studying history is like trying to read a book where half the pages are missing and the other
half are written in 50 different languages in other words there are going to be some gaps to
put it mildly as historians keep studying they fill some of those gaps but there are always
plenty more left unanswered that will keep them awake at night
number 10. where is cleopatra's tomb cleopatra is one of the most iconic figures of the ancient
world but her final resting place remains a mystery according to roman historians both
she and her lover mark anthony committed suicide following their defeat by octavian
at the battle of alexandria but cleopatra did it later only after finding out that octavian
intended to parade her as a trophy during his roman triumph afterwards octavian allowed the two
lovers to be buried together although anthony may have been cremated and not mummified that's about
all we have from the ancient sources in modern times there is an ongoing debate over where the
tomb would even be located some egyptologists think that the most obvious answer alexandria
is the right one but in recent years there's been increased interest in the ruins of an ancient city
named tapas cyrus magna which was once home to a large temple dedicated to osiris dozens of
tombs had been uncovered so far at cyrus magna as well as a few mummies of particular interest
was a pair of mummies male and female who had been buried together and covered head to toe
in gold leaf although they weren't cleopatra and mark antony they were very clearly people of high
standing in egyptian society more importantly though they showed that tapasirus magna was a
significant city in cleopatra's time and a possible location for a tomb 9. who made the
devil's footprints february 8 1855 was a cold and snowy winter night for the people of devon who
lived near the river x in the morning they woke up to see a land covered in a thick blanket of snow
but there was something else that sparked a lot of interest concern and even fear in the snow there
were trails of marks that resembled cloven hoofs which many of the superstitious locals immediately
attributed to the devil the times reported that the tracks had been made by a bipedal creature
not a quadruped and that they seemingly passed through walls and haystacks over roofs and even
across the river possible culprits included badges and kangaroos that escaped from a private zoo
according to a different explanation the marks had been left by an experimental balloon that had been
released from the davenport dockyard and traveled across the land trailing its mooring shackles that
actually created the hoof prince the definitive answer however still eludes us number eight what
happened to the courthouse brothers joey vaz corta real was a 15th century explorer who
sailed for the portuguese crown and was rewarded for his efforts with high ranking positions in the
azore islands he had three sons gaspar miguel and vasquez who unsurprisingly also became explorers
in 1500 gaspar quarter real set sail to explore the north atlantic on behalf of king manuel the
first to portugal he reached greenland but the heavy ice prevented him from landing the following
year gaspar went on another expedition this time with three carabelles once again his route was
impeded by ice so he changed course and finally touched down on a new land where pine trees and
wild berries grew this is usually believed to be newfoundland although the exact location is
uncertain he encountered natives and captured around 50 of them intending to enslave them but
he never made it back to portugal the other two carabelles returned but the one with gaspar
corte real was never heard from again in 1502 his brother miguel corteria launched a relief
expedition also setting sail with three ships once they reached the shores where gaspar landed
they split up to search agreeing to return at a rendezvous point but the exact same thing
happened again the other two caravelles returned but the one carrying miguel corterial became lost
the third brother actually tried to mount his own rescue mission and while the king did send more
ships he forbade him from being on them the fate of the cordo real brothers remains a mystery 7.
why did neolithic europeans burn down their houses a strange phenomenon was happening in neolithic
europe primarily in the southeast people were burning down their own houses seemingly on purpose
the entire villages would have been set alight all at once and new settlements would have been built
on top of the scorch remains the archaeologists have dubbed this practice the burned house
horizon but its intentions and origin are still very much clouded in mystery although this was
something done by multiple neolithic cultures it seemed to be particularly pervasive throughout the
kakateni tapilia culture which spread over large parts of modern day ukraine romania and moldova
the big question is why why would anyone do this to their own homes six possible explanations have
been put forward and the first two contend that the burns were never on purpose one claimed that
they were accidental due to flammable materials and incendiary activities such as cooking and
the other that they were the result of attacking invaders however neither explained the regularity
of the practice as well as the fact that bodies were hardly ever found inside the burned houses
the other four explanations all indicate that the burned house horizon was an intentional phenomenon
but done for different purposes one archaeologist suggested that the houses were burned to make them
more water-resistant by hardening the clay the walls were made out of another thought it was a
way of fumigating the villagers to get rid of insects and other pests it may have been done
simply to recycle all materials and create space or as a religious ceremony symbolically ending the
life cycle of the home 6. what happened to abigail williams one of the most well-known and notorious
episodes from the history of colonial america is the salem witch trials a series of prosecutions
driven by paranoia and superstition which saw hundreds of people accused and 20 of them executed
for witchcraft but one mystery that still lingers is the fate of abigail williams the young girl who
started the whole thing in 1689 samuel paris became the new minister of salem massachusetts
and he moved there with his young daughter betty paris and her cousin abigail williams in early
1692 the village doctor was summoned to the paris home where both girls began to exhibit strange
behaviors such as convulsing barking and speaking in tongues the doctor concluded that they had been
bewitched because they had the same symptoms as in a prior well-known case of witchcraft
the goodwin family in boston the two girls blamed the family slave to tuba who was arrested and
imprisoned after afterwards she confessed her deed likely under torture and even named two more women
who acted as accomplices from then on the insanity began more girls were displaying the same symptoms
and more people were being accused of witchcraft samuel paris lost his job as minister and he left
town taking betty with him who later married had children lived a normal life abigail williams
however stayed behind and had a significant role in the trials accusing 57 people of witchcraft as
soon as she gave testimony in june 1692 abigail completely disappeared from the historical record
it is unknown what happened to her or why she did what she did some say she did it simply
because as a poor girl with no real prospects in life this would have been the only time she had
any kind of power or influence others think that the symptoms displayed by abigail and the other
