Gone are the mystical disappearances of people that have not yet been solved. Mysterious crimes that remain unsolved

The sea is a mysterious element, fraught with many undisclosed secrets. Every time you walk along the beach or admire the sun sinking into the waves, remember that in the depths of these waters there may be something that you don’t even know about ...

Man from Medan (Ourang Medan)

The story of the Dutch cargo ship Ourang Medan, which sank in the Strait of Malacca, is one of the most terrible and controversial. Under unclear circumstances, the entire crew of the ship died.

“The captain and all the officers lie dead in the cockpit and on the bridge. Perhaps the whole team is dead, ”such a distress signal was received by British and Dutch listening stations in June 1947.

After that, someone briefly "beat off" Morse: "I'm dying." One of the American ships, Silver Star, was immediately sent to the ship.

The team really turned out to be dead - something did not spare even the dog. There were no signs of violent death on the bodies of the dead, but the frozen faces expressed horror. Although there was no damage to the ship either, it was suspiciously cold in the depths of the hold. Then smoke began to rise from there, and the rescuers retreated in a hurry. After that, Ourang Medan exploded.

Since the only official mention of this incident appeared in the US Coast Guard publication Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council, and there were no other references to it, many question the veracity of this story.

In addition, there is a rational explanation for the incident. It is likely that Ourang Medan was carrying nitroglycerin and potassium cyanide, both of which are hazardous when in contact with seawater. So, probably, the team just got poisoned.

Mary Celeste

Perhaps the most famous case of a ghost ship. On November 5, 1872, a ship carrying a cargo of rectified alcohol left Staten Island for Genoa. In addition to the captain, there were 7 crew members on the ship, as well as the wife and daughter of the captain.

But the Mary Celeste never entered the port of destination. The ship was found four weeks later completely empty: not a single living or dead soul was there. Neither a sextant nor a chronometer was found on the ship - the absence of these important instruments makes it seem that the crew was trying to evacuate. And very hastily, considering that the captain left both jewelry and money in the cabin.

But the ship did not get into a storm: the captain's cabin was in perfect order, and on the table of the captain's wife there was an oil dish with untouched oil, which would certainly have fallen when rolling.

The cargo was also intact. All papers, with the exception of the ship's log, disappeared.
For several centuries, historians have been trying to explain the mysterious disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste, but neither the attack of pirates, nor the rebellion, nor the effects of alcohol, nor even the intervention of sea monsters can answer all questions.

Carroll A. Deering

The case of this American cargo schooner is cited as one example of the riddle of the Bermuda Triangle.

What happened on the ship in 1921, historians have not been able to explain. The schooner made a single voyage, which was her last.

The Carroll A. Dearing left Norfolk with a cargo of coal for Rio de Janeiro. The ship was commanded by William Meritt, and his son helped him. There were nine people on the team. According to some rumors, the captain did not want to go to sea with these people and did not trust them.

But soon the captain fell ill and was forced to go ashore, and the elderly Willis Wormell was sent to replace him. The ship landed in Rio de Janeiro without incident. Wormell, apparently, also had a low opinion of the team and managed to complain about it to his friend, the captain, whom he met in Brazil.

The ship went back to the USA with the same composition. During a short stop in Barbados, the crew drank on the shore for several days, and a quarrel broke out between the captain and the first officer. The assistant did not like that the captain did not allow him to punish the sailors and that he had to solve many navigational tasks, since the captain had poor eyesight.

A few weeks later, the ship was caught in a storm. Sailing past the floating lighthouse, one of the sailors called out to the lighthouse keeper. He reported that the schooner had lost its anchors during a storm. The lighthouse keeper noticed that the ship was in chaos and that the captain never came out to talk to him.

A few days later, US Coast Guard officers spotted the schooner that had run aground. The sails were raised, there were no lifeboats. When the rescuers boarded the schooner, not a single person was on board. There were no personal belongings, no ship's log. There were no anchors either. The last mark on the map was not made by the captain's hand.

The only one brought by the rescuers from the ship was the ship's gray cat.

A few months later, one of the fishermen who lived near the crash site of the ship found a bottle with a letter on the shore, which said that the ship "Carroll A. Dearing" was captured by pirates, and the crew was taken prisoner.

KazII

Fast forward in time to 2007. Australian catamaran fishing yacht Kaz II left Airlie Beach for Townsville. There were three on board: the owner of the yacht Derek Batten and his two brothers Peter and James.

Three days later, the yacht was spotted from a helicopter, she was drifting in the Great Barrier Reef. When the sea patrol boarded the yacht, neither the owner nor his brothers were on the ship. There was no one at all.

