Random Strangest Solved Mysteries (12 items)

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  (#11) The Iron Pillar of Delhi

  Likely built sometime around 450 CE, the 23-foot-tall iron pillar found in Delhi's ancient Qutb Complex amazed both locals and scientists because of its seeming resistance to rust. Theories about the "out-of-place artifact" abounded, with one explanation being that it was built by aliens, since local people at the time couldn't have built such an element-resistant object.

  But recent scientific analysis showed that not only was such a feat well within the capabilities of ancient people, it also revealed exactly why the pillar doesn't rust. It's coated with a thin layer of iron hydrogen phosphate hydrate (also called misawite), which keeps the elements out. The film likely ended up on the pillar through a combination of impurities in the iron and the primitive ovens the metallurgists were using. No ancient astronauts needed.
  
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  (#1) The Bloop

  "The Bloop" was the name given to an extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1997. Detected in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean off the southern tip of South America, the Bloop was an ultra-low frequency burst of noise that could be heard through hydrophones almost 3,000 miles away. Scientists had no idea what it was, and theorized everything from calving ice in Antarctica, to an iceberg dragging along the ocean floor, to a whale, and even to some unknown sea cryptid.

  It wasn't until 2012 that scientists agreed upon an explanation for the Bloop. The sound was matched to a known icequake, and it was eventually narrowed down to the crash of disintegrating icebergs somewhere between Bransfield Straits and the Ross Sea in Antarctica.
  
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  (#8) The Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film

  Shot in Northern California in 1967, the Patterson-Gimlin Film is almost certainly the most well-known piece of footage purporting to show Bigfoot. While the authenticity of the film is still debated by cryptozoologists and skeptics alike, they needn't bother: a 2004 book by author Greg Long revealed the entire thing as a hoax.

  A local laborer named Bob Heironimus wore a suit, and freely admitted to Long that he'd done so. Roger Patterson never paid anyone involved with the film, had charges filed against him to get him to return the camera he used, and likely did the whole thing as a stunt to provide for his family, as he was sick with cancer.
  
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  (#7) The Kidnapping of Carlina White

  On August 4, 1987, Carlina White, just 19 days old, was rushed to New York's Harlem Hospital Center. Suffering from an infection and high fever, Carlina was admitted, but disappeared during an early morning shift change. Witnesses described a heavyset woman dressed like a nurse who had been hanging around the NICU, and who left shortly after the shift change. But because the hospital's video surveillance wasn't working, nobody knew what she looked like. The incident was the first non-parental infant abduction in New York history. A reward was set up for White's return, but she was never found. The parents sued the hospital, won a settlement, and eventually split up. The case remained cold for decades.

  For the next 23 years, Carlina was raised under a new name by Connecticut resident Annugetta "Ann" Pettway. After becoming suspicious of her mother's inability to provide birth documents, as well as the lack of resemblance between the two, Carolina began researching on the Internet, and found baby photos that resembled her likeness as an infant.

  She called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and was reunited with her birth parents in 2000. Pettaway disappeared, but eventually turned herself in and pleaded guilty to kidnapping. She's currently serving a 12 year sentence.
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  (#4) The Blood Rain of Kerala

  Over two months in the summer of 2001, the state of Kerala in India was deluged by a mysterious, red-colored rain. Over a hundred thousand pounds of red particles fell, coating everything in the area. While the red rain phenomenon had happened before (documented cases go back to 1818) and would happen again, the blood rain over Kerala grabbed the imagination of scientists and pseudo-scientists alike when two researchers published a paper claiming the red particles were alien spores from an exploding, life-seeding comet.

  While the paper quickly became an accepted explanation for the rain, the actual cause was identified almost immediately, albeit with far less fanfare: airborne spores from local green algae. While such spores are commonly found in the atmosphere, and have been found in the other red rains around the world, there's still no explanation for why so many rained down for so long. 
  
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  (#5) The Death of Anastasia

  The horror of the October Revolution hit home in 1918, when Russia's Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed by Bolshevik secret police. Among them was 17-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna— better known simply as Anastasia. Because the bodies of the Tsar and his family were never found, rumors abounded that Anastasia had somehow escaped—rumors fanned by nearly a dozen women who claimed to be missing duchess.

  The most prominent was Anna Anderson, a German woman who claimed to be Anastasia in 1921, while living in an asylum. She claimed to have no memory of her escape. While Anderson managed to fool some people, survivors of the Romanov dynasty rejected her. Still, the story was made all the more intriguing by the fact that Anastasia's body was never found.

  The plot thickened in 1991,when a grave site was unearthed that contained the skeletons of nine of the eleven executed Romanovs, but not Anastasia. However, in 2007, two burned skeletons were found in a pit near the same site, and DNA testing confirmed that one was the Grand Duchess. She died in 1918, as had been suspected all along.
  

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