Disappearances
Aircraft squadron disappears in the Bermuda Triangle
At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a ...read more
6 Famous Missing Treasures
1. Ark of the Covenant According to the Hebrew Bible, Moses had the ornate, gold-plated wooden chest known as the Ark of the Covenant built according to God’s own design. Its purpose was to guard sacred relics, including two stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments. The ...read more
Skeleton May Help Solve Amelia Earhart Mystery
TIGHAR, which has spent more than 25 years investigating the ill-fated final voyage of Amelia Earhart, believes Earhart’s plane did not crash in the Pacific Ocean, as many believe, but rather that she and her co-pilot Fred Noonan were able to make a landing on the remote, ...read more
Was Amelia Earhart Captured While Spying on Japan?
In “Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave,” author W.C. Jameson claims that Amelia Earhart was a spy for the U.S. government, and was flying a secret mission to photograph Japanese military installations in the Pacific at the time of what he calls her “so-called disappearance” in July ...read more
What Happened to the Mary Celeste?
On November 7, 1872, the 282-ton brigantine Mary Celeste set sail from New York Harbor on its way to Genoa, Italy. On board were the ship’s captain, Benjamin S. Briggs, his wife, Sarah, and their 2-year-old daughter, Sophia, along with eight crewmembers. Less than a month later, ...read more
Relics of Long-Lost Shipwreck Unveiled
By the time he sailed from Greenhithe, England, on May 19, 1845 at the head of two ships and some 129 men, 59-year-old Sir John Franklin had already traveled to the Arctic three times with the intention of charting the Northwest Passage. The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were both ...read more
The Enduring Mystery Behind Percy Fawcett’s Disappearance
With his steely blue eyes, manicured beard and trademark Stetson hat, Colonel Percy Fawcett looked like the quintessential swashbuckling adventurer. His resume included a stint as a British artilleryman in Sri Lanka, a tour of duty in World War I and a top-secret gig as a spy in ...read more
Who Was D.B. Cooper?
It's the only unsolved hijacking case in the history of commercial aviation. On the afternoon of November 24, 1971—Thanksgiving Eve—a man aboard a flight from Portland to Seattle threatened to detonate a bomb if he didn't receive a hefty ransom. Once he got the money, the ...read more
Ship From Doomed Arctic Expedition Found After 170 Years
It’s one of the most puzzling mysteries in maritime history. In 1845, famed Arctic explorer and British hero Sir John Franklin left England on a mission to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. After last being spotted by British ...read more
Malaysia Airlines flight vanishes with more than 200 people aboard
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, loses contact with air traffic control less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur then veers off course and disappears. Most of the plane, and everyone on board, are never seen ...read more
The Hunt for L’Oiseau Blanc
Nungesser, the pilot of L’Oiseau Blanc, was an aristocrat and French flying ace; Coli, his navigator, was a mariner and former infantryman who had lost one of his eyes in an earlier injury. The two men were competing for the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 reward offered by a New York ...read more
9 Places Investigators Have Searched for Jimmy Hoffa
1. Gardena, California As the search for the vanished Hoffa got underway in Michigan after his 1975 disappearance, an early theory regarding his fate cropped up thousands of miles away on the West Coast. When rumors surfaced that Hoffa may have been involved in an acrimonious ...read more
6 Explorers Who Disappeared
1. Percy Fawcett The unforgiving Amazon jungle has claimed the lives of more than one adventurer, but perhaps none so famous as Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925 while on the trail of a mythical lost city. One of the most colorful figures of his era, Fawcett had made ...read more
What happened to the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke?
The origins of one of the America’s oldest unsolved mysteries can be traced to August 1587, when a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Later that year, it was decided that John White, governor of the new ...read more
Has Jimmy Hoffa Finally Been Found?
By this time next week, one of U.S. history’s most perplexing mysteries might finally be solved. Earlier today, police drilled under a driveway at a home outside Detroit in their latest attempt to uncover clues about union leader Jimmy Hoffa’s 1975 vanishing act. According to ...read more
6 Mysterious Disappearances in U.S. History
1. Jimmy Hoffa On July 30, 1975, James Riddle Hoffa, one of the most influential American labor leaders of the 20th century, disappeared in Detroit, Michigan, never to be heard from again. Born in 1913 to a poor coal miner in Indiana, the charismatic Hoffa proved a natural ...read more
People Rumored to Have Survived Their Deaths
1. Butch Cassidy According to the traditional narrative, the American train and bank robber Butch Cassidy, leader of the Old West gang known as the Wild Bunch, died in a hail of bullets in Bolivia in 1908. But rumors that the notorious bandit (who is seated on the far right in ...read more
Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of ...read more
The Mary Celeste, a ship whose crew mysteriously disappeared, is spotted at sea
The Dei Gratia, a small British brig under Captain David Morehouse, spots the Mary Celeste, an American vessel, sailing erratically but at full sail near the Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was seaworthy, its stores and supplies were untouched, but not a soul was ...read more
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make solo, nonstop transatlantic flight
Five years to the day that American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, female aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to repeat the feat, landing her plane in Ireland after flying across the ...read more
Amelia Earhart disappears
On July 2, 1937, the Lockheed aircraft carrying American aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan is reported missing near Howland Island in the Pacific. The pair were attempting to fly around the world when they lost their bearings during the most challenging leg of ...read more
Labor leader Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing
On the morning of July 31, 1975, James Riddle Hoffa, one of the most influential American labor leaders of the 20th century, is officially reported missing after he failed to return home the previous night. Though he is popularly believed to have been the victim of a Mafia hit, ...read more
Israeli sub vanishes
The Israeli submarine Dakar, carrying 69 sailors, disappears on January 25, 1968 and remains missing for some 30 years. The Dakar was built at the height of World War II by H.M. Dockyard in Great Britain and commissioned as the HMS Totem by the British navy in 1943. Following the ...read more
Popular evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears
Aimee Semple McPherson, a nationally known evangelist, disappears from Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. Police dispatched planes and ships in an effort to find her, but she was nowhere to be found. Authorities later discovered that radio announcer Kenneth Ormiston, a ...read more