67 Creepy And Mind-Boggling Things That Were Mysteries Until Humans Finally Cracked The Case

In 1981, a Soviet submarine ran aground in Swedish waters. This was a huge deal - although the Soviets claimed the sub was in distress and didn’t purposefully enter Swedish waters, basically everyone in Sweden saw it as evidence that their waters were being invaded by spy subs. Plus, they did some snooping of their own and determined that the sub was emitting radiation, meaning it had nukes on board. So they went along with the Soviets’ clearly false claim about an accident and helped get the sub out of there, but panic was in the air.

So the Swedes did exactly what you’d expect, and they prepared for more Soviet subs. I mean, when you see one Soviet sub, surely there are more, right? So Sweden developed advanced acoustic technology to detect subs and they created a plan to basically seal off their waters when they heard a sub. And wouldn’t you know it, a year later, they found a Soviet sub! Well, they didn’t *find* it, but they absolutely heard it. And they cut off the bay and figured they just had to hunt the sub down. But after a month, they couldn’t find it. They gave up and reopened the bay, but they assumed the sub found a way out. But they’ll get it next time! And then it happened again, but they couldn’t find it again. And then again and again with no clear pattern for a decade. What the heck!

Thankfully, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. So... no more subs, right? Nyet! Because the Russian subs were still coming! Wait, what?

Okay, so now nothing is making sense. At this point, the Swedish military brought in outside experts to figure out what was happening. This included oceanographer-types who were obvious experts in the surrounding waters. The military then played the audio evidence of the Soviet submarines, only to be told they weren’t submarines at all - they were *fish*, and the propeller-like sound was water being released from their swim bladders.

And that’s the story of how the Swedish military spent ten years and tens of millions of dollars chasing fish farts.

The disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, who was also a French reconnaissance pilot during World War II.

In 1944, he took off on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica and never made it back, and there was never any evidence of what might have happened to him and his plane.

Finally, in 1998, a French fisherman pulled up his net and found wrapped in it a silver bracelet engraved with Saint-Exupery's name, and in 2004, a diver searched in the area and found the remains of his plane, which had apparently been shot down by a German fighter after all.

I feel like the finding of the Rosetta Stone has to be up there. Suddenly, after thousands of years you can start to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs? That was a long wait with an amazing payoff.

In the 30s to early 40s, Kodak noticed that the X-ray film that they produced strayed developing while still in the box, even when not exposed to light at all. The company did a full audit of their manufacturing plants and couldn’t find any material that emits X-rays. Finally, they turned to the cardboard boxes that held the film. They had one company contracted to produce them and the company have plants along the Mississippi River. It was then determined that the water from the Mississippi River used to produce the cardboard had a significant concentration of radioactive fallout. The fallout was determined to be the chain descending from U-238, which is the primary fuel used in nuclear bombs. Kodak discovered that the US military was developing and testing nuclear bombs West of the Mississippi, which shot fallout into the air and the winds carried it and rained it over the plains that drain into the river.

I have one that most people seem to not know about. Grand Duchess Anastasia was in fact [unalived] with the rest of her family in 1918. She never escaped and the several women throughout the 20th century claiming to be her lied.

The site of the [death penalty] of the Tsar and his family was completely untouched until 1991. Excavation found only 9 of the 11 expected remains. It wasn't until 2007 that two further sets of remains were found a small distance away from the previous grave site. DNA testing found that one of the sets of remains belonged to Tsarevich Alexei and the other to one of his sisters. With this find, it proved conclusively that the entire Imperial family was in fact [unalived] and buried in 1918.

What's the purpose of the appendix really ... it keeps your good bacteria safe.

Crop Circles. Even after the guys showed how the did it on TV, some idiots still believe it’s aliens.

Bermuda Triangle / devils sea...
a triangle shaped section of ocean where airplanes and boats were known to disappear.

Apparently most stories were embellished, and there is so much traffic that goes through the area it’s actually a very small amount of vessels that go missing (percentage wise).

CoryBlk:

I remember when I was a kid my dad telling me that the Bermuda Triangle was nonsense. I remember him saying that more ships have sunk in Lake Superior than the triangle.

