Early 20th Century (1900-1945).
Cases from 1900 to 1945 — the world wars, the dawn of aviation, and the first age of mass media. 39 case files in the archive.
-
The Roswell Incident (July 1947)
The crash near Corona, NM. Mogul balloon explanation (1994 USAF report) vs. continued speculation about the recovery.
-
The Tunguska Event (1908)
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 Tuskegee Syphilis Study
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.
-
The Hinterkaifeck Murders (1922)
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.
-
The Black Dahlia (1947)
Elizabeth Short, 22, found bisected on a Los Angeles vacant lot in January 1947. LAPD's massive investigation generated multiple suspects across eight decades.
-
The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart (1937)
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 Philadelphia Experiment (1943)
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 Kenneth Arnold Sighting (June 24, 1947)
The Mount Rainier sighting whose East Oregonian wire coverage coined 'flying saucer.' The event that opened the modern UFO era.
-
The Bermuda Triangle: Flight 19 (December 1945)
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.
-
The Plutonium Files (1945-1947)
18 Manhattan Project-era patients injected with plutonium without informed consent at Strong Memorial, University of Chicago, UCSF, and Oak Ridge.
-
The Sodder Children Disappearance (1945)
Five of the nine Sodder children presumed lost in a Christmas Eve fire at their West Virginia home; no remains ever recovered.
-
The Battle of Los Angeles (February 1942)
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 VENONA Project (1943-1980)
The US Army Signal Intelligence Service's decryption of Soviet diplomatic cables. Gene Grabeel's 1943 start; Meredith Gardner's 1946 breakthrough.
-
The Cottingley Fairies (1917-1920)
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 Loch Ness Surgeon's Photograph (1934)
The April 1934 Daily Mail publication that became the iconic Nessie image. The 1975/1994 Spurling-Wetherell confession revealing the hoax.
-
The Federal Reserve Conspiracy Claims
The November 1910 Jekyll Island meeting that drafted the Aldrich Plan and led to the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
-
The Mantell Incident (January 1948)
Kentucky Air National Guard P-51 Mustang pilot Captain Thomas Mantell killed pursuing an unidentified object visible from Godman AAF.
-
The Foo Fighters (WWII)
Allied military pilot reports of unidentified glowing aerial objects, late 1944-May 1945, across European and Pacific theaters.
-
The Ghost Rockets (1946)
Approximately 2,000 reports of unidentified cigar-shaped objects across Scandinavia between May and December 1946.
-
The Vinland Map
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 Amber Room
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.
-
The Cleveland Torso Murderer (1935-1938)
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.
-
The Maury Island Incident (June 1947)
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.
-
The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Experiments (1944-1956)
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 Yamashita Gold
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.
-
Operation Highjump (1946-47)
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 Disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1944)
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 Disappearance of Glenn Miller (1944)
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 Lake Anjikuni Disappearance (1930)
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 Eilean Mor Lighthouse Disappearance (1900)
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 Bennington Triangle (1945-1950)
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 SS Ourang Medan
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 Atlas Vampire (1932)
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.
-
Foreign Accent Syndrome
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 & Cotard Delusions
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.
-
Coral Castle
The Florida monument one man, Edward Leedskalnin, built alone from massive stone. The 'lost secret of the pyramids' and magnetism claims, and the simple tools and leverage that actually explain it.
-
The Villisca Axe Murders
The 1912 murder of eight people, including six children, in their beds in a small Iowa town. The botched scene, the suspects, the two trials, and why it stays unsolved.
-
The Nazi Bell (Die Glocke)
The alleged Nazi anti-gravity bell-device of Lower Silesia. The single 2000 source behind the story, the real people and places it borrows, the Wenceslas Mine Henge, and why historians treat it as post-war myth.
-
Lucid Dreaming
Proved in a sleep lab in 1975 by signalling with the eyes, since REM paralysis spares them. What the brain is doing, how common it is, and the 2021 study that held a conversation with a sleeping person.