The Cold War is a name given to the years following World War II up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. During that time, the United States and the Soviet Union had a tense standoff.

The two sides began an arms race, making as much advanced technology as possible to beat the other. When the threat of potential nuclear attack from the Soviet Union became a possibility, the Office of Civil Defense created a number of films aimed at educating the American people about the dangers of nuclear fallout.

Despite the fact that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the aftereffects of the devastating damage caused by radiation were still a new phenomenon that needed to be studied. Many of these films are labeled as fearmongering, misleading propaganda, while others will argue that the government was simply trying to do the best they could with the information they had at the time.

10 Duck And Cover

This 1950s federally funded film was meant to be shown in elementary schools to educate children on how to protect themselves during an atomic bomb attack. It compares atomic bomb blasts to common disasters like house fires and radiation flashes to a bad sunburn.

The entire point of the movie is to encourage people to “duck and cover” if there is ever an atomic bomb explosion. It explains that if there is a warning that the bomb is coming, people should go to their homes and hide inside hallways, duck and cover against a wall, and keep away from doors or windows.

Obviously, with everything the public knows about atomic bombs today, ducking and covering is not enough to protect yourself from a radioactive blast. This film is a perfect example of how little people knew about the dangers of atomic power in the early 1950s.

For years, Duck and Cover was considered to be an example of the misguidance given to citizens from the government. However, in 2010, the United States government advised citizens yet again that if there was any attack from an enemy force, they should stay indoors

Critics of this advice have compared it to the uselessness of Duck and Cover. However, in modern times, aside from TV series like Doomsday Preppers, average US citizens are not preparing for nuclear fallout.

9 Fallout Shelter Life

This film shows what people can expect if they need to live in a community fallout shelter. During the Cold War, the Office of Civil Defense offered free supplies to buildings that were willing to provide their basements as community shelters. It is clear that this movie pushes the audience to want to build their own fallout shelters at home, which could be outfitted for months of survival rather than only two weeks.

The food that the government provided was part of their “emergency mass feeding” plan for these community shelters. They contained rations adding up to only 700 calories per day.

The daily meals were actually just biscuits and crackers that were infused with nutrients. There were also candies that were meant to be carbohydrate supplements. The red dye used in the candy is actually banned today because it was discovered to cause cancer.

The second half of this film gives terrible advice about what to do after canned goods are gone. They say that eating the rotting vegetables and moldy bread is okay as long as the rotting bits are cut out. In reality, poisonous mold spores contaminate the entire area surrounding it. The US Department of Agriculture now advises against eating any type of moldy food.

The film also tells people that eating livestock should be fine, too. In reality, we can see the aftereffects of livestock in Fukushima, Japan, after being exposed to radiation from the nuclear factory explosion in 2011.

By the end of this film, the group hears a radio announcement that they can safely leave their shelters two weeks later. This is also totally unrealistic as we learned from Fukushima, which still has harmfully high levels of radiation even years later.

8 Survival Under Atomic Attack

This movie was made by the Office of Civil Defense and featured the information in their 1950 booklet called Survival Under Atomic Attack. The goal of both the booklet and this film is to tell the American people, “You can survive atomic attack!”

The film downplays the seriousness of the effects that radiation had on the population of Hiroshima, Japan, after the nuclear bomb hit. Showing documentary clips of the recovery in Japan, the film explains that shadows forever cast on the pavement on the Yorozuya Bridge from the blast are proof that you can survive if you hide behind a cement object. In reality, it means the exact opposite because the shadows are permanently cast as a form of thermal radiance.

This movie discourages people from evacuating their cities and tells them to continue with their daily lives, especially continuing production in factories. It is clear that the government wanted people to keep working. Without factory workers, weapons would stop being produced and it would be unlikely that the US could bounce back from an attack.

The tips given in this film are general fire, safety, and emergency preparedness tips that apply to tornadoes and hurricanes, like keeping flashlights on hand and making sure your garbage can has a lid on it. The advice was ultimately useless for an atomic attack. It would only serve the government to keep citizens feeling safe so that society continues to function.

7 Town Of The Times

This film talks about the statistics of the average American town only having five finished fallout shelters built in the basements of private homes. Local politicians are hesitant to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to build massive fallout shelters underneath public buildings like schools.

This movie goes through a scenario of what towns can do to create fallout shelters with their available public spaces and how life can continue in the event of an attack.

The government strongly preferred that individual families build their own fallout shelters rather than rely on state and local governments to spend taxpayer dollars on larger ones for the community. The government even offered lifetime guaranteed tax credits if families built fallout shelters in their basements that met the standards set by the government.

The last remaining up-to-code fallout shelter in New York City belongs to Francisco Lago, who now uses it as a storage area in the basement. Another woman named Edith Fetterman commented to The New York Times on her reasons for building a fallout shelter in Queens, New York, in the 1950s.

She is a Polish immigrant who survived the Holocaust as a young girl, but her parents and sister were killed. She grew up, got married, and had two kids. After knowing such evils existed from her childhood, the threat of nuclear war only made sense. Many Americans felt there was nothing to worry about, but building a personal fallout shelter was the logical thing to do for Edith.

6 Walt Builds A Family Fallout Shelter

This film was sponsored by the National Concrete Masonry Association, teaching a do-it-yourself method of building a fallout shelter in your basement. People are encouraged to build the shelter with the idea that it could double as a guest bedroom, a photography darkroom, or a playroom for children if a nuclear attack didn’t happen.

In 1959, the government circulated a booklet called The Family Fallout Shelter which gives blueprints on DIY shelters, ranging from very simple ones that would only cost $150 all the way to the more elaborate ones costing several thousand dollars.

By the end of this instructional film, Walt explains that it just makes sense to have a shelter in your basement in the age of nuclear threat. Author Melvin E. Matthews Jr. explains that while the fear of possible attacks was not irrational, much of this propaganda was funded by companies who would benefit from the sales of construction goods and the hiring of contractors to make these simple shelters, which they described as “just a swimming pool, only upside down.”

5 To Live Tomorrow

This film gives the appearance of a helpful public service announcement, although it is actually clever marketing to exploit society’s fears. At the beginning and end of this film, we see that it was sponsored by the Life Insurance Institute.

The plot of this short movie shows a man working as an insurance executive as he tries to come up with a way to let customers know how to be prepared for a nuclear attack. He keeps going to the conclusion that the key to survival is leadership. In panicked situations, people tend not to think clearly unless they are trained on what to do. The movie suggests that the viewer prepare to take action and become a leader.

One example they show is a grease fire in the kitchen of a family home. The children are frozen with fear until the mother instructs them to run and get the fireproof blanket from the other room. Meanwhile, she throws baking soda on the flames. As the leader, she delegates tasks to the children and they are able to put out the fire together.

Without explicitly saying it, this movie seems to be hinting at fathers that they have a responsibility to be prepared for absolutely anything as leaders of their households. One of those things would be the possibility of death during a nuclear attack, and they should probably think about purchasing life insurance.

4 Ten For Survival

In 1959, the Office of Civil Defense realized that jumping under tables and a two-week supply of crackers and candy wasn’t enough to protect the American people from atomic bombs. The government realized that they had made a huge mistake in all the films they were using to educate the public.

The TV series called Ten for Survival was an attempt to make up for the mistakes of the past and give correct information to the public. These episodes aired once a week for 13 weeks straight.

They also advertised an accompanying Family Fallout Shelter booklet. Multiple TV stations requested that they show Ten for Survival on their channels as well to make sure that all Americans had a chance to see it.

In an eerie interview in this episode, two ordinary citizens from Staten Island, New York, predicted that any attack on the United States would happen in New York City. In a survey by NBC, the vast majority of Americans agreed. They also agreed that it would be a surprise attack. Although it took many years, that prediction came true on September 11, 2001.

3 The Day Called X

This film demonstrates a scenario of what would happen if a nuclear bomb was dropped on Portland, Oregon. During the Cold War, Portland was designated as one of the potential target cities. In 1955, there was an evacuation drill of the entire city. So this was a documentary that included a narrator and some dramatized scenes. This aired on CBS, which means that most people in America would have seen it.

