I brought a notebook, circled three clues, and immediately accused the weather. These 120 unsolved mystery questions cover vanishings, unidentified criminals, stubborn ciphers, stolen masterpieces, lost treasure, and cases where the honest answer remains an unusually frustrating shrug.
Keep investigating with our world history trivia and U.S. history trivia.
Famous Disappearances and Lost Expeditions
Q: Which aviator disappeared over the central Pacific in 1937?
A: Amelia Earhart, while attempting to fly around the world.
Q: Who was Earhart's navigator on the final flight?
A: Fred Noonan, an experienced celestial navigator.
Q: Which island was Earhart trying to reach?
A: Howland Island, a tiny American possession north of the equator.
Q: What aircraft was Earhart flying?
A: A Lockheed Electra 10E.
Q: Which ship waited near Howland Island?
A: The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca.
Q: Which Malaysian airliner vanished in 2014?
A: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying 239 people.
Q: From which city did Flight 370 depart?
A: Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing.
Q: Which ocean became the main Flight 370 search area?
A: The southern Indian Ocean.
Q: Where was confirmed Flight 370 debris first found?
A: Réunion Island, where a flaperon washed ashore in 2015.
Q: Which English colony disappeared in the sixteenth century?
A: The Roanoke Colony on present-day Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
Q: Which word was carved at the abandoned Roanoke settlement?
A: CROATOAN, referring to an island and Indigenous community.
Q: Who governed the Roanoke colonists?
A: John White, who returned to England for supplies.
Q: Who was the first English child born in the Americas?
A: Virginia Dare, White's granddaughter, born at Roanoke in 1587.
Q: Which two ships vanished during Franklin's Arctic expedition?
A: HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
Q: Who led the lost Franklin expedition?
A: Sir John Franklin, seeking the Northwest Passage in 1845.
Q: Where were Erebus and Terror eventually located?
A: Canadian Arctic waters in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
Q: Which part of Franklin's story remains unresolved?
A: The precise experiences, movements, and deaths of many crew members.
Q: Which American labor leader vanished in 1975?
A: Jimmy Hoffa, former president of the Teamsters union.
Q: Where was Hoffa last seen?
A: Outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant near Detroit.
Q: When was Hoffa legally declared dead?
A: 1982, seven years after his disappearance.
Q: Which three Australian siblings vanished in 1966?
A: Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont.
Q: From which beach did the Beaumont children disappear?
A: Glenelg Beach near Adelaide.
Q: Which British girl disappeared from a Portuguese resort in 2007?
A: Madeleine McCann, then three years old.
Q: In which Algarve town did Madeleine disappear?
A: Praia da Luz.
Q: Which lighthouse trio vanished from Scotland's Flannan Isles?
A: James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald McArthur in 1900.
Q: What did the relief crew find at the Flannan lighthouse?
A: An empty station with no confirmed explanation for the men's absence.
Q: Which American writer vanished in Mexico in 1913?
A: Ambrose Bierce, author of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
Q: Which explorer disappeared searching for a lost Amazon city?
A: Percy Fawcett, along with his son Jack and Raleigh Rimell.
Q: What name did Fawcett give his lost city?
A: Z, which he believed lay somewhere in Brazil.
Q: Which French motion-picture pioneer vanished during train travel in 1890?
A: Louis Le Prince disappeared after boarding a Dijon-to-Paris train.
Unidentified Criminals and Unsolved Crimes
Q: Which hijacker parachuted from a Boeing 727 in 1971?
A: D.B. Cooper, the name attached to an unidentified man.
Q: What name did the Cooper suspect actually use?
A: Dan Cooper; a reporting mix-up popularized D.B. Cooper.
Q: Which airline operated Cooper's hijacked flight?
A: Northwest Orient Airlines.
Q: What ransom did Cooper receive?
A: $200,000 and four parachutes.
Q: Where did Cooper jump from the aircraft?
A: Somewhere over the Pacific Northwest between Seattle and Reno.
Q: What Cooper evidence was found in 1980?
A: Three bundles totaling $5,800 on the Columbia River's Tena Bar.
Q: Which killer sent coded letters to California newspapers?
A: The Zodiac Killer in the late 1960s.
Q: Which symbol did the Zodiac use as a signature?
A: A circle crossed by vertical and horizontal lines.
Q: How many Zodiac victims are officially confirmed?
A: Five killed and two wounded, though the writer claimed more.
Q: Which Zodiac cipher was solved by amateurs in 2020?
