1.In the town of Taos, New Mexico, everyone who lives there (or even just visits) can hear an annoying hum which sounds much like a diesel engine running in the distance. However, despite multiple attempts, no sound recording or monitoring device can pick up the sound, and therefore it is impossible to tell where it is coming from. Could it be (as one actual explanation proposes) that the sound is transmitted directly into people’s brains, rather than being a physical noise? To this day, no-one knows for sure.
2.Perhaps the strangest example of an object ‘out of its time’ appeared in Romania when in 1974 a group of workers discovered three objects buried ten metres deep in a sand trench. Two of the items were found to prehistoric elephant bones, dating back two million years. The third object was an aluminium wedge. Considering that the metal was not created until 1825, experts were - and remain to this day - astounded. Of course, many claim ‘hoax’, but if one doesn’t jump to that conclusion right away, the implications are extraordinary.
3.In 1908 an Italian Archaeologist named Luigi Pernier discovered a fired clay disc in the ruins of the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos. Dating to the 2nd millennium BC, it is around 15 cm in diameter with each side covered by a spiral of symbols, comprising of 45 unique signs which appear to have been made by pressing hieroglyphic seals into the clay when it was soft. To date, the Phaistos Disc has eluded any attempt to translate it, as it has been generally concluded there is not enough context available to decipher the script.
4.While prospecting in Colorado in 1818, a man named Thomas Jefferson Beale came across three ciphertexts which allegedly reveal the location of a buried treasure hoard, including gold, silver and countless precious jewels. Only one of the three ciphers has so far been cracked, and the key to that was - amazingly - the Declaration of Independence. That particular text revealed that the treasure is buried in Bedford County, Virginia - however it is thought that the two remaining undeciphered texts tell us where in the county it is! Despite the potential burial area being huge, it hasn’t deterred a whole host of treasure hunters from regularly scouring the hillsides for any signs of disturbance.
5.The most significant event in the history of SETI - the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - is known as the Wow! Signal. Whilst observing deep space from Ohio University’s Perkins Observatory, Jerry R. Ehman suddenly noticed a strong radio signal coming from the constellation of Sagittarius. It was so far above the scale of what would be considered ‘normal’ background radio noise, that the computer printout had to use letters, as no numbers went high enough! It was clear to anyone involved that this signal was not something that occurred naturally in space, and Ehman circled the numbers in the printout, writing ‘Wow!’ in the margin - hence the now-accepted name for the event. Believers suggest this is evidence of a com- munication attempt by an alien life form, whereas sceptics have dismissed the signal as a ‘mistake’ or ‘technical glitch’.
6.The identity of Jack the Ripper is surely one of the all-time classic crime mysteries. In the late 19th Century, the Ripper is believed by general consensus to have committed five murders (although a number of later killings did also bear his hallmarks, and the fifth of the ‘confirmed’ killing still raises a number of doubts). At the time police were stumped, even arresting a man purely on anti-Semitic hearsay before apologising and letting him go. Since then, more than eighty suspects have been proposed, from members of royalty to mad surgeons, and even a suggestion that the Ripper was in fact ‘Jill’ rather than ‘Jack’. The case became muddied when a number of letters were sent to the police; some obvious hoaxes, some in fact likely to have been writ- ten in the killer’s own hand. One even included half a kidney (it should be noted that one of the victim’s had a kidney removed at the scene of the attack) with a note saying the other half had been fried and was very nice to eat. Everyone has their own view on who the Ripper was, and why the killings stopped just as suddenly as they began.
7.One of the world’s most fascinating mysteries is surely the Tamam Shud case. In December 1948, an unidentified man was found dead on a beach in Adelaide. The only clue to a possible identity was a tiny piece of paper found in a hidden pocket sewn into the trousers of the dead man with the words ‘Tamam Shud’ scribbled on it. The phrase is used on the last page of a collection of poems of Omar Khayyam called The Rubaiyat, a copy of which was found with a scribbled code in it, which was believed to have been written in there by the dead man. What does the code mean? What was it leading him to? Why and how did he die? All of these questions remain completely unanswered to this day and the case is as much of a mystery now as it was the very day the body was discovered.
8.In 2007, a rather grizzly mystery began in British Columbia, when in August a man’s severed foot in a training shoe turned up on Jedediah Island. It was to be the first of many. Over the next few years, more feet turned up on beaches in the area, always clad in a rubber-souled shoe. Although the coroner of British Columbia suggested that the feet most likely belonged to suicide victims whose bodies had decomposed naturally, only leaving the foot in the shoe which currents would later bring ashore, many people weren’t convinced. Some victims were in fact identified, and their families assured investigators that their missing loved ones were not in any way suicidal. So was there a murderer with a fetish for feet on the loose? Or is there another strange explanation? It is hard to know, and just as mysteriously as the feet had started to appear, in 2012 they stopped!
9.There is a book called the Voynich Manuscript which is written in a script that is completely unknown and appears to be untranslatable, even to the most experienced linguists on the planet. Made in the early 15th century, it depicts a number of plants that do not match with any known species on our planet, as well as a series of what appear to be astronomical drawings. Although experts cannot figure out what the book is, who wrote it and why, they do agree that it is unlikely to be a fake, as it would have taken far too much time and money to create something so intricate just for a joke!
10.There is only one unsolved case of hijacking in US aviation history - that of DB Cooper. A man, actually going by the name of Dan Cooper (it was later reported incorrectly by the media) bought a one-way ticket for flight 305 between Portland International Airport and Seattle, Washington. Shortly after take-off, Cooper whispered to an air stewardess to take a note from him, and that he had a bomb. The note requested she sit next to him and that he was hijacking the place. She did as told, and with some trepidation asked to see the bomb. Cooper opened up his briefcase enough the stewardess to see eight red cylinders in two rows. He gave her his demands - $200,000, four parachutes (two main and two reserve) and a fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft as soon as it landed. This was communicated to the pilot, who in turn made the authorities aware of the situation. When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper let all of the passengers go in exchange for the money, which the FBI had quickly assembled from nearby banks. As the plane was being refuelled, Cooper discussed his intended flight plan with the cockpit crew; he made a number of requests about altitude, direction, and even the position of the aircraft’s wing flaps. He also requested that the aircraft take off with the rear staircase deployed, however the captain refused - yet Cooper said he would lower it himself once they were airborne. Eventually, the aircraft took off, Cooper politely asked the remaining flight steward to join the crew in the cockpit and close the door. He did so, and at around 8pm the pilot saw the warning sign that the rear stairs had been lowered, and he and the rest of the crew felt a change in air pressure, indicating that the rear door had been opened. Dan Cooper - or whoever he was - had parachuted out with the money. He has never been found, and no additional information about the case have ever since come to light!
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