There are certain unsolved mysteries that seem destined to remain unexplained forever,
as there doesn't seem to be any explanation or evidence
that could lead to it being finally solved. But every once in a while,
some of the world's strange mysteries are solved in ways that we never expected.
5. Atacama Alien
In 2003, a strange mystery unfolded when the skeleton of a humanoid figure was found wrapped
in a white cloth and wrapped in a violet ribbon in an abandoned mining town in Chile's Atacama desert
and due to its strange appearance, theories started to run wild on what it could be.
The figure was only 6 inches in height and contained fewer
than the normal amount of ribs found on a human. The cranium appeared to be elongated
and the bones themselves showed signs of accelerated ageing.
This led people to believe that it belonged to a non-human primate of some sort
or that it could even have belonged to an extraterrestrial
that somehow ended up on earth. The specimen was found by Oscar Munos who eventually sold it
to a private collector in Spain named Ramon Navia-Osorio where it still remains today.
Belief that the bizarre find was proof of alien life ran so rampant that it appeared in
a documentary that further fueled these claims. Images of the strange specimen quickly spread
throughout the internet and people became ever more curious to find out what it actually was.
Then, in 2018, scientists in California extracted DNA from the strange find in an attempt to piece
together its true origins. After intensive testing was carried out, it was found that
it was not an alien that had crash-landed on earth or a non-human primate, but a human.
It was found to be a female who suffered from mutations in at least 7 genes that are known
to cause problems with bone formation, such as the acceleration of their development.
This accounted for the strange shape, size and seemingly advanced age.
It was also found that the DNA samples closely resembled that of other Chilean people, finally
giving an indication as to where she may have originated from. These discoveries will now aid
future patients with the same defects as therapies and medications can be developed as treatments.
4. Space Blast
In 2018, scientists observed a type of explosion in space that was so unusual that it took them
two years just to classify it. At first, they believed the explosion to be a type of supernova,
but they soon realized that it showed some characteristics that just didn't make sense.
The object appeared incredibly bright at first but unlike a supernova, it faded
away in just a matter of days. They then decided to compare the explosion to two similar events
that they had observed in the past, but this left them with more questions than answers
as they were also unable to explain these previous events.
The first of those explosions had grown so bright that the scientist who was observing
it thought she had made a mistake. The other started throwing material out into space,
which was very unexpected and uncharacteristic of a supernova explosion.
A scientist from Northwest University and co-author of various studies on
new kinds of explosions stated that the unusual nature of the explosions
left them completely baffled and they started searching for similarities in the events.
They soon learned that it was a new type of explosion
that we had never seen before and they were named Fast Blue Optical Transients or FBOTs.
They also learned that the material being ejected was some of the fastest that had ever
been observed in nature and that they ejected far more than previously observed explosions.
It was previously believed that this type of behavior only occurs when a massive star collapses
and produces a gamma-ray burst and when two neutron stars merge with each other. But
they were excited to learn that they had stumbled upon a completely new phenomenon
and they now believe that FBOTs begin the same way that supernovae do,
but after the initial explosion, something different occurs.
Whereas a supernova ejects a spherical blast of matter into space, FBOTs
shed their material just before the explosion occurs. As the blast then makes contact with
the ejected material, it causes bright light to be emitted, allowing scientists to observe the event
and finally giving the answers that have been eluding them for more than 2 years.
3.
Brazil Blocks
In 2018, beach-goers in north-eastern Brazil were baffled when they stumbled on something
that remained an unsolved mystery until 2021. An object shaped like a crate had
washed up on the shore and at first, they didn't know what to make of it.
Their first instinct was that they had stumbled upon some kind of treasure that had been lost
at sea, but when they inspected the object more closely, their hopes were dashed when they found
that it was, in fact, a crude block of rubber that had been cut into a rectangular shape.
But the mystery didn't end there. Soon, more of the strange objects started washing
up on beaches all over the region and they were littered by hundreds of the weird rubber blocks.
They became so great in number that the State Environmental Administration created a hotline
for people to call if they stumbled on more of the objects so that they could be retrieved.
Each day, they would get calls from a different beach and employees had
their hands full in keeping up with the sheer numbers being reported daily. In a single month,
over 350 of the objects appeared on different beaches across the region, each weighing around
180 pounds, requiring tractors to remove them from the sand and onto pickup trucks.
A marine biologist named Luis Bezerra from took it upon himself to investigate the strange phenomenon
after he came across one of the blocks while walking on a beach in July of 2019.
