Everyone loves a good mystery. Trying to solve it, or at least work out theories of our own, lets us flex our brain power and pretend we’re detectives for a bit, both of which are fun.

Sometimes, things stayed mysteries for so long that we kind of collectively miss them being solved, and that’s often the case for the ones listed below.

Not impossible.

Aerodynamicicists understand perfectly well how insects, e.g. bees, fly.

It’s not the same as aircraft, but the clap-fling mechanism, the vortices they produce, and the resulting thrust and lift have been accurately modeled and match the measurements.

In brief.

The finding of the Fenn treasure.

In brief, some people:

claim that the supposed location doesn’t match with some clues Fenn gave verbally;

have travelled to the supposed location and taken pictures that don’t seem to jibe with the photos of the chest in situ;

have called into question when the treasure was actually removed from wherever location it was in;

have pointed out some very suspicious emails and timing between Fenn and the supposed finder;

have pointed out that a Medium article posted by the finder about Fenn after Fenn’s passing actually reads a lot like Fenn wrote it.

Turns out.

The luminiferous ether. It was thought to be the medium through which light would travel. Since light could behave like a wave, and waves needed a medium, it was assumed there needed to be a medium for light that was both transparent (because we couldn’t see it) and infinitely rigid (because the ‘stiffness’ of the medium corresponds to wave speed).

Turns out, light is an electromagnetic wave that can travel through a vacuum.

They had no choice.

The Roanoke colony wasn’t murdered by natives or kidnapped by aliens. They joined the local native tribe.

We can tell because people in the tribe were born with blonde hair and blue eyes for decades after the colonials went “missing”

Also because they left a message about where they were going…Literally carved it in a tree lol

Acting strange.

Elisa Lam could have gotten both on the roof and into the watertank by herself and her family does not think any foul play was involved as Elisa had mental health problems and they were used to seeing her act strange when off her medication.

Everyone loves dinosaurs.

Torosaurus was actually a mature triceratops. Nanotyrannus was a baby T Rex.

Stigymoloch and Dracorex are younger Pachycephalosaurus skeletons. Anatotitan was a grown up Edmontosaurus and I think there was a few others just because baby dinosaurs looked drastically different than adults.

Much yuck.

Spontaneous generation. People used to think flies would spontaneously appear from rotten meat, as every time they had it, flies somehow would appear even though flies were no where close when the meat was okay.

After observation and experiments, we understood flies landed in the meat, left their eggs, and then more flies would be born and then stay to eat the meat.

Not so scary.

Most dinosaurs would likely have made some variation of a honk/bark. Jurassic Park got it p close with the sound of their raptors.

Also the moai heads have bodies, and they just look like normal guys.

The mystery of WHY, though.

The mystery of the Mary Toft: In 1726, a woman in England claimed to have given birth to rabbits. While it was believed to be a medical mystery at the time, it was later discovered that the rabbits had been inserted into her womb by a local surgeon.

Such a stupid reason.

Most investigators agree that a Compton based Crip named Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson was the one who k**led Tupac as there was tension between the two, because either Orlando or one of his boys stole a chain from Pac’s label Death Row earlier in the year, resulting in Pac beating the s**t out of him earlier that night, which led Baby Land to k**l Pac as a sort of way to revenge.

Baby Lane was never formally charged, because he was murdered in his own right not long after the fact.

I think one of the main reasons why people are in denial about this is because people don’t want to admit that such an important person died for such a stupid reason.

They walked, of course.

No one knew how the islanders of Easter Island moved their giant heads from one place to another. When asked how they did it, the islanders said they walked them.

This sounded impossible and silly to Europeans so they ignored it. But a team of archeologists and native islanders a few years back made their own Easter Island head, tied 4 big ropes around it, then had a dozen guys on each rope pull the head side to side.

It rocked corner to corner causing it to “walk” forward down the road.

They’ll figure it all out.

The two ships of the lost Franklin expedition of 1845 were both found in the last decade sunk in the “Northwest Passage” (northern Canada).

The mystery of what happened to the crew (126 men I think) has been speculated upon with plenty of solid theories but very few remains have been found. The ships are still being examined and may contain more clues.

Researches determined Lead poisoning from the new technology of canned food was a huge factor in some of the poor decisions and health of the crew.

Inuits told stories of the coldest winters they had ever experienced and no game could be found to hunt. They believed the white men brought a curse on the land. They also told disturbing stories about groups of white men from the expedition turning on one another and resorting to cannibalism as they starved. This was of course denied by the British government for over 100 years. But then remains of former crew were eventually found which showed clear evidence of cannibalism.

If you want to see something morbidly interesting, look up Franklin Expedition frozen Corpse’s on the Internet. There were 3 bodies perfectly preserved of men buried early on. Their identities and how they died have been matched to records.

They were right all along.

The Northwest Passage. Successful routes were eventually found.

“For centuries, European explorers, beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492, sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia, but were blocked by North, Central, and South America, by ice, or by rough waters (e.g. Tierra del Fuego).”

Not a miracle.

The “Miraculous Staircase” in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There was even a movie made about it starring Barbara Hershey.

One of the myths is that it stands miraculously without a center support pole and no engineer can figure out how that’s possible. The center stringer is tightly wrapped with only 8″ diameter. It acts as the center pole.

Nuns said a nine-day novena for a much-needed staircase, a woodworker miraculously showed up from nowhere and built the staircase. It must have been Saint Joseph! The staircase was ordered from France. The manufacturer sent a guy to put it together.

It’s made of wood found nowhere in the area, it’s a miracle! Because the wood is from France, duh.

And finally the guy who built it stayed in Santa Fe afterward. The local newspaper had his obituary (1896 or 1898) and even said he was the man who built the staircase.

Finally solved.

Not a worldwide mystery but a mystery amongst my Mom’s side of the family, when my mom was little like 8-13 years old, she was so close (until now) with her cousins that they all play together almost everyday in their Grandma’s house and that house is a 2nd story house.

So here’s how the mystery started, my mom, her siblings, and her male cousins played with a ball, and the ball went upstairs and into the only room that the stairs went to, but then the door suddenly went open and the ball bounced down the stairs, there was a moment of silence, and then they all ran to their grandma saying that there’s a ghost, so their grandma comforted them and told the maid to check on it, and then she found no one there.

A few weeks after that incident, they never went up to that room and then they started to forget about it. Many years later (2 months ago), my whole family went to my mom’s hometown and she spent time with her brothers and female cousin of hers to go the cemetery to visit grandpa, as we were going, my mom remembered that story and started talking about it, then my mom said “We never really knew who threw the ball back haha” and then her cousin said “that was me!”

So my mom, her brothers and her cousin all laughed because the mystery was finally solved, sadly her cousin passed away 2 months ago, she revealed the mystery before she died of breast cancer, may she rest in peace.

I had no idea!

Just last year the identity of the Somerton Man was discovered.

“The Somerton Man was an unidentified man whose body was found on 1 December 1948 on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia.

The case is also known after the Persian phrase tamám shud (Persian: تمام شد),[note 1] meaning “is over” or “is finished”, which was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man’s trousers.

The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám.”

Just a guy who split from his wife and didn’t want to be found

Yeah, some of these slipped past me, too.

I’m going to need to do some deeper dives!