Best Historical Mysteries

3100-2200 B.C.: Who Built Stonehenge, and for What Purpose?

  • Submitted By: Adam
    • Spinal Tap never finished their Jack the Ripper musical, "Saucy Jack," because the killer's true identity was never revealed. Thankfully, they did manage to compose their masterpiece, "Stonehenge", even though "No one knew who they were... or... what.... they were doin' there..."
    • Stonehenge, is an enormous stone monument in Wiltshire, England, erected between 3100-2200 B.C. No one knows exactly why it was built or how its large stones were carried to the site (possibly via sledge?), but some people believe that the monument was used to keep track of the seasons. During the summer solstice on June 21, the rising sun creates the effect of hovering over one of the stones, called the "Heel Stone."
  • YouTube: Spinal Tap: Stonehenge (Time: 3:54)


  • Wikipedia: Stonehenge
  • Discovery Channel: Stonehenge
  • NOVA: Stonehenge Q&A

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722 B.C.: Where Are the Lost Tribes of Israel?

  • Submitted By: Andrew m
    • According to the bible (Torah, not the sequel), there were twelve tribes of Israel, each named for one of the sons of the patriarch Jacob. Biblical and historical records find that today's Jews are largely the descendants of two tribes that long ago intermixed: the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. So what happened to the other ten? In 722 B.C. (give or take), they were conquered by the Assyrians and sent into exile, where they disappeared from history. Or did they? And who are their modern-day descendants?
    • Scholars and crackpots alike have been offering up answers since at least the middle ages. Each theory has adherents, as well as varying amounts of historical, linguistic and genetic evidence to back it up.
  • Here are just ten of the many groups that have been proposed as descendants of the ten lost tribes:
  1. Celts
  2. Japanese
  3. Afghanistan's Pathan
  4. India's Bene-Menashe
  5. Southern Africa's Lemba
  6. Ethiopian Jews
  7. Native Americans
  8. British
  9. Persian Jews
  10. Afghanistan's Pashtun

587 B.C.: What Happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

  • Submitted By: Ryan m
    • We all know the answer to this question: the Nazis dug it up, getting to it before Indiana, and when they opened it, it shot out crazy laser beams that incinerated the Nazis and melted their faces.
    • But there are a number of real theories as to what became of this artifact, which is mentioned several times in the Bible as a wooden container leafed in gold within which the original Ten Commandments tablets given to Moses by God were kept. Believed by the leaders of ancient Israel to be an object of great power, the Ark was the most sacred object in Israel, provided legitimacy to its rulers, and served as a symbol of the ancient nation itself.
    • The Ark disappeared from history when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C. Most historians assume that the Ark was destroyed at this time by the Babylonians. However, since no direct evidence of this destruction exists, the field is open for theories as to alternative fates.
  • If the Ark still exists, five particular theories get the most attention:
  1. The ark is housed in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, Ethiopia, and is protected by a guard who inherits his job directly from the previous guard.
  2. A new theory places the Ark in Zimbabwe.
  3. The Knights Templar removed the Ark, along with the Holy Grail, back to France during the Crusades.
  4. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain information as to the location of the Ark.
  5. The most controversial theory: that the Ark is buried beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

500-540: Was There a Real King Arthur?

  • Submitted By: Lon
    • So shadowy and uncertain is the legacy of King Arthur, scholars have a hard time even keeping the fictional accounts straight, let alone sorting out the truth. The most comprehensive version of the Arthur legend, Thomas Mallory's Morte D'Arthur, collects stories around some universally-accepted key events - Arthur pulling the sword from the stone (retold by a talking owl and blonde moppet in a somewhat forgettable Disney "classic"), partnership with the wizard Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, the quest for the Holy Grail - but much of this is inconsistent with earlier versions, and none of it provides any real context to learn about the man himself, or even most of his associates and enemies.
    • The almost total lack of evidence for a real-world leader of significance behind the stories (no verifiable accounts of the period mention him by name) has led most scholars to reject the notion of a historical Arthur completely, though with such poor record-keeping from the post-Roman period in Britain, his existence is certainly possible. Regardless, I think we can all agree, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
  • YouTube: Monty Python and the Holy Grail: French Taunting (Time: 5:54)


  • Wikipedia: Arthurian Legend | Arthurian Characters
  • University of Idaho: An Archaological Quest for the "Real" King Arthur
  • How Stuff Works: The Real King Arthur

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1587: What Happened to Roanoke Colony?

