91 Fun Facts About Unsolved Mysteries

Which network launched 'Unsolved Mysteries' as a weekly series on October 5, 1988?

NBC turned a run of hit specials into the weekly series and kept it for nine seasons, until CBS picked the show up in 1997.

Which trench-coated host narrated Unsolved Mysteries for eleven seasons on network television?

Robert Stack fronted four specials and eleven seasons and stayed with the show until 2002, the year before he died; two other actors had fronted the first three specials before he took over.

What element does the Netflix revival of 'Unsolved Mysteries' notably drop from previous iterations?

A host or narrator: the Netflix episodes play as documentaries with no presenter, though the longtime host's silhouette still appears in the opening credits as a tribute.

Which actor hosted the very first 'Unsolved Mysteries' special in January 1987?

Raymond Burr, TV's Perry Mason, fronted only the pilot special; another actor took the next two before the show settled on its permanent host.

Unsolved Mysteries correspondent Keely Shaye Smith later married which James Bond actor?

Pierce Brosnan met Keely Shaye Smith on a beach in Mexico in 1994; she presented the show's case updates in the mid-1990s, and the two married at an abbey in Ireland in 2001.

Unsolved Mysteries' longtime host won an Emmy playing which real-life lawman on TV?

Eliot Ness: the host won a 1960 Emmy as the Prohibition agent in The Untouchables, then mocked that stern image in later comedies such as Airplane!

After CBS cancelled it in 1999, which cable channel picked up Unsolved Mysteries with new episodes in 2001?

Lifetime aired new episodes in 2001 and 2002, the last made with the longtime host, who died in 2003; in 2008 another cable channel repackaged the old segments with a new presenter.

Which actor took over as host of 'Unsolved Mysteries' during its revival on Spike TV from 2008 to 2010?

Dennis Farina, a police detective for 18 years before he turned actor, hosted the Spike run, which mostly repackaged the original segments around his narration.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers vanished in June 1962 after escaping which prison?

Alcatraz: the three left dummy heads in their bunks and launched a raft made from about 50 raincoats; no bodies were ever found, and US Marshals kept the case open for decades.

What did parents write to Unsolved Mysteries asking to have changed because it terrified their children?

The theme music: composer Gary Malkin recalled parents begging for a new tune because their children were terrified of it, and a producer said kids would run from the room when it began.

How much ransom did hijacker D. B. Cooper demand in 1971 before parachuting from a Boeing 727?

$200,000: Cooper demanded $200,000 in cash plus four parachutes, then jumped from the Boeing 727 over southwest Washington; he had bought his ticket as Dan Cooper, and a press error produced 'D. B.'

Who cracked the Zodiac Killer's first cipher in August 1969?

A married couple, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, solved it within about a week; both were amateurs, and she broke in by guessing that the message would contain the word 'kill'.

The undeciphered Voynich manuscript has been held since 1969 by which university's rare book library?

Yale: its Beinecke Library was given the book by dealer Hans Kraus, who had bought it in 1961; carbon dating puts the vellum in the early 1400s, yet its script has never been convincingly read.

The Mary Celeste was found deserted but seaworthy off the Azores in 1872 by which Canadian ship?

Dei Gratia, under Captain David Morehouse, came upon her adrift; his crew sailed the empty ship to Gibraltar to claim salvage, and the hearings there never explained what had happened.

Who governed the 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke when it was settled in 1587?

John White sailed home for supplies in 1587 and could not get back until 1590, when he found the settlers gone and the word 'CROATOAN' carved on a post.

How many Soviet ski hikers died in the 1959 Dyatlov Pass incident in the Ural Mountains?

Nine: all nine hikers died after cutting their way out of the tent in February 1959 and fleeing into the cold; six succumbed to hypothermia and three to severe injuries.

Which university's Big Ear radio telescope picked up the 1977 'Wow!' signal?

Ohio State: its Big Ear radio telescope recorded the signal on August 15, 1977, and astronomer Jerry Ehman circled the reading '6EQUJ5' on the printout, writing 'Wow!' beside it.

From which constellation did the Wow! signal appear to come?

Sagittarius: the signal lasted the full 72 seconds that Big Ear could watch one point of sky, and years of repeat searches of the same patch never picked it up again.

Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished in 1975, had led which US labour union from 1957 to 1971?

The Teamsters became America's largest union under Hoffa, who was jailed for jury tampering; he vanished in 1975 while trying to win back control and was declared dead in 1982.