He found that some of the blocks had adult deep sea barnacles attached to them,
meaning that they had to have been in the water for an extended period of time
and that they travelled a massive distance before ending up where they eventually did.
He also noted that an imprint on the side of one of the boxes showed it to be a product of French
Indochina which is modern-day Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The term “French Indochina” has not been
in use since 1954, further indicating that the blocks had some age to them.
After further, intense investigation, it was found that the objects originated
from a German blockade runner that regularly traveled between South America and Hamburg.
It was ultimately intercepted by an allied ship that was traveling home from Japan in 1944.
Thanks to the natural degradation of the hull under the water, it took over 80 years for
the blocks to break free and travel via winds and currents to the coastal regions of Brazil.
It is speculated that the blocks were lumps of unprocessed rubber
that were being transported to Germany for industrial use
in the Second World War and the strange mystery has finally been solved years later.
2. Timothy Robinson
On the 26th of November, 2008, 56-year-old Timothy Robinson from Oregon was reported as
a missing person. He was last seen driving his silver 2008 Mazda sedan and despite a search
effort being put into place to look for him, his disappearance remained unsolved for over a decade.
But on the 26th of May, 2020, the crew from a popular YouTube channel
called Adventures With Purpose decided to livestream an environmental cleanup effort
and they stumbled on something that shocked them to the core.
During the cleanup effort, they discovered a vehicle submerged
in the Willamette River in Milwaukie, Oregon river and decided to have it removed. But as
the car is slowly being pulled on to the shore, the channel's host,
Jared Leisek can be heard desperately yelling for someone to phone the police.
What they didn't realize was that they had solved a 12-year-old mystery that left investigators
baffled. Timothy Robinson was still inside the vehicle and he had at long last been found.
After the footage was shared on social media platforms, the channel was contacted
by Timothy's family who thanked them for finally bringing them some closure,
as they were still trying to figure out what had happened to Timothy.
Timothy's niece, Jessica wrote that she had never seen the channel before they
were contacted by investigators who asked them if they knew a Timothy Robinson.
She informed them that Timothy was her uncle and that he had been missing for 12 years.
She thanked him once more for finally solving a mystery that had been haunting
their family and for giving them the chance to finally lay Timothy to rest.
The area of the river in which Timothy's car was found, is known to locals as The Junkyard,
as many vehicles have been dumped there over the years, in many cases for the purposes of insurance
fraud. But now that one person has been found in one of these vehicles, people are wondering
if there are any more vehicles in the water that ended up there with their occupants still inside.
1. USS Conestoga
On the 25th of March, 1921, the SS Conestoga (kon uh stoge uh), an ocean-going tugboat
set sail from the Golden Gate and headed for American Samoa via Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
But when the time of its arrival had come and gone,
a massive search effort was launched by the Navy around the Hawaiian islands.
But the search proved fruitless as no part of the ship or its crew was found.
Nearly two months later on the 17th of May, a merchant vessel came upon
a battered lifeboat off the Mexican coast with the letter C on its bow.
A search was then organized in that area but once again, nothing came of it.
For the next few months. Newspapers ran headlines about the missing ship
and on the 30th of June, the Navy declared that it considered the USS Conestoga to have been lost
along with its crew, becoming the last Navy ship to disappear without a trace during peacetime.
Then in 2009, the NOAA Office of Coast Survey was conducting a hydrographic survey off the coast of
San Francisco. Here, they stumbled upon a probable and uncharted shipwreck and it was reported.
In September of 2014, NOAA decided to launch a 2-year investigation that aimed to document
historic shipwrecks in the area. While on a mission with archaeologists from the Naval History
and Heritage Command and several Navy officers in 2015, they came upon the wreck once mare
and found that it was indeed the USS Conestoga that had been missing for 94 years.
Weather logs indicate that, after setting out on its journey, the boat, which may have been
towing a barge, the wind in the Golden Gate area increased by 17 miles per hour from 23mph to
40mph. This would have caused the seas to become much rougher and would have caused high waves.
It was also found that a garbled radio transmission that was relayed by another
ship indicated that the USS Conestoga was battling a storm and that the barge that
it had been towing had been torn loose by the massive surf and had gone adrift.
When the area where the boat was discovered was analyzed, it became likely that the officers and
crew had made a desperate attempt to reach a protected cove on the island.
This would have been a near impossible task, as that same area had been the setting for
five other previous shipwrecks due to the difficulty of the approach.