It was as if they had only left the yacht a few hours ago: the food was untouched, the laptop was on, as was the yacht's engine.

According to one version, James dived into the sea for some reason, the yacht was swept aside, and his brother rushed to his aid. When the owner of the ship noticed that the ship was moving away from his friends, he tried to lower the sails, but the sail knocked him down, and the man drowned along with his brothers.

What are these mystical circumstances and how can one disappear without a trace? After all, no one will ever know what really happened to these people.

1.Sigismund Levanevsky

The great pilot Sigismund Levanevsky took off in front of hundreds of spectators. He was supposed to reach Alaska - but he was never seen again.

2.Henry Hudson

This brave traveler explored much of North America. Apparently the depths of the sea swallowed him up: Hudson went in search of the legendary Northern Passage to Asia, but the team, tired of the endless ice, rebelled. The ship came to the shore without Hudson: the sailors all swore that the explorer somehow just took it and disappeared right from the deck.

3.Jim Sullivan

He was never a big star, but he always remained in the party of movie stars. Album U.F.O. (the whole record is dedicated to a guy who was abducted by aliens) was released in 1969 and brought some fame to Sullivan. The producers invited the musician to record new material in Nashville - he got into his truck and hit the road. A month later, Sullivan's car was found in the New Mexico desert, with a guitar and the musician's belongings in the back seat.

4. Felix Moncla

In November 1953, a US Air Force pilot took to the skies to intercept a strange object that appeared near Lake Superior. The radar showed how Felix's plane came close to the object, and then disappeared. The UFO traveled alone north of the base, and no trace of Monkle or aircraft wreckage was found.

5 Roanoke Colonists

In 1587, a large group of 115 British colonists landed on Roanoke Island, present-day North Carolina. Governor Walter White went to England a few months later to get supplies. He returned only three years later, the colony disappeared completely. No traces remain, except for the frightening word "Croatoan" carved into one of the houses.

6. Ambrose Bierce

The author and satirist, known for The Devil's Dictionary and The Owl Creek Bridge Incident, was known to be dark and rather cynical in nature. Relatives turned away from the wit and Bierce decided to go to glorious Mexico - he was not yet known there. The writer successfully crossed the Rio Grande, that's all that is known about this journey to posterity.

History is cyclical. In the process of development, people invented something more than once, lost these technologies, and after a while they rediscovered them. Here are four ingenious inventions of the past, the secret of which is still unraveled.

Roman concrete

Express info by country

The Earth is in third place in terms of distance from the Sun and in fifth place among all the planets in the solar system in terms of size.

Age– 4.54 billion years

Medium radius - 6,378.2 km

Middle circle - 40,030.2 km

Square– 510,072 million km² (29.1% land and 70.9% water)

Number of continents– 6: Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Antarctica

Number of oceans– 4: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic

Population– 7.3 billion people (50.4% men and 49.6% women)

Most populous states: Monaco (18,678 people/km2), Singapore (7607 people/km2) and Vatican City (1914 people/km2)

Number of countries: total 252, independent 195

Number of languages ​​in the world– about 6,000

Number of official languages- 95; most common: English (56 countries), French (29 countries) and Arabic (24 countries)

Number of nationalities– about 2,000

Climatic zones: equatorial, tropical, temperate and arctic (basic) + subequatorial, subtropical and subarctic (transitional)

Many ancient Roman temples, aqueducts and roads are still in excellent condition. And even the harbors, which are more than 2 thousand years old, are surprisingly well preserved, despite the fact that they are constantly undermined by the sea. The secret is in a special building material.

In addition to sand, water, lime, and broken earthenware, Roman concrete also contained one secret ingredient: volcanic ash. It was he, according to modern scientists, who made concrete so durable and timeless. The ash prevents cracks in the material and protects buildings from destruction. The most striking evidence of this can be considered the Pantheon, which has been in Rome since 126 AD.

Fire of Archimedes

Archimedes of Syracuse was born in 287 BC. e. and became famous as one of the most outstanding mathematicians and physicists of his time. In particular, he is credited with the invention of concave mirrors, with which it was possible to destroy ships. To do this, it was necessary to correctly direct the sun's ray onto the mirror: it was refracted and set fire to the tree.

Hosts of the MythBusters attempted to recreate Archimedes' invention, but the temperature was too low to ignite the tree.

Antikythera mechanism

This is one of the most mysterious inventions of the past. The Antikythera mechanism was discovered in 1901 off the Greek island of Antikythera. The find is a bronze mechanism with 37 gears, wheels and dials.