I am gonna go in a different direction here I will say finding out what actually causes sickness. For much of humanity this argument had fierce advocates of miasma to why did you make God give you leprosy? The black plague and a pope surrounding himself with candles which attracted fleas and allowed his survival is the greatest doesn't matter it worked ever.

anonymous:

It’s hard to exaggerate the impact Germ theory had on the world. The fact that now you can have one child and expect it to live to adulthood is unheard of throughout human history. Even for royalty.
That and figuring out how to make Ammonia from the air are what made modern day life possible.

Weeping Jesus statue in India mystery. Apparently a Jesus statue started crying and all Christians along with Hindus started to drink it. It turned out to be sewage.

In the 1970s, a number of Japanese citizens disappeared from coastal areas in Japan. After many years it was found out that North Korea had abducted them.

Most of the missing were in their 20s; the youngest, Megumi Yokota, was 13 when she disappeared in November 1977, from the Japanese west coast city of Niigata.

El Dorado or the lost city of gold turned out to be a mistranslation. It was just the name of some guy that got mistranslated to the name of a city.

It's a personal favorite, but finding Richard III. I've always been obsessed with the history of the Wars of the Roses so seeing him found in my lifetime *and* seeing the evidence of his scoliosis and his battle wounds after centuries of wondering if it was all just Tudor propaganda was...monumental. Sent shivers down my spine that this incredibly polarizing man who lived an incredibly interesting life and, by all accounts, had an equally epic death was just stumbled upon underneath a parking lot after 600 years. Dumped in his grave like so much laundry.

The Bloop.

tl;dr in 1997 a really weird and loud noise was detected underwater and everyone was all "WTH was that?". In 2012 it was determined it was an iceberg breaking and/or rubbing against the seabed.

The Prophet Hen of Leeds. A hen was laying eggs with messages like "Christ is Coming" and people thought the world was ending. Turned out the farmer was actually writing on the eggs herself, and then reinserted it back into the chicken.

What Deinocheirus looked like.

When I was a kid in the 80s, all that was known were the bones of the arms with enormous claws. Hence its name, "terrible hand". They were mostly shown grasping a small car because they were so freaking huge. The rest of the animal was a complete mystery. Was it like a giant Allosaurus, one that'd make the T-Rex look like a puppy in comparison? A few years later it seemed more likely to be ostrich-like and an omnivore. Either way, given how rare it is for fossils to form at all, I was convinced I'd die never knowing what this dinosaur actually looked like.

Then surprisingly in 2014, they found more bones and it was just the weirdest thing.

1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. For years conspiracy theories and talk of Alien abduction by wackos circulated.

Till 1998, when mountain climbers on a remote mountain found an engine, pieces of metal, and clothing at the bottom of a glacier on the side of Mount Tupungato. Turns out the aircraft got caught flying the wrong way in the jet stream while it was flying at night and using a system of timing when to start their decent. Being in the jet stream reduced their airspeed in relation to the earth and they smacked themselves straight into the side of a mountain, after which an avalanche covered the wreckage. The wreckage took decades to flow down the side of the mount with the glaciers. The glacier preserved the wreck so well that 50 years later the recovery team found identifiable remains, personal items, and could read serial numbers on the engines. Amazing one of the landing gear tires was still inflated, and that teams continued to visit the site for periodically as more of the aircraft, cargo, and remains of passengers are still emerging from the ice.

The Marfa Mystery Lights.

Small town in west Texas has lights that can be seen dancing off the horizon in a certain spot some nights. For many years the source of the light was not known and explanations ranged from mass hysteria to the ever popular UFO.

One researcher finally figured it out. The elevation changes and desert air would occassionally combine to distort and project headlights from cars on a highway several miles away. Reports of the mystery lights from times prior to the highway or automobiles, are probably campfires in the general area of the highway. Like many highways, the area was already used as a road for quite a long time.

Where is the Titanic?
(Most people don't realize that half of the people in the world grew up when the ship's location was still a complete mystery.
Now, it's old news.

The Windsor Hum.

Residents of Windsor (Canada) have been saying they could hear a hum coming from across the river in Detroit for the better part of a few decades. Well turns out that when a steel producer turned their furnaces off recently (when they were closing up shop) the Hum stopped. People had no idea what the noise could be until the factory closed.

Edit: also a little fun fact; Zug Island (where the factory was located) was mentioned in Robocop and was also the destination of the SS Edmond Fitzgerald before it sank.