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If you could go back in time and solve an unsolved mystery, where would you go?

AGXStarseed

AGXStarseed

Well-Known Member
History has a lot of unexplained phenomena, unsolved mysteries, unresolved accounts of strange stories, etc. that keep many of us interested in working out what happened.
If you had the opportunity to go back in time and solve these mysteries, which mysteries would you like to go back and solve?

For those of you wondering, the 'time travel' would be similar to A Christmas Carol, with people not been able to see/hear you and you been only able to watch - not intervene.
I'll give us a few mysteries to start us off.

1. The Existence of Jesus - Without getting too religious as this isn't the forum for that, I would be genuinely interested to see if he actually existed, what kind of person he was and if he really did possess supernatural powers or not. Considering how many of us are brought up to believe in Jesus, I think this would be a good mystery to solve (albeit one a lot of people likely wouldn't want the answer to if it wasn't the one they wanted/believed).

2. The Disappearance of Agatha Christie: On December 3rd 1926, author Agatha Christie (know for writing the Poirot and Miss Marple books) left her home and then disappeared for 10 days - with her car abandoned above a chalk quarry in Surrey. She was found on December 14th at a hotel in Harrogate with no idea of how she got there.
I'd be interested to see what actually happened to her over those ten days.

3. The 1977 "Thunderbird" attack in Illinois: On July 25th 1977 in Lawndale, Illinois, a ten year old boy was attacked by a giant bird which tried to carry him off. The attempt failed and the incident was witnessed by Marlon's mother and multiple witnesses, but the police refused to believe their story (the officer on the phone laughing when it was described) and the family suffered ridicule and abuse for a long time afterwards.
I would want to go back to see if this actually happened, as there have been other reports of giant bird sightings and some believe the bird may have been a Teratorn - a gigantic species of predatory bird that was believed to be extinct.
Here's a scale model of a Teratorn:
image109.jpg


4. The Roswell Incident: This one is pretty well known, but I'd just like to see if it actually was a UFO crash landing or genuinely just a weather balloon.

5. The Disappearance of the crew from the Mary Celeste: The Mary Celeste was a ship that entered the Bermuda Triangle. When it was later discovered, all the crew were missing - with food left half eaten and the lifeboat gone. None of the crew were ever heard from again.
I'd like to find out what caused the crew to abandon ship and what actually happened to the crew.


What about you guys?
 
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John F Kennedy and what ever happened to my cooking pot that somehow disappeared to never re-appear. It's probably filled with dirt in the field that was behind the house, but I'll never know for sure.
 
I would go back 17 minutes and not be distracted reading the cereal box so I wouldn't bite my tongue while eating.
 
I would like to see what the dinosaurs were really like, what the world was like then.
I would also like to see how the universe was actually formed and what was there, if anything before the big bang.
I would like to know how they moved and erected the statues on Easter Island, and how they transported the stones of Stonehenge. Also, I'd like to see how they built the pyramids. I think that this is something better understood, but I'd still like to see and confirm it.
About the Bermuda triangle, I'd like to see what happed to Flight 19. I'd also like to know what happened to the Malaysian Airways Flight 370, which disappeared in 2014 but was never found.
I would like to know whether George Mallory actually summited Everest or not.

I believe Jesus was a real person who existed, but don't believe he had 'superpowers'.
 
My favorite mystery?

To determine whether or not the last Nazi war criminal imprisoned in Spandau really was Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, and to learn of all the events that transpired after he landed his plane in England in 1941.

Whether or not he attempted to negotiate an armistice with Britain, and whether or not the British government truly considered it. And whether the Russians knew about it, and had Hess murdered and replaced with an imposter. With both countries remaining permanently silent on the issue for political and diplomatic reasons.

That the man who landed in England in 1941 was not the same man who was tried at Nuremberg in 1946.
 
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If I came back, it probably wouldn't be for a mystery... Living life in regret is not a good thing but sometimes you just can't help it.
 
