appears to be lurking at the edge of the solar system, scientists have
announced. The “planetary mass object” seems to be disrupting the orbits of other, smaller rocky
bodies within the Kuiper Belt—a disc-shaped region of icy bodies beyond Neptune that encircles
the whole solar system and extends around 2.3 billion miles.

This “planetary mass object” is different from the hypothetical Planet Nine—a huge object
believed to be orbiting the sun from the outer solar system. Evidence for this planet was
announced in 2016, when scientists from Caltech, California, found several objects with highly
unusual orbits. These orbits could, however, be explained by the existence of a giant planet with a
mass about 10 times that of Earth.
 

Land of Punt – was an ancient kingdom. A trading partner of Egypt, it was known for producing
and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory, and wild animals. The region is
known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to it. [3] It is possible that it corresponds
to Opone as later known by the ancient Greeks,[4][5][6] while some biblical scholars have identified
it with the biblical land of Put. At times Punt is referred to as Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), the “Land of the
God”.[8] The exact location of Punt is still debated by historians. Most scholars today believe Punt
was situated to the southeast of Egypt, most likely in the coastal region of
modern Djibouti, Somalia, northeast Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Red Sealittoral of Sudan.[9] It is
also possible that the territory covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia.[10]
[11] Puntland, the Somali administrative region situated at the extremity of the Horn of Africa, is
named in reference to the Land of Punt.[12]
 

El Dorado – was the term used by the Spanish Empire to describe a mythical tribal chief (zipa)
of the Muisca native people in then Spanish colonial province of Colombia, who, as an initiation
rite, covered himself with gold dust and submerged in Lake Guatavita. The legends surrounding
El Dorado changed over time, as it went from being a man, to a city, to a kingdom, and then
finally to an empire.
A second location for El Dorado was inferred from rumors, which inspired several unsuccessful
expeditions in the late 1500s in search of a city called Manõa on the shores of Lake Parime. Two
of the most famous of these expeditions were led by Sir Walter Raleigh. In pursuit of the legend,
Spanish conquistadors and numerous others searched Colombia, Venezuela, and parts of Guyana
and northern Brazil for the city and its fabulous king. In the course of these explorations, much of
northern South America, including the Amazon River, was mapped. By the beginning of the 19th
century, most people dismissed the existence of the city as a myth.
 

Area 51 – The United States Air Force facility commonly known as Area 51 is a highly classified
remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base, within the Nevada Test and Training Range. 
 

Holy Grail – is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Different
traditions describe it as a cup, dish or stone with miraculous powers that provide happiness,
eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often in the custody of the Fisher King. The
term “holy grail” is often used to denote an elusive object or goal that is sought after for its great
significance.
 

New Zealand – 
Fountain of Youth – is a spring that supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or
bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands
of years.
 

Dark matter – is a hypothetical form of matter that is thought to account for approximately 85%
of the matter in the universe, and about a quarter of its total energy density. The majority of dark
matter is thought to be non-baryonic in nature, possibly being composed of some as-yet
undiscovered subatomic particles.[note 1] Its presence is implied in a variety
of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained unless more
matter is present than can be seen. For this reason, most experts think dark matter to be
ubiquitous in the universe and to have had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. Dark
matter is called dark because it does not appear to interact with observable electromagnetic
radiation, such as light, and is thus invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, making it
extremely difficult to detect using usual astronomical equipment.

WHAT WERE THEY?

Monsieur Chouchani – or “Shushani,” is the nickname of an otherwise anonymous and
enigmatic Jewish teacher who taught a small number of distinguished students in post-World War
II Europe and elsewhere.  Although there is no known body of works by Chouchani himself,
there is a very strong intellectual legacy seen in the influence on his pupils. By all accounts,
Chouchani had the appearance of a vagabond and yet was reputed to be a master of vast areas of
human knowledge, including science, mathematics, philosophy and especially the Talmud. Most
of the biographical details of Chouchani’s life are known from the works and interviews of his
various students, as well as anecdotes of people whom he encountered during his lifetime.
[3] Chouchani appeared in Paris after the Second World War, where he taught between the years
of 1947 and 1952. He disappeared for a while after that, evidently spent some time in the newly
formed state of Israel, returned to Paris briefly, and then left for South America where he lived
until his death.
Lori Erica Ruff – (October 16, 1968 – December 24, 2010) was an identity thief who remained
unidentified for nearly six years after her death. Ruff was eventually identified as a native of
the Philadelphia area who moved away from her Wyncote home in fall of 1986 and later vanished
after struggling to adapt to her parents’ divorce. Within the next two years, she obtained the birth
certificate of Becky Sue Turner, who had died in a fire in Fife, Washington near Tacoma at the
age of 2 in 1971. Ruff used the certificate to get an Idaho identification card, then moved
to Texas and changed her name to Lori Erica Kennedy.
 

