The bewildering world around us got a little less bewildering recently. So far, 2018 has been a good year for solving mysteries that had haunted us for decades, centuries, and even millennia. More and more of the unknown becomes known with each passing day.
10 Mysteries Conundrums Overview
10 Who Was Joseph Chandler?
Back in 2002, a 76‑year‑old resident of Eastlake, Ohio, named Joseph Chandler took his own life. At first glance the case seemed straightforward—an elderly man, a tragic end, and that was that. However, when officials tried to trace his next‑of‑kin, they hit a puzzling snag: the man who died was not the real Joseph Newton Chandler III, whose actual death occurred back in 1945 when he was merely eight years old.
This identity conundrum lingered for sixteen years until June 2018, when investigators finally announced that the deceased was in fact Robert Ivan Nichols. By deploying genealogical sleuthing and DNA analysis, they located Nichols’s surviving son and confirmed his true name.
Robert Nichols had served as a decorated World War II Navy sailor. After the war he settled into a seemingly ordinary existence—married, three children, and a drafting job at General Electric. Yet in 1964 he vanished from his family’s life, promising they would learn the reason “in due time.” By 1978 he resurfaced under the alias Joseph Chandler, complete with a fabricated birth certificate, Social Security card, and employment record. The fourteen‑year gap between his disappearance and re‑emergence remains shrouded in mystery.
Those who knew him as Joseph described a quirky, solitary intellect who always kept a suitcase ready for a sudden departure and would disappear for days or weeks without warning. Authorities still piece together his earlier years, suspecting a darker motive for his disappearance. One popular theory even links him to the Zodiac Killer, though no definitive proof has emerged.
9 What Did The Spanish King Say To His General?
Ferdinand II of Aragon, a pivotal figure in Spanish history, helped drive the Reconquista, wed Isabella I, and backed Columbus’s maiden voyage. Recently, Spain’s intelligence service cracked a half‑millennium‑old cipher that Ferdinand employed to correspond with his general, Gonzalo de Córdoba, during the war with France over the Kingdom of Naples.
The encrypted letters traveled roughly fifteen days between the monarch and his commander, prompting the use of a secret code to safeguard the messages should they fall into enemy hands.
The cipher comprised 237 combined letters and 88 unique symbols, each real character built from two to six of these symbols and written without any spacing between words. Historians stared at the tangled script for centuries. After the letters were displayed at the Army Museum in Toledo, professional codebreakers from Spain’s National Intelligence Center were summoned. After six months of painstaking work, they decoded four letters, and hope remains that the remaining correspondence will eventually be deciphered.
8 Why Is Tracy Melting Fast?
In Greenland, two neighboring glaciers—Tracy and Heilprin—drain into the Inglefield Gulf. Though they sit side by side, Tracy is shedding ice at nearly four times the rate of Heilprin.
Human observers have sporadically monitored the pair for 120 years. Over that span, Tracy has retreated more than 15 km (9.5 mi) upstream, while Heilprin has only withdrawn about 4 km (2.5 mi). The stark contrast baffled scientists for decades.
NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) campaign, launched in 2015, finally illuminated the cause. Oceanic measurements revealed a warm water plume coursing beneath Tracy, whereas a much cooler flow lies in front of Heilprin. Additionally, Tracy’s grounding line reaches roughly 600 m (2,000 ft) below sea level, compared with Heilprin’s 350 m (1,100 ft). Since the upper ocean layer around Greenland is colder than the deeper water that originates further south, Tracy’s deeper immersion subjects it to more warm water, accelerating its melt rate.
7 What Happened To Louise Pietrewicz?
Louise Pietrewicz vanished 51 years ago from a farming community on Long Island, and only now have investigators uncovered her remains, offering a glimpse into her final moments.
In 1967, 38‑year‑old Louise ran off with her boyfriend, police officer William Boken. Trapped in an abusive marriage, she emptied her savings, Boken quit his job, and the pair disappeared together. The case faded from public memory, and no one was ever charged.
A deep‑dive by the Suffolk Times last year revived interest, prompting a woman to step forward. She turned out to be Boken’s ex‑wife, who claimed that he had hidden a body beneath the basement of their former Southold home. Using ground‑penetrating radar, police located skeletal remains packed in a burlap sack. DNA testing matched the remains to Louise’s daughter, confirming her identity. Autopsy revealed she had been shot, most likely by Boken, who died in 1982. The ex‑wife’s tip finally solved the long‑standing mystery.
6 Where Did The Embrithopods Come From?
The newest fossil find of the extinct mammalian order Embrithopoda finally clarifies the group’s origins.
When the dinosaurs vanished, a vacuum opened that was quickly filled by large mammals, among them Embrithopoda—relatives of modern elephants. The most famous member, Arsinoitherium, resembled a massive rhino with two enormous horns perched above its nose.
Excavators in a Moroccan quarry uncovered 55‑million‑year‑old remains of a new genus named Stylolophus. This pushes the earliest known embrithopod fossils back by seven million years, settling a debate over whether the order began in Africa or the Middle East. Prior to this, the oldest specimens dated to 48 million years and were scattered across northern Africa and Turkey. The Moroccan discovery supports the view that embrithopods originated in Africa, prompting some paleontologists to reclassify them within the broader Afrotheria clade, which includes elephants, tenrecs, sea cows, aardvarks, and hyraxes.