The researchers suggest that the device was used to determine the astronomical position of the Sun, Moon and other planets. The Antikythera Mechanism is dated to the 1st-2nd centuries. BC e. Such mechanisms began to be used again only in the XIV century, so one can only guess how scientists were able to make such a device.

"Death ray"

Renowned inventor Nikola Tesla claimed to have been developing weapons based on directed energy for 40 years. In 1937, he announced that the weapon, called the "Ray of Death", was ready and had even already been tested. It is a particle accelerator capable of firing a beam of directed energy at a distance of up to 400 km. A "death ray" can even melt an airplane engine. Fortunately, the scientist did not find the money to implement his development and the world did not receive a new type of weapon.

Mystery of the Panamanian jungle

In the spring of 2014, students from Amsterdam went to Panama to learn Spanish and spend their holidays in a warm country. On April 1, they left the tourist town of Boquete and went on an excursion to the Baru volcano. The girls never returned from their walk.

The mysterious disappearance off the traveled path, the confused testimony of people who saw the girls last, gave rise to many rumors about what happened that day. Their disappearance was blamed on a guide who was supposed to lead the students to the volcano, as well as local residents - allegedly they could rob and kill tourists. All search expeditions ended in nothing. Only a few months later, a backpack found near the river was brought to the police - a few kilometers from the hiking trail.

The girls' mobile phones were in the backpack. The experts managed to restore the photographs - dozens of pictures capture the beauty of nature and satisfied tourists climbing the volcano. And then something went wrong in their walk...

The search expedition found new footprints. Two plastic bags stretched between the branches clearly indicated an attempt to collect rainwater. Zippered denim shorts lay on the ground.

Forensics later found a lace-up boot with a human foot inside. As the examination showed, the remains belonged to one of the girls. Nearby, a fragment of the pelvic bone of another tourist was found, and almost two months later, her rib. That's all. No other body parts were found. This is despite the fact that in this area there are not large enough animals that can destroy, for example, a human skull.

Most likely, one of the girls became ill during the ascent. It could have been a reaction to an insect bite, or it could have just been smashed, slipping on the rocks. Probably, a friend tried to help her, and then guarded the body so that wild animals would not take it away. Even earlier, the tourists lost their way, but, obviously, they hoped that they would still be found. They repeatedly tried to call the emergency services, but the signal was too weak. The history of mobile phones indicates that one of the girls was alive for at least another eight days.

But there are still more questions than answers. How did the Dutch girls end up ten kilometers from the trail? Where are the other body fragments? Why were one of the girls' shorts taken off and laid out on a stone? Criminologists did not find any biological materials on them, although in all the photos the girl is dressed in them. Well, the most mysterious moment - photos from mobile phones.

At night, 90 photographs were taken on one of the phones, only three of them show details of the environment, the rest show darkness. What prompted the hostess to photograph the jungle at night? There are many versions, but there are still no answers to all questions.

The mystery of the man with the scrap of paper

On December 1, 1948, the body of a man in a sweater and double-breasted jacket was found on the Australian coast at Somerton Beach. All the labels on the clothes were cut off, the man did not have any documents. There were no signs of violence on the body of the deceased, and the cause of death was not reliably established. Presumably, he could have been poisoned or poisoned himself.

In a secret pocket of their trousers, the men found a piece of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" cut from a rare copy of the collected works of Omar Khayyam. In the original language, the words mean "finished" or "completed". The volume from which the phrase was cut out was later discovered. There was an incomprehensible inscription on the book, the meaning of which has not yet been deciphered. In the course of further investigation, the investigators found a lot of evidence, but they failed to compile a single reliable version of events.

Since the body was found during the years of the Cold War and the blockade of West Berlin by the USSR, the investigation had a version that the unknown person was a Soviet spy. In the decades that have passed since the discovery of the body of the “Man from Somerton”, they tried to connect his death with several other mysterious murders, but none of these assumptions has been documented.

Nearly 70 years have passed since the body was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, over the years the case has become part of Australian folklore. The case is still shrouded in mystery, like the identity of Jack the Ripper in England. Australian tabloids always pay attention when the next amateur sleuth comes up with a new story, no matter how ridiculous it is, and homegrown detectives around the world are once again trying to solve this mystery.

Mystery board MH370

On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared over the Indian Ocean. Controllers from Malaysia and Vietnam tried in vain to contact the crew.

After the loss of communication, the plane abruptly veered off course and headed towards the Indian Ocean. He flew for about seven more hours. So far, only a few fragments of the aircraft have been found, and in unexpected places. And although the airline itself officially recognized everyone who was on it as dead, there is still no full-fledged version of what happened.