 The Atacama Skeleton: Discuss | Preview Resource

Consider the case of this supposedly alien skeleton and the process by which its actual origin was
determined. Are there times when people would rather science leave certain questions
unanswered?

This tiny skeleton might look like an alien, but her genes tell a different story – Alien
Taured Man – The Man From Taured is an urban legend that depicts the story of a man who
allegedly crossed over from his universe into ours, and then shortly returned back to his home
universe. Is there any truth to this, or is it simply a legend?
 

Somerton Man – is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December
1948, on Somerton beach, Glenelg, just south of Adelaide, South Australia.  The case has been
considered, since the early stages of the police investigation, “one of Australia’s most profound
mysteries”.[2] There has been intense speculation ever since regarding the identity of the victim,
the cause of his death and the events leading up to it. Public interest in the case remains
significant for several reasons: the death occurred at a time of heightened international tensions
following the beginning of the Cold War; the apparent involvement of a secret code; the possible
use of an undetectable poison; and the inability of authorities to identify the dead man.
 

Bog bodies – is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies,
sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread,
having been dated to between 8000 BCE and the Second World War.[1] The unifying factor of the
bog bodies is that they have been found in peat and are partially preserved; however, the actual
levels of preservation vary widely from perfectly preserved to mere skeletons.
The preservation of bog bodies in peat bogs is a natural phenomenon, and not the result of human
mummification processes.[1] It is caused by the unique physical and biochemical composition of
the bogs.[7] Different types of bogs can affect the mummification process differently: raised bogs
best preserve the corpses, whereas fens and transitional bogs tend to preserve harder tissues such
as the skeleton rather than the soft tissue.
Sky Object

A mysterious object seen in the California sky late Wednesday sent a flurry of people searching
for answers.

NASA confirmed Thursday that it was a meteor after the bright light in the sky got everyone
speculating what it could have been. The space agency said the meteor went down in the ocean.

This was December 2019.

Greek Fire – was an incendiary weapon used by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire that was
first developed c. 672.a combustible compound emitted by a flame-throwing weapon and used to
set light to enemy ships. It was first used by the Greeks besieged in Constantinople (673–78). It
ignited on contact with water, and was probably based on naphtha and quicklime. The Byzantines
typically used it in naval battles to great effect, as it could continue burning while floating on
water. It provided a technological advantage and was responsible for many key Byzantine
military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from two Arab sieges, thus
securing the Empire’s survival.
 

Archimedes Death Ray – Archimedes may have used mirrors acting collectively as a parabolic
reflector to burn ships attacking Syracuse. The 2nd century AD author Lucian wrote that during
the Siege of Syracuse (c. 214–212 BC), Archimedes destroyed enemy ships with fire. Centuries
later, Anthemius of Tralles mentions burning-glasses as Archimedes’ weapon.[33] The device,
sometimes called the “Archimedes heat ray”, was used to focus sunlight onto approaching ships,
causing them to catch fire. In the modern era, similar devices have been constructed and may be
referred to as a heliostat or solar furnace.
 
Mithridate –  is a semi-mythical remedy with as many as 65 ingredients, used as
an antidotefor poisoning, and said to be created by Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus in the 1st
century BC. It was one of the most complex, highly sought-after drugs during the Middle Ages
and Renaissance, particularly in Italy and France, where it was in continual use for centuries.
[1] An updated recipe called theriac (Theriacum Andromachi) was known well into the 19th
century.
 

Havana Syndrome – is the name popularized by the media in 2018 for purported acoustic
attacks on US embassy staff first reported in Cuba, and then in China. Beginning in August 2017,
reports surfaced that American and Canadian diplomatic personnel in Cuba had suffered a variety
of health problems, dating back to late 2016, and accusations were made that these were a result
of attacks using unspecified technology, possibly acoustic in nature.[2][3]
The Cuban government was at first exonerated by the U.S. government, but then in a reversal,
Cuba was accused of perpetrating unspecified attacks causing these symptoms. The U.S. reduced
staff at their embassy to a minimum, and U.S. President Trump declared in October 2017 that he
believed Cuba was responsible for the attacks, but offered no evidence for his claim.

