31 Unsolved Mysteries from History

‘The Nazca Lines’
31 Unsolved Mysteries from History
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One of the defining features of the past is that we know what happened. It’s how things work, with the way that we move through time. Unfortunately, that can be a bit boring. Which is where only a good old fashioned unexplained phenomena can scratch the itch.

A Reddit thread looked for some of the weirdest, as-yet-unsolved events from the past, and Redditors delivered. Everything from missing records to full-on ghost stories are hidden outside the purview of normal history books. 

Keep reading if you’re interested in a few historical questions with no answers.

sapphon S 8y ago We know, from accounts in several sources, that ancient Byzantine military forces attacked rival navies (and, rarely, armies) with a primitive type of pressurized flame-thrower. Our best effort cannot, however, discern what they used for fuel or how exactly they overcame the engineering problems involved. Lots of different theories exist, but none have been proven. We only know what it came to be called: 'Greek fire'.
SmoreOfBabylon 8y ago Edited 8y ago One of my favorite ocean mysteries is the 52- hertz whale. It's a whale whose regular call is a very different frequency/pattern from that of any other baleen whale ever heard - so different that scientists aren't entirely sure what species of whale it might be (although it has a migration pattern slightly similar to those of fin and blue whales). One theory is that the whale is of a known species, but is deformed or possibly even deaf.
TheLightningCount1 . 8y ago Benjaman Kyle Man found behind a burger king with amnesia. From 2004 to 2015 he had no clue who he was or how he got there. Finally scientists found his name thanks to genetic records. No one to this day knows how he came to be in that state.
JustASexyKurt . 8y ago . Edited 8y ago The Mary Celeste. Found with no life or bodies on board, but with all cargo from the ledger still on board, likely ruling out piracy. None of the crew were ever found
threwaway1608 8y ago Edited 8y ago Disappearance of Brian Shaffer creeps me out. In April 2006 a guy is seen on CCTV entering a bar in Columbus, Ohio with friends, and is again spotted briefly outside talking to two girls. Не then goes back into the bar and is never seen or heard from again. CCTV does not see him leave the bar and there was no other way he could have left without being seen. The more | read about it the more confusing and frustrating it gets to try and theorize what could have happened to him. Interestingly
AdvocateSaint 8y ago Because I'm in an Ancient Rome binge phase right now, The Disappearance of the Ninth L Legion. Over 5000 roman soldiers stationed in Great Britain were never mentioned again in historical records after 120 AD. They simply disappeared from history. Considering that we have a respectable amount of primary sources for the losses of other leigions throughout Rome's lengthy military history, this is a bit odd. Theories range from destruction in wars against local tribes, to aliens (of course). Doctor Who even did an episode on them.
DesmondWasBest 8y ago The dancing plague of 1518. I dont understand how people died of dancing and couldn't stop, I will always believe it was fake, but it was widely documented. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plagy e of 1518
GenXer1977 . 8y ago The Nazca Lines. People drew huge pictures in the sand that no one could see until hundreds of years later when airplanes were invented.
CoyoteEffect 8y ago | forgot a lot of the info about this one, but the music on the dark side of the moon (probably faked) Pretty simple story: during 1969, during the Apollo 10 mission, for 1 hour they had to orbit behind the moon. During this period, NASA lost touch with them and they were on their own. At one point, they start to receive a whistling signal. When it starts, they begin talking about how it sounds like outer space music. The only concern is that they have no reaction to it, they just take it as something
Catch_022 . 8y ago Approx 5000 year old underground temple with perfect acoustics - word spoken in the Oracle room is magnified a hundredfold and is audible throughout the entire structure.
Cptn_Canada . 8y ago Edited 8y ago The Shag Harbor UFO back in the 60s there was a huge flying object seen over the harbor in nova scotia where it hovered for a while and it crashed into the water so in the morning all the fishermen went out to look for debris. some people claimed to see lights under the water. so some people dived the next morning and they found nothing. lights were later spotted underwater around the HMC Shelburne. followed by another underwater ship here is the article if anyone is interested, way more details than i
. 8y ago The 1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg. The events depict a giant space battle with carriers and dog fights.
