in the past we've examined some of the mysterious questions that
keep historians up at night and today we're ready to take a look at tim moore
number 10. who fired the first shot heard around the world april the 19th 1775 is a
date that forever changed the world it was the day the battles of lexington and concord the
first military engagements between the british and the americans that triggered the revolutionary war
took place that opening salva of bullets that marked the beginning of the battle has become
known as the shot heard around the world thanks to a poem by ralph waldo emerson but the question is
who fired it unfortunately the initial skirmish was a massive chaos and confusion and nobody is
really sure which side fired the shot let alone which person an army of 800 british regulars
led by general thomas gage entered lexington at around 5am that morning with orders to seize all
the weapons and gunpowder stored at concord they encountered a militia company of 70 men also who
scattered as the british forces into the town square then someone somewhere fired that
fable shot thinking they were being attacked the regulars opened fire on the colonists and killed
eight militiamen before moving towards concord and thus the war began number nine what happened to
the bermangi five on the south coast of new south wales australia there's a small town with nice
lovely beaches with the intriguing name of mystery bay so what mystery does it refer to exactly well
it's the 1880 disappearance of the bomagi five a group of men who vanished without a trace in that
area while conducting a geological survey the group was led by a geologist with the new south
wales mines department named lamont young who was working out of the nearby town of bomagi this was
at the time of the australian gold rush there was lots of money to be made so geologists like young
surveyed every bit of australia in the hopes of finding a new goldfield on october 10th 1880 young
took his assistant and a boat crew of three and traveled northward to explore a new area of coast
later that evening a laborer riding along the coast saw the empty boat which had drifted into a
rocky part of the bay the sale was tied down some of their clothes books and equipment were still
aboard and there was a lot of vomit on the floor of the ship the five men however were nowhere to
be found and their fate remains a mystery to this day number eight was now scopy real or a scam
around 250 years ago there was a french engineer named etienne botteno who claimed to have invented
a new science which he called now scopey it could be used to discover ships and land at great
distance nowadays both the man and his strange claim have always completely faded from memory
found mostly as minor references in other people's works but even in his own time now scopey was
never seriously studied both because botano never bothered to write down or explain in detail how
it worked because he lived on the remote island of mauritius back then called the ill defrost
it seemed that for the most part modulo used noscopy as a secret weapon to winning barbets
being able to predict the arrival of ships and deport up to four days in advance but in 1782 he
alerted the governor that a fleet of 11 ships were approaching the island bottano then advised him
that the fleet had changed course fearing that the british might be attacking the governor dispatched
a warship to find out what was going on when he returned it confirmed everything bottineau said a
fleet of vessels was heading towards mauritius but then it changed course and headed towards india
so the question remains was botano simply a lucky was he a con man or did naoskopi actually work 7.
where is attila the hun fewer people have had a more sudden shocking and violent impact on the
world than attila leader of the huns the origins of these nomadic people are still uncertain but
they appeared in europe sometime during the late 4th century a.d in just a few decades they had
established a vast empire and became the biggest threat to the hegemony of the roman empire they
could have become the leading force in europe if not for the unexpected death of attila which
surprisingly happened during peace time while the hunnic leader was celebrating the latest marriage
many cultures have different customs when it comes to dealing with the dead some like to
build lavish tombs mausoleums even pyramids for their leaders the huns were exactly the opposite
they believed attila's tomb should be a secret the honey chief dane was placed in three nesting
coffins one made of arn one made of silver and the last one made of solid gold these were filled
with jewels and other priceless treasures that signified attila's strength and subjugation of
other nations but they didn't mark the burial site with any kind of monument and they also
killed the gravediggers so that the knowledge of the location would die with them and that location
remains a mystery to this very day 6. what caused the puebloan migration the ancestral puebloans are
one of the oldest native american cultures having appeared sometime during the 8th century a.d
for hundreds of years they lived and thrived in the four corners region of the united states
comprised of parts of utah colorado new mexico and arizona but then during the 13th and early
14th centuries they seemingly disappeared under circumstances that still remain a mystery for a
while we thought that the ancestral puebloans were wiped off the face of the earth maybe a
natural disaster maybe by enemy tribes nowadays however scholars are pretty convinced that these
ancient people didn't die out suddenly but rather they migrated but there is still the question of
what event could determine an entire civilization to pack up and abandon the place they had called
home for centuries it's still possible that enemy attacks could have been the reason or a loss of
fertile land due to deforestation and soil erosion some scientists believe that the culprit was a
mega drought that made it impossible to grow food in the region while all explanations are plausible
none have been proven definitively 5. what happened to the joy eater
when it comes to creepy stories about ghost ships the joyeta has to be right up there on october