WHAT THE HECK?

Magnetic pole reversals – See British Geographical Survey
The Earth has a magnetic field, as can be seen by using a magnetic compass. It is mainly
generated in the very hot molten core of the planet and has probably existed throughout most of
the Earth’s lifetime. The magnetic field is largely that of a dipole, by which we mean that it has
one North pole and one South pole. At these places, a compass needle will point straight down, or
up, respectively. It is often described as being similar in nature to the field of a bar (e.g. fridge)
magnet. However there is much small-scale variation in the Earth’s field, which is quite different
from that of a bar magnet. In any event, we can say that there are currently two poles observed on
the surface of the Earth, one in the Northern hemisphere and one in the Southern hemisphere.

By magnetic reversal, or ‘flip’, we mean the process by which the North pole is transformed into
a South pole and the South pole becomes a North pole. Interestingly, the magnetic field may
sometimes only undergo an ‘excursion’, rather than a reversal. Here, it suffers a large decrease in
its overall strength, that is, the force that moves the compass needle. During an excursion the field
does not reverse, but later regenerates itself with the same polarity, that is, North remains North
and South remains South.

Bermuda Triangle –  also known as the Devil’s Triangle or Hurricane Alley, is a loosely-

defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number
of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Most reputable
sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery. The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is
amongst the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing
through it for ports in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean islands. Cruise ships and pleasure
craft regularly sail through the region, and commercial and private aircraft routinely fly over it.
Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity
by extraterrestrial beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the
incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors.
 

Oak Island Money Pit – In 1795 at age 16, Daniel McGinnis made his way across to Oak Island
on a fishing expedition. Once on the island, he found himself stood in a clearing in front of an old
oak tree bearing the marks of unnatural scarring. This, he supposed to be caused by a rope and
tackle system used to lower material down into a shaft below, indicated by a depression beneath
the tree about 4.8 meters in diameter.
 

The Great Blue Hole in Belize is the largest sinkhole in the world — a giant cavern measuring
300 meters (984 feet) across and around 125 meters deep.
In 1971, underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau put the Blue Hole on the map when he first
explored its depths.

 It has its own website: http://greatbluehole.net/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBYYbGNO4cM
 

Dyatlov Pass incident – refers to the unsolved deaths of nine ski hikers in the northern Ural
Mountains in the Soviet Union (now Russia) between 1 and 2 February 1959. The experienced
trekking group, who were all from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, had established a camp on the
slopes of Kholat Syakhl in an area now named in honor of the group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov.
During the night, something caused them to tear their way out of their tents and flee the campsite
while inadequately dressed for heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures.
After the group’s bodies were discovered, an investigation by Soviet Union authorities
determined that six had died from hypothermia while the other three showed signs of physical
trauma. One victim had a fractured skull; two others had major chest fractures. Additionally, the
body of another team member was missing its tongue and eyes. The investigation concluded that
an “unknown compelling force” had caused the deaths. Numerous theories have been put forward
to account for the unexplained deaths, including animal attacks,
hypothermia, avalanche, infrasound-induced panic, military involvement, or some combination of
these.
 

Hollinwell Showground – see more details on this BBC Midlands website

 

Solway Spaceman – See the BBC website news item

Airfares – I think this is just a Scholar’s staff mystery?  Who knows?  It’s a mystery!

WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

 
The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system.
The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438),
and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The
manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish–Samogitian book dealer who purchased it in
1912.[18]
Some of the pages are missing, with around 240 remaining. The text is written from left to right,
and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. Some pages are foldable sheets.

The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers,
including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II.[19] No
one has yet demonstrably deciphered the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of
cryptography. The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular
imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. None of the many
hypotheses proposed over the last hundred years has yet been independently verified. [20]
In 1969, the Voynich manuscript was donated by Hans P. Kraus[21] to Yale University‘s Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where it is catalogued under call number MS 408. [12][22]   

See wikipedia – it is a long read!!