During the drill, the entire city had to evacuate. The community shelter for normal citizens could only hold 300 people and only had enough supplies to survive for a week. So they were encouraged to evacuate instead.

Meanwhile, the members of local government moved to a bomb shelter 10 kilometers (6 mi) away from Portland, tucked away in the mountains with their families. “Government must survive if its people are to survive,” they said.

Author Brian Johnson analyzes The Day Called X and mentions that the people are calm in this film because it is only a drill. Normal citizens really had no idea how much nuclear warheads had advanced since World War II.

He also says that the film talking about the importance of people carrying out their civic duties during an attack is laughably unrealistic and clearly just pro-government propaganda. The truth is that, even if they were given notice, the people of Portland were doomed.

The only thing this film accomplishes is to potentially keep society running long enough for the members of government to get to their bomb shelter. This was the only place that was actually equipped for people to survive.

2 Three Reactions To Life In A Fallout Shelter

Sponsored by the Department of Civil Defense, this film goes over the variety of psychological reactions people may have while living in the confinement of a fallout shelter. Actors play out several scenarios, ranging from anger and fighting among the men to hysterical denial from a woman to depression in a man who believes his family was killed by the blast.

By the end of the film, the only advice from the government is to be organized and keep busy in fallout shelters. It leaves an open-ended question for the audience, “What would YOU do to prevent issues like this?” If the film accomplished anything, it was to encourage people not to act like the troubled people in this movie and to become mentally prepared before a nuclear attack occurred.

The Department of Civil Defense left out some of the gorier details of their research. Documents of these studies were only recently declassified so that the public can read them.

The conclusion of the government study was that community shelters would likely be overcrowded in the event of a nuclear attack. The air would become toxic with atmospheric contaminants and disease. The psychological turmoil alone would be enough to cause civil unrest among the survivors. Essentially, the situation would devolve into chaos.

1 Atomic Attack

Sponsored by Motorola in 1954, this full-length movie is about a suburban housewife who learns that there was a hydrogen bomb dropped on New York City. She was living in nearby Westchester County, which is 80 kilometers (50 mi) from the city.

The housewife ends up hosting refugees, including her daughter’s high school science teacher. The teacher had quit his job working on atomic bombs because he is a pacifist.

The housewife and the teacher debate the issue, and the movie concludes that America will only respond to an attack by returning the attack on the enemy’s major cities as well. In this way, the movie serves as propaganda in favor of continuing the arms race against the Soviet Union.

This movie is credited as the original inspiration of much apocalyptic fiction that was created in the years following the 1950s. At first, this movie was spread to give people information on nuclear attacks in an entertaining way.

However, just three years after its release, the film was removed from circulation by the Federal Civil Defense Administration when they realized that it was teaching incorrect information. In the film, they claim that nuclear fallout debris was only spread through rainwater, and the characters are walking outside within days of the blast. In reality, radiation can travel through the air, and it lasts for far longer.

Shannon Quinn is a writer and entrepreneur from the Philadelphia area. You can also find her on Twitter.

Under the surface, the Cold War wasn’t all that cold. All the key players backed campaigns of espionage and even murder. In this environment, assassins flourished like never before. As deadly killers ranged across the world, everyone was a suspect and no one was safe.

10Spray-Gun Man

In 1950, a 19-year-old Ukrainian student named Bohdan Stashynsky was arrested for riding a train without a ticket. The local authorities handed him over to the KGB, who threatened to arrest his family unless he agreed to work for them. After he spent several years infiltrating the anti-Communist underground, the agency felt that he could be trusted. That was when they gave him the gun.

The gun was a small aluminum cylinder that sprayed a jet of liquid cyanide. If this hit someone in the face or chest, the vapors would cause their arteries to suddenly contract, cutting the blood supply to the brain and killing them rapidly (a CIA report concluded that it might “conceivably . . . allow the victim time to scream”). The arteries would return to normal after five minutes, leaving to trace of the poison. Stashynsky tested it on a dog in the woods outside Karlshorst.

In 1957, Stashynsky loomed out of a stairwell in Munich and killed Ukrainian anti-Communist Lev Rebet with a jet of poison. Two years later, he killed Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera the same way. He swallowed antidote pills before and after each attack. Both deaths were ruled heart attacks.

They might have stayed that way if Stashynsky hadn’t fallen in love with an East German woman. The KGB disapproved of the relationship and repeatedly tried to break the couple up. When their young son suddenly died, the agency relented and allowed Stashynsky to travel to the funeral in Germany. The couple immediately defected to the West, where Stashynsky confessed to the murders.

9William Bechtel

In a diary found by the Swiss police, William Bechtel wrote, “I can break a man’s neck without his having time to shout. I know how to kill. But I look harmless.” These qualities, picked up in the French Foreign Legion, made him the perfect assassin for the “Red Hand,” a unit of the SDECE spy agency tasked with eliminating anti-French independence leaders in Africa.

One such leader was Cameroonian nationalist Felix Roland-Moumie. In 1960, Bechtel introduced himself to Moumie as a journalist and invited him to dinner in Geneva. An accomplice distracted Moumie with a phone call while Bechtel slipped deadly Thallium into his aperitif. The dose was carefully measured to kill him after he had boarded his flight to Guinea in the early hours of the morning. It was believed that the poison would not be detected by the authorities there.

The plan went wrong when Moumie pushed aside the aperitif and sipped a glass of wine instead. Undeterred, Bechtel poisoned the wine as well, but then Moumie suddenly picked up the aperitif and drained it, giving him a double dose of poison. He died almost immediately and Swiss investigators linked the killing to Bechtel. Protected by the French government, he was never convicted of the murder before his death in 1980. The head of the SDECE later gave a detailed description of the murder.

8Jean-Pierre Cherid

Jean-Pierre Cherid was radicalized as a member of the OAS (“Organization Armee secrete”), a right-wing paramilitary group that opposed Algerian independence and repeatedly tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle. In response, de Gaulle launched his own terrifying underground gang of killers: the SAC (“Service d’Action Civique”).

After the OAS collapsed, Cherid fled to Spain, where he soon found employment as an assassin for the Spanish government. He was particularly active in the war against the Basque separatist group ETA. Among other assassinations, he planted the car bomb that killed ETA leader Jose Benaran Ordenana and planned the murder of Jose Martin Sagardia in southern France. He also led the notorious machine gun attack on the Hendayais bar, which killed two French citizens.

Cherid died in 1984, when he made a mistake while wiring a bomb in Biarritz, France. His mangled remains were recovered from the roof of a neighboring house.

7Michael Townley

In 1973, the Chilean president Salvador Allende died in a US-backed coup. The new junta launched a reign of terror, with the notorious “Caravan of Death” racing across the country murdering political prisoners. Meanwhile, Chile’s secret service (DINA) began recruiting killers to deal with the regime’s overseas enemies. One of their most successful hires was a young American named Michael Townley, who had cut his teeth building bombs for CIA-backed Cuban groups in Miami.

In 1974, Townley planted the car bomb that killed General Carlos Prats, an opponent of the coup who was living in Argentina. The next year, he orchestrated the shooting of exiled politician Bernardo Leighton and his wife in Rome.

In 1976, he carried out his most notorious assassination, when he detonated a bomb in Washington DC, killing former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and an American associate. The murder caused a scandal, especially since Townley and DINA had strong links to the CIA and it was rumored that the agency may have been aware of the plot.

Townley was extradited from Chile to the United States in 1978. In return for his testimony against various Cuban accomplices, he received a light 10-year sentence. He is currently believed to be living quietly as a free man under the Witness Protection Program.

6Josip Perkovic

In 1977, a Serbian exile named Dragisa Kasikovic was found dead in his Chicago office. He had been stabbed over 60 times. His girlfriend’s nine-year-old daughter Ivanka was found nearby, similarly butchered. Dragisa and Ivanka were among dozens of Yugoslavian emigres murdered during the Cold War, from America to Australia to France. The victims were all opponents of the Yugoslav government established by Josip Broz Tito.

