History Mysteries YOU Can't Solve

foreign The Mystery of the nine Russian hikers found dead the diatlov pass incident 1959. just to the east of the Ural Mountains located on the ESET river is the Russian city of Yekaterinburg known during the Soviet era as verdlavsk in the local cemetery is a group grave dating back to 1959 and contains the bodies of nine members from the Euro polytechnical Institute who all died in mysterious circumstances while hitchhiking in the north Ural Mountain Range 1959 may have been at the height of the Cold War full of tension and mistrust but it was also a proud time to be a Soviet citizen as the people's Revolution was achieving so many great and glorious things or so the Soviet press would have had you believe for the Soviet satellite Luna one had just been launched and become the first man-made object to pass by the moon and the third Soviet Antarctic expedition had concluded and had been a resounding success so against this inspiring backdrop of progress and achievement were a group of 10 people 8 men and two women who set off on a hitchhiking Expedition all of them were highly experienced hikers and skiers and the purpose of their trip was to gain their grade 3 hiker certificate which was at the time the highest such award in the Soviet Union their goal was to reach or torton Mountain the route they had chosen to get there was graded as the most difficult possible so it was going to be a real challenge for them all all but one of the Expedition members were in their 20s and it was led by a 23 year old radio engineering student Igor diatloff after traveling north by train and Lorry the group set off from the village of vizai on January 27 1959 as a safety precaution theatloff told his local sports club that he expected to return to visai by February 12th and would send them a telegram when he did so by all accounts things started off well enough for the group though the next day one of the groups started to have knee and joint pain and was forced to turn back the rest of the group now nine people continued on with their hike after this point none of them were ever seen alive again February 12th came and went and the sports club received no telegram from diatlov but no one was at first worried as it was not unusual for these types of hikes to overrun over a few days but by February 20th friends and relatives had become concerned and The Institute organized its own search teams made up of volunteer teachers and students a few days later the Army and local police joined in assisted by snowmobiles planes and helicopters it was not until February 26th that the group campsite was found on the slopes of kolatsiaki this meant in the local dialect dead Mountain on account that very little Wildlife was ever found there so the local mancy Hunters rarely hunted there and this might explain why the camp was not discovered until then what the Searchers found was strange indeed the group's tent was heavily covered in snow and had collapsed it had been ripped open from the inside and judging by the adjacent tracks it seemed that the group had rushed down the slopes wearing only what they had been sleeping in the group's tracks led to the edge of the forest nearly a mile away The Searchers found three bodies along the way from the missing group including the leader diatloff who it seemed had attempted to return to the camp the three bodies were found separately over an 1100 foot stretch of the slope at the actual Tree Line The Searchers found a further two bodies dressed only in their underwear with no Footwear on next to what was left of a small fire their hands and feet were burnt although they had tried desperately to stay warm a tree next to them had all its branches broken up to a height of 18 feet which suggested that one of them had tried to climb up it to get a good vantage point an inquest would later conclude that all five had died of hypothermia this is where the body loses more heat than it can keep or produce and you freeze to death final four bodies of the Expedition were not found until May 4th they were found 250 feet inside the forest from where the others had lit the small fire their bodies were under 13 feet of snow and a shallow Ravine these four were slightly better dressed than the others it is suggested that they had taken more clothes off of those who had died first for warmth because of their death was different from the others in the group firstly it seems they did not die at the same time three of the group members had lethal bone fracture injuries associated with high pressure impacts that could not be caused by a human being and were more commonly associated with a fatal car crash much has been made of the fact that the woman in this group had her eyes tongue and part of her lips missing but this was thought to be all part of the decomposition process as she was found face down in some running water beneath the neat the snow the official inquest simply concluded that compelling natural forces were what killed the hikers and this was mainly due to the temperature being well below freezing at the time at the time of their deaths none of the Expedition were properly dressed none of them were wearing a complete set of shoes some of them had only one shoe others had no shoes or wore only socks or were barefoot many possible explanations for this strange incident have been put forward and several factors are taken for granted by these theories and backed up by the official investigation team these were one that it was nighttime two that it was very cold and three they were all dead before or shortly after Dawn the next day were they attacked by local Nancy tribesmen though they were on manzi territory the manzi were not an aggressive or territorial people and the kolotsiaki mountain held no particular sacred significance or value to the manzi tribe in fact it was an exceedingly poor hunting ground rarely visited by mancy hunters victim of a robbery it seems highly unlikely as nothing of value seem to have been taken from the campsite there were no other sets of tracks in the area and the injury inflicted on some of the Expedition members could not have been done by anything human an animal or pack of animals that attacked them although further south of the hikers campsite were dangerous animals such as brown bears and wolves it was unlikely they would have wandered that far north especially as the hunting