6 Famous Unsolved Mysteries That Have Totally Been Solved

[lazarus]

Cracked, of course. I didn't know the one about Amelia Earhart.

[onager]

1. Thanks! That was great!

We probably shouldn't mention this in...certain groups. Where certain people still quote Edgar Cayce on the subject:

Atlantis was something that Plato completely pulled out of his ass just so Socrates could have something to talk about, and he specifically mentions in his writing that Atlantis is a completely hypothetical city.

:rofl:

In Egypt I heard some great rants (from Egyptians) about the Charlton Heston/Space Alien Theories of Pyramid Building. Many tour guides in Egypt are moonlighting grad students or even teachers. Boy, do they HATE that crap!

Funny thing is, you can stand at the Step Pyramid in Saqqara and see the whole history of Egyptian pyramid building right before your eyes. If it's a rare clear day in the Cairo area, you're looking at the Step Pyramid (the first one built by Pharoah Djoser); in the middle distance you can see the Bent and Red pyramids (built later by Pharoah Sneferu); and WAY off, barely visible, the Giza Plateau with the Great Pyramid of Cheops and those of his offspring.

The woos who push the alien theory seem to ignore everything except the Giza pyramids, which always struck me as weird.

Right here on DU, we once had a fellow who claimed he, his girlfriend, and other Enlightened People had "out-of-body meetups" inside the Great Pyramid.

Didn't get a chance to ask him my verifying question - what grand structure is located right across the street from the Giza Pyramids?

[mr blur]

2. I had an out-of-body meetup in Pizza Hut once.

Mind you, I was very stoned at the time.

But who built Pizza Hut? And why are they all identical? It's one of history's great mysteries.

[Silent3]

3. That was one of the first things I noticed when I visited.

Or "Beeza Hoot" as I like to think of it, after seeing how Pizza Hut gets transliterated into Arabic. I love that you got this shot from inside the place -- I only saw it from across the way, while standing at the foot of the Sphinx.

Before going to the see the Great Pyramid myself, I never realized how carefully crafted most of the pictures are that we see in news stories, movies, documentaries, travel brochures, etc., to make the pyramids and the Sphinx look like they are beautifully isolated from modern civilization, as opposed to one dusty parking lot away from the bustling and generally very tacky outskirts of Giza.

[onager]

7. Unfortunately, not my photo.

I stole it from somewhere on the internets. There's another great photo I've seen looking at the Sphinx, from inside the Beeza Hoot.

You're right, it's amazing how all the photos/vids we see are always looking AWAY from Cairo, and toward the desert.

I was impressed by the tourist safety devices around the Sphinx, which are non-existent. You can easily step right over the edge - beside the Sphinx's paw - and it's a LONG way down.

Usual Irrelevant Personal Note to My Fellow Amateur History Geeks:

Don't bother looking for Napoleon's "Battle of the Pyramids" battlefield anywhere near the Pyramids. That battle was actually fought in Imbaba, nowadays a far suburb of Cairo and in 1798 a rural watermelon patch.

We can thank Napoleon for the misnomer, since he knew a thing or two about spin and propaganda. When you're trying to make history, it's a pretty safe bet that "Battle of the Pyramids" will sound a lot better than "Battle of the Imbaba Melon Patch."

In fact, all of Egypt and especially Alexandria is famous for historic place names having nothing to do with reality. Alexandria has a district named "Caesar's Camp" where nobody named Caesar ever camped. Its "Cleopatra" district would have been way too down-scale for the woman it's named after, even in the First Century BCE.

The famous Alexandrian landmark Pompey's Pillar apparently got its name from some visiting Crusaders, who started a rumor that Pompey The Great's severed head was on top of the pillar in a box. Unfortunately it wasn't.

That pillar actually has a much more interesting history - it was part of the Serapeum, the huge temple complex that housed the last remnants of Alexandria's Great Library. (As shown in Alejandro Amenabar's 2009 movie Agora.)

[semillama]

4. OMG! A UFO hovering over the Great Pyramid!!!! n/t

[semillama]

5. I knew about the Earhart one

Mind you, it's not as much of a slam dunk as they made it out to be, but the evidence does strongly support TIGHAR's hypothesis. I believe Dr. Tom King has a book out about the archaeological investigation.

Real archaeology FTW!

[TZ]

6. I thought they did DNA testing on the bone fragments and confirmed it?

I could be wrong, but I think that was in the news recently....

[semillama]

8. I don't think it's been confirmed yet

They had what they thought was a hair but during testing it turned out to be a thread.

Here's the latest news item I could find from Discovery News:

http://news.discovery.com/history/amelia-earhart-island-artifacts.html

"antalizing new clues are surfacing in the Amelia Earhart mystery, according to researchers scouring a remote South Pacific island believed to be the final resting place of the legendary aviatrix.

Three pieces of a pocket knife and fragments of what might be a broken cosmetic glass jar are adding new evidence that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan landed and eventually died as castaways on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati. The island was some 300 miles southeast of their target destination, Howland Island.

"These objects have the potential to yield DNA, specifically what is known as 'touch DNA','" Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), told Discovery News in an email interview from Nikumaroro.

Gillespie and his team will be searching the tiny island until June 14 for evidence that Earhart's twin-engine plane, the "Electra," did not crash in the ocean and sink, as it was assumed after the futile massive search that followed the aviatrix's disappearance on July 2, 1937. "