Tito famously opposed Soviet influence, and it has been alleged that Western governments were reluctant to investigate the Yugoslav assassination program for fear of damaging their relations. Investigators were allegedly warned against accusing the Yugoslav government and the murders never received the publicity given to assassinations by other Communist states—even though the Yugoslavs killed far more people in the west than the KGB did.

Even after the Cold War ended, there was considerable resistance to going after the perpetrators. When Croatia joined the European Union, it passed a law effectively blocking the extradition of Josip Perkovic, who ran the unit that carried out many of the murders. Perkovic was finally arrested in 2014 and is currently serving a life sentence in Germany for the 1983 murder of exile Stjepan Durekovic.

5Vinko Sindicic

In 1988, football fans flooded into Glasgow for a World Cup qualifier between Scotland and Yugoslavia. One of the “fans” left Glasgow and traveled north to a wooded area, where he retrieved a hidden gun. Carrying on to Kirkcaldy, he shot Croatian dissident Nikola Stedul in the mouth and chest.

Astonishingly, Stedul survived, thanks largely to his dog Pasha, who charged the gunman and alerted the neighbors by barking, forcing him to flee before finishing the job. The assassin was subsequently arrested at Heathrow Airport and identified as Vinko Sindicic, perhaps the deadliest agent of the Yugoslav murder program.

Sindicic is believed to have carried out over a dozen murders around the world. Probably the most notorious is the killing of the journalist Bruno Busic, who was shot in the doorway of his Paris apartment in 1978. An attempt to try Sindicic for the killing collapsed after a disastrous trial and he is currently a free man, having completed 10 years for attempted murder in a British prison.

4Craig Williamson

Craig Williamson killed from a distance, but that didn’t make him any less deadly. As South Africa’s “superspy,” he had infiltrated the anti-Apartheid movement during the 1970s, before rising suspicion led to his recall in 1980. Promoted to the rank of major in South African military intelligence, he ordered the bomb maker Jerry Raven to design deadly bombs small enough to be slipped into an envelope. In 1982, he used one of these letter bombs to kill exiled writer and activist Ruth First in Mozambique.

In 1884, he sent another letter bomb to the ANC members Marius and Jeanette Schoon in Angola. The bomb killed Jeanette and the couple’s six-year-old daughter. Williamson had known the couple well during his double agent days and allegedly sent the bomb as revenge for their role in blowing his cover, although he denies this was his motive.

In 2000, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted Williamson amnesty for all three murders, as well as the 1982 bombing of the ANC office in London. He remains a free man.

3Mehmet Ali Agca

As a young man, Mehmet Ali Agca joined a violent Turkish neo-fascist group called the Grey Wolves, who sent him to Syria to be trained as an assassin. He carried out his first killing in 1979, when he shot the noted newspaper editor Abdi Ipekci.

He later escaped from prison and spent several years on the run. During this time he is believed to have carried out at least one more assassination, gunning down a Turkish nationalist in Germany. Then, in 1981, he pushed through a crowd in Rome and shot the Pope.

John Paul II was hit four times but survived and later publicly forgave Agca. The shooting remains shrouded in mystery. Agca himself made several bizarre and conflicting statements, including a claim to be the Messiah. Experts are split on whether these claims were due to mental illness or a deliberate tactic to throw off investigators.

There is a plausible theory that he was hired by the Bulgarian Secret Service on behalf of the KGB, who were disturbed by the Pope’s popularity in his native Poland. Equally plausible is the theory that he was a crazy person who decided to kill the Pope. Agca was released from prison in 2010 and currently lives in Turkey.

2Mike Harari

In 1972, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September killed 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich. In response, the Israeli government launched Operation Wrath Of God, which aimed to assassinate the entire leadership of Black September. The leader of the operation was Mike Harari, a Mossad agent and founder of the Kidon assassination unit.

Harari was a legend in Mossad—during the famous raid on Entebbe airport, he personally scouted the location and even got inside the air traffic control tower disguised as an Italian businessman. Under his leadership, the hit squad killed at least seven suspected Black September members across Europe. One man answered his telephone, confirmed his identity, and was immediately killed by a bomb hidden in the receiver.

But Harari’s reputation took a hit when he personally led a mission to Norway which ended up killing an innocent Moroccan waiter who had somehow been mistaken for Black September leader Ali Hassan Salameh. To make matters worse, six members of the squad were arrested by Norwegian authorities. Harari himself escaped, but the damage to Mossad’s reputation was tremendous.

Harari’s last known operation came six years later, when he finally managed to assassinate Salameh, somewhat restoring his image after the Norway fiasco. He died in 2014, having spent much of his retirement denying an alleged stint working for Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

1The Giant, The Killer, And The Old Man

In the early 1980s, the Belgian region of Brabant was terrorized by a mysterious group that killed at least 28 people. The attacks were superficially robberies, but the scale of the violence and the tiny amounts taken made it clear that money wasn’t the real motive.

In one case, the group burst into a supermarket and shot seven people dead, including young children. They made off with a small bag of cash, which was later found unopened in a canal. On another occasion, the group triggered the alarm in a food shop and then waited for the police to arrive. The gendarmes walked right into an ambush.

Three regular members of the gang were tentatively identified. The Giant was a tall man who appeared to be the leader, the Killer was considered the most violent of the group, and the Old Man usually acted as the getaway driver.

It was later revealed that members of the Belgian neo-fascist group Westland New Post had performed surveillance on some of the locations attacked by the killers, apparently on the instruction of their leader Paul Latinus. That has led to speculation that the extreme right-wing carried out the attacks to discredit leftists or undermine the government. It has also been suggested that the group was connected to elements of the Belgian state or the CIA-backed Gladio network. The murders remain unsolved.

While we have no research to back this up, espionage would have easily been one of the most dangerous occupations one could have chosen during the Cold War. Regardless, countless espionage operatives worked on both sides of the Iron Curtain, driven by ideology, cash, or a bit of both. These notable Cold War spies regularly took up high-stakes, Hollywood-esque jobs that eventually led to their imprisonment and execution.

10. Raymond Mawby

Raymond Mawby was a British Member of Parliament who died in 1990, earlier working as an assistant paymaster general and junior minister. According to a BBC investigation, this was the time when he was also working as a spy for the Czechoslovakian security service for over a decade, from 1960 to 1971. 

Throughout his tenure as an operative, Mawby supplied sensitive political information to communist spies during Czechoslovakia’s communist era, including a hand-drawn floor plan of the prime minister’s Commons office, details about parliamentary committees, and a confidential parliamentary investigation into another Conservative Party politician. 

Allegedly operating under the codename ‘Laval’, Mawby’s relationship with the Czech spy service began in 1960, when he was approached at a cocktail party and convinced to provide political gossip in exchange for cash payments – exactly £100 for every exchange of information he provided. He continued to assist the foreign intelligence agency even after his promotion to junior minister in 1963. As per the report, this relationship came to an end in November, 1971.

9. Micha? Goleniewski

Micha? Goleniewski was a high-ranking officer in Poland’s intelligence service. He was also a KGB operative, though he’d later turn into one of the West’s most valuable double agents during the Cold War. 

Goleniewski began his political career by collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World War. He would soon become a high-ranking counterintelligence officer for the Polish intelligence, followed by his stint as a KGB operative supplying information about the Polish intelligence to his handlers back in the Soviet Union. 

In April 1958, Goleniewski voluntarily defected to the United States, and for the next 33 months or so, he’d smuggle a large amount of top-secret Soviet and Warsaw bloc military and espionage secrets to the West, including details that exposed 1,693 communists working across western intelligence and government departments. 