Whatever happened to Antoine de Saint-Expury (author of The Little Prince).

Also I would like to meet Johann Sebastian Bach, to ask him why he didn't encourage any of his daughters to become musicians.
 
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A few more from me:

King Arthur: Similar to what I said about Jesus, I'd like to see if he was real and - if he was - how much of his story was true. If he was real and the magic stuff was real too (why not?), I'd like to see where Avalon actually is and where he told Sir Griflet/Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur.

Billy Meier: This guy claims to have been in contact with a race of extraterrestrial humans called the Pleiadians since childhood. Without going into conspiracy theory territory, I'd like to see if he was genuinely meeting with them or if he's talking a load of rubbish.

West Memphis Three: I thought about this one after listening to the 2011 song "3" by Disturbed, which told of three teenage boys accused of the brutal murders of three children, although the case has since attracted a substantial amount of controversy - most notably as one of the West Memphis Three (Echols) was said during the trial to suffer from "serious mental illness characterized by grandiose and persecutory delusions, auditory and visual hallucinations, disordered thought processes, substantial lack of insight, and chronic, incapacitating mood swings.".
I would want to go back and see what truly happened. Here's the song:

The Disappearance of Madeline McCann: This is one of those 'missing child' stories that still hasn't been solved and I would like to see what actually happened. We have seen cases of missing children that thankfully have a happy outcome even if that outcome is years later, so I would want to see if Maddie is still alive or not and who took her.

The Library of Alexandria: Not so much a mystery although the majority of its contents were lost in a great fire. I would want to go back and see what was on the numerous scrolls, especially as its reported one of the scrolls contained the correct calculation for the radius and circumference of Earth - thousands of years before modern scientists confirmed it!
 
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At the risk of sounding like I'm copying @AGXStarseed, I'd like to investigate the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh. She was an estate agent whose last appointment (according in her desk diary) was at 37 Shorrolds Road, London, SW6 7TR on 28 July 1986 at 12:45.
Wikipedia entry
 
Did the Roswell Alien landings ever actually happen and were they hushed up by the US government? I'd like to find out.
 
What Sylvia Plath wrote in her last two diaries which her estranged husband Ted Hughes destroyed (supposedly to project her/their children but I suspect really to protect himself).
 
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I would like to go back to 1974, when F. Sherwood "Sherry" Rowland at UC Irvine discovered the link between CFCs and ozone depletion. I'd like to ask him what it was like being one of the first people in the world (along with his postdoc Mario Molina) to know about the harmful effects of aerosol propellants. Did he tell his wife to stop using hairspray?

Obituary from 2012

Update: Actually I had the opportunity to put that question to Prof Rowland when I had the good fortune to be in the audience of the 1995 Nobel Chemistry Prize lectures in Stockholm. I desisted, partly because I was watching on a screen outside the main theatre (so I couldn't see Paul Crutzen's equations, boo!) but also because I didn't know whether Rowland was married!

But seriously, I would love to have asked him how it was that the USA acted so swiftly in passing legislation to phase out CFCs, and what lessons can be learnt to apply to other environmental problems. The USA was one of the first countries in the world to phase out CFCs in 1978 (I think Sweden was the very first). It would take the best part of a decade for the rest of the world (including the UK, which procrastinated until 1988) to follow suit in the form of the 1987 Montreal Protocol. Some might say that getting rid of CFCs was an easy win, given that industry alternatives were readily available. But just read again this paragraph from the obituary linked to above:

Their ozone depletion theory was at first disputed by the chemical industry and especially by DuPont, the inventor and main manufacturer of CFCs, whose then chairman considered it "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense". Rowland recalls that the trade magazine Aerosol Age ran "an article calling us agents of the Soviet Union's KGB, who were trying to destroy American industry." By 1978, however, the use of CFCs in aerosols had been banned in the US and Canada.

So, from scientific paper to legislation in just four years! Maybe there's a movie to be made out of that.
 
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