supraman2turbo 8 8y ago Gil Perez's teleportation
theclansman22 . 8y ago The Sea People that came, wrecked Egypt's shit, then were never heard from again. We don't know where they come from or where they went.
SmoSays 8y ago The word 'fuck' is a linguistic mystery.. It is a very common word in English but we straight up don't know how we got it. A lot of words have some sort of trail. True, there are many words that have murky origins but here's why fuck is so odd: It's all over from the PIE family tree, not just English. We don't know how those languages got the word either. The earliest use was in a macaronic text from the 1500's. There's some belief that it comes via Germanic and others that it comes from Latin.
grelb . 8y ago Antikythera mechanism A device from 150- 100BC made with technology that was lost. This technology never appeared again until the 14th century.
The Salish Sea Missing Feet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish Sea hu man foot discoveries 16 feet have washed up on beaches long the coast of Washington (Untied States) and British Columbia (Canada). It's likely most of the feet belong to suicide jumpers who've leaped off bridges into the water. Some feet still remain unidentified, as in nobody knows who they belong to.
Tunguska Event: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska even t In June 1908, a huge explosion decimated 80 million trees in a 2000 km square area and caused no human casualties. It's theorized to be a meteor that disintegrated before it hit the ground because there was no impact crater found. I find that very interesting that such a cataclysmic occurrence happened but we don't fully know exactly what it was.
Tara Calico: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara Calico While there are plenty of missing persons cases from around the world, this one is pretty chilling for a disturbing photograph. Tara vanished in New Mexico in September 1988. In June 1989, a woman discovered a Polaroid in a Florida parking lot which showed a girl bearing similar resemblance to Tara as well as an unknown young boy who appear to be bound and with type over their mouths and could be in the back of a van, in the trunk of a car or in a room somewhere. Supposedly a windowless cargo van was seen
. 8y ago Not exactly an event but the Voynich Manuscript. It is a book written in an unknown language with odd illustrations and it is at least 400 years old. It is European but no one knows who wrote or why.
lordrehan . 8y ago 62 children from Zimbabwe witnessing a UFO landing, all with accurate and matching accounts of the incident in the 90s. Interviews were recorded here.
lee0897 . 8 8y ago D.B Cooper
AStudyinBlueBoxes 8y ago Byron Preiss' 1982 book The Secret: A Treasure Hunt had 12 riddles and 12 paintings which, when paired and solved, were said to lead to 12 hidden treasures around North America. As far as I know only 2 have been fully solved and found and I really want to know how to find the rest.
HoopyFraggle . 8y ago John Titor, the self proclaimed time traveler
8y ago The Wow Signal, perhaps the only possible extraterrestrial radio source we've ever received. It came from a barren area in the Sagittarius constellation and might have been a passing spaceship or something as it was never detected again. It got it's name from the scientist writing Wow! next to the readout. Personally I would've written What in the actual FUCK?!
8y ago I'm super late to the thread, but one of my favorites that I didn't see anyone else mention is the young.sun.paradox. Basically, we know how stars like our sun evolve and grow. We also know from geological record when Earth did and didn't have liquid water. The thing is that those two things don't line up right. Earth has liquid water at a time when the sun should have been too dim for Earth to have liquid water. Either our sun is more abnormal than we think it is or our understanding of how stars work is
MMaxs 8y ago . Edited 8y ago The Stone spheres of Costa Rica Why and how they were made is such a weird mystery.
HeadslnTheFreezer 8y ago Completely harmless and of absolutly no import, but I've always thought it was bizarre... maybe because I'm local it stuck with me: Caldwell mystery thread. This is a poor write up but I'm on mobile and had a hard time finding something better. The basics are all there though.
Halo909 . 8y ago Rudolf Hess flying into Scotland in the Middle of World War II. It does not make sense of any level unless there was a lot more going on behind the scenes that we don't know about.
Ixamxtruth . 8y ago I think for me, it's what happened on March 3, 1876 in Kentucky. Bunch of meat began falling from the sky, and dna results claim it belonged to either a human infant or a horse. They never really found out the cause, but they had a few theories.
deknegt1990 . 8y ago Max Headroom signal intrusion. They still don't know who did it 30 years later.

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