The 'Somerton Man' case takes its other name from the Persian phrase 'tamám shud', torn from which book?

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: the scrap, meaning 'it is finished', lay in a hidden fob pocket; police later traced the very copy, found in the back of a stranger's parked car, with what looked like a code written inside.

Which crime novelist vanished in December 1926 and was found days later at a Harrogate hotel?

Agatha Christie's abandoned car set off a huge police search; she turned up at a spa hotel where she had registered under the surname of her husband's mistress.

Three lighthouse keepers vanished in December 1900 from which Scottish isles?

The Flannan Isles: the relief ship arrived on December 26, 1900, to find all three keepers gone; one set of oilskins was still indoors, suggesting its owner had rushed out without it.

How did the thieves who stole 13 works from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 get inside?

Posing as police officers: two men in uniform talked their way in on March 18, 1990, handcuffed the two guards in the basement, and spent 81 minutes removing 13 works.

What reward did the Gardner Museum set in 2017 for the return of its stolen art?

$10 million: in 2017 the museum doubled its standing reward to $10 million for information leading to the recovery of all 13 works, which include Vermeer's The Concert and Rembrandt's only seascape.

Jim Sanborn's cipher sculpture Kryptos stands at which US agency's headquarters?

The CIA: Jim Sanborn's Kryptos, dedicated at CIA headquarters in 1990, carries four coded passages; a CIA analyst cracked three with pencil and paper in 1998, a year before a computer scientist published the same answers.

The Beale ciphers supposedly locate a treasure buried around 1820 in Bedford County, in which US state?

Virginia: the 1885 pamphlet places the treasure near Bufords in Bedford County, Virginia; only the second of the three ciphertexts, keyed to the Declaration of Independence, has ever been decoded.

Oak Island and its 'Money Pit' lie off which Canadian province?

Nova Scotia: the story goes that a teenager found the pit in 1795; two centuries of digging since have cost six lives and millions of dollars without turning up a treasure.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to where?

Beijing: the Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people aboard; military radar tracked it turning west across the Malay Peninsula after it vanished from civilian screens.

In 1980 a boy found part of D. B. Cooper's ransom money buried on the banks of which river?

The Columbia: eight-year-old Brian Ingram, clearing sand for a campfire in February 1980, dug up three rotting bundles of $20 bills whose serial numbers matched the ransom.

The name 'Jack the Ripper' originated in which missive sent to the press in 1888?

The 'Dear Boss' letter reached the Central News Agency in September 1888 signed 'Jack the Ripper'; police officials came to suspect that a journalist had written it to keep the story selling.

How many Whitechapel victims make up Jack the Ripper's so-called 'canonical' group?

Five: Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly, killed between 31 August and 9 November 1888, are the victims most often linked to one hand; the police file on the Whitechapel murders ran to eleven.

Unsolved Mysteries grew out of three 1986 TV specials devoted to what kind of case?

Missing persons: the specials were called 'Missing... Have You Seen This Person?', and their success led the producers to widen the format to mysteries of every kind.

The unsolved 1912 Villisca axe murders, which killed eight people, took place in which US state?

Iowa: the Moore family of six and two visiting girls were killed in their beds in Villisca; a travelling minister later confessed, took it back, and was acquitted after two trials.

The 1585 Roanoke colony was abandoned when Governor Ralph Lane sailed home with which English seafarer?

Sir Francis Drake, calling at Roanoke in June 1586 after raiding Spanish ports, offered the colonists a ship and supplies; when a storm wrecked that plan, Lane's men sailed home with him instead.

The Mary Celeste was bound from New York for which Mediterranean port when found abandoned in 1872?

Genoa: she left New York on November 7, 1872, with 1,701 barrels of alcohol for Genoa; one theory is that fumes from the cargo frightened her captain into ordering everyone into the lifeboat.

The Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people between 1968 and 1969 in which US metropolitan region?

The San Francisco Bay Area was his hunting ground in 1968 and 1969; he then taunted police and local newspapers for years with letters and coded messages, and was never caught.

The anonymous 'Circleville Letters' terrorised a small town from the late 1970s in which US state?

Ohio: residents of Circleville, Ohio, began getting threatening anonymous letters in the late 1970s; Paul Freshour was jailed for a booby-trap attack tied to them, yet the letters kept coming while he was in prison.

The 1908 Tunguska explosion flattened some 2,150 square km of forest in which region?

Siberia's remote taiga kept scientists away until 1927, no crater was ever found, and an airburst of a small asteroid or comet is the leading explanation.