there was so poor also no animal footprints were found in the area nor did the hikers have any wounds resembling an animal attack an avalanche had occurred forcing them to flee the Avalanche Theory at first glance looks like a possible answer considering the heavy deposits of snow on the crushed tent also there is the fact that the tent was cut open from the inside and everyone had seemed to rush down the hill seemingly in a panic with great urgency but though the cutting of the tent from the inside cannot be satisfactorily explained the Avalanche Theory can be dismissed the buildup of snow on one side of the tent was probably due to nearly a month of snow drift before the campsite was found by the search team and if there had been an avalanche how come the tracks of the fleeing hikers could still be seen so clearly leading away from the camp and most experts agree that the topography surrounding the campsite does not lend itself well for conditions that could cause an avalanche among other things it was not steep enough for Avalanche to occur in fact no Avalanche had ever been recorded in that particular area was it to do with a Soviet military secret project there were rumors that parachute bombs were being tested nearby and that one drifted way off course and detonated near the campsite could this have startled all nine sleeping hikers into a panic thinking they had just heard the boom that often accompanies the start of an avalanche was it radioactivity it was said that some of the hikers abandoned clothes were radioactive While others were not could it be that earlier that day a few of the parties stumbled on some secret military project and got contaminated only to be tracked down by the military and forced to flee into the night where they either froze to death or met a tragic death in the ravine an interesting unanswered question would be why did the investigation team check for radiation in the first place not exactly something you do if you were investigating the tragic deaths of a group of young hitchhikers a government cover-up it is true that the Soviet authorities took a keen interest in the case and sent officials to monitor the progress of the investigation and there did seem that officials higher up put pressure on the investigation team to wrap things up as quickly as possible but this was pretty much a common practice and a strictly run and oppressive regime like the Soviet Union over the years the events of that fateful incident have been the subject of many conspiracy theories this is not helped by the fact that the Soviet Army closed the areas for three years after the incident claiming it was for his safety reasons leading to further speculation that they had something to hide and for sound Theory a more colorful theory is the wind around the mountain that night caused what is known as a Carmen Vortex Street effect which can produce infrasound which can cause panic attacks in humans so the theory goes that this happened that night causing the group mental and physical distress and induced the group to panic and flee down the hill and mass this area and they got disoriented in the darkness split up and succumbed to the elements the science backing up this theory is at best questionable partying that went wrong as we all know college students across the world have a reputation for partying so could it have been some wild letting off steam Escapade after several days of hard hiking that involved alcohol and possible drugs that led to erratic and foolish Behavior the investigators briefly looked at this possibility and then quickly dismissed it they explained that all the hikers were of good moral character with no history of alcohol or drug abuse the investigators also pointed out that the only alcohol taken on the trip was for medical purposes and that the flask containing it was found full and unopened it is conceivable that the Soviet authorities would cover up a possibility like this so they could portray their deaths as a heroic tragedy involving a group of clean living and dedicated young Communists rather than some decadent morally corrupt youths who died to partying and irresponsible Behavior possible explanation without an overall Theory either startled or forced them to flee down the hill and travel a considerable distance with little clothing on and none or incomplete Footwear the conclusion that the tent was cut from the inside may not have been correct the fleeing hikers had split into three main groups one group seemed to freeze to death while trying to get back to the campsite another chose to build a fire but due to the freezing temperatures this was not enough to keep them from freezing to death too the last group fled through the forest in what must have been pitch black darkness and later were found at the bottom of a small Ravine with severe impact damage could it be they had fallen into the Ravine and got injured that way or had built a snow shelter as experienced hydras have been told to do so but the structure had collapsed on them in a series of cave-ins killing them one by one the immense weight of the snow caving in or falling into a ravine might explain the crushing impact injuries many of that group suffered and a last tantalizing anomaly is the picture the investigators took of the crushed and ripped hiker's tent which was meant to hold all 10 of the original hikers but the picture clearly shows a tent that would struggle to hold half that number the area surrounding the site of the incident was later renamed dietloff pass in honor of the ill-fated Expedition leader Igor diatlov and the incident has now become an unexplained mystery with many questions still left unanswered so what do you think caused the hikers to act as they did we'd be interested to hear your theories please add your comments below the blackout Ripper 1942. World War II World War II on the home front for the British was tough but they were resilient having endured the terrible Blitz from September 1940 to May 1941. during the attacks the Germans had tried to relentlessly bomb the British into submission by mass aerial attacks killing around 43 000 civilians and wounding another 139 000 in total by 1942 the intensity of these bombings had died down though the Germans still carried out regular bombing rates especially in London in February 1942 the British had endured nearly three years of blackouts and two years of German Air