  • Submitted By: Lon
    • Roanoke Colony was founded in what was then Virginia (present-day North Carolina) in 1585, after Walter Raleigh received the rights to the area from Queen Elizabeth I. In 1587, Virginia Dare was born there, the first English child to be born in the New World. Shortly after her birth, in response to hostile relations between the colonists and the neighboring Croatans, Dare's grandfather, John White, returned to England to ask for help in quelling the native tribes threatening life in the colony. Upon his return in 1580, White found the entire Colony deserted, with no evidence as to what befell the 116 colonists who had made Roanoke their homes whatsoever.
  • The major theories are as follows:
  1. The colonists dispersed and were assimilated into the native population.
  2. The colonists simply moved elsewhere or were absorbed into another colony.
  3. The colonists tried to return to England and died at sea.
  4. Everyone died from famine and the bodies were moved.
  5. The Spanish arrived and destroyed the colony, and then removed the evidence.

1590-1613: Did Shakespeare Really Write All of Those Plays?

  • Submitted By: Ryan m
    • The short answer to this historical mystery is "no." Most scholars agree that at least five of Shakespeare's plays show that he collaborated somewhat with other playwrights. But the larger question is "Did someone else write the plays under the name of Shakespeare?" Most scholars see this as a silly question: there was an actor and playwright named Shakespeare, who is in the historical record, and he achieved some historical notoriety. The problem is that Shakespeare lived during a time when there were very few written records (save his often reprinted plays.) What we know of Shakespeare is not particularly impressive: he was born to a glove maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, moved to London, was an actor, and had two children and a wife. We know very little else. The fact that Shakespeare did not attend Oxford or Cambridge, and yet could still write the way that he did, has provoked many scholars to question his authorship.
  • There are five major people who are put forth as possible candidates as the "real" Shakespeare:
  1. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford: "Strongest" candidate, if you believe that Shakespeare definitely didn't write them.
  2. Francis Bacon: The famous philosopher wrote a great deal during the same era, but it's generally in a different style.
  3. Christopher Marlowe: A contemporary and rival of Shakespeare's. However, since Marlowe was murdered in a barroom knife-fight in 1593, and Shakespeare's best work was written between 1594 and 1610, it seems unlikely that he was able to write while stuck in a coffin.
  4. Queen Elizabeth I: Sure, yeah, right.
  5. Sir Walter Raleigh: The adventurer and explorer. He's famous, he was alive in 1600, so maybe he was Shakespeare.

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1796: Did Catherine the Great Actually Sleep With a Horse?

  • Submitted By: Julia
    • Short answer, no. The often-told rumor is that Catherine II of Russia was crushed to death when a horse that was being lowered onto her for sexual purposes was dropped. Why was the rumor started, and who started it? Opinions vary. Some say it started in the French courts to diminish her legend. Others claim that there was always a salacious story or 80 circulating about Russia's most enlightened of despots.

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1850: Was Zachary Taylor Assassinated?

  • Submitted By: Ryan m
    • If you ask who the first president was to be assassinated, most people will tell you Abraham Lincoln, in Ford's Theatre, in 1865. However, some historians believe that the first President assassinated was actually Zachary Taylor, in 1850.
    • Taylor, elected in 1848, fell ill on Independence Day 1850, and died five days later. The cause of his death has never been firmly established, although the official explanation was gastroenteritis. Others have theorized that he died of cholera (after drinking water from an empty pitcher sitting in the sun) or heat stroke. In 1991, Taylor's body was exhumed, with the aim of finding out whether Taylor had, in fact, been poisoned. The debate over slavery was contentious at the time, and Taylor, a Southerner willing to compromise with the North, had his share of enemies in Dixie. Tests conducted determined that arsenic poisoning was unlikely the cause of death, but this has not silenced the theories. The official explanation? Natural causes. But historian Michael Parenti's book History as Mystery examines this question in depth and concludes that it is quite possible Taylor was assassinated. Verdict: still a mystery...