 

Kryptos is a sculpture by the American artist Jim

Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia.
Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of
the four encrypted messages it bears. Of the four messages, the first three have been solved, while
the fourth message remains as one of the most famous unsolved codes in the world. The sculpture
continues to be of interest to cryptanalysts, both amateur and professional, who are attempting to
decipher the fourth passage. The artist has so far given two clues to this passage.
 

Cicada 3301 – is a nickname given to an organization that on three occasions has posted a set
of puzzles to recruit codebreakers/linguists from the public. [1]The first internet puzzle started on
January 4, 2012, and ran for approximately one month. A second round began one year later on
January 4, 2013, and a third round following the confirmation of a fresh clue posted
on Twitter on January 4, 2014.[2][3] The stated intent was to recruit “intelligent individuals” by
presenting a series of puzzles which were to be solved. No new puzzles were published on
January 4, 2015. However, a new clue was posted on Twitter on January 5, 2016. [4][5] In April
2017 a verified PGP-signed message was found: Beware false paths. Always verify PGP
signature from 7A35090F.[6] That message explicitly denies the validity of any unsigned puzzle,
as recently as April 2017.

WOW! SIGNAL: DISCUSS
The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal received on August 15, 1977, by Ohio
State University‘s Big Ear radio telescope in the United States, then used to support the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence. The signal appeared to come from the constellation Sagittarius and
bore the expected hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin…….A common misconception is that the
Wow! signal constitutes some sort of message. In fact, what was received appears to be
an unmodulated, continuous wave signal with no encoded information; essentially a flash of radio
energy. The string “6EQUJ5” is merely the representation of the expected variation of signal
intensity over time, expressed in the particular measuring system adopted for the experiment..
(from wikipedia)

Rongorongo – is a system

of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-
writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, none successfully. Although some
calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, none of
these glyphs can actually be read. If rongorongo does prove to be writing and proves to be an
independent invention, it would be one of very few independent inventions of writing in human
history.
 Toynbee tiles- are messages of unknown origin
found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and
four South American cities.[1][2] Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered.
They are generally about the size of an American license plate (roughly 30 cm by 15 cm), but
sometimes considerably larger.
Circleville letters – Travel approximately 25 miles from Columbus in Ohio and it is quite
possible to overlook one of many small towns dotted around America. Situated along the banks
of the Scioto River, Circleville is the type of small-town America in which everyone knows
everyone else. It is likely to be the kind of place where residents can leave their doors unlocked
overnight without fear of recriminations. On the face of it, Circleville does seem like the kind of
place that big city citizens might turn to in order ‘to get away from it all’. For a few terrifying
weeks during 1976, all of that changed. Someone began a campaign of terror against the entire
town with the Circleville letters. (see more at Historic mysteries)
Linear B – is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the
earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabetby several centuries. The
oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1450 BC. [1] It is descended from the older Linear A, an
undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary,
which also recorded Greek.
Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. These ideograms or
“signifying” signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no phonetic value and are never
used as word signs in writing a sentence.  The application of Linear B appears to have been
confined to administrative contexts.
Quipu – were recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures
in the region of Andean South America.[2]
Knotted strings were used by many other cultures such as the ancient Chinese and native
Hawaiians,[3] but such practices should not be confused with the quipu, which refers only to the
Andean device.
A quipu usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people used them for
collecting data and keeping records, monitoring tax obligations, properly
collecting census records, calendrical information, and for military organization. [4] The cords
stored numeric and other values encoded as knots, often in a base ten positional system.
A quipu could have only a few or thousands of cords.
Phaistos Disc – is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete,
possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.). The disk is
about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its
purpose and meaning, and even its original geographical place of manufacture, remain disputed,
making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology.
While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most
additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography. Attempts at decipherment are
generally thought to be unlikely to succeed unless more examples of the signs are found, as it is
generally agreed that there is not enough context available for a meaningful analysis.
Although the Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists, a few scholars
believe that the disc is a forgery or a hoax.
Singapore Stone – is a fragment of a large sandstone slab which originally stood at the mouth of
the Singapore River. The large slab, which is believed to date back to at least the 13th century
and possibly as early as the 10th or 11th century, bore an undeciphered inscription. Recent
theories suggest that the inscription is either in Old Javanese or in Sanskrit, which suggested a
possibility that the island was an extension of the Majapahit civilization in the past.  It is likely
that the person who commissioned the inscription was Sumatran. The slab may be linked to the
legendary story of the 14th-century strongman Badang, who is said to have thrown a massive
stone to the mouth of the Singapore River. On Badang’s death, the Rajah sent two stone pillars to
be raised over his grave “at the point of the straits of Singapura”.
Rohonc Codex – is an illustrated manuscript book by an unknown author, with a text in an
unknown language and writing system, that surfaced in Hungary in the early 19th century. The
book’s origin and the meaning of the text and illustrations have been investigated by many
scholars and amateurs, with no definitive conclusion, although many Hungarian scholars believe
that it is an 18th-century hoax.