Raids to the point they had become very much a part of daily life though for the British the Grim realities of War were never that far away on February 8 1942 the shocking news came that the mighty British Fortress of Singapore was under attack by the Japanese but also on that day there was a gruesome Discovery much nearer to home in an air raid shelter in central London a woman's body laid lifeless on the floor it appeared that she had been strangled to death the Grim reality was the likely culprit was not a German but a British citizen thus started the week-long reign of terror of the blackout Ripper day one Sunday February 8 1942 victim Evelyn Hamilton location air raid shelter near Marble Arch in London age 40 years old occupation pharmacist Evelyn Hamilton was last seen on the evening of that day she had left her boarding house to get a late supper her body was discovered the next morning in an air raid shelter she had been strangled to death and her handbag had been stolen day two Monday February 9 1942 victim Evelyn Oatley also known as Nita Ward location in the victim's flat at War Door Street in SoHo London age 35 years old occupation part-time actress and prostitute on the day soap rationing was finally introduced in Great Britain a woman was discovered dead in her flat in Soho Central London in some ways her murder did not surprise the police as the victim known as Nita was a well-known prostitute but what was shocking was the savagery of her death she had been strangled and her throat slit her body had been horribly mutilated with a number of items a razor blade a can opener and hair tongs but the police did find one important clue and that was from the clumsily discarded can opener on it were fingerprints but frustratingly it matched none on the police's criminal databases though helpfully it suggested the murderer was left-handed the second murder was only a 30-minute walk away from the previous day's murder and strangulation had been the cause of death in both cases but what really worried the police was the second murder was so much more violent than the first day three Tuesday February 10 1942 victim Margaret Florence Lowe also known as Pearl location in the victim's flat at gusfield Street Melbourne age 43 years old occupation prostitute on Tuesday February 10th the day started with good news that the American Allies who had been in the war less than two months had sunk the Japanese Destroyer to natsushio but for the British Metropolitan Police there was a more pressing matter trying to solve the murder of the two women unaware there had been another murder about a mile away from yesterday's murder but the body was not discovered until three days later on Friday the 13th it had been another prostitute a 43 year old known as Pearl who had been butchered in her flat she had been strangled but with a Silk Stocking or scarf and her body had been horribly mutilated with a knife a razor blade and a candle fingerprints had been found on a candle day 4 Wednesday February 11 1942 victim Doris Juan a also known as Doris Robson location in the victim's flat at Sussex Garden in Paddington age 32 years old occupation prostitute and housewife the next day the police no longer had any doubt they had a serial killer on their hands for on a ground floor flat they discovered 32 year old Dora shuane like the other women she had been strangled and her body left horribly mutilated by now both the police and newspapers started to realize the four murders could be linked the British newspapers dubbed the killer the blackout Ripper and started to draw parallels with the famous Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper day 5 Thursday February 12 1942 then there was a lull just as the Press was whipping the British public into a frenzy all went quiet and the killer learned to cover his tracks better day 6 February 13 1942 victim Greta Hayward location Piccadilly Circus London age 32 years old occupation unknown that evening a young woman named Greta Hayward was waiting for her boyfriend in Piccadilly Circus in central London a young man in an RAF uniform had started to chat with her and then he had offered her a large amount of money but she explained that she was not that kind of girl then moments later he attacked her dragging her into a nearby doorway where he started to strangle her luckily the attack was interrupted by a night Porter passing by forcing the attacker to flee Into the Night victim Catherine Mulcahy also known as Kathleen King location near Paddington train station London occupation prostitute later that evening a mile or so away at a flat near Paddington railway station a prostitute known as Kathleen King was entertaining a young man suddenly the man turned violent and attempted to strangle her but Kathleen managed to fight him off and scream for help the man then fled in a panic and in a clumsy attempt at trying to buy her silence he threw a five pound note at her in all these incidents and murders there was a distinct modus operandi so the police thought they were all being done by the same man the attacks were all on women who were or might be prostitutes they were all carried out in the evening or early hours all took place in Central London strangulation or attempted strangulations were used each time where there was an opportunity the victim's bodies were horribly mutilated so who was the assailant could it be that the murders were all related was an under-resourced London Police Force jumping to the conclusion that it was a Serial Killer's work as it was easier to investigate them as one case rather than individual ones the London Police Force had lost many of its best men to the armed forces and was stretched thin from its civil defense duties from 1939 to 1945 crime Rose by 50 percent undermanned police force could not cope with the habitual looting and racketeering in the capital as well as the social problems arising from desperate and homeless citizens so was it convenient to overlook the subtle differences between the cases like in the Evelyn Hamilton case robbery may have been a motive as she was carrying around 80 pounds in cash which would be worth about 2 600 pounds today this was because she was in the process of moving North for a new job the two attacks on the night of Friday the 13th were clumsy could they have been the acts of an enraged drunk a complicated relationship another possibility was