8. Otto von Bolschwing

Otto von Bolschwing was an early recruit to the Nazi Party, rising through its ranks to become Heinrich Himmler’s deputy in the Reich Main Security Office, where he mainly focused on the supposed ‘Jewish problem’. In 1937, he designed terror tactics to drive Jews out of Germany and rob them as they left. Bolschwing’s radicalism led him to support the anti-Semitic Iron Guard in Romania, even attempting a coup against the German-allied government. He continued to climb the Nazi hierarchy even after his detention, as he was soon hired as Adolf Eichmann’s deputy and oversaw the logistics of the Holocaust.

After the war,  Bolschwing escaped to American-occupied Austria and worked with exiled Iron Guard members, before he was recruited by the CIA under the code name ‘Agent Unrest’. His Nazi background was overlooked due to his espionage value against the Soviet Union. Eventually, Bolschwing would work as a CIA asset with valuable connections in Austria and Eastern Europe, supporting the larger US intelligence effort during the Cold War until 1953.

7. Gunvor Galtung Haavik

Gunvor Galtung Haavik was a Norwegian Foreign Ministry clerk and an agent of the Soviet Union for over 27 years. Her career began during the Second World War, when she worked as a nurse and interpreter for Soviet prisoners held by the Nazis, where she fell in love with a Russian prisoner of war. When the soldier’s safety was threatened by the Nazis, the KGB promised protection in exchange for Haavik’s cooperation. By the time Norway joined NATO in 1949, she had already signed a spy contract with the Soviets for future operations

Over time, there were suspicions that Soviet diplomats were too well-informed about Norway’s classified positions on various matters, especially regarding its European Community membership. Haavik was eventually identified by Norwegian counterintelligence during her meeting with a KGB operative, A.K. Printsipalov, leading to her arrest in 1977. While she confessed to her espionage activities against Norway and other western nations, Haavik died before her trial due to heart failure.

6. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky

Often called one of the West’s most valuable double agents during the Cold War, Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky began his espionage career in the Soviet Red Army in 1937, later working as an artillery officer against the Nazi invasion during the Second World War. By 1949, he had moved to the Soviet Army Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and attended the Military Diplomatic Academy, before being hired as an intelligence officer in Moscow. By 1960, he had risen to the rank of colonel in the GRU.

By April 1961, however, Penkovsky had turned against the Soviet system, offering his services to British intelligence through a British businessman named Greville M. Wynne. Over the course of the next year and a half, he secretly provided British and US intelligence agencies with over 5,000 photographs of classified military, political, and economic documents from the Soviet union. The information he supplied decisively revealed the limited long-range missile capabilities of the Soviet Army during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. 

5. Elizabeth Bentley

Born in Connecticut, Elizabeth Bentley was well-educated, with degrees in the humanities at Vassar College and Columbia University. In 1935, she joined the American League against War and Fascism due to her exposure to fascism in Italy, followed by her relatively-brief stint as a member of the US Communist Party. 

Bentley’s espionage career began when she was recruited by a coworker, Juliet Stuart Poyntz, at the Italian Information Library. She collected information on fascist activity and later worked as a secretary with Juliet Stuart Poyntz – a Russian-born American involved in espionage through a Soviet-backed travel agency. 

When Golos died in 1943, however, Bentley grew disillusioned with the Communist Party, resulting in her turning to the FBI as a double agent. Bentley’s testimonies would eventually lead to the conviction of 11 Communist party leaders. 

4. Adolf Tolkachev

Adolf Tolkachev was a Soviet engineer who turned into one of the most important CIA assets during the Cold War. His work began in 1978 in Moscow, and involved leaking top-secret information about Soviet radar technology, avionics, and cruise missiles. He soon became known as the ‘Billion Dollar Spy’ for saving the United States an estimated $2 billion in weapons research and development costs. 

Operating right under the eyes of the KGB, Tolkachev engaged in 21 meetings with CIA officers on the streets of Moscow throughout his two-decades-long career. A big part of his job was smuggling documents out of his military laboratory – usually concealed within his overcoat – and photographing them in secret. According to declassified documents, Tolkachev was motivated to work against the Soviet Union due to his family’s plight during Stalin’s Great Terror era.

3. Hede Massing

Hede Massing was born in Vienna in 1900 to a Polish father and Austrian mother. She joined the Communist Party around 1920 and married Gerhart Eisler, a prominent member of the German Communist Party. Between 1933 and 1937, Massing served as a Soviet espionage agent in the United States. In her later years, however, she went against the Soviet Union – particularly the communist movement under Stalin – and turned into a staunch anti-communist.

In 1949, Hede Massing played an important role in the Alger Hiss espionage trial, testifying that Hiss had been working with the Soviet Union against the interests of the United States. Although her testimony had some inconsistencies, it directly contributed to Hiss’s conviction for perjury in 1950. 

2. Philip Agee

Born in 1935, Philip Agee was a former CIA officer-turned-whistleblower. Agee’s transformation came during a chaotic period in American history, marked by the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, and a growing popular disillusionment with US foreign policy. He finally left the CIA in 1969 after twelve years of service, primarily motivated by the agency’s perceived role in undermining democracy to serve American interests abroad.

In 1975, Agee published his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary – an unprecedented work that revealed the extent of CIA’s covert operations in Latin America. Unlike other whistleblowers before him, Agee exposed the identities of CIA officers, agents, and assets working in the field. Despite criticism, Agee continued to undermine the CIA operations and US policies he deemed objectionable. 

1. Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik

Born in 1939, Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik was a Soviet diplomat-turned-CIA spy at the height of the Cold War. While he was initially thought to be an unlikely candidate for western espionage, Ogorodnik was eventually recruited by the Colombian intelligence agency and the CIA, operating under the codename TRIGON, or Trianon. 

Ogorodnik worked as a valuable spy due to his high level of access to secret diplomatic cables within the Soviet Foreign Ministry in Moscow, which he photographed and transmitted to the CIA. He even requested a suicide pill, or the L-pill, as a contingency plan. While we don’t know exactly why he turned into a double agent, it might have had something to do with his continued financial problems, or his deep-seated discontent for the Soviet bureaucratic system. 

Ogorodnik’s career and life came to an end when he was apprehended by the KGB in Moscow. Instead of capture, he opted for the L-pill and ended his life, leaving many unanswered questions about the extent of his espionage and counter-espionage activities. Till today, Ogorodnik remains one of the most important double agents of the Cold War, particularly due to his involvement with coded numbers transmissions called numbers stations.

The National Park Service in the United States preserves untouched natural beauty. The Grand Canyon, for example, is considered one of the Modern Natural Wonders of the World. Waterfalls, geysers, rushing rivers, and still lakes, along with the plentiful wildlife and serenity of nature, are just some of the breathtaking attractions of these paths. There is another feature to these parks, however, and that is danger.

The obvious dangers include those rushing rivers and waterfalls leading to drownings, those steep drop-offs leading to injury and loss of life, and those endless trails leaving people lost in remote, confusing, and sometimes dangerous terrain. In the majority of cases, people are found, but unfortunately, in some cases, only the remains are found. In other cases, the only thing found is a mystery. There are currently 24 cold cases of missing persons listed by the National Park Services Investigative Services Branch. These are some of their stories.

Related: 10 Historical Figures Who Disappeared And Have Never Been Found

10 Morgan Heimer

There is an obvious connection between the sometimes rugged and difficult terrain of National Parks and missing persons and deaths that occur there. Many people enter the parks inexperienced or unprepared. However, in the disappearance of Morgan Heimer, this was not the case. In fact, Heiman was an employee of Tour West, a rafting company on the Colorado River.

Heiman was regarded as an outstanding swimmer and experienced trekker. He was a strong and fit 22-year-old. On the sixth day of an eight-day excursion, Heimer was last in line bringing the rafters back from a swim. The lead tour guide recalled walking away from the cliff they were standing on to talk to a member of the excursion group. When he went back to Heimer, he was simply gone.