1865: What Happened to the Confederate Gold?

  • Submitted By: Nicole gustas
    • The Confederate gold that is the MacGuffin of the National Treasure films isn't so farfetched. A large part of the Confederate treasury went missing at the end of the war. Maybe somebody embezzled it. Maybe the money was never there in the first place. Or maybe, just maybe, a secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle took the money and hid it in order to fund a second War Between the States.

1888-1891: Who Was Jack the Ripper?

  • Submitted By: Adam
    • From 1888-1891, London's East End was terrorized by notorious serial killer, nicknamed "Jack the Ripper", who prowled the streets of Whitechapel, killing prostitutes. To this day, Jack the Ripper's true identity remains unknown, and the list of suspects goes on for miles...
  • Some popular suspects include:
  1. Aaron Kosminski: A Polish Jew who had a strong hatred for women and was admitted into a mental asylum in 1891.
  2. Montague John Druitt: A barrister who committed suicide shortly after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly
  3. Michael Ostrog: A Russian thief and con man.
  4. Dr Francis J. Tumblety: An Irish-American "quack" doctor living in London at the time of the murders.
  5. Prince Albert Victor: Queen Victoria's grandson

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1916: How Did Rasputin Die?

  • Submitted By: Brianh
    • The final demise of Rasputin, the Russian monk who supposedly had mystical powers of healing, has never been fully understood by historians. Various accounts of his assassination were given by those responsible for his death, but all recollections seem to indicate that the man who was deemed to be dangerous to the Romanov dynasty did not die easily.
    • One of the most famous accounts, written shortly after the assassination, describes how five men, including a member of the Duma, went to Rasputin's home and poisoned him with cyanide during dinner. Rasputin devoured the meal and seemed "merrier than ever." When the poison did not achieve the desired effect, the assassins panicked and shot the monk. Believing him to be dead, the men went upstairs to let Rasputin die alone, only to hear the eerie creaking of the front door being opened. The men rushed downstairs and saw Rasputin crawling on the floor with blood spewing from his mouth and "terrible eyes bulging from their sockets."
    • In a superhuman show of strength, Rasputin sprang to his feet and rushed towards the door. In disbelief, the assassins fired on Rasputin twice more, and finally threw his bound, bullet-ridden body into an icy river, where the infamous "healer" finally died.

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1917: What Happened to Mata Hari's Remains?

  • Submitted By: Julia
    • Following her execution in 1917, World War I spy and exotic dancer Mata Hari's remains were claimed by the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. Her head was supposedly embalmed for preservation, but in 2000, archivist discovered that it and the rest of her had gone missing and had probably been missing from as early as 1954. What happened to the world's most famous courtesan? To this day, nobody knows.
  • YouTube: Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (Time: 3:02)


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1922: Is there a "Curse of King Tut"?

  • Submitted By: Ericc
    • The Curse of King Tutankhamun is the grandaddy of all spooky historical mysteries, and became legendary after the death of George Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon. The chief financier of the expedition which discovered Tut's tomb, Lord Carnarvon was present when Tut's tomb was first opened. Within months, Lord Carnarvon died from complications from an infected insect bite on his cheek. But three circumstances make this otherwise pedestrian coincidence a supernatural mystery. First, it was reported that shortly after Lord Carnarvon's death there was a blackout in the entirety of Cairo. Second, there is a popular anecdote that at home in England, Lord Carnarvon's favorite dog gave a sudden howl and dropped dead at approximately the same time as his owner died in Egypt. And finally, when researchers unwrapped King Tut's mummified body, the ancient king reportedly bore a wound on his left cheek precisely where Lord Carnarvon's fatal insect wound was located.
  • YouTube: In Search Of... The Mummy's Curse (Part 2 of 3) (Time: 6:27)


  • Wikipedia: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon
  • The UnMuseum: The Curse of the Mummy

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1947: Did a "Flying Disc" Really Crash Near Roswell, New Mexico?

