Cases from 1900 to 1945 — the world wars, the dawn of aviation, and the first age of mass media. 35 case files in the archive.
The crash near Corona, NM. Mogul balloon explanation (1994 USAF report) vs. continued speculation about the recovery.
An object exploded several kilometers above central Siberia with the force of approximately 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, flattening 2,150 km² of forest. No crater was ever found.
The US Public Health Service's forty-year experiment on 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama. Penicillin became standard care in 1947 and was deliberately withheld.
Six members of a Bavarian farm family killed with a mattock over the night of March 31, 1922. Strange events preceded the killings. Still officially unsolved.
Elizabeth Short, 22, found bisected on a Los Angeles vacant lot in January 1947. LAPD's massive investigation generated multiple suspects across eight decades.
Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished near Howland Island during their 1937 round-the-world attempt. Crashed-and-sank, Nikumaroro castaway, and Japanese-capture theories.
The alleged Navy invisibility experiment on the USS Eldridge. Origin: 1955 letters from 'Carlos Allende' to Morris Jessup. Allen's 1980 admission to Moore.
The Mount Rainier sighting whose East Oregonian wire coverage coined 'flying saucer.' The event that opened the modern UFO era.
Five US Navy TBM Avengers under Lt. Charles Taylor lost on a routine training mission off Fort Lauderdale; the PBM Mariner search aircraft lost on the same evening.
18 Manhattan Project-era patients injected with plutonium without informed consent at Strong Memorial, University of Chicago, UCSF, and Oak Ridge.
Five of the nine Sodder children presumed lost in a Christmas Eve fire at their West Virginia home; no remains ever recovered.
The pre-dawn anti-aircraft barrage over Los Angeles less than three months after Pearl Harbor. ~1,440 rounds fired. Secretary Knox: 'false alarm.' Secretary Stimson: '15 aircraft.'
The US Army Signal Intelligence Service's decryption of Soviet diplomatic cables. Gene Grabeel's 1943 start; Meredith Gardner's 1946 breakthrough.
Five photographs by cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths near Cottingley Beck. Promoted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his 1920 Strand Magazine article.
The April 1934 Daily Mail publication that became the iconic Nessie image. The 1975/1994 Spurling-Wetherell confession revealing the hoax.
The November 1910 Jekyll Island meeting that drafted the Aldrich Plan and led to the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
Kentucky Air National Guard P-51 Mustang pilot Captain Thomas Mantell killed pursuing an unidentified object visible from Godman AAF.
Allied military pilot reports of unidentified glowing aerial objects, late 1944-May 1945, across European and Pacific theaters.
Approximately 2,000 reports of unidentified cigar-shaped objects across Scandinavia between May and December 1946.
The map once-dated to c. 1440 showing Vinland alongside Europe and Asia. The September 2021 Yale Beinecke formal conclusion: a 20th-century forgery.
The ~6-ton amber chamber built 1701-1707 for Frederick I of Prussia, given to Peter the Great in 1716, looted by Nazis from Tsarskoye Selo 1941 and last documented at Königsberg Castle 1944.
At least 12 confirmed victims in Cleveland's Kingsbury Run shantytown. Eliot Ness's Director of Public Safety investigation; the August 1938 shantytown burning; the Dr. Francis Sweeney suspect interrogations. Officially unsolved.
Three days before Kenneth Arnold. Harold Dahl's Puget Sound observation of six doughnut-shaped objects; one of the earliest documented Men in Black encounters; the August 1947 fatal B-25 crash carrying USAAF investigators back to California.
Illinois inmates deliberately infected with malaria to test antimalarial drugs for the WWII effort. The University of Chicago and Army involvement, Nathan Leopold's participation, and the program's invocation at the Nuremberg doctors' trial.
The legend of looted Japanese WWII treasure hidden in the Philippines. The Rogelio Roxas golden-Buddha case and the lawsuit against the Marcos estate, the historians' skepticism, and the deadly treasure hunting.
Admiral Byrd's large 1946-47 US Navy Antarctic expedition. What it actually was — logistics, training, and mapping — versus the conspiracy lore of a secret Nazi base, hollow-earth entrance, or UFO encounter.
The French aviator-author who vanished on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in 1944. The discovery of his plane's wreckage off Marseille in 2000-2004, the German pilot's 2008 claim, and the unresolved cause.
The bandleader whose small aircraft vanished over the English Channel en route to Paris in 1944. The icing/mechanical-failure explanation, the jettisoned-bombs theory, and why the plane was never found.
The famous story of an entire Inuit village vanishing in 1930 in Canada. The origin in a 1930 newspaper story, the details that grew over time, and the RCMP's conclusion that the event as described did not happen.
The 1900 disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from the Flannan Isles lighthouse off Scotland. The empty lighthouse, the storm-damaged west landing, the leading freak-wave explanation, and how a 1912 poem embellished the legend.
The area around Glastenbury Mountain in Vermont where several people disappeared between 1945 and 1950. The cases, the local folklore, and why the 'triangle' is a retrospective grouping of unrelated disappearances.
The ghost-ship legend of a cargo vessel whose entire crew was supposedly found dead in the late 1940s before the ship exploded. The 1948 newspaper origin, the 1952 US Coast Guard retelling, the absence of the ship from any registry, and why its existence is doubted.
The unsolved 1932 murder of Lilly Lindestrom in Stockholm. The blood-drained body, the gravy ladle, the forensic evidence that 1930s science could not use, and why this lurid cold case has never been closed.
The rare neurological disorder in which brain injury alters speech so it sounds foreign. The real mechanism, the famous 1941 Norwegian case, and why waking up speaking a new language is a myth.
The Capgras delusion (my family have been replaced by impostors) and the Cotard delusion (I am dead). Two documented neuropsychiatric conditions, the disconnection between recognition and emotion, and what they reveal about the self.