that some of the victims had Tangled and complicated relationships could they have been the cause of their demise for instance Evelyn Oatley had abandoned her lancasterian poultry farmer husband to head to London to pursue an acting career and Doris Juan a led a double life as both a housewife and secretly as a prostitute her elderly husband had no idea that Doris would entertain men while he worked the night shift as a hotel manager could it be a copycat killer this is not unheard of for by midweek the murders were in all the newspapers could this have emboldened some maniac to carry out similar murders to satisfy their sick desires or a cunning murder to settle a score but made to look like the blackout River to throw the police off the scent was it a serial killer the intensity and modus operandi would suggest so and London had seen serial killers before like Jack the Ripper from 1888 to 1889 and George Joseph Smith the brides and the bath murders from 1912 to 1914. with all these possibilities the police had to put together all the pieces of the puzzle on who the blackout Ripper was at the scene of the attack on Greta Hayward the attacker had left behind his gas mask case in the shop doorway the gas mask's case carried the identifying number 525-987 and RAF records revealed that it belonged to 28 year old officer Cadet Gordon Frederick Cummins he was promptly arrested on Monday February 16th at the nearby RAF Barracks for the assault it was discovered that he had no criminal record he seemed happily married to a secretary and was doing well for himself in the RAF having recently been promoted from leading aircraftmen in a ground crew unit to an officer Cadet training to fly super Marine Spitfire fighter aircraft but soon things would start to unravel for Cummins and the pieces would start to fall into place about this short Reign of Terror it was found out that Cummins was in fact a womanizer and he was left-handed but there was also damning hard evidence linking Cummins to the murders the police found a cigarette case in his uniform pocket belonging to one of the victims Margaret Lowe in a search of his quarters detectives found a fountain pen that had belonged to Doris Una but what sealed his fate Beyond a doubt was his fingerprints on the can opener used to mutilate Evelyn Oakley's body it took the jury just 35 minutes to find Cummins guilty an appeal in early June 1942 was dismissed and he was hanged at Wandsworth prison on June 25 1942 during an air raid Cummins protested his innocence to the very last moment and his wife stood by him until the end believing he was innocent the mystery of yamashita's gold 1944-1945 throughout history there have been many stories of lost Priceless Treasures like the Chalice drunken by Christ at the Last Supper that's said to be hidden somewhere in Glastonbury and Somerset England there's also a tale of a fabled city in South America called El Dorado that was said to be made of gold and contained precious gemstones in unbelievable quantities it despite many expeditions to the region it has yet to be found then there's the tale of a lost wagon train in medieval England it was rumored to contain an enormous Hall of gold collected by the tyrannical King John in taxation it's estimated to be worth billions of dollars in today's value The Story Goes that it was lost on the shores of Norfolk during a particularly violent storm supposedly it was washed into the sea and to this day the treasure has never been seen again though some say it was all just a scam in order for the king to get out of paying a fortune he owed to some very powerful barons in more recent times in the later half of the 20th century there were various stories of lost Nazi gold there was even an unsubstantiated claim that the Vatican Bank was hiding some of this looted treasure and then there's the Intriguing World War II mystery that is commonly referred to as yamashita's gold it was claimed that the Japanese authorities in conjunction with the Yakuza gangsters allegedly looted a vast amount of valuables on a massive scale from the then occupied territories towards the end of the war it was intended for this loot to fund the Japanese war effort Imperial Japan's own gold reserves had shrunk dramatically paying for its military this secret operation named kinlo Yuri or the Golden Lily was thought to have been masterminded by the legendary Imperial Japanese Army General tomoyuki Yamashita and it's rumored that Prince yasuhito chichibu oversaw the organization Yamashita was a very well respected General with a fearsome reputation being known as the tiger of Malaya he was a highly decorated officer having been awarded Japan's highest military honors that of the order of the Rising Sun as well as the revered Order of the Golden kite yamashita's Brilliance was even recognized by Nazi Germany who awarded him the prestigious order of the German eagle for his outstanding leadership against the Allies significantly he had presided over the worst military defeat the British forces had ever suffered this was when a significantly smaller Japanese force had overwhelmed the British Garrison at Singapore in 1942 capturing over 80 000 British and Commonwealth troops in doing so by the following year Yamashita had fallen out of favor with the Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo who he had clashed with often over various political issues so he ended up being transferred to the isolated and remote Northern State of Manchuria where he spent the next two years languishing in obscurity until September 1944 he was called back to run the defense of the japanese-held Philippines it was said he also took over a covert operation that had been running since 1943 of stockpiling looted valuables in the Philippines these had come from foreign Banks museums temples and churches located in Japanese occupied territories like Hong Kong Korea Taiwan Singapore Malaysia Vietnam and parts of China by now it's said that the Japanese had amassed a huge fortune and it was storing it at Fort Santiago in Manila the Filipino capital but their plan to ship it all back to Mainland Japan had become impossible as U.S submarines and aircraft now dominated all the shipping planes out of the Philippines then the situation became even more dire as over the next few months the U.S launched a number of successful large-scale amphibious operations that captured a series of key