5 Who Was Lyle Stevik?
In 2001, a young man in his twenties checked into a motel in Amanda Park, Washington, under the alias Lyle Stevik. He hanged himself, and his body was discovered a few days later. Despite extensive efforts, authorities could not determine his true identity, leaving Lyle Stevik an enduring enigma.
The mystery captured the imagination of the online community, spawning countless theories. Some linked his suicide, which occurred shortly after the September 11 attacks, to the tragedy itself—speculating he might have been a would‑be hijacker who backed out, a planner wracked with guilt, a spy, or a cult member. The lack of concrete evidence allowed these wild conjectures to flourish.
In May 2018, the DNA Doe Project—a nonprofit that uses genealogy databases to identify unknown decedents—finally solved the case. By cross‑referencing DNA profiles, they uncovered his real identity, though police have kept his actual name private to protect his family’s privacy. The truth turned out to be far less sensational: Lyle was simply a troubled youth who ran away from home and chose to end his life.
4 Why Is The Great Pyramid Lopsided?
The Egyptian pyramids have long been hailed as engineering marvels, sparking theories of alien assistance. Yet the Great Pyramid of Giza isn’t perfectly symmetrical; its western side is marginally longer than the eastern side, giving it a subtle tilt.
Surprisingly, this irregularity escaped detection until 2016. Researchers from Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) and the Glen Dash Research Foundation conducted a detailed survey to map the pyramid’s original base. Since the outer white‑limestone casing had been stripped away, they searched for the faint markings that indicated where the original stones sat.
By pinpointing 84 reference points, they applied linear regression to calculate side lengths. The measurements showed the north, south, and east faces ranged from 230.295 m to 230.373 m (755.561–755.817 ft), while the west face measured slightly longer at 230.378 m to 230.436 m (755.833–756.024 ft). This minor construction slip explains the pyramid’s slight lopsidedness—still impressive, but a reminder that even ancient builders made tiny errors.
3 What Killed The Unluckiest Man In Pompeii?
Recent excavations at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii uncovered a skeleton that quickly went viral as the “unluckiest man in the world.” The initial impression suggested a massive 270‑kg (595‑lb) stone block had slammed into his upper body, apparently decapitating him.
Further study, however, revised his cause of death. Archaeologists found the missing upper portions of the skeleton intact and concluded that he died from asphyxiation caused by the pyroclastic flow, not from a crushing stone. The body lay atop a Bourbon‑era tunnel that collapsed, causing his skull, thorax, and upper limbs to fall about a meter (3.3 ft) below the rest of his remains. Aside from a few fractures, his skull remained whole and even retained most of its teeth, contradicting the earlier “decapitated by boulder” narrative.
Researchers continue to investigate how the skeleton ended up in that peculiar position. One hypothesis suggests the stone block might have been a doorjamb that fell over the body after the tunnel collapsed, but the exact timing remains uncertain.
2 What Causes The Lightning Of Jupiter?
For centuries, scholars theorized that Jupiter generated lightning, but it wasn’t until Voyager 1’s 1979 flyby that the phenomenon was confirmed. Subsequent questions lingered about how Jovian lightning differed from Earth’s.
The Juno spacecraft’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) finally answered many of those queries. It recorded 377 lightning discharges that, unlike earlier observations limited to the kilohertz range, spanned megahertz and gigahertz frequencies—mirroring Earth’s lightning spectrum. This clarified that previous discrepancies stemmed from insufficient instrumentation rather than an exotic Jovian mechanism.
Nonetheless, Jupiter’s lightning displays a distinct pattern. JPL scientist Shannon Brown describes it as “inside‑out” compared to Earth: storms concentrate near the poles and are virtually absent at the equator. The contrast arises from how each planet acquires heat. Earth receives most of its energy from the Sun, warming the equator and fostering moist, rising air that fuels thunderstorms. Jupiter, however, gets 25 times less solar energy, leading to a relatively stable equatorial atmosphere where warm air does not rise, while its poles, receiving enough internal heat, host vigorous lightning activity.
1 When Did Our Testicles Descend?
A recent study in PLOS Biology tackles the evolutionary origins of descended testicles, asking whether early mammals possessed this trait or acquired it later.
Today, members of the Afrotheria clade—such as elephants, hyraxes, and sea cows—exhibit “testicondy,” meaning their testes remain tucked inside the abdomen. Scientists wondered if this was a primitive condition or a derived reversal.
Because soft tissue rarely fossilizes, researchers from the Max Planck Institute examined the genetic record instead. They focused on two genes, INSL3 and RXFP2, known to drive testicular descent before birth. Analyzing the genomes of 71 mammals, they discovered that four Afrotherian species with testicondy still carried non‑functional copies of these genes.
By counting mutations accumulated in these defunct genes, the team estimated their loss occurred between 23 and 83 million years ago. Since the Afrotherian lineage split from other mammals around 100 million years ago, the inference is that the earliest Afrotherians possessed descended testes. Consequently, early mammals likely shared this trait, and the abdominal retention seen in modern Afrotherians evolved independently on at least four separate occasions.