MYSTERIES OF THE LIVING

HUMANS

Function of the appendix – The function of

the appendix is unknown. One theory is that the appendix acts as a storehouse for good bacteria,
“rebooting” the digestive system after diarrheal illnesses. Other experts believe the appendix is
just a useless remnant from our evolutionary past. Surgical removal of the appendix causes no
observable health problems.
Need for sleep –
We tend to think of sleep as a time when the mind and body shut down. But this is not the case;
sleep is an active period in which a lot of important processing, restoration, and strengthening
occurs. Exactly how this happens and why our bodies are programmed for such a long period of
slumber is still somewhat of a mystery. But scientists do understand some of sleep’s critical
functions, and the reasons we need it for optimal health and wellbeing.

One of the vital roles of sleep is to help us solidify and consolidate memories. As we go about our
day, our brains take in an incredible amount of information. Rather than being directly logged and
recorded, however, these facts and experiences first need to be processed and stored; and many of
these steps happen while we sleep. Overnight, bits and pieces of information are transferred from
more tentative, short-term memory to stronger, long-term memory—a process called
“consolidation.” Researchers have also shown that after people sleep, they tend to retain
information and perform better on memory tasks. Our bodies all require long periods of sleep in
order to restore and rejuvenate, to grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesise hormones.
Read more at Sleep Foundation
Evolutionary Missing Link – (see BBC for a great article) The term “missing link” has been
used extensively in popular writings on human evolution to refer to a perceived gap in the
hominid evolutionary record. It is most commonly used to refer to any new transitional fossil
finds. Scientists, however, do not use the term, as it refers to a pre-evolutionary view of nature.
 

Right-handedness – According to IFL Science We finally know why people are right or left
handed. By Robin Andrews.
Most of us are right-handed, but a fair few happen to be left-handed. Why is this? Is it just
something we learn to have a preference for over time, or is it something to do with
our neurological wiring from birth? Are left-handed people really more evil than the rest of us, or
is that just crazy talk?
According to a brand new study in the journal eLife, however, it is definitively nothing to do with
our brains or our neurological development. In a rather satisfying plot twist, it seems that your
left- or right-handedness is actually ingrained in your biological workings from before you were
born, but in the form of a particular hubbub of gene activity in the spine, not the brain.
“Our data suggest a spinal, not a cortical, beginning of hemispheric asymmetries,” the team
announced in their paper.

A team of researchers from Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa – led by biophysicists at
Ruhr University Bochum – have been carefully monitoring the gene expression taking place
within the developing spinal cords of growing babies inside the womb, between the eighth and
twelfth weeks of pregnancy.

It’s long been assumed that gene activity in the brain, depending on which hemisphere shows the
most activity, defines whether or not someone is right- or left-handed. However, based on activity
in these proto-spinal cords, it seems that there’s some asymmetry going on there that’s never
before been detected.

This newly discovered activity is taking place long before the part of the brain responsible for
movement – the motor cortex – is actually “wired up” to the spine. It appears to be centered on
parts of the spine responsible for transmitting electrical impulses to the hands, arms, legs, and
feet, and this asymmetry defines whether a person writes with their right or left hand.  So there
you have it! Still no word on whether left-handed people are more evil, though.
 

Fingerprints – are the tiny ridges, whorls and valley patterns on the tip of each finger. They form
from pressure on a baby’s tiny, developing fingers in the womb. No two people have been found
to have the same fingerprints — they are totally unique.  Why?
Fingerprints are set in stone by the time a fetus reaches 17 weeks. Fingerprint pattern formation
consists of two components: developmental and genetic. The ridge pattern development not only
depends on genetic factors but also on unique physical conditions. So even if identical twins are
genetically similar, the pressure faced by the fetus in the womb can affect their fingerprints. Even
the difference in the length of umbilical cord can make changes to the fingerprints. So ya,
identical twins could fool everybody with their looks, but they ain’t fooling the fingerprint test!