Of course, this story gave rise to a lot of conspiracy theories: from assumptions that the plane was hijacked by the Americans, in order to later simulate the crash of another flight of the same airline over the territory of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic (according to this version, there were corpses on the plane, and a bomb was remotely detonated on it), - until the recent hypothesis that the pilot sent the plane into the ocean deliberately, thus committing suicide. This, however, is refuted by Australian researchers, stating that he was unconscious in the last minutes of the disaster.

A technical malfunction is another possible cause. While there is no official clarification, conspiracy theories continue to circulate.

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1. Theft of diamonds for 5 million euros

On February 15, 2009, three masked robbers ended up in Europe's largest department store, Kaufhaus Des Westens. The robbery was committed when the department store was closed. The robbers used a rope ladder, thus achieving complete inactivity of various kinds of signal systems waiting for strangers below.

The robbers stole diamonds, totaling more than 5 million US dollars. True, the team made a stupid mistake by leaving a glove at the crime scene. According to the DNA of the glove, the police concluded that the robber could be one of the twin brothers, Hassan and Abbas O. German justice requires that the guilt of every person accused of a crime be proven.

And since the brothers never confessed to the robbery, and it was impossible to determine which of them owned the glove, the lucky ones were simply released, without charge. The third member of the gang was never found. I don’t know, I would, in the place of the criminal elements in Germany, urgently organize several teams of twin robbers :)

2. Dan “DB” Cooper - 200k cash

This man, in November 1971, on the 24th, decided to go by plane from Portland. He was wearing a suit and raincoat, plus dark glasses. The man calmly sat down in his seat on the plane, and did not stand out in anything special. Then he asked the stewardess for whiskey, and when she brought him what he wanted, the man gave her a note that read literally the following: "I have a bomb in my suitcase. I will blow it up if necessary. Sit next to me. This is a hijacking."

The man demanded $200,000 and four parachutes to be delivered to Seattle. When the plane landed, he let go of all passengers, leaving only the pilot, co-pilot and stewardesses. As soon as the money was delivered to him, the man forced the pilots to fly to Mexico, rising to a height of about 5 kilometers.

On the way to Mexico, he bailed out somewhere in northwest Portland. Nobody ever saw him again. By the way, in 1980, on the beach (which was located in the jump region), 6 thousand dollars were found in a package, the dollars were from a stolen batch. No one knows if the man survived the jump, or where the money is. His body was never found, so perhaps everything went well for the thief. At the moment, this is the only unsolved hijacking crime.

3. Tokyo, 300 million yen (817 thousand US dollars)

In 1968, in December, bank employees of one of the banks in Tokyo transported 300 million yen in a bank car. Probably all of you have seen what these cars look like if you ever watched a Hollywood movie about a bank robbery. So, on the road, the car was stopped by a policeman on a motorcycle. He told the surprised people that under the bottom of the car there was a bomb that needed to be eliminated. The policeman climbed under the bottom, ostensibly to defuse the bomb.
A few seconds later, sparks and clouds of smoke began to come out from under the bottom. Of course, everyone who was in the car jumped out of it. The policeman immediately got into the car and drove off in an unknown direction (there was no GPS at that time, and the car could be driven into the garage located next door).
Despite the fact that there were 120 witnesses in the case, 110 thousand (!) Suspects, the case was never solved.

4 Antwerp, $100 million worth of diamonds

This is the largest diamond theft in history. The fact is that the diamonds were stolen for 100 million dollars, and they were stolen from a vault with 7 security levels. Here, thermal sensors, and motion sensors, and radar, and magnetic fields, and a reliable security company went into business. So, on February 15, thieves somehow got into the vault, opened the deposit boxes, and took everything that was inside from there. The leader of the band of robbers was allegedly arrested and imprisoned, but was soon released. The reason for the release is also unclear.
No one has ever figured out how the robbery was carried out.

5. Chicago - $1 million

This robbery also looks more like a magic trick than a real robbery. The fact is that on Friday, October 7, 1977, a bank employee counted 4 million US dollars, and put this money in the bank vault (all this is confirmed, the bank employee has nothing to do with it).
On Tuesday morning, the money was counted again, and here's the bad luck - one million dollars disappeared without a trace. In 1981, 2,300 dollars of this amount were found, the money was taken during an anti-drug police action. But where the drug dealer got this money from, no one ever found out. And what is $2,300 compared to a million dollars? Yes, petty.

Agree, for each of these stories you can make a film that is much more interesting than ordinary Hollywood films. Moreover, it will be almost a documentary.