The guide mentioned that Heimer wanted to take a break, so no one was particularly concerned at the time. Not only that, but they were confident in his skills, and he was wearing a life jacket and familiar with the terrain. When he didn’t come back to the group for dinner, authorities were called. This launched a six-day search. His disappearance occurred on June 2, 2015. No one has seen Morgan Heimer since.^[1]

9 Drake Kramer

Another experienced outdoorsman who enjoyed the Grand Canyon was a 21-year-old college student, David Kramer. His love of nature and exploring areas like the Grand Canyon motivated him to major in Geology at the University of Texas. His decision to visit the canyon wouldn’t be surprising to his family or friends. The circumstances for this trip, however, were slightly more unexpected.

Kramer, without any warning, chose to take off to California and, from there, the Grand Canyon. He arrived at the Bright Angel Lodge in Arizona on February 1st. Although Kramer had been there a few times before, it was unlike him to travel alone. His parents had seen him just before on January 29th and said he was in good spirits; they even attended a movie together. Even more jarring was a message Kramer sent to his mother, seemingly explaining the reason for his trip. He told his mother that he “needed to be back with Mother Earth and set his soul free.”

Because of this message, authorities counted suicide as a high probability after he left his car at the lodge and traveled along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on his own. His family, in great hopefulness, saw the message as David needing to spend time in nature and do a bit of soul searching. The terrain of the South Rim is very mixed, so it can be difficult to traverse, but it is very rare that no sign of him or his remains would be found in that area. Despite this, neither Kramer’s body nor any clues about what happened to him have ever been found.^[2]

8 Ruthanne Ruppert

Ruthanne Ruppert left her home in Florida to vacation in Yosemite National Park in August of 2000. The trip was not an unusual one for Ruppert. She was an extremely experienced climber and often traveled to reach new heights. One of her favorite experiences to share was that she had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and did so with a frozen foot! As other people fretted over Y2K, Ruppert went to the Argentine Peak in Colorado to ring in the new year.

The trip to Yosemite should’ve been a piece of cake for such an experienced climber. Ruppert had planned to be a member of a backpacking group traveling 30 miles across the park. She was devastated when she woke up with an eye infection that caused her to miss the group while receiving medical care. Although she was upset, she still needed to figure out how to spend the rest of her trip. She rented a tent cabin in Curry Village and went shopping. After this, Ruppert seemed to simply vanish.

Her stock of supplies was left behind, not something an experienced hiker would forget. Her family is certain she would not have left them and had no intentions to harm herself. It seems missing that trip was the biggest issue in Ruthanne’s life and certainly wasn’t something she would go to extremes over. After a search and rescue operation, nothing could be found of Ruppert.

Oddly enough, eight years later, Ruppert’s backpack was found in Fireplace Creek, stuck in a drainage area. Fireplace Creek is almost eight miles away from Curry Village. How Ruppert’s backpack ended up there, along with her whereabouts, remains a mystery.^[3]

7 Stacy Ann Arras

Stacy Ann Arras was only 14 years old when she went on a guided tour at Yosemite National Park. The trip was attended by her father and six others, all riding mules. The area has several campsites, all within a mile or two of each other. Stacy’s group was at the furthest set of cabins, Sunrise High Sierra Camp. After settling in, Stacy wanted to go to a nearby lake to take pictures and asked her father to join her. He chose to rest instead, so an elderly gentleman, Gerald Stuart, from the tour group went along with her.

Stuart was 77 and, along the way, decided to stop to rest as well. The group could see Stacy and Stuart along the path as they were downhill from the cabins. They saw Stuart stop and sit on a rock as Stacy continued, and shortly after, he walked back up to the cabins from the place he had sat down. He asked other campers who came from Stacy’s direction if they had seen her, but no one had. When the group realized Stacy was not along the trail, at the lake, or back with them, they began searching for her.

A massive search party began the next day. They went over and beyond any of the searches mentioned so far. They had three helicopters, two dog search and rescue teams, and close to one hundred people searching the park. Despite the immediate and immense response to Stacy’s disappearance, the only trace of her that has ever been located was her camera lens cap. If she was harmed, the perpetrator was incredibly careful as not so much as a drop of blood was found.

It is unlikely that a 14-year-old at the farthest part of a mountain would have simply walked off on her own, never to be seen again. If she was injured along the trail, certainly one of the many people in the area at the time or in the search parties would’ve found her or something of hers. Another vanishing act in Yosemite National Park.^[4]

6 George Penca

As seen with Stacy Ann, there is not always safety in numbers. As an avid churchgoer, when George Penca decided to visit Yosemite National Park, he did so with 80 other followers from his congregation. Penca was not an experienced hiker but was in a well-traveled area with his friends and tour guides. It should have been a good experience for all involved.

However, at some point, Penca was separated from his group. It has been said that he had not felt well and decided to turn back, but others said the group split into two, and somehow during that separation, Penca was lost in the jumble. The last time that anyone recalls seeing Penca was at 2:40 in the afternoon. As the rest of the group expected to meet Penca back at their campsite, he was not reported missing until 9:00 that night.

The Upper Yosemite Falls they were hiking is a strenuous hike, rated difficult by the Park itself as a difficult trail for visitors. It is also rated high on the “crowd factor,” meaning plenty of people use this trail. No one outside of the church group remembers seeing him along the trail. He was carrying a bag with water and a bit of food. Neither the bag nor any of its contents were ever found. None of his clothing, his blood, or any trace of his body was ever found. In a heavily populated area, visible to the town of Yosemite itself, in nice weather, with a trusted group of churchgoers, George Penca disappeared in Yosemite National Park.^[5]

5 Thelma Pauline “Polly” Melton

Polly Melton was not someone you would expect to be an avid hiker. Although out of shape and a heavy smoker, she still loved the mountains, hiked regularly, and made the base of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina her summertime home. She had spent years visiting this location. And she was well known in the mountain town community, even volunteering almost daily at a senior home in town.

Melton went on a trail marked “Easy” in September of 1981. She was with two friends, and it should have been a leisurely walk for the experienced Melton. According to the two women she was hiking with, she sped up ahead of them. It wasn’t a far distance, but she went up over a knoll out of sight. When the two women she had been walking with only moments prior got over the hill, Melton had completely vanished. They heard no strange noises indicating distress, saw no sign of scuffle. They continued to the campsite, and still, no Polly.

Melton didn’t have any belongings with her, not even a change of clothes or her purse. She was also on medications for high blood pressure and nausea, and she didn’t have these with her either. There was just no trace of her until over a year later when a check in her name was cashed in Alabama. Police failed to say without a doubt that it was her signature.

There is a popular theory that Melton had decided to run off that day. Her husband, the third and last presumably, had fallen ill, her mother had recently passed, and her pastor speculated she was having an affair. The day before she went missing, she was volunteering at the senior home like usual; however, she asked to use their phone for the first time in the four years she had worked there.

Did Melton meet her lover in the woods, run off with no personal possessions or identification, and leave the Mountains that she loved so dearly, along with her husband and friends? For a woman that is said to have smoked two packs of Pall Malls a day and described as “too large to be kidnapped,” she must’ve been swift on her feet that day. Even though she would now be in her 90s, with no evidence to say otherwise, the National Park Service keeps her missing person case open year after year.^[6]

4 Michael Ficery

Michael Ficery was “an off-the-grid kind of guy” even when he was young. He spent his youth and into his adulthood surfing, cycling, and especially hiking. His family also said that he had the memory of an elephant. This would be very helpful in navigating the sheer amount of trails that the Yosemite National Park has to offer. Even for incredibly experienced people like Ficery, the National Park Service does not ever recommend hiking alone. Ficery, nonetheless, began a solo hike on the morning of June 15th, 2005.

Not only would he be backpacking alone, but he was also doing so in one of the less-traveled areas of Yosemite, the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. His plan was to begin there and head toward Lake Vernon. At some point, his plans changed a bit, and he chose to take the Pacific Crest Trail toward TilTill Mountain. The Pacific Crest Trail here is not steep like the other parts of Yosemite but rather gradually rises and falls. However, the area can be rocky, so there is the danger of getting injured or waylaid.