Flight 19, a group of US Navy Avenger bombers lost in 1945, disappeared over which area?

The Bermuda Triangle: the five Avengers vanished on a training flight on December 5, 1945, and a Mariner flying boat sent to search for them also disappeared that night with 13 crew, feeding the region's legend.

Toddler Madeleine McCann vanished from a holiday apartment in 2007 in which country?

Portugal: she vanished from a holiday flat in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007; four months later Portuguese police named her parents formal suspects, a status lifted when the case was shelved in 2008.

Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937 while flying from Lae toward which tiny Pacific island?

Howland Island, a US possession less than two miles long, was the refuelling stop; the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, waiting offshore, picked up her radio calls on July 2, 1937, but could not guide her in, and she never appeared.

Which English king is the usual prime suspect in the fate of the Princes in the Tower?

Richard III, who had the boys declared illegitimate and took the throne in June 1483, is the usual suspect; bones found under a Tower staircase in 1674 were placed in Westminster Abbey on Charles II's orders.

In which Colorado city was six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey killed at home in December 1996?

Boulder: her mother reported finding a ransom note demanding $118,000, but hours later JonBenét's body was found in the basement of the family's own home.

In 1987 an intruder in a Max Headroom mask hijacked two TV signals in which US city?

Chicago: on November 22, 1987, the masked figure cut into WGN's sports report and, two hours later, a Doctor Who episode on WTTW; the FCC and FBI investigated, and nobody was ever identified.

The looted Amber Room was last documented in which city before it vanished during World War II?

Königsberg: the looted panels were reassembled for display in the city's castle; after the bombing and siege of 1944-45 they were never seen again, and a replica opened in the Catherine Palace in 2003.

The Phaistos Disc, stamped with an undeciphered script, was found in 1908 on which island?

Crete: Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier unearthed the disc at the Minoan palace of Phaistos; because no other text in the same signs has ever turned up, scholars have too little material to decipher it.

NOAA attributes the 'Bloop', a mysterious 1997 underwater sound, to what?

An icequake, not a monster: by 2012 NOAA called the sound consistent with ice calving or seabed gouging by ice, after years of speculation about an enormous unknown animal.

Which actress joined Unsolved Mysteries as co-host for its 1999 season on CBS?

Virginia Madsen joined the longtime host for the short 1999 season, but ratings kept sliding and CBS dropped the show that June, leaving cable to revive it.

Which future Oscar winner played a murder victim in a 1992 Unsolved Mysteries re-enactment filmed in Texas?

Matthew McConaughey played the victim in one of his first screen roles; the fugitive killer was arrested in Panama in February 1993, about ten weeks after the segment aired.

Elizabeth Short, found murdered in Los Angeles in 1947, is remembered by which press nickname?

The Black Dahlia: the name is thought to be a twist on the 1946 film The Blue Dahlia; dozens of suspects were questioned and several people confessed, but the murder was never solved.

Which director's company 21 Laps co-produced Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries reboot?

Shawn Levy's 21 Laps, the company behind Stranger Things, revived the show with its original producers, trading the old four-segment hour for one case per episode.

A viewer recognised missing child Kayla Unbehaun after which 2022 Unsolved Mysteries episode?

Abducted by a Parent, which closed the third Netflix volume, showed her missing poster; in May 2023 someone at a shop in Asheville, North Carolina, recognised her, and she was reunited with her father.

Rey Rivera's body was found in 2006 under a hole in the roof of which Baltimore building?

The Belvedere: his body lay in an unused room of the former Belvedere Hotel, under a hole in a lower roof; his glasses and phone were found undamaged, and a detective on the case said the scene 'looked staged'.

Alonzo Brooks, subject of the episode 'No Ride Home', died in 2004 in which state?

Kansas: Brooks vanished after a party near rural La Cygne in April 2004 and was found by a creek a month later; federal investigators later reopened the case, exhumed his body and ruled his death a homicide.

Josh Guimond, profiled by Netflix in 2022, vanished in 2002 from which school's campus?

Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota: he left a campus party around midnight and never reached his dorm; police first thought he had drowned in a campus lake, but years of searches found nothing.

Jack Wheeler, found in a Delaware landfill in 2010, had helped create which landmark?

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Wheeler chaired the fund that raised the money for the Washington wall; security cameras filmed him wandering Wilmington disoriented, one shoe in his hand, in the days before his body was found.

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès's family were found buried in their garden in which French city?