A: The 340-character cipher, commonly called Z340.
Q: Which Victorian killer targeted women in Whitechapel?
A: Jack the Ripper in London in 1888.
Q: How many victims form the canonical Ripper group?
A: Five women, although other cases have been proposed.
Q: What was the final canonical victim's name?
A: Mary Jane Kelly, killed in Miller's Court.
Q: Which nickname came from a signed letter?
A: Jack the Ripper, from the Dear Boss letter.
Q: Which 1947 Los Angeles victim became known as the Black Dahlia?
A: Elizabeth Short.
Q: Where was Elizabeth Short's body found?
A: A vacant lot in Los Angeles' Leimert Park neighborhood.
Q: Which family was killed at Villisca in 1912?
A: Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children, and two Stillinger sisters.
Q: What weapon gave the Villisca case its common name?
A: An ax found in the Moore house.
Q: Which New Orleans murderer sent a jazz-themed letter?
A: The Axeman of New Orleans.
Q: What did the Axeman demand residents play?
A: Jazz music on the night he claimed he would strike again.
Q: Which Texarkana attacker inspired The Town That Dreaded Sundown?
A: The Phantom Killer of the 1946 Moonlight Murders.
Q: Which family was slain in Germany at Hinterkaifeck?
A: Andreas and Cäzilia Gruber, relatives, and their maid in 1922.
Q: What strange clue preceded the Hinterkaifeck murders?
A: Footprints reportedly led from the forest toward the farm without returning.
Q: Which Oslo hotel guest died under the alias Jennifer Fairgate?
A: An unidentified woman found at the Oslo Plaza in 1995.
Q: Which three women vanished from a Springfield, Missouri, home in 1992?
A: Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall, known as the Springfield Three.
Q: What unusual clue was left at the Springfield Three home?
A: The women’s cars and personal belongings remained, while a porch-light globe was broken.
Q: Which Japanese candy-company president was kidnapped in 1984?
A: Katsuhisa Ezaki of Glico.
Q: What name did the Glico-Morinaga extortionist use?
A: The Monster with 21 Faces.
Q: Which Canadian theater magnate disappeared in 1919?
A: Ambrose Small, last seen after selling his chain.
Q: Which Arkansas girl vanished from a Little League game in 1995?
A: Morgan Nick, who disappeared near a ball field in Alma.
Codes, Identities, and Historical Puzzles
Q: Which illustrated manuscript uses an undeciphered script?
A: The Voynich Manuscript.
Q: After whom is the Voynich Manuscript named?
A: Rare-book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it in 1912.
Q: Which university library holds the Voynich Manuscript?
A: Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Q: What do many Voynich illustrations depict?
A: Unidentified plants, astronomical diagrams, and bathing human figures.
Q: To which period does radiocarbon dating place its parchment?
A: The early fifteenth century.
Q: Which coded sculpture stands at CIA headquarters in Virginia?
A: Kryptos, a copper-screen artwork containing four encrypted passages.
Q: Where is the Kryptos sculpture located?
A: CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Q: Who created Kryptos?
A: American artist Jim Sanborn.
Q: How many Kryptos passages have been solved?
A: Three of four; the final section remains unsolved.
Q: Which word did Sanborn reveal as a clue to Kryptos?
A: Berlin, followed later by the clue Clock.
Q: Which encrypted notes supposedly reveal buried Virginia treasure?
A: The Beale ciphers.
Q: Which document helped decode the second Beale cipher?
A: The Declaration of Independence.
Q: Which part of the Beale story remains unverified?
A: The treasure, Thomas Beale's identity, and two unsolved ciphers.
Q: Which inscription appears on Shugborough Monument?
A: The letters O U O S V A V V, framed by D and M.
Q: In which English county is Shugborough Hall?
A: Staffordshire.
Q: Which ancient disk carries stamped spiral symbols?
A: The Phaistos Disc from Crete.
Q: Where was the Phaistos Disc discovered?
A: The Minoan palace of Phaistos in 1908.
Q: Which ancient script remains undeciphered on Crete?
A: Linear A, used by the Minoan civilization.
Q: Which related script was decoded by Michael Ventris?
A: Linear B, representing an early form of Greek.
Q: In what kind of publication did the D’Agapeyeff cipher first appear?
A: A 1939 cryptography book titled Codes and Ciphers.
Q: Who published the unsolved D'Agapeyeff cipher?
A: Alexander D'Agapeyeff in Codes and Ciphers.