cities in the Philippines all these disasters forced Yamashita to disperse this gigantic Hall of treasure across the Philippines in remote mines and caves in order to make this possible Allied prisoners were used to dig the intricate tunnel systems and once the gold was safely stashed away they were executed and buried along with the treasure it is also said that Japanese officers even had their own Engineers killed as well to protect the Secret locations of the gold these highly Secret locations were said to have contained elaborate booby traps consisting of such things as land mines poison gas and hidden pits full of sharpened bamboo sticks it is said that there are over 170 locations totaling over a hundred billion US dollars in today's value Yamashita retreated with his main Force out of Manila and into the neighboring mountains but against his orders a large force of Naval Marines took it upon themselves to reoccupy the capital in an attempt to destroy all the port facilities and Naval storehouses in the city that were all still relatively intact What followed between February 3rd and March 3rd 1945 was four weeks of fierce Street to street fighting that resulted in a large part of the city being burnt down the Japanese Marines during this time carried out some of the worst atrocities of the entire war going on a rampage They carried out numerous mass shootings beheadings bayonetting and The Burning Alive of unarmed civilians many of whom were women and children when the U.S finally liberated the city over one hundred thousand Filipino civilians had been massacred by the Japanese Defenders Yamashita and his remaining forces continued fighting throughout the summer carrying out what was essentially a guerrilla warfare campaign they finally surrendered in September several weeks after the official surrender of Japan within a couple of months of being captured General Yamashita was put on trial for war crimes regarding the slaughter of civilians during what had become known as the Battle of Manila he was quickly found guilty and just moments before he was executed on February 23 1946 he gave a speech thanking the U.S military for all their kindness and fair treatment he had received from them throughout his trial he was then hanged by the end of the war the Japanese who knew the locations of the gold were all but killed in action or had been executed for war crimes many years later the most famous man to have claimed to have found a portion of the treasure Yamashita is said to have hidden made his Discovery his name was Rogelio Roxas a former locksmith turned amateur treasure hunter in 1970. with information and a map you had received from Japanese informants with connections to Yamashita Roxas claimed to have found a large Golden Buddha statue and other valuable gold Treasures buried deep in underground tunnels inside were also bayonets katanas radios and the skeletons of Japanese soldiers still in uniform he further claimed that the then dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos swiftly confiscated all of this treasure and imprisoned him where he was tortured although Roxas escaped prison as long as Marcos was in power he had no chance of recovering this treasure when Marcos was deposed in 1986 and went into Exile in Hawaii Roxas sued him two years later and won his case but the supposed treasure was never recovered what was inside this tunnel that killed 520 passengers the Italian train mystery trained 8017 March 3rd 1944 zero fifty hours World War II had been a humiliating and painful experience for the Italian people their military campaign in North Africa had ended in disaster with the loss of all their colonies there and was quickly followed by the Allies invading Italy itself in the summer of 1943. this resulted in the overthrowing of the Italian fascist government forcing their leader the dictator Benito Mussolini to go into exile by March of 1944 it seemed the German Nazi regime was surely on the verge of collapse as it was rumored that soon the Allies would be invading northern France then it was hoped it would only be a matter of time before the warring Europe would finally be over and things could start to return to normal in Italy once again on the Rainy Night of March 2nd 1944 the overnight steam power freight train 8017 from matapaglia to Potenza did not pass through the railway station at balvano in southern Italy the station Master there was not overly worried despite the war being all but over in Italy it was still causing major disruption to an already overburdened and damaged state-run Railway system therefore the station Master simply presumed the freight train had either been delayed or canceled at short notice a common Occurrence at the time but later at 5 10 that morning when one of the crewmen from the freight train staggered into the railway station the station Master knew something was seriously wrong the man's face was white with shock and he seemed totally disoriented muttering something about them all being dead hundreds of them what the station Master could make out from the man's almost incoherent babbling was at the freight train with its 47 cars was crammed full of illegal passengers desperate to get to Naples the train crew had tried to limit the number of passengers who were getting onto the freight wagons but they had been overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of people forcing themselves on board this was of no surprise to the station Master for while this was a freight train with no passenger carriages it was not uncommon for them to be crammed full of people and black market Smugglers as there was a desperate shortage of Passenger Services throughout Italy at the time so the train had set off no being pulled by two locomotives it was massively overloaded and to make matters worse the locomotives were using low-grade coal the railway companies were suffering from coal shortages and had to resort to using lower quality fuel therefore the underpowered and overweight freight train meandered slowly through the epien mountains not able to pick up speed on the ice-covered tracks so when it came to the long tunnel at army that was on an incline in the middle of nowhere the train had stalled inside with a few of its rearmost carriages sticking out the back of the tunnel entrance there are conflicting reports as to why the train stopped the two theories being that the train was