Getting hurt on tough terrain was something Ficery had been through before, having cracked an ankle at Yellowstone, having to crawl all the way out of the wilderness. So, when the outdoorsman failed to return from his adventure after his permit expired and his family expected him home, they feared the worst. The search for Ficery was so massive the United States Marines were involved. Unlike some others on this list, they did find something that belonged to Ficery: his bag. It contained his map, water, and camera. His friends and family were even more concerned at this point because they believed that Ficery would never willingly leave his bag at any time during a hike.

Unfortunately, in the 16 years that have passed, not another trace of Ficery has been found. Also, unlike others on this list, Ficery had not experienced any recent tragedies or shown signs that he was a danger to himself at all. His sister joined a company called Pack six years later, which puts together essential packs for explorers, and put out a statement regarding her brother. She believed he was unprepared for his trek, dangerously went out alone, and spoke of the dangers of changing your itinerary, as it makes it harder for search and rescue teams to follow the trail. However, if he had sustained an injury or passed, why is there still no other trace of him?^[7]

3 Floyd Roberts III

The first time Floyd Roberts visited the Grand Canyon was in 1992 when a friend of his, Ned Bryant, suggested they make the trip together. Roberts enjoyed it so much he became Bryant’s regular hiking companion. They went several times over the years, and in June of 2016, they went again, bringing along Bryant’s daughter. Both Bryant and Roberts at this time were considered experienced hikers and were well prepared.

On June 17th, the three of them were headed along a trail when they decided to take different paths, the Bryants over the hill before the trailhead and Roberts around it. Roberts did not meet them on the other side. After waiting to see if he simply needed to catch up with them, the father and daughter began to worry and went back the way that Roberts took around the hill. Still no sign of him. They then went back to their camp and put bright-colored sleeping bags on nearby trees to provide a sort of flag to help Roberts find them.

The Bryants had good reason to believe that Roberts would be fine. He was an intelligent man; he even worked for NASA before teaching game design and programming for high school students. He was also well prepared. Robert’s bag had enough food to last him a week, and he carried two gallons of water with him, as well as a map outlined by Bryant with all of their trail plans. Unfortunately, Roberts never returned to camp, and the Bryants had to hike to find cell service to report his friend missing.

A canine team was brought in immediately but provided no answers. After six days and a massive search, the officials were forced to reduce the search power. Kelly Tanks, the area they were exploring, is one of the more remote sections of the park, and the heat that day presented problems, with temperatures reaching around 92 degrees.

Five years and countless hikers in the area have passed through, yet nothing at all can be found of this man. This was a man who had been in the area before, with resources to help him find help and survive, and a good friend with him. Why did he choose to go off alone? What happened on the side of the hill that the other two couldn’t have heard him if he needed help? How, once again, is there not a single footprint, a scrap of fabric, or remains of any sort to be found?^[8]

2 Paul Braxton Fugate

Park Rangers are standard in the National Park Service. They are who you contact when someone is hurt or lost. Paul Braxton Fugate was a Park Ranger at Chiricahua National Monument, a National Park in Arizona. So it was shocking when Fugate disappeared at the park himself. Fugate finished his shift at the visitor center around 2:00 pm and went for a hike. He was still dressed in his uniform as he went out to check a trail. He mentioned to one coworker that they could start closing duties without him if he wasn’t back by 4:30. He was then seen starting down the trailhead.

That was the last any person spoke to him or saw him.

His disappearance was immediately realized when he did not return to close the park. He was the only permanent staff member at the park and would not have left the other seasonal employee to finish that job. Unfortunately, Fugate would’ve been the natural expert in a search and rescue mission at the park. But the Cochise County Sherrif’s Department and the National Park Service had to work without him.

To make things more difficult, Chiricahua has 17 square miles of canyons, treacherous terrain, and wildlands. The search and rescue teams found absolutely nothing related to the Park Ranger. When this effort failed, a reward for information that led to Fugate’s whereabouts—that eventually reached $60,000—was offered to the public. This disappearance took place in January of 1980. It has been 41 years since Fugate disappeared at the age of 41. The NPS had him listed as missing but told his wife that they believed he walked off the job and therefore was terminated.

This left Fugate’s wife, Dody, unable to collect his pension or any survivor’s benefits. They even demanded she repay the $6,000+ that they had paid her over the time he had been missing. Fortunately, in 1986, five years later, the case was reviewed again, and Dody did have access to his benefits after that time. While this means the National Park Service agreed there was no reason to believe Frugate was still living, the search for him is still ongoing.^[9]

1 Teresa “Trenny” Gibson

On October 8, 1976, a sixteen-year-old high school student, Teresa “Trenny” Gibson, left Knoxville with her classmates and teachers to explore the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Specifically, they were planning on going to Clingman’s Dome, where a stunning view of the mountains can be seen from a 45-foot tall observation tower. Gibson appeared to be enjoying the trip, walking along with her friends.

Along one of the trails, she walked with two other girls who said they slowed down a bit to rest. Gibson carried on a little ahead of them, but this trail was being used by dozens of groups that day. There were people before and after her on the trail the entire time they were hiking. The general consensus from the group was an expression heard over and over again—one minute she was there, and the next minute she was gone.

The trail that they were on at the time of her disappearance is relatively steep, with some major drop-offs along one side. Gibson’s group alone was 40 students, plus teachers. If she had fallen down one of the drop-offs, she would have had to do so silently for no one around to hear her. Likewise, if someone abducted her, they would have also had to be incredibly quiet and either incredibly quick or invisible for no one to have seen anything.

Even if she had wanted to run away and thought this was a great opportunity, she did so with no identification or the savings she had been collecting. The search for her was made difficult by rain and fog the night that she was reported missing. A slew of volunteers came to the park to help look for Gibson. Several dog units were also brought in to help find any trace of her. Interestingly one of the dogs found a trace that went past the Dome, about a mile and a half further than she was last seen around Newfound Gap. However, the trail went cold then. Gibson, like the rest of the National Park Services’ missing cold cases, simply vanished.^[10]

Or have they? Mostly, yes. Yes, they have.

People love a good puzzle—take a jigsaw. A few hours spent pawing through various pieces, locating all the corners, and matching up colors and figures, all culminating in a completed picture. Very satisfying. Even if the jigsaw is particularly large or difficult, taking longer than a few hours to complete, the sense of achievement (and maybe relief) is a good feeling.

What if there’s a missing piece? It’s disappointing. It’s infuriating. It can ruin an evening or a holiday or, in extreme cases, a relationship. The entries listed below are all fiendishly difficult puzzles that have located their respective missing pieces. Whether it is by advancements in technology, uncovered evidence, or some good old-fashioned logic and reason, we can all rest easier knowing these conundrums have been solved or, at the very least, demystified.

Related: 10 More Unsolved Coded Mysteries You Could Decipher Today

10 Blue Jets

When cinemagoers watched the White House explode under the concentrated energy weapon of an attacking alien spaceship, most were unaware that Mother Nature produced an eerily similar-looking phenomenon—the “blue jets” or ionospheric lightning. Scientists remained in the dark about the cause of this amazing-looking phenomenon. Well, now we know exactly why this happens…sort of.

This amazing aerial phenomenon is, according to scientists using cameras and X-ray detectors on the International Space Station, an upward projecting lightning flash that’s often 48 kilometers (30 miles) long. The cause? “Blue bangs,” a series of blue-hued rumbling bursts in large thunderstorms. There we go—all done.

Except for the fact that we still don’t have a conclusive explanation for the “blue bangs.”

Torsten Neubert, an atmospheric physicist, has posited a hypothesis; short-ranged electrical discharges coming within a half a mile of each other are the cause. The powerful bursts of current result in producing these “blue bangs,” and thus, the “blue jets.”^[1]

Either that or it’s aliens.

9 How in the Sweet Hell Does the Flimsy-Looking Butterfly Actually Fly?

It’s no mystery how a bird flies. Indeed, the study of such mechanics laid the groundwork for humankind to take to the skies themselves. Butterflies, however, are complicated. They’re more like a piece of crepe paper caught in an updraft. Scientists have considered the problem of how exactly the little bugs manage to fly for a while but have never come to a firm conclusion. That is, until recently.