Laughter – 
Research has shown that the health benefits of laughter are far-ranging. Studies so far have shown
that laughter can help relieve pain, bring greater happiness, and even increase immunity. Positive
psychology names the propensity for laughter and sense of humor as one of the 24 main signature
strengths one can possess.
Unfortunately, however, many people don’t get enough laughter in their lives. In fact, one study
suggests that healthy children may laugh as much as 400 times per day, but adults tend to laugh
only 15 times per day. Other studies find us laughing a little more than that, but if you ask me,
virtually all of us could use a little more laughter in our lives, considering how beneficial a good
laugh can actually be for our stress levels and overall wellness.

 Yawning – 

 Dreaming –

 So these are the theories:

1.  To fulfil our wishes – Freud

2. To forget – pruning of things we do not need
3.  To remember – maze example
4. Keep our brains working  – Continual Activation Theory
5. To reverse – Primitive instinct reversion theory – practice fight or flight
instinct
6.  To heal – take the edge of difficult experiences
7. To solve problems – limitless possibilities
Interstitium
 

Blood types – Four different types – A, B, AB & O

Altruism – 
Vanishing honeybees – 
 Pests and diseases Genetics – lack of diversity: Chemicals

White-nose syndrome – 
 A fungal disease that went from Europe to North America.  Many have died since 2006.

Immortal jellyfish – 
Turritopsis dohrnii is now officially known as the only immortal creature. The secret to eternal
life, as it turns out, is not just living a really, really long time. It’s all about maturity, or rather, the
lack of it. The immortal jellyfish (as it is better known popularly) propagate and then, faced with
the normal career path of dying, they opt instead to revert to a sexually immature stage.

It turns out that once the adult form of the 4.5 mm-wide species Turritopsis dohrnii have
reproduced, they don’t die but transform themselves back into their juvenile polyp state. Their
tentacles retract, their bodies shrink, and they sink to the ocean floor and start the cycle all over
again. Among laboratory samples, all the adult Turritopsis observed regularly undergo this
change. And not just once: they can do it over and over again.
  Tardigrade indestructibility – are microscopic
animals blessed with two very cool nicknames — the water bear and the moss piglet. They are
segmented and reach a maximum length of a millimeter, maybe a millimeter and a half.

Water bears are as indestructible as they are tiny. They’ve been known to survive in temperatures
as cold as minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit and as hot as 304 degrees F. They shrug off extreme
doses of radiation and laugh in the face of the silent vacuum of space itself. In an experiment in
2007, water bears were exposed to outer space for 10 days. After returning to Earth it was
discovered that a lot of the bears survived and some even had babies.

More recently, scientists tried to rid the planet of tardigrades (only in theory) by putting the
creatures through a series of tests that mimicked what they would experience if a deadly asteroid
or radiation burst hit the Earth. But the tardigrades outlasted billions of years worth of theoretic
disaster events, according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports. For example,
researchers found some water bears can survive radiation doses of 5,000 to 6,000 grays (humans
would barely survive a dose of 5).
Called “Earth’s hardiest animals,” these resilient creatures have long been the subject of scientific
curiosity.

Animal intelligence – Some good articles to show this including Vox – 7 animal feats , Discover
– Animal Intelligence and New Scientist
Cryptids – an animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti.
See Wikipedia cryptid list
 

Baobab death –  Some of Africa’s oldest and biggest baobab trees have abruptly died, wholly or
in part, in the past decade, according to researchers.
The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and in some cases as wide as a bus is long, may
have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated.

“We report that nine of the 13 oldest … individuals have died, or at least their oldest parts/stems
have collapsed and died, over the past 12 years,” they wrote in the scientific journal Nature
Plants, describing “an event of an unprecedented magnitude”.