Q: Which unknown prisoner became known as the Man in the Iron Mask?
A: A seventeenth-century French state prisoner whose identity remains debated.
Q: Which writer made the Iron Mask globally famous?
A: Alexandre Dumas through The Vicomte of Bragelonne.
Q: Which unidentified woman died in Norway's Isdalen Valley?
A: The Isdal Woman in 1970.
Q: What complicated the Isdal Woman investigation?
A: She used multiple aliases, wigs, and coded travel records.
Q: Which unidentified man was found on Australia's Somerton Beach?
A: The Somerton Man in 1948, long known through the Tamám Shud clue.
Q: What phrase appeared on paper in the Somerton Man case?
A: Tamám Shud, meaning ended or finished in Persian.
Q: Which identity has researchers proposed for the Somerton Man?
A: Carl Webb, based on genetic genealogy announced in 2022.
Q: Which unidentified murder victim was called Bella in the Wych Elm?
A: A woman found inside a Worcestershire tree in 1943.
Q: What graffiti spread Bella's mystery?
A: Who put Bella down the Wych Elm?
Stolen Art, Lost Treasure, and Modern Mysteries
Q: Which Boston museum suffered a major 1990 art theft?
A: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Q: How many works were stolen from the Gardner Museum?
A: Thirteen works, still missing decades later.
Q: How did the Gardner thieves enter?
A: They posed as police officers responding to a disturbance.
Q: Which Vermeer painting was stolen?
A: The Concert, one of the world's rare Vermeer paintings.
Q: Which Rembrandt seascape disappeared?
A: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Q: What remains in the museum's empty frames?
A: The frames hang as reminders and placeholders for the stolen works.
Q: Which Russian treasure vanished during World War II?
A: The Amber Room from Catherine Palace.
Q: What material covered the Amber Room's walls?
A: Amber panels, gold leaf, and mirrors.
Q: Where was the Amber Room last documented during the war?
A: Königsberg Castle in East Prussia.
Q: Which Canadian island is famous for the Money Pit?
A: Oak Island in Nova Scotia.
Q: When did recorded Oak Island treasure digging begin?
A: The late eighteenth century, according to traditional accounts.
Q: Which pirate's treasure is often linked to Oak Island?
A: Captain Kidd's, among many unsupported treasure theories.
Q: Which Arizona legend describes a hidden gold mine?
A: The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine in the Superstition Mountains.
Q: Which prospector is tied to the Lost Dutchman legend?
A: Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant nicknamed the Dutchman.
Q: Which Portuguese ship vanished with treasure near Sumatra in 1511?
A: Flor de la Mar, returning from the conquest of Malacca.
Q: Which Spanish galleon sank near Cartagena in 1708?
A: San José, lost during a battle with a British squadron.
Q: What valuable cargo made San José famous?
A: Gold, silver, and emeralds intended for the Spanish crown.
Q: Which television signal intrusion featured a rubber mask?
A: The 1987 Max Headroom broadcast incident in Chicago.
Q: Which two stations had their signals hijacked?
A: WGN-TV and WTTW.
Q: Which eerie shortwave broadcast is nicknamed the Buzzer?
A: UVB-76, known for repeating a buzzing tone and occasional messages.
Q: Which 1959 hiking deaths occurred in the Ural Mountains?
A: The Dyatlov Pass incident involving nine experienced hikers.
Q: Who led the Dyatlov hiking group?
A: Igor Dyatlov.
Q: What had the hikers done to their tent?
A: They cut it open from inside before fleeing into severe cold.
Q: Which natural explanation now has substantial support?
A: A delayed slab avalanche combined with extreme weather and hypothermia.
Q: Which five aircraft vanished in the 1945 Flight 19 incident?
A: Five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers.
Q: From where did Flight 19 depart?
A: Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Q: Which rescue aircraft also vanished during the search?
A: A PBM Mariner, likely lost in an explosion.
Q: Which three prisoners escaped Alcatraz in 1962?
A: Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin.
Q: What did the Alcatraz escapees leave in their beds?
A: Dummy heads made from plaster, paint, and real hair.
Q: What central question remains about the Alcatraz escape?
A: Whether the three men survived the cold, dangerous bay crossing.
How Did You Score?
If you knew Tena Bar, CROATOAN, the Z340 cipher, the Concert, the Monster with 21 Faces, and why Kryptos still needs one more solution, your caseboard is impressive. Mine has red string everywhere and has solved absolutely nothing.
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