Nantes: the bodies of his wife Agnès and their four children were found under the terrace of the family home on April 21, 2011; Xavier had last been seen six days earlier, leaving a budget hotel in the Var.

The woman known as 'Jennifer Fairgate' died in 1995 in a hotel room in which capital?

Oslo: she was found shot in room 2805 of the Oslo Plaza Hotel in June 1995; she had checked in without identification, given a false Belgian address, and nearly every label had been cut from her clothes.

The unsolved 1922 Hinterkaifeck farm murders took place in which German region?

Bavaria: six people were killed with a mattock at the lonely Hinterkaifeck farmstead on the night of March 31, 1922; the killer seems to have stayed on afterwards, tending the cattle and eating the family's food.

The 1966 'Lead Masks Case', two men found dead wearing lead eye masks, happened in which country?

Brazil: the two electronics technicians were found on Vintém Hill in Niterói, in suits and lead eye masks, beside a note telling them to swallow capsules, then 'protect metals' and wait for a signal.

Kaspar Hauser, who claimed he grew up in a dark cell, turned up in 1828 in which city?

Nuremberg: the teenager turned up in a square on May 26, 1828, clutching a letter for a cavalry captain and able to say little; a 2024 DNA study ruled out the old theory that he was a stolen prince of Baden.

The schooner Carroll A. Deering was found aground without crew in 1921 off which headland?

Cape Hatteras: the five-masted schooner was found hard aground on Diamond Shoals on January 31, 1921, a meal half prepared and the lifeboats gone; five US government departments investigated and never learned what became of the crew.

The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine is said to lie in which Arizona range?

The Superstitions: legend places the mine of German immigrant Jacob Waltz, who died in 1891, in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix, where a number of treasure hunters have died searching.

The first Cicada 3301 puzzle appeared in January 2012 on which website?

4chan: the first puzzle appeared there in January 2012 and led solvers from clues hidden in images to QR-coded posters on lampposts in several countries; its anonymous makers have never been identified.

Under what pseudonym did the Georgia Guidestones' anonymous commissioner operate?

R. C. Christian: the commissioner approached Elberton Granite in June 1979 under that pseudonym, accepting the deliberately inflated price quoted to scare him off; the monument was bombed and demolished in July 2022.

The cryptic Toynbee tiles embedded in city streets reference which film director?

Stanley Kubrick: the tiles read 'Toynbee idea in Kubrick's 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter'; hundreds have appeared in US and South American streets since the 1980s and their maker was never confirmed.

The 1518 'dancing plague', in which people danced for weeks, broke out in which city?

Strasbourg: it began in July 1518 when Frau Troffea started dancing in the street; within a month dozens had joined her, and the city authorities at first prescribed more dancing, even hiring musicians.

The Mothman sightings of 1966-67 centred on Point Pleasant in which US state?

West Virginia: sightings around Point Pleasant began in November 1966, and a biologist suggested a stray sandhill crane; after the town's Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967, killing dozens, the creature was recast as an omen.

The unidentified 'Isdal Woman' was found burned in 1970 near which Norwegian city?

Bergen: her body was found in the Isdalen valley near Bergen in November 1970; two suitcases she had left at the railway station had every label cut from the clothes and identifying marks scraped away.

A 1989 Polaroid thought to show missing cyclist Tara Calico turned up in which state?

Florida: the Polaroid of a bound young woman and a boy was found in June 1989 in a convenience-store parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida; Scotland Yard said it showed Calico, Los Alamos disagreed and the FBI was inconclusive.

Where in the Stay on Main hotel in downtown Los Angeles was Elisa Lam's body found in 2013?

A cistern on the roof: guests had complained of low pressure and odd-tasting water, and footage of her behaving erratically in an elevator had gone viral days earlier.

Which New York governor appointed Judge Joseph Crater months before he vanished in 1930?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor, named Crater to the New York Supreme Court in April 1930; Crater vanished on August 6 after dinner in Manhattan, and his case was so famous that 'pulling a Crater' entered slang.

Lord Lucan vanished in 1974 after being suspected of killing whom?

His children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned in the family's Belgravia home on November 7, 1974; Lucan's car was found abandoned in Newhaven, a 1975 inquest jury named him the killer, and he was declared dead in 1999.

Pilot Frederick Valentich vanished in 1978 over which body of water?

Bass Strait: Valentich's Cessna vanished on October 21, 1978, en route from Melbourne to King Island; his last words to air traffic control were 'It's not an aircraft', and officials suggested he had flown upside down into the sea.