affected girls as they were called could have been caused by ergotism from eating fungus-infected rye
which could have also led to premature death thus explaining her sudden disappearance from
the historical record 5. who is buried inside the dyson kofin while not as famous as the pyramids
japan has its own ancient tombs built between the 3rd and 7th centuries a.d called kofin
some of them have an unusual keyhole design and they can range vastly in size from just a few
dozen feet to thousands of feet in length the largest one can be found in the city of sakai
osaka prefecture it is called dyson coven and it is over 1 500 feet long and a thousand feet
wide but the big question is who's buried inside the kofin has long been regarded as the final
resting place of emperor nintoku the 16th emperor of japan who ruled during the fourth century but
no academic or scientist has ever confirmed this and they are not able to do it because people are
actually forbidden from entering the tomb since the matter concerns a royal ancestor it falls
under the authority of the imperial household agency the japanese government body which
deals with all affairs concerning the imperial family ever since the 1970s they've restricted
all archaeological research to the outside of the moats which surround the coven but there has been
some progress on that front in recent years in 2018 the agency allowed archaeologists to excavate
the moats and look for ancient artifacts in 2020 there was some talk of excavating the mound and
though it hasn't happened yet this is one mystery that might find an answer in the years to come
number four what happened to rolda munson norwegian explorer roald edmondson cemented
his place in history in 1911 when he led the first expedition to reach the south pole that
was not the first or the last of his dangerous adventures in 1926 he flew over the north pole
in a dirigible alongside italian aeronautical engineer umberto nobile with the american
financier lincoln ellsworth following their flight amundsen and nobela had a falling out which led to
a public feud over who led the expedition the two of them became adversaries but all feelings
of hostility were put aside in 1928 when a munson received word the noble had crashed his airship
the italia while exploring the arctic on june the 18th 1928 roald amundsen and a french crew boarded
a latham 47 float plane and left tromso to assist in the rescue efforts they were never seen again
it is generally accepted that their plane crashed somewhere over the barren sea and all the people
aboard were killed but what we don't know is where and why neither the wreckage nor the bodies have
been recovered although new searches still take place occasionally the latest one happened in 2009
when a team used an underwater robot to search 45 square miles of the sea floor for the plane wreck
but they were unsuccessful 3. what was the lin biel incident while we're talking about mysterious
plane crashes we should mention an event known as the lin biao incident during the chinese communist
revolution of the 1940s limbiao was a general who played a decisive role in the victory of the
communists and the rise to power of mao zedong he remained influential throughout mao's reign
and in 1969 he was designated as his successor he never got a chance to assume leadership though as
lin bien and his family were killed in a plane crash over mongolia on september 13th 1971. at
first the chinese government made no announcement regarding lin's demise it wasn't until the summer
of 1972 that they put forward the official story that lin biao died while fleeing to the soviet
union after a failed coup and assassination attempt against mao zedong unsurprisingly not
many people were convinced to buy the story the soviet union secretly sent their own agents to
investigate the crash site but they weren't big on sharing either so their findings also remained
classified until the end of the cold war it wasn't until the 1990s that they at least confirmed that
lindbial was actually among the casualties of the flight putting an end to rumors that
bowed hadn't killed in secret or thrown in prison before the plane even took off however
all other details surrounding the limbaugh incident and the exact circumstances of his death
remain a mystery number two did thomas cromwell plot anne boleyn's downfall
amblin was the queen of england and second wife to king henry viii thomas cromwell was the king's
chief minister and one of the main figures behind the english reformation which saw the church of
england break away from the authority of the pope they started off as allies but their relationship
soured in just a few years and came to an abrupt end with the execution of anne boleyn for treason
but was cromwell the one who engineered the plot to get rid of the queen or did he simply carry out
the king's orders by 1536 anne boleyn had been queen for three years but she had fallen out of
the king's favor due to her inability to give him a son she was also on the outs with thomas
cromwell due to their differing ideologies even though they were once strong allies
cromwell was instrumental in engineering the annulment of henry's first marriage so that he
could wed anne boleyn and in return she made him her right-hand man but in 1536 thomas cromwell
gathered evidence that anne had committed adultery with numerous men including her own brother
she was found guilty and executed on may 19 1536 thus paving the way for henry viii to marry jane
seymour just a few days later there's little doubt that most of the evidence against anne
boleyn had been either manufactured or gathered by torture but historians are uncertain over the role
that thomas cromwell played in collecting that evidence did he fool the king and conspire to get
rid of a political enemy or was he acting according to henry's instructions all along
number one what brought down the minoan civilization over a hundred years ago
archaeologists excavating the greek islands in the aegean sea discovered the remnants of the minoan
civilization as they kept exploring they found that the minoans weren't just any ancient people
but they were probably the first truly advanced civilization in europe by 1800 bc they already had
a writing system sophisticated art giant palaces and even a plumbing system the minoans were ahead
of everyone else in europe but by the mid-15th century bc they started to experience a sharp
decline which eventually led to the collapse of their entire civilization this begged the question
what caused the minoan civilization to fall for a long time the answer was a catastrophic volcanic
eruption on the island of thera or santorini as we call it nowadays but archaeologists eventually
discovered that minoan life went on following that event so there must have been something
else others have argued that the eruption also caused massive tsunamis to hit the islands and
that it also altered the climate to bring on years and years of cold wet summers which in
turn led to bad harvests while there's no doubting that the volcanic eruption happened some scholars
believed that it was a large earthquake that made the minoan palaces come crumbling down
and yet a fourth hypothesis claims that it was a man not mother nature who caused the collapse of
the minoans and that the civilization was ended by invasions from mainland greeks particularly
the myceneans maybe it was one of these or maybe it was a combination of them that brought down
europe's first true great civilization so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did
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