“It is definitely shocking and dramatic to experience during our lifetime the demise of so many
trees with millennial ages,” said the study’s co-author Adrian Patrut of the Babeș-Bolyai
University in Romania. (from The Guardian 2018)
Zebra stripes – Genetics determine the variety of stripes in zebras. While the specific processing
of determining this striping pattern isn’t known, it has something to do with selective
pigmentation. Melanocyte skin cells produce the pigments that color the fur. Certain chemical
messengers regulate which melanocytes deliver their pigment to the zebra [source: Camazine].
Mathematical models haven’t been able to accurately simulate the development of the pattern, but
we do know that it takes place during the embryonic phase
Zebra stripes do not help regulate their body temperature. That’s the conclusion reached by
researchers in Hungary, trying to narrow down a longstanding mystery about the animals’
amazing coats.

Thankfully, previous research has already ruled out two other big contenders, camouflage and
social interaction – so we’re getting closer with every step.
Two other major hypotheses remain. The first is the idea that the stripes produce a sort of optical
illusion that “dazzles” predators when the zebras are running. It’s possible, but the jury is still out
on that one.
The other is that the stripes deter biting, bloodsucking flies. This may have something to do with
polarisation. A 2012 study (in which Horváth also participated) found that the light and dark
stripes reflect polarised light in a way that deters flying insects; put more simply, flies don’t like
landing on zebras’ striped coats. (from Science Alert)
Monarch migration – The monarch is the only butterfly known to make a two-
way migration as birds do. Unlike other butterflies that can overwinter as larvae, pupae, or even
as adults in some species, monarchs cannot survive the cold winters of northern climates. …
Some fly as far as 3,000 miles to reach their winter home!
Giant squid – is a deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae. Giant squid can
grow to a tremendous size due to deep-sea gigantism: recent estimates put the maximum size at
13 m (43 ft) for females and 10 m (33 ft) for males from the posterior fins to the tip of the two
long tentacles (second only to the colossal squid at an estimated 14 m (46 ft),[2] one of the largest
living organisms). The mantle is about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long (more for females, less for males), and
the length of the squid excluding its tentacles (but including head and arms) rarely exceeds 5 m
(16 ft). Claims of specimens measuring 20 m (66 ft) or more have not been scientifically
documented.
The number of different giant squid species has been debated, but recent genetic research
suggests that only one species exists.

Cases & Guiding Questions

C
onsider the case of this supposedly alien skeleton and the process by which its actual origin was
determined. Are there times when people would rather that science leave certain questions
unanswered?
The Atacama skeleton, or Ata, named after the Chilean desert where the remains were found,
has 10 pairs of ribs. The average person has 12. Ata’s skull narrows to a ridged peak. Her bones
are as calcified as those of a child between the ages of 6 and 8. Yet her skeleton’s apparent age is
at odds with her size. If Ata ever stood, she stood 6 inches high, barely tall enough to peek over
a spring crocus.
Her features attracted UFO hunters and extraterrestrial investigators, who suspected her bones
might represent something remarkable. Ata is indeed remarkable. And she is human, according to
the story told by her genes,

Where did the Neanderthals go?  Scientists have proposed several theories to explain the
disappearance of the Neanderthal branch of the human family tree. Discuss with your team:
how would you feel if you discovered you were part-Neanderthal? If the Neanderthals had
survived, do you think “modern” humans could have coexisted peacefully with them?
The last appearance date of Neanderthals is commonly cited as ca. 30 thousand years ago (ka).
This date follows the emergence of modern humans in Europe by several millennia, but our
understanding of the exact timing and duration of this interval is obscured by the limitations of
our dating methods. For example, peaks in atmospheric radiocarbon production during this time
result in a large degree of uncertainty in the relevant radiocarbon dates (Conard & Bolus 2008).
The two species may have coexisted in Europe for up to ten millennia, and possibly came across
each other during this time, although the duration of this coexistence is debated, as is contact
between the two (e.g., Finlayson 2000, Pinhasi et al. 2011). The question of what may have
happened during these encounters and what the role of the early modern humans could have been
in the Neanderthal extinction, have been the subject of intense discussion and a focal point in
Neanderthal research

Consider the long-awaited discovery of the San Jose. Discuss with your team: who has the right
to lost treasure when it is finally found? Does solving a mystery give you ownership over the
results?
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Colombian Navy,
Maritime Archaeology Consultants and Switzerland AG did find the “Holy Grail” of shipwrecks
in 2015, and only recently received permission to tell the world about the find. The treasure trove
of gold, silver and gems it holds is worth an estimated $1 to $17 billion.