unable to pull the weight or had to stop due to an oncoming train within minutes all of the people in the tunnel itself were dead [Music] what had killed them since it was about 1am in the morning most of the passengers were fast asleep totally unaware that the train was stuck in the tunnel and struggling to get out of it as the freight trains desperately rev their engines to get more power and free themselves this produced more and more carbon monoxide because the tunnel had no real ventilation it quickly filled up with the totally odorless and highly poisonous gas meaning it gradually suffocated the unsuspecting passengers and crew researchers later learned that the train had two different locomotives attached and these trains could not communicate with each other this was due to the 476 locomotive being Austrian built and having a right-hand driver the 480 locomotive was left-handed this prevented the conductors from the individual locomotives from communicating it was found that the 480 locomotive tried to restart and move forward and the 476 locomotive tried to reverse out of the tunnel a few of the passengers had figured out what was going on and attempted to flee down the tunnel towards its exit but by now had been too weak to make it instead collapsing to the ground unconscious as the gas slowly suffocated them too horrified by what he had heard the station Master grabbed a lamp and hoveredly organized a rescue team which set off in a locomotive almost immediately as the tunnel was just a few miles from the station they arrived at the scene within 15 minutes only to find the track in the tunnel was littered with dead bodies everywhere a short time later it was discovered at the other end of the tunnel there were a few carriages at the rear of the train that were sticking out of the tunnel they found a handful of survivors all of the people in the tunnel itself were dead it was later discovered that 520 of the Train's passengers died from asphyxiation by the carbon monoxide created inside the tunnel even 50 of The Rescuers had to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning as they had entered the fume-filled tunnel in a vain attempt to find survivors in fact it would be several hours before it was truly safe to enter the tunnel the vast amounts of dead bodies were moved and stacked up on the railway station platform awaiting identification and burial in the end most were buried in Mass graves in the local Cemetery without any kind of religious ceremony being carried out due to the lack of resources in Wartime as the war was still very much ongoing the Allied High command decided to downplay the tragedy and it was given very little publicity at the time because they feared it might damage Italy's fragile morale and overshadow the war effort against the Nazis though an official inquiry would be eventually held and would conclude that the tragedy had occurred due to a combination of unfortunate circumstances that had ultimately been brought about by the war therefore it concluded that no one was truly responsible for what had happened nevertheless the government didn't want people to learn of this accident that was one of the worst rail disasters of this Century they feared that the people and their allies would blame the government for the lack of quality coal and the restricted passenger trains [Music] who killed William II 1100 A.D nearly a thousand years ago on a summer day in 1100 A.D deep in an English Forest play a man of noble birth dead on the ground a single Arrow had pierced his lung and killed him he had been out hunting that day with friends who later claimed they had become separated from him and he had been killed in a tragic hunting accident by a stray Arrow what his friends did next seem both strange and against common decency made more unusual because his younger brother Henry was in The Hunting Party they all just left the body where it fell and continued on their way except for the younger brother who rushed home in order to secure his inheritance and the family fortune as he was next in line the noble man's body was later found by some peasants and was dragged off to be given an appropriate burial making it even more suspicious was the fact that the dead Noble was none other than William II King of England for it was only 34 years ago that his father Duke William of Normandy had defeated Harold II who was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon King of England William then claimed the English Throne as his own and became William the first commonly known as William the Conqueror William the first had a stormy and complex relationship with his four Sons Nate too had a similar relationship with him and each other his oldest son Richard died in a hunting accident in his late teens when he was Maul to death by an angry stag so when William the Conqueror died in 1087 A.D the crown should have fallen to the next eldest son Robert with a break from tradition the crown instead passed to the third eldest son who had been named after him therefore William succeeded to the throne to become William II only giving Robert the Estates in France making him the new Duke of Normandy both brothers were seen by most people including their own father as being flawed as both men and leaders but it was widely regarded that King William the Conqueror particularly disliked Robert and possibly saw his younger brother William as the best of a poor crop the fourth and last son Henry was young at the time of his father's death 18 or 19 years old he was probably not considered as a candidate for the throng because of his age and being so far down in the order of succession as for William II he was a character who was hard to understand full of vice and ill-temper at times many felt he lacked the dignity and refinement needed for a king at times he could be forceful and quite religious so it is accepted that he was ill-suited to be a monarch and was disliked by all those around him including his brothers so was his death an accident as claimed by The Hunting Party he was with or something far more sinister first we'll look at the obvious possibility that it was an accident hunting accidents have always been common being royalty is no exception to this as an example in 1231 King valdemar the younger of Denmark was accidentally shot while hunting and subsequently died of his wounds so there is the distinct possibility that the simplest explanation is the correct one and it was just an accident but what makes William II's death so suspicious is that complex political situation he found himself in and how he was treated in death could it have been a cold and calculated assassination the most obvious suspect was his younger brother Henry who was now 32. William at the time of his death was in his early 40s and it was conceivable that he would live another 20 years maybe Henry was impatient to claim his god-given right of succession and Henry's abandonment of his King and brother's body seemed callous and even Brutal by medieval standards instead Henry rushed off and secured the Royal treasury at Winchester and got himself crowned in such haste that he didn't wait for the Archbishop to arrive which was the tradition it may have been prudent in such unsettled times to rush off but to instruct someone to take away his brother's body would have taken no time at all rather than to leave it to the Savage Heat Of The Summer's Day and any Wildlife that may come across it but there had been much animosity between the two brothers and Henry had much to resent William for as he felt he had been sidelined over the years in the matters of State so on coming to the throne Henry canceled many of William II's policies Henry also had a harsh and manipulative side so perhaps he no longer wanted to live in his older brother's shadow then there was the second eldest of the brothers Robert the very eldest was Richard but he had died some years earlier so tradition should have dictated the next in line for the throne was Robert but on the death of his father William the Conqueror he had instead inherited the family estates in northern France and therefore became the new Duke of Normandy instead of inheriting the English throne unusually William the conqueror's will instructed that his son William should become king of England Robert was said to be a skilled Knight though it was said he was also very lazy and his relationship with his father and family was a complete mess he had led an unsuccessful Rebellion against his father in 1077. then after his younger brother William had become king he had led yet another unsuccessful rebellion in 1088. by some miracle he survived carrying out these acts of treason and eventually Robert found his calling in life and was a leading figure in the First Crusade and set off for the Holy Land in 1096. in fact four years later he was returning home from the holy land when William was killed could this give him the perfect Alibi or was he planning to make yet another Power grab ahead of his return and underestimated his younger brother who had stole his inheritance from him it is worth considering that in the hunting party was a nobleman called Walter Tyrell of Normandy who had distant links with the royal family rumors emerged a few decades later that he may have killed the King by accident while trying to hunt a stag as The Story Goes he was so stricken with fear and guilt that he immediately fled to France where he died shortly afterwards the trouble is that the mentioning of this version of events is far and few between emerging sometime later and the facts are sketchy another possibility is that William II who was often painted as a pleasure-seeking womanizer had caused a jealous husband to seek revenge this could be a possibility as William was a confirmed Bachelor who never married and there is clear evidence that he had many Affairs so could it have been an offended husband who had been in the hunting party and who in a jealous rage swore Vengeance and killed the King when he became separated from the primary group or is there one last possibility could it have been a group of bitter Saxons angry at being conquered and ruled over by a group of Frenchmen who had taken their land away from their fathers and distributed it among themselves if this was a possibility why was there no attempt to instigate an uprising as power transferred to William's brother Henry there is no record of this or anything that supports this Theory but records are scarce from this period due to how long ago it was and also the fact that written records were still only carried out by a Selected Few mainly the monastic orders but it is worth considering any record of lingering Saxon Insurrection would have been discouraged as it was in the English Monarch's interest to portray the country as a unified Nation as it was quickly becoming one of the most powerful countries in Europe so who killed William II it's unlikely that we will ever know but it seems he had many enemies with his corpse abandoned in a forest it was found by a group of peasants who respectfully took his body in the back of a commoner's cart to Winchester Cathedral with no pomp or ceremony by the time William's body got there the next day it would have entered the state of Rigamortis all in all a most undignified end to a king's reign so who killed William II of England and why Australia 1935. was it a shark attack or murder 1935 looked like it would be a good year the world was slowly recovering from the great economic depression it was the year Elvis was born and no one thought for a moment that the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was anything more than an irritable nationalist no one could have imagined that in just four more years Hitler would plunge the world into a second world war that would ultimately end up costing an estimated 70 to 85 million lives in Australia life was good the country had just gotten its own International Airline Qantas Empire Airways or the Flying Kangaroo and the feel-good American Civil War comedy little colonel starring Hollywood child Superstar Shirley Temple was Charming audiences all across Australia so early one April morning about a month mile off the coast of Sydney in east Australia businessman Bert Hobson and his nephew Ron were checking some lines they baited with macro the previous night bird had hoped to catch a shark to sell to the local aquarium which was run by his brother Charlie much too Hobson's Joy he found he was in luck as he'd caught a small shark but to his surprise he found it been half devoured by much larger tiger shark who in the process had gotten itself entangled in his other lines the tiger shark was massive measuring around 14 feet in length and along with the legendary great white shark was one of the most vicious predators in the seas around Australia so Hobson put a rope around the shark secured it to the back of his boat and cut it free of his lines he then towed the shark ashore his brother paid him good money for the shark and it was displayed at his aquarium as the new Star attraction it quickly proved incredibly popular as crowds flocked to see the tiger shark menacingly Circle angrily around in its large pool then after just a week it started to look ill and threshed weakly around in its tank Charlie was starting to worry about his new investment as none of the great predator sharks had ever lived more than a few weeks in captivity his concerns were well founded when that late afternoon it went into convulsions and then violently threw up the crowd gasped and looked on in disbelief not because this Mighty Predator had regurgitated a dead rat a decomposed bird and part of a much smaller shark but also a human arm the arm was fished out of the water and the police were called in the severed limb was in surprisingly good condition having only recently been eaten it turned out it was a left arm belonging to an adult male with a distinct tattoo on it of boxers fighting also the police were able to lift a good set of fingerprints off the dismembered arm it was first thought that it might have belonged to a swimmer who'd been an unwitting victim of a shark attack but as no swimmer had been reported missing in the area the police quickly dismissed this possibility they also became suspicious about the cause of the man's death as it turns out the arm had been dismembered with a sharp knife and not bitten off by a shark's bite so police were now convinced the man was a victim of murder then they managed to establish from the fingerprints in the tattoo that the arm belonged to a 45 year old local Petty Criminal by the name of James Smith he ran a disreputable billiard hall downtown and had been reported missing by his brother a couple of weeks before on the morning of his disappearance he'd told his wife that he was leaving home because he was offered five pounds for the week to drive a fishing party about it later emerged he'd actually gone to play cards and drink with friends one of his closest being a criminal by the name of Patrick Brady however when they went to question Brady he'd already fled his home and gone on the Run later the next month he was arrested on check forgery charges this allowed the police to hold him for a while and question him about Smith's disappearance but as he told them very little and there was no real case against him he was only charged over the check fraud and released then a little while later the police thought they got the big break they needed in Smith's case a witness who was a taxi driver came forward and linked Smith's movements that date to an associate of his Reginald Holmes a well-known fraudster and Smuggler but when they brought him in for questioning Holmes denied any involvement in Smith's disappearance or death the police frustratedly were forced to release him too as they had no grounds to hold him so this might have been the end of the matter however four days later a troubled Holmes tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head but the bullet struck his forehead and failed to penetrate the skull the police were called by concerned neighbors and Holmes ended up fleeing the scene in a speed bout leading the police on a high-speed chase around Sydney Harbor before being arrested and taken to hospital once detained Holmes decided to enter into a plea deal with the authorities and confessed what had really happened to Smith on the day of his disappearance he claimed that Smith and Brady had met up at a rental Cottage By the coast to discuss an insurance scam they were planning involving a yacht but after a heavy drinking session Smith and Brady were now both drunk and had a falling out over how the money they would get ought to be divided up in a drunken rage Brady killed Smith then dismembered and disposed of the body at Sea in a metal trunk Brady then allegedly took Smith's arm to Holmes house and threatened Holmes with it to extort money from him afterwards Holmes said that he had thrown Smith's arm which Brady had left with him into the sea to get rid of it police now felt they had enough evidence to arrest Brady and charged him with Smith's murder but a week later on the day of the inquest into Smith's death Holmes was found dead in his car in an apparent suicide though police felt it was Saul far too staged and that it was suspicious a suicide victim shot himself in the head three times at the inquest Brady's defense argued that though the arm was undoubtedly Smith's it didn't necessarily mean that he was dead bizarrely the coroner agreed with them saying that without the whole body they couldn't know for certain that Smith was dead and therefore couldn't rule that he had been a victim of Foul Play the police nevertheless went ahead with the trial against Brady but after just two days the judge instructed the jury to find Brady innocent as he felt home's statements were unreliable and as the witness was dead heat couldn't be cross-examined as the prosecution could offer no other evidence Brady was acquitted Smith's body was never found and Brady continued his life of petty crime spending over 20 years in jail Brady died in 1965 of a heart attack at 76 having just been released from prison throughout his whole life Brady always maintains that he was innocent in fact in a more recent contribution the historians rupe and meager argued that Brady didn't murder Smith they believed Brady had no motive to kill his friend and rather it was Associates of Holmes who were guilty for shortly before the murder Smith had blackmailed homes for not receiving any reward after botching an insurance scam which Holmes orchestrated Smith's black males could not be tolerated and he had to be removed as of today the crime is classified by the Australian polices unsolved but who do you think did the crime leave your theories down below and maybe you'll be the one who can solve the case

Channel: Simple History

Views: 306,403

Keywords: simple history, animated history, educational, education, History Mysteries YOU Can't Solve, history, mystery, engineering, researcher, construction, theunknownlist, the unknown list, book, bigfoot

Id: 52HAlDIaa4E

Length: 53min 39sec (3219 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023