A team at Lund University, Sweden, decided to test a 50-year-old hypothesis about how the butterfly flies—the “clap” hypothesis. They found that this is indeed how they do it, using some robotic clappers to simulate the wings. It worked.

It turns out that it is not a simple case of slapping their proportionately huge wings together, though. The little insects have very flexible wings, and only the ends clap together. The remaining portion of the wings creates a small “air pocket,” which aids in propulsion and allows for directional flight.^[2]

8 Why Do Japanese Trains Keep Getting Stopped by Millipede Swarms?

Occasionally, up in the forest-covered mountains of Japan, trains are periodically halted in their progress by vast swarms of icky, poisonous millipedes. These events have been recorded as far back as the 1920s, making the phenomenon at least a century old. In 1977, a forestry researcher named Keiko Niijima suggested that it was perhaps a cyclical behavior, speculating that the beasties had an eight-year migratory cycle (similar behavior to that of certain types of bamboo and, more famously, cicadas).

Over 40 years later, this observation has been confirmed as true. As of January 2021, a research team from Shizuoka University has confirmed the eight-year cycle, stating that the migration is due to large broods traveling to new, abundant feeding grounds. Next up—whether the millipedes are planning world domination. In eight years, of course. ^[3]

7 When Did Money Get Invented?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

This historical head-scratcher has been plaguing academics for centuries. When did people start using money? Well, now we know. Or at least we have a new “earliest date” for items that conform to our modern interpretation of “money.”

Dutch researchers have found that many Bronze Age artifacts—objects shaped like rings, ax blades, and ribs—are mostly the same weight, suggesting that they were interchangeable and used as a form of rudimentary currency. This discovery proves that “money”-oriented commerce was occurring in Europe as far back as 5,000 years ago. Evidence of prehistoric sub-prime mortgages placed on mottle-and-daub huts remains scant. ^[4]

6 45-Year-Old Cold Case Solved

Once again, as with high-profile cases like the Golden State Killer murders and the Bear Brooke murders, the guys and gals at Parabon NanoLabs have uncovered the perpetrator in another cold case. This entry is one of the coldest cases to be solved in the U.S. in recent years.

At the very end of that year, December 27th, 1975, police in Grand Junction, Colorado, uncovered the body of a woman who had been bound, raped, and murdered by strangulation in an apartment complex. Forty-five years later, after the case had gone cold decades before, the police department reached out to Parabon for DNA analysis, hoping to get a genetic profile of the killer.

The tests came back, and after some cross-comparisons with criminal databases, police named Jimmy Dean Duncan as the perp. Duncan, who had been 26 years old in 1975, and was also considered a suspect at the time, died in 1987. So while he can never be brought to justice for the horrific crime, the mystery of who killed Deborah has ended, hopefully granting some peace to her loved ones.^[5]

These cases give us hope that we can see cold cases becoming a rarity. Maybe even a thing of the past.

5 The Ancient Persian Army That Vanished

People go missing all the time. Although a rarer phenomenon, groups of people will also disappear (think the Roanoke colonists vanishing in 1590). The story of King Cambyses II and his army is a little different. In 524 BC, around 50,000 men disappeared in the Egyptian Sahara. It was as though the sands just swallowed them up. In fact, that was the story for thousands of years—the army was tasked with destroying the Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis when a sandstorm enveloped them, burying them all under the desert sands near Luxor.

In 2009, however, a team of Italian archaeologists discovered a mass of bronze artifacts and piles of bones that seemed to indicate the location of the lost army. Had it been true all along—did they indeed all perish in a sudden, unnaturally large sandstorm? They seemed to indicate as much when revealing their discoveries in a documentary film (which is more Ancient Aliens than The Egypt Exploration Society).

According to Egyptologist Olaf Kaper, speaking on the discovery in 2014, no. the remains were found near a ruined fortress that had been the base for an Egyptian rebel leader named Petubastis III. According to Kaper, the army was probably slaughtered in an ambush reminiscent of the Romans’ defeat in the Teutoburg Forest. It is likely that the arrogance of the invading Persians was their undoing, crushed by a rebel force much more used to the environment and spurred by revenge. The myth of the sandstorm was probably the invention of Cambyses’s eventual successor, Darius I, designed to undermine the reputation of his predecessor and bolster his claim over Egypt.

Given the unlikelihood of tens of thousands of people dying in a single sandstorm, and by applying a bit of Occam’s Razor, it is likely that we can put this millennia-old piece of propagandistic mythmaking to bed.^[6]

4 Geometric Problem Solved After 90 Years of Head Scratching

The conjecture in question, made by German mathematician Eduard Ott-Heinrich Keller in 1930, suggests that any tessellation or tiling of Euclidian space by identically sized squares (or hypercubes, when applied to dimensions higher than 2) will always find that two squares will meet face to face. All dimensions, up to the sixth, have been shown to be accurate. The question of the sixth dimension remained too complex to quantify.

That was until a team from Carnegie Mellon University finally crunched the numbers with a bit of help from their computerized pals. After a period of four months of computer programming (and only half an hour to solve the problem), the 90-year-old geometry problem called “Keller’s Conjecture” was solved.

“I was really happy when we solved it, but then I was a little sad that the problem was gone,” said John Mackey, a professor at the university.

Bet you can’t do it again with a pen, a piece of paper, and an abacus, Johnny boy.^[7]

3 Missing Link of the T-Rex Identified

Finding the complete lineage of animals that died millions of years ago is a tough gig—a lot of digging involved, followed by tediously long tests that end up with a result that barely makes a blip on the news cycle. If a “missing link” in human phylogeny was unearthed, the world would lose its frickin’ mind.

But dinosaurs—meh.

Luckily for the team involved in this entry, the dinosaur in question is perhaps the best-known and most-loved genus—Tyrannosaurus rex. News emerged back in 2019 that revealed the link between the Jurassic Park star and an erstwhile discovered small dinosaur called Suskityrannus hazelae. This little beastie, first found in New Mexico 20 years ago, is several million years older than its titanic cousin. It stood at almost 1 meter (3 feet) at the shoulder, considerably smaller than the monster that ate that bloke on the loo (watch the 1st movie, gen Z; it’s the only good one in the series).

Perhaps the most important observation is the similarity in the arm’s length for both species—the (relatively) tiny tyrannosaur displayed the same short forelimbs and strong jaw seen in its more famous descendent. This observation suggests that these traits were adopted while the tyrannosaurs were still relatively small, which makes a hell of a lot more sense.^[8]

2 Literary Puzzle from 1934 Finally Solved…Again

If you’re one of those annoying people who must skip ahead and read the end of a detective novel, unable to wait for the killer to be uncovered by going through the laborious task of “reading like a normal human,” you’ll hate the literary puzzle called “Cain’s Jawbone.”

Penned by Edward Powys Mathers of The Observer newspaper in 1934, the puzzle was a murder mystery novella with none of the pages in order. It was solved in the 1930s by two entrants, each winning the princely sum of £25. Over the decades, Cain’s Jawbone faded into obscurity, and the solution was lost. A copy of the book was donated to Shandy Hall, a museum dedicated to Laurence Stern. The curator was the third person to solve the mystery.

In 2019, the curator worked with crowdfunding publisher Unbound to re-release the puzzle with an offer of £1,000 for anybody who could solve it within a year. Twelve people attempted the Herculean task, with only one person solving it (the fourth person ever). BBC Comedy writer John Finnemore spent four months decoding and solving the fiendishly tough murder mystery. The Laurence Sterne Trust keeps the solution—if you fancy having a go, they are the ones to contact to verify if your answer is right.^[9]

1 Who Was Jacob Klimowsky?

The Nazi theft of artworks, treasures, and artifacts, as well as their penchant for burning books, is well-documented and well-known. What is often overlooked is their destruction of heritage properties and sites. This terrible purging of culture is a hallmark of totalitarian regimes; Mao’s wholesale destruction of Chinese historical sites in order to remold the Chinese people’s idea of national identity is another prime example. The demolition of the Königsberg New Jewish Cemetery in Kaliningrad in 1938 is a lesser-known example of this terrible practice.

