Mystery Facts

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was buried in Vienna's St. Marx Cemetery, but the exact location of his grave remains unknown.

No one knows how many people died during the sinking of the Titanic.

In 2007, an unmanned yacht was discovered drifting off the coast of Australia. The engine and a laptop were running, the radio and GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on board.

In 2003, a Boeing 727-223 was stolen from an airport in Angola. Despite a worldwide search, it still has not been found.

A waterfall in Minnesota called The Devil's Kettle puzzled scientists for decades because half its water disappeared into a hole with no apparent outlet. The mystery was finally solved in 2017 when researchers confirmed the water simply flows through fractured rock and rejoins the river downstream.

The burial site of Genghis Khan remains one of history's greatest mysteries. According to legend, everyone involved in his funeral procession was killed to keep the location secret, and the soldiers who buried him were then executed by another group—who were also killed. While these specific details are unverifiable, the secrecy surrounding his death and burial is well-documented.

Since 1982, a radio frequency emanating from Russia has been broadcasting a buzzer-like sound and, periodically, an unknown voice reads orders, names, and numbers. No one knows where exactly it is coming from or what it means.

Nobody really knows where strawberries got their name.

Amelia Earhart's plane may have been hiding in plain sight for 89 years. A researcher spotted a strange shape in a Pacific lagoon in 2020. The same shape turns up in aerial photos from 1938, just months after Earhart disappeared. Researchers say its size and outline match the tail and wing of her plane. A Purdue-backed team sets sail July 28 to investigate.

In 2012, archaeologists dug up a parking lot in Leicester and found the skeleton of King Richard III - lost for 527 years. An amateur historian convinced a university to dig on a hunch. They found him in the first trench, six hours into a two-week dig. The parking space above his grave was marked with the letter R.

On December 5, 1872, sailors spotted the Mary Celeste drifting in the Atlantic with nobody aboard. The ship was seaworthy, her cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol mostly intact, and a six-month supply of food untouched. The captain, his wife, their 2-year-old daughter, and seven crew had vanished. 153 years later, nobody knows where they went.

Hikers called the cops when they found a body melting out of an Alpine glacier in 1991. Police treated it as a routine mountain casualty. Carbon dating later revealed the man had been dead for 5,300 years. A decade later, X-rays found an arrowhead in his shoulder - he had bled to death in minutes.

A medical student from Michigan solved a decade-long treasure hunt in 2020 - finding a bronze chest filled with gold nuggets, ancient coins, and jewels that art dealer Forrest Fenn had hidden in Wyoming around 2010. More than 350,000 people had searched for it. The chest sold at auction in 2022 for $1.3 million.

Luigi Lo Rosso, a junk dealer from Capri, found a rolled-up canvas in a villa cellar in 1962 and hung it in his family’s living room. His wife called it “horrible.” Experts now believe it may be a genuine Picasso - a portrait of Dora Maar created between 1930 and 1936 - and have valued it at up to €6 million.

A geologist named Ann Pizzorusso says she solved a 500-year mystery in the Mona Lisa. She matched the rocky landscape behind the subject to Lecco, Italy - the 14th-century Ponte Azzone Visconti bridge, the limestone Alps, and Lake Garlate. Leonardo worked in the Lecco region for years. Not every art historian agrees, but the geological case is hard to argue with.

Farmers near Xi'an, China were digging a well in March 1974 when their shovels hit a buried clay head. It led to the Terracotta Army: an estimated 8,000 soldiers, of which only 2,000 have been dug up so far. They guard the 2,200-year-old tomb of China's first emperor, a tomb that has never been opened. Ancient writers said it holds rivers of mercury, and soil tests found the mercury is real.

A Virginia woman bought a napkin-sized landscape at a West Virginia flea market in 2009 for $7. She wanted the plastic cow and the doll in the same box. Two years later she learned the little painting was a genuine Renoir worth $100,000. Then the FBI showed up. The museum had reported it missing in 1951.