So even when we live in the most technologically productive era of humanity, in which NSA literally knows everything about you, we still have not fully understood some incidents from our past. Here are the top 10 unsolved mysteries.

10 The lost city of Atlantis

The very first mention of Atlantis came from Plato in his dialogue Timeaus. He talks of an island which was situated “in front of the Pillars of Hercules”. There has been discussion ever since whether it exists or if Plato just made up the island as a way to prove a point in his dialogue (philosophers tend to do that). To summarize the story of Atlantis, it existed in the 10th millennium, was a world power, it attacked Athens, failed miserably, and then sank in a single day.

Of the places suggested to be the location of Atlantis, the two most probable are the island of Santorini, which was a prosperous Minoan island and sank by huge volcano eruption or Sicily, the people who lived there were called “the sea people” and used to raid Egyptian settlements and how Plato described Atlantis, as pretty similar to Sicily (Athens also once attacked Sicily and failed miserably, maybe Plato made a reversal?) . Note both of these places are no where near the strait of Gibraltar (AKA. The Pillars of Hercules).

9 Roanoke Colony

During the late 16th century, the British were desperately trying to gain a foothold in the Americas competing with the French and the Spanish at every step. But this colony had bad luck from the very beginning its surprising how none of the colonists just came up and said “I think this is a bad idea”. Here’s how it goes Sir Walter Raleigh (ring a bell?) sent an expedition to Roanoke island (now part of North Carolina), the ships got lost on the way, then lost most of their food, then when they reached they blamed a local native village for stealing a silver cup (I swear I aint making this up) and which they promptly raided and burned it to the ground. Then when the expedition leader needed to go back to England and get more supplies most of the colonists abandoned the colony at the first opportunity.

Enter expedition number two, Raliegh not easily deterred sent a much larger expedition, to join up with the remnants of Roanoke and set up a large colony. When they arrived all they found was an empty colony and a skeleton, it turns out that when you sack and loot a village, natives don’t like it very well surprisingly . Understandably fearing for their lives they sent the new expedition leader John White (snow?) back to England to get more soldiers to help defend the colony. He left his granddaughter Virginia Dare there (she was the first British born on American soil) and went for home. Sadly he couldn’t return for another three years due to a little thing called the Spanish armada. When he did finally make it back, The entire colony was abandoned including his granddaughter, with no sign of struggle, it seemed as if everyone just packed up and left in an orderly fashion. The only clue left there was a carving on a tree saying “CROATAN”. Before White left he told the colonists to draw a cross if they were forced to leave by force but there was no cross anywhere. So one of three things happened, either they all moved to a new place and got captured, or they tried to return to England (they had some small boats with them) and sank, or they all just died very shortly after White left, the last one seems likely because Virginia’s mother Eleanor wrote these “Dare stones” which people think are fake but they basically list on stones about where and when everyone of the colonists died. Either way it was a sad ending.

8 Dyatlov Pass incident

There is this mountain in Russia called “Dead mountain”, I think that should be reason enough to never go even near it. A gang of 10 people attempted to scale it from the most dangerous route possible. During the journey one of the guys got sick and was left in a small village along the way. The other 9 continued forward but very soon they realized they took a wrong turn and with the rapidly worsening weather conditions which included a brewing snow storm they hunkered down in the slope of the mountain. They weren’t heard from ever since, 10 days after their disappearance a massive search party was assembled and they found their tent. It was filled with supplies but was abandoned and it seemed the campers cut through the tent from the inside in the dead of night and made a run randomly out of it. Their bodies were found only in undergarments and socks, one of them even tried to climb a tree. The last four bodies were found much later and they are what makes this strange, they were found fully clothed, wearing the clothes of the other campers and they had fallen into a ravine. They had fractured skulls and other injuries, one of them was even missing a tongue. What happened here?

The two most plausible theories are either there was an avalanche which forced them to abandon base in a hurry or the government was conducting nuclear tests there which killed them (the bodies were found with a high level of nuclear radiation).

7 Los Lunas Decalogue stone

Ok enough about totally creepy things, this one is of a lighter tone. The Los Lunas Decalogue is an out of place artifact, it was found in Los Lunas, New Mexico and this stone is around 2000 years old. The real kicker is that this has the ten commandments written on it, and most evidence points to the fact that this happened way before the arrival of Columbus. Its written in an ancient phonetic script and refers to Yahweh as “YHWH”.

Many archaeologists say its a hoax, but it still doesn’t explain what a Jewish relic was doing in America, 2000 years ago..

6 Tomb of Alexander the Great

When in India, Alexander the Great met a naked philosopher named Calanus, he was an old man who self immolated himself infront of him, rather than turning old and getting sick. His last words to Alexander were, “See you in Babylon” which sounds like the beginning of a cheesy 80’s era song, and Alexander and his soldiers didn’t get the meaning at that point because he had no plans of ever revisiting that city. Only when Alexander later died in Babylon did it make sense to his followers. The discussion of his death is for another day, today we still don’t know where his tomb is.