The cemetery was opened in 1928, including a beautiful funeral hall designed by noted German architect Erich Mendelsohn. After its destruction, it faded from collective memory, laying as mounds of rubble on a scrubby plot of land for decades. When Jews in East Prussia, a historical society based in Berlin, went to inspect the site in 2010, they discovered something incredible. Among the debris at the site was a single intact gravestone. It belonged to a man named Jacob Klimowsky. The miracle quickly turned into a mystery—members of the society found that nobody could find a record of the man, or even his family name, in the area.

Ten years later, after a good deal of sleuthing, the society located and contacted some of Jacob’s descendants. They had no idea that their ancestor, a WWI veteran on the German side, was buried in Königsberg, much less that his gravestone was the last one left intact. The family provided the society with documents, including photos, of Jacob, allowing them to finally uncover the mystery and help restore this portion of local heritage that was thought to have been destroyed.^[10]

So you’re feeling achy, sneezy, congested, or queasy due to contracting a cold. In that case, you might want to check out some of these natural albeit bizarre cold remedies with the caveat that they are not necessarily “doctor recommended.”

Let’s explore ten of the most bizarre cold remedies.

10 Wet Socks

This cold remedy will literally give you cold feet, which doesn’t sound too enticing when you already have a cold.

Here’s what to do. Take a pair of your socks- preferably cotton or wool as opposed to socks made from synthetic fibers. Soak them in ice-cold water and then wring out the excess water. Pull the socks over your bare feet. Shivers!

Next, pull a dry pair of socks over the wet pair. Climb into bed under the covers, making sure your feet stay warm and snug. When you wake up, you should find that the original wet pair of socks are completely dry in the morning. Doing this wet sock-dry-sock routine supposedly increases your body’s natural immunity while increasing blood circulation to the feet and simultaneously relieving the congestion in your head. Oh, and it also assists with the elimination of waste from the body.

9 Homemade Cough Lozenges

This homemade, natural cold remedy will soothe your sore throat along with your weary soul. It’s no fun to have a bad cough that leaves your throat feeling raw. Follow this recipe, and hopefully, these custom-made lozenges will give you some much-needed relief.

Place a saucepan on a stove burner. Add one cup of white granulated sugar and half a cup of water. Add one teaspoon of fresh lemon juice for a hit of vitamin C, one tablespoon of honey (an antibacterial that soothes a sore throat and acts as a natural cough suppressant). Add one and a half teaspoons of ground ginger (acts as an anti-inflammatory, helps maintain the immune system, and aids with pain relief and nausea). Add 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (reduces phlegm, has antiseptic properties, and contains antioxidants).

Turn on the burner and stir all the ingredients together thoroughly. Simmer on low for fifteen to twenty minutes. Stir regularly. Meanwhile, cover a cookie sheet with baking parchment. After the ingredients have finished simmering, remove the pan from the burner to allow the mixture to cool. As it cools, it should become a thick syrup.

Next, spoon teaspoons full of syrup onto the parchment about the size of a quarter per lozenge. Space them out so they don’t run together. Let the lozenges set completely. When they’ve hardened, sift powdered sugar over them and mix them around so each lozenge is completely coated. This dusting of confectioner’s sugar keeps the lozenges from sticking to each other.

8 Listening to Music

We all know that music is good for the soul but did you know it’s also good for a cold? Research done by German scientists revealed that listening (to jazz music in particular) reduces stress, which amplifies immunoglobulin levels in the body.

Immunoglobulin is a naturally occurring protein that helps the body defend itself against infection. By listening to jazz, or the second-best type of music- dance music, your antibody levels will rise while cortisol, a stress hormone, decreases. A body in a restful state has a much better chance of coming back into balance from a cold than when it is stressed.

So kick back, put in your earbuds, and lose yourself in the music. Your cold-riddled body will thank you for it.

7 Cupping and Scraping

Cupping, an ancient Chinese healing remedy, on the surface, seems a bizarre remedy for colds. If you’re experiencing congestion due to a cold, then cupping might be a good choice for relieving it. Cupping triggers your body’s energy which helps to restore and heal it.

During an appointment with a practitioner, cups are placed on the skin. Each cup is heated or pumped manually to create suction and then left on the skin for a few minutes.

There are different types of cups. Your practitioner may use edge cups, electric suction cups, Zen clear cups, or oval glass cups. They all essentially do the same thing: massage the skin at a deep level, causing increased blood flow. Increased blood flow detoxes the area where a cup has been applied.

Please note you might react to cupping treatment with a headache, nausea, fatigue, or burns if the cups are overheated before being applied to the skin. But as a rule, cupping is generally pain-free.

Another treatment is scraping, traditionally known as gua sha. The treatment entails running a scraping tool across muscle fibers, myofascial lines, along lymphatic tracks, and the meridians of the body. During a cold, having this kind of treatment can open the skin’s pores and release inflammation in the body.

When you’re feeling miserable and are desperate for some relief, any viable treatment such as this one is worth considering.

6 Make a Poultice

Making and applying a tallow poultice to your chest to relieve congestion is not just an old wives’ tale. This peculiar cold remedy is a combination of an African and European home remedy.

Take rendered cattle or sheep tallow, otherwise known as fat, and gently warm it to soften it. To the tallow, add some herbs. For example, mint aids in clearing up your congestion, while mustard adds a little heat to the poultice. Experiment with the herbs you have in your garden.

Once the tallow and herbs have been mixed, wrap the mixture in a piece of cotton flannel cloth and apply it to the chest.

Another poultice you might want to try making consists of mustard, flour, and water. Simply mix four tablespoons of flour with two tablespoons of dry mustard. Add enough lukewarm water to make a paste. Take a smooth tea towel (not terry cloth) and spread the paste over half the towel on one side. Fold the remaining half of the towel over the paste and apply to the chest. Leave the poultice on the chest for twenty minutes.

Afterward, wipe away any residue from the poultice with a clean, damp cloth. You should apply this mustard poultice once every six hours.

5 Lizard Soup

North American’s have a tradition of serving a cold sufferer warm chicken soup. But in China, lizard soup is served instead.

To simmering water, add a dehydrated lizard along with yams and dates. Cook until yams are soft. It’s reported that this soup reduces coughing and soothes other common cold symptoms. Most importantly, the broth helps to rehydrate the body due to the loss of fluids from repeatedly blowing your nose and sweating, and it aids in loosening built-up mucus.

4 Gogol-Mogol

The phrase “gag me with a spoon” comes to mind when it comes to Gogol-Mogol. Gogol-Mogol is a medicinal hot drink served to citizens in Ukraine and Russia who are inflicted with a cold.

Gogol-Mogol is made by taking one beaten egg yolk and a teaspoon of sweetener – sugar or honey and whisking them together. It’s then added to half a cup of hot milk. Next, dissolve one tablespoon of unsalted butter in the warm mixture.

To make this drink more palatable, you may wish to add a little cognac or rum; of course, this addition is for adults only. It’s believed the egg yolk soothes the throat while the L-tryptophan found in the warm milk helps you to sleep more soundly when stricken with a cold.

3 Onions and Lard

If you’re suffering from a sore throat due to a cold, you might want to slice up a raw onion and stuff it inside your socks! It turns out onions contain allicin. Allicin can reduce inflammation in the body and acts as an antioxidant.

Speaking of socks, here is an old English remedy. Take a pair of dirty socks and wrap them around your neck after first greasing the neck with either rendered chicken fat or lard. Doing this is thought to bring on sweating. And finally, seeing we are on the topic of socks, before putting on a fresh, clean pair of socks, consider rubbing Vicks VapoRub on the bottom of your feet first.

People who use this bizarre cold remedy claim it offers relief from congestion and coughing.

2 Oysters, Anyone?

Oysters are packed with zinc. So if you