    • The tricky thing about Roswell is that the supposed UFO crash happened near a military air field...and the Army issued a press release announcing the "capture" of a "disc" the day after the alleged accident. Very shortly thereafter, however, a commanding general disputed the original statement, saying the debris was, in actuality, what They want us to believe most UFOs "actually" are: a weather balloon!
    • But by then all kinds of scuttlebutt had surfaced amongst the locals: a farmer had found strange metallic wreckage that was wafer-thin but impenetrable, the air field hospital had been cordoned off to perform autopsies on little green men, the military threatened people who'd collected debris and absconded with the evidence...and the foundation for the Roswell phenomenon was soundly in place.
    • The story didn't really take off until the late 1970's, when military men like Major Jesse Marcel began making official statements to book writers and journalists that they were there, the crash was real, the alien bodies had indeed been picked at, and there was a cover-up. In the Nineties, the government succumbed to public pressure and made a statement that still insisted the wreckage in question had been a weather balloon—albeit one as top secret as the Manhattan Project that was monitoring the Russians' ability to construct their own atomic bomb.

1962: Did Anyone Actually Escape From Alcatraz?

  • Submitted By: Brianh
    • Once a formidable maximum security prison that held America's most notorious criminals, the crumbling walls of Alcatraz most likely fail to intimidate the throngs of tourists that visit the historic island everyday. Yet while in operation, the prison that held Al Capone and "Machine Gun" Kelly boasted an impressive record for keeping its inmates on "The Rock." Over the 29 years Alcatraz operated as a federal prison, 36 men tried to escape. The results? Twenty-three caught, six shot and killed, and two presumed drowned in the cold waters of San Francisco bay.
    • The most famous escape attempt, as depicted in the film Escape From Alcatraz, took place in 1962. Three prisoners managed to fashion lifelike dummies and a raft out of raincoats, tunneled through their cells and successfully made it off the island. Investigators later discovered bits of the raft and one of the prisoner's personal belongings washed up on the shore and concluded that the men had drowned, pointing to the fact that no robberies or burglaries were reported in the hours after the escape attempt. However, the bodies of Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin were never found. The following clip from Mythbusters proves that the men could have made it from Alcatraz to the shore given the materials available to the inmates.

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1963: Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Alone?

  • Submitted By: Jonathan h
    • "Honey? It's 4 AM. Why don't you go back to sleep?"
    • "It just doesn't make any sense. The Warren Commission concluded that 99 witnesses only heard shots coming from the book depository, but 35 separate witnesses were not brought in for questioning and told police officers later that they either saw men or heard shots coming from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll.
    • "Furthermore, Oswald was only a mid-level marksman. There's no way he would have been able to fire off three shots from his rifle in 6.3 seconds, with one being a perfect kill-shot."
    • "Baby, please just go back to sleep. Do you care about JFK more than you care about your own family?"
    • "Listen to me. Oswald couldn't have acted alone. Look at the trajectory of the bullet. If he was hit from Oswald from the book depository, his head would have been launched forward. But, look at the Zapruder film. It clearly shows Kennedy's head being thrown back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back...and to the left..."

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1971: What Happened to DB Cooper?

Submitted By:  Sean percival
    • With an Andy Kaufman-like mystique hanging over his life and death, the legend of DB Cooper lives on some 30 years after his daring caper. On November 24, 1971 a man purchased a plane ticket under the name Dan Cooper ("DB" came later, from a typo) and claimed his suitcase was loaded with explosives. He managed to negotiate the safe return of the passengers in exchange for $200,000 in cold, hard cash.
    • Not much is known about the fate of Mr Cooper after the money exchange. The popular theory is that he parachuted from the plane, leaving his skinny black tie behind as the only evidence. A parachute found recently in Southwest Washington was initially thought to be DB's, but turned out to be much older, most likely a remnant of a 1945 crash in the area.
  • YouTube: Walter Cronkite report on D.B. Cooper hijacking (Time 2:40)


  • SeattlePI.com: Parachute thought to be from '45 military crash (April 1, 2008)

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