His coffin was hijacked on its way to Greece, by Ptolemy (his former general who was now ruler of Egypt), and buried him in Alexandria. Caesar visited his tomb, Caligula also did and he looted his breastplate, later Muslim travelers visited it as well and even wrote about it. And then suddenly in the last two hundred years we have no idea where it is. There have been more than 100 search attempts and all have failed. Legend has it he is buried under a Coptic church.

5 King Arthur

The legendary king, at first seems like a total myth, but remember that all myths are based loosely on reality. The strongest candidate for King Arthur is Riothamus, who was a historic figure referred to as the “king of Britons” who fought with the Romans twice in Gaul, just like Arthur did. He was betrayed by his close adviser just like Arthur was (Lancelot in Arthur’s case). And in the end Arthur goes off to Avalon, Riothamus had to escape and he was last seen in a town called Avallon. I think we have a clear winner.

For the epic tale of another Old English hero, Beowulf, check out our top mythical heroes of all time list.

4 Summerwind

Another creepy post. There is this mansion in Wisconsin named “Summerwind”. It was built in the 1920’s and who ever lived there had a bad experience. When the first owner lived there with his wife, he heard complaints from his maids that the place was haunted which he shrugged off as women talk, until one day the basement door started shaking and he saw a ghostly apparition of a man, he fired two shots at it and fled with his wife. After remaining vacant for 40 years new owners moved in and almost immediately saw strange occurrences from flickering shadows, to hearing soft voices when they entered a room, you know standard horror movie stuff. There was also a ghost of a woman who appeared occasionally in the dining room. I hope you aren’t alone when you read this. Later they found the remains of a little girl, and when they went to double check, the body was gone. Later they hired some construction workers to renovate the house, but the workers complained about lost tools and how the rooms changed sizes every time they measured them.

Needless to say it was abandoned again, this time for good and after multiple lightning strikes a very small portion of the house remains today.

3 Mayerling Incident

This one is a pretty interesting mystery, it reads just like a Agatha Christie novel. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria had an affair with Baroness Mary, during a family dinner with his parents, he excused himself and left to an imperial hunting lodge called “Mayerling“. This was where he had invited Mary so he could spend time with her. The next day, when one of the staff knocked on his door, it didn’t open. After waiting long enough they broke the door to find the Prince and Baroness dead. The prince had a gun in his hand making it seem like a standard murder-suicide at first and that’s the official story. A thing to note is that the Prince was in a big fight with his father over his mistress which might have caused him to do that in despair.

But things are never that simple. In reality the affair was an open secret in the royal family, even his wife knew about it and didn’t care (she had an affair of her own), everyone seemed okay with it. The official report also says that only one shot was fired, but there is evidence to suggest that 6 were fired, where did the other 5 go? (Modern forensic evidence suggested that the baroness died from a head wound); and during the burial, the prince was wearing gloves and his mother was not allowed to see his hands as there were defensive wounds there. Since his death changed the Austrian succession and eventually even led to world war 1, it makes sense that he was attacked by some assassin whom he tried to defend himself from but failed in the end, or maybe the lovers just had a quarrel which got sour and the royal family did their best to cover it up. We may never know. If you enjoy unsolved deaths, you will like this list as well.

2 Taman Shud case

Taman Shud means “finished” in Persian, and how it all fits together is that in Adelaide, Australia, a man was found washed up on the beach with a final page of a Persian poem which had those words written on it (The poem is from the Rubaiyat). All we know about him is that, he carried a pack of cigarettes, was well dressed, appeared to be in top physical condition, had no identification on him, his dental records didn’t match that of any other person living in Australia.

The autopsy made it clear that he most probably died from poisoning. This created a media frenzy and every possible lead was pursued, after searching through army records they found a man who supposedly had a drink with the mystery man, he said that the man had a military pension card and his name was “Solomonson”. I don’t know about you but the name seems fake as hell, mind you this was during the cold war. They found his suitcase too but that didn’t explain much. When they found the whole version of the Persian book, (the same one from which that page was torn from) it had the name of a woman on it who they tracked down, but she made sure she remained anonymous all we know is that she died in 2007, and when she was shown the picture of the Taman shud guy, she looked horrified as if she recognized him but refused to give out any information. Last piece of the puzzle was that the Persian book had some code scribbled on its back which still hasn’t been solved. This one is a mind bender. He was probably a spy who got killed off. One last interesting tid bit, he had a unique and extremely rare ear shape, and the book woman has a son with the exact same ear shape, the probability of that is 1 in 20 million, a love child?

1 Voynich Manuscript

Best for last. A book was found which originated from Italy from the 1400’s. It’s filled with strange illustrations and the language is totally different, in fact its unrecognizable. Language analysis suggests that its similar to European languages in syntax and formatting but to this day no one could decipher it (feel free to try with this free high res copy). It has illustrations ranging from biology to astronomy to even recipes, sadly we can’t understand a word of whats going on.

It has illustrations of flowers which only belong to the new world, which is strange because the new world wasn’t discovered back then. We cant even easily dismiss it as a hoax because one of the previous owners (from the 1600) sent a letter to learned friend of his (a priest) to ask for advice on how to read it (we still have that letter). Whether it is some totally artificially created language or if its some exotic language written in Latin phonetics (thai?), it will be a long time before we know what secrets the book has, whether it be on how to stay young forever or how to make the best Kaeng ho.