The ownership of the treasure is already being disputed by Spain, which owned the ship;
Colombia, in whose waters it sits; and marine archaeologists, who found the ship. However it
pans out, Colombia is preparing for the contents of the ship to be salvaged and has already
committed to building a state-of-the-art conservation lab and museum to process the wreck,
pointing out that there’s much more than treasure at stake.

“The San José discovery carries considerable cultural and historical significance for the
Colombian government and people because of the ship’s treasure of cultural and historical
artifacts and the clues they may provide about Europe’s economic, social, and political climate in
the early 18th century,” WHOI states in the press release.
Per the Associated Press, the United Nations cultural agency Unesco has stepped into the
ownership dispute, and it recently called on Colombia “not to commercially exploit the 300-year-
old wreck.”
Are lost pets a mystery? How about lost socks? – No and yes
Is there an ancient city lost beneath the waters of Fuxian Lake in the Yunnan province of
China? Researchers (and sources) disagree. Discuss with your team: how could we best confirm
whether such a city exists and, if so, its historical origins? Does anyone have a stake in the
outcome? Are there other lost cities of interest around the world?
Article: Submerged pyramid? – “At the bottom of this poorly explored Lake—which stretches
through Chengjiang County, Jiangchuan County and Huaning County in Yunnan Province, rising
1,720 meters above sea level and encompassing an area of 212 square kilometers—are structures
that have mystified experts ever since their discovery………
The enigmatic monuments were discovered in 1992 when expert diver Geng Wei came across
hand carved flagstones and countless other stone relics scattered across the bottom of the second
deepest freshwater lake in China.  Geng Wei was left mystified by what many believe are the
remains of a lost ancient city.

So when were these enigmatic structures built? The answer is sort of simple: before the last Ice
Age—when water levels around the planet were much lower than today.”

Did scientists really just discover a new human organ? What mysteries do some people believe
this new organ could explain? Discuss with your team: what aspects about humans are the most
mysterious to you?
Discuss with your team: does this explanation of how the ancient pyramids were built make sense
to you, and why does it matter that we know how they came to be? What are some other theories
that people have posited to explain their construction, and do any of them have past or present
sociocultural implications? Are there viable alternatives to scientific research for solving
mysteries from so long ago? Be sure to investigate other architectural mysteries; are some more
mysterious than others?
 

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it turns out that the smartest creatures on Earth were not
humans, but mice. While there is no evidence for this particular theory, there is evidence that
animals such as dolphins and octopi might be exceptionally intelligent. Is there a way to decipher
exactly how intelligent they are—and would confirming their intelligence make a difference in
how we treat them?

What conclusions might people have drawn (or jumped to) if this had happened in 1976? What if
it had happened in 2016? Discuss with your team: to what extent are mysteries a product of their
time? Are there mysteries today that may seem quaint or nonsensical in the future?
In 2002, the Secretary of Defense of the United States discussed the existence of “known
unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. What did he mean by these two phrases? Could there also
be, as philosopher Slavoj Žižek has suggested, unknown knowns?

Evaluate this suggested explanation for the mystery of the Flying Dutchman. Then, consider with
your team: are there other mysteries that could be attributed to “fata morgana” or other tricks of
light? To what degree should we distrust what we see with our own eyes?
Where did the ten “lost tribes of Israel” end up? One theory is that their descendants now live in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Discuss with your team: why would governments have an interest in
finding evidence to support (or disprove) such a theory? Why might it matter where the
descendants of long-ago people live today?
Some mysteries are political: why did the United Kingdom vote for Brexit? What’s the matter
with Kansas? Are political mysteries actual mysteries, or just unlikely outcomes that happen at
about the expected rate?
Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare’s plays—or did someone else write some or all of them?
Explore other instances in which the authorship of works has come into question. Should the
identity of the writer affect how we appreciate his or her writing?
Consider these “six strange facts” about an astronomical object named ‘Oumuamua. Do you
agree with the author that these strange facts could launch a whole new age in space science?
Discuss with your team: how would the world react if it were proven ‘Oumuamua was a probe
from a distant alien civilization?
Some have suggested it was an atomic weapon from outer space, or even a collision of matter and
antimatter; no one knows for sure what caused a giant explosion in Siberia in 1908. Discuss with
your team: was this “Tunguska Event” a cautionary tale from which we should learn a lesson, or
was it an ultimately inexplicable one-off that we should let recede into history?