Mysteries

Things nobody has fully explained, and some that were explained much later. 16 stories, a few minutes each.

1. The Wow! SignalOn August 15, 1977, a radio telescope in Ohio detected something that still has no definitive explanation. The signal lasted 72 seconds, arrived at…
2. The Dancing Plague of 1518In July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg and began to dance. She did not stop.
3. Phantom IslandsFor centuries, mapmakers drew islands that did not exist. These phantom islands appeared on charts and atlases, were copied from one generation to…
4. The Voynich ManuscriptIn 1912, an antiquarian book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich purchased a strange medieval codex from a Jesuit college in Italy. No one could read it.…
5. The Antikythera MechanismIn 1901, sponge divers exploring a shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera pulled up a corroded lump of bronze. For decades, it sat in a…
6. The Winchester Mystery HouseSarah Winchester inherited a fortune built on rifles. Her husband William had been heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, maker of "the gun…
7. Ball LightningIn 1638, a "great ball of fire" reportedly came through the window of a church in Devon, England, injuring about sixty people.
8. The Zone of SilenceIn the Chihuahuan Desert of northern Mexico, where the states of Durango, Chihuahua, and Coahuila meet, there's a patch of scrubland about thirty…
9. The Marree ManOn June 26, 1998, a charter pilot named Trec Smith was flying between Marree and Coober Pedy in the South Australian outback when he noticed…
10. The Mary CelesteOn December 4, 1872, the British ship Dei Gratia was sailing about 400 miles east of the Azores when her crew spotted another vessel drifting in…
11. The BloopIn the summer of 1997, hydrophones operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up an unusual sound in the South Pacific.
12. The Dyatlov Pass IncidentIn February 1959, nine experienced hikers died under unexplained circumstances in the northern Ural Mountains of Russia. The group, led by…
13. The Phantom Time HypothesisIn 1991, a German historian named Heribert Illig published a paper arguing that 297 years of human history never happened.
14. The Sailing Stones of Death ValleyIn a remote corner of Death Valley, rocks move by themselves.
15. The Kentucky Meat ShowerOn March 9, 1876, chunks of meat fell from a clear sky onto a strip of land near Rankin in Bath County, Kentucky. The area affected was roughly 100…
16. Why Stradivarius Violins Sound So GoodBetween roughly 1680 and 1720, Antonio Stradivari built about 1,100 string instruments in his workshop in Cremona, Italy.