Which Australian prime minister vanished while swimming near Portsea in December 1967?

Harold Holt waded into the surf at Cheviot Beach on December 17, 1967, and no trace of him was ever found; a Melbourne swimming centre was later named in his memory.

Which explorer vanished in 1925 searching for a lost city dubbed 'Z'?

Percy Fawcett set out from Cuiabá in April 1925 with his son Jack and Jack's friend; their last letter came from a spot he had named Dead Horse Camp, and what became of the three was never established.

Tylenol capsules that killed seven people in 1982 were laced with which poison?

Potassium cyanide had been slipped into capsules already on store shelves; the unsolved poisonings pushed drug makers to the sealed, tamper-evident packaging now standard for over-the-counter medicines.

Five of the Sodder children vanished in a 1945 house fire on which holiday?

Christmas Day: the fire broke out around 1 a.m. on December 25, 1945, at the family home in Fayetteville; the Sodders came to doubt that the five children had died, and for years kept a billboard at the site appealing for news of them.

Which writer coined the nickname 'Servant Girl Annihilator' for an 1880s Austin killer?

O. Henry, then a young Austin resident named William Sydney Porter, used the phrase in an 1885 letter; the axe murders of 1884-85 came three years before Jack the Ripper, and some newspapers linked the two killers.

Glasgow's 'Bible John' met all three of his victims at which venue?

The Barrowland: all three women killed between February 1968 and October 1969 had spent the evening at the Barrowland Ballroom, and the well-spoken, Bible-quoting man seen with them became known as Bible John.

The MV Joyita, found adrift without her 25 passengers and crew in 1955, had sailed from which islands?

Samoa: she left Apia for the Tokelau Islands in October 1955 and was found five weeks later drifting near Fiji; her cork-lined hull made her almost unsinkable, so nobody could say why she was abandoned.

The crewless steamer Baychimo, abandoned in Arctic pack ice in 1931, was sighted adrift for decades off which coast?

Alaska: the Hudson's Bay Company fur trader was abandoned in the ice in 1931 and became a ghost ship along Alaska's Arctic coast, sighted again and again until 1969.

The undeciphered rongorongo glyphs were collected in the 19th century from where?

Easter Island: the two dozen or so surviving tablets were carried off in the late 19th century and now sit in museums far from the island; they are written in reverse boustrophedon, with every other line upside down.

The Copper Scroll, a treasure list found in 1952, is displayed in which country?

Jordan: found in a cave near Qumran, the scroll is kept in a museum in Amman; unlike the other Dead Sea Scrolls it is no religious text but a list of 64 hiding places for gold and silver.

The airliner Star Dust's final 1947 Morse message ended with which unexplained word?

STENDEC: the radio operator sent the word three times before the airliner hit Mount Tupungato on August 2, 1947; pushed back by the jet stream, the crew had begun descending while still short of the mountains.

The low-frequency 'Taos Hum' is reported in which US state?

New Mexico: residents of Taos began reporting the low drone in the early 1990s; researchers who came to investigate could not trace it to any cause, and most people in town could not hear it at all.

The giant Nazca geoglyphs, best seen from the air, are in which country?

Peru's Nazca Desert holds the lines, made roughly 2,000 years ago by clearing away the dark surface pebbles to expose the paler ground beneath.

The Monster of Florence murders inspired a subplot in which Thomas Harris novel?

Hannibal: Harris sat in on the trial of Pietro Pacciani, the man accused of murdering couples in cars parked outside the city, and worked the case into the novel's Florence chapters.

Bandleader Glenn Miller's plane vanished in December 1944 over which stretch of water?

The English Channel: Miller took off from Twinwood Farm, Bedfordshire, on December 15, 1944, in a single-engined Norseman bound for Paris, the day before the Battle of the Bulge began; no wreckage was ever found.

Writer Ambrose Bierce vanished in 1913 after joining whose revolutionary army as an observer at Ciudad Juárez?

Pancho Villa's army took him on as an observer after he rode into revolutionary Mexico at 71; sometime after Christmas 1913 he vanished near Chihuahua, and no trace of him was ever found.

The 'Boy in the Box', finally identified by DNA in 2022, was found in 1957 in which city?

Philadelphia: the boy lay in a cardboard box in a weedy lot in Fox Chase; once police named him Joseph Augustus Zarelli, his grave, long marked 'America's Unknown Child', was given a headstone bearing his name.