3rd 1955 this american merchant vessel left samoa with 25 people aboard headed towards the tarkalau
islands it was supposed to arrive there two days later but even on october the 6th there was still
no word from the joy eater a search and rescue team was dispatched but they were unable to find
it it was over a month later that another merchant ship stumbled upon the jaita adrift hundreds of
miles off course it was partially submerged and listing badly on one side although it wasn't in
danger of sinking the people were gone the cargo was gone and the interior had sustained a lot of
damage had the vessel been attacked by pirates or japanese fishing boats or a soviet submarine was
it a mutiny or was it all some sort of insurance fraud no sign that the 25 people aboard the joy
eater have ever been found leaving this puzzle unsolved for the time being 4. what happened to
thomas payne's remains there once was a time when thomas paine was regarded as one of the biggest
heroes of the american revolution his influential pamphlets inspired many people into action and
when he was finished in america he traveled to paris and became involved in the french revolution
as well and yet when he died in 1809 he was broke childless and so hated by his peers that only six
people attended his funeral and according to legend some of his bones were recycled into
buttons while the rest were tossed in the garbage payne's ideas and his character have mostly been
rehabilitated in modern times but one question still lingers what happened to his remains
thomas paine became a pariah in his time mainly due to two reasons one his work titled the age of
reason was seen as an attack on christianity and two following his arrest and detention in france
payne criticized many of his former revolutionary allies feeling that they had abandoned him when
he died payne was buried in a modest grave on his farm but a decade later a fan of his named william
cobbert arranged for him to be exhumed and shipped to his native england he hoped to arrange for a
grand resting place for pain but unfortunately found no takers ultimately cobb ended up keeping
payne's bones in his attic until he died at which point their fate becomes uncertain cobb's son sold
all of his effects at auction so it's possible that some bones were sold off piece by piece while
others were thrown in the trash some people have claimed to possess parts of thomas payne but none
of them have been proven number 3. where did the tamil bell come from there's a certain category
of historical puzzles called outer place artifacts and as its name suggests it refers to items that
have been found in places where they don't belong this puts pressure on scholars and scientists to
try and explain how they got there and one of the most prominent examples is the tamil bell
around 1836 british missionary william calenzo stumbled upon the tamil bell in the northland
region of new zealand being used by maori women to bore potatoes after questioning the locals
he found out that they had possessed the bell for many generations after finding it buried
under a tree later examinations of the unusual artifact revealed that it was a ship's bell
made of bronze and that it had tamil writing on it and it wasn't modern tamil either but rather an
old-fashioned script that hadn't been used for centuries it's pretty obvious that the bell came
from a tamil ship but this raises more questions than it answers europeans first made contact with
new zealanders in the mid-17th century but this was at least 100 years older than that did this
mean that the tamil people and other south asian cultures knew about new zealand much earlier than
this did they have contact with each other or did the bell simply wash ashore following the sinking
of a tamil ship number two what happened to america's first black doctor james doram sometimes
spelled durham made history when he became the first black man in the united states to become
a doctor unfortunately most of his life is clouded by mystery and uncertainty and so is his death as
dharam disappeared one day never to be seen again the future physician was born into slavery circa
1762 in philadelphia and for the first two decades of his life he was owned by several doctors one of
them john kearsley taught james to read and write not just in english but also in french and spanish
durham's last master was a scottish physician who lived in new orleans named robert dao
he encouraged durham to study medicine and also allowed him to practice it on some of his patients
in 1783 james durham became a free man not entirely sure if he paid for his liberation
or if doubt granted it but he was able to open his own practice in the city it flourished for years
thanks mainly to durham's fluency in multiple languages and his willingness to treat patients
from all racial backgrounds things were going well for durham he even became a correspondent
with benjamin rush one of the founding fathers and arguably the most famous doctor in the country at
the time in 1801 durham returned to his native philadelphia just a year later he disappeared
and was never heard from again some think he practiced medicine elsewhere but others fear that
he may have been killed by people who resented his success number one who are the sea peoples
ancient history is filled with mysterious civilizations about whom we know almost
nothing but few of them have had a bigger impact on history than the sea peoples the confederacy
of seafaring nations the sea peoples appeared suddenly in the mediterranean during the 12th
century bc and waged war on anyone who got in their way the greeks the egyptians the phoenicians
they all suffered at the hands of this wrathful civilization the egyptians were the ones who have
provided us with the most detailed accounts of the sea peoples as the two sides fought often during
the reigns of ramesses ii and ramesses iii they also named some of the groups that made up this
war in confederation such as the tujeka and the sheridan but this has not helped us pinpoint their
origins today the incursions of the sea peoples are considered one of the main factors behind
the late bronze age collapse but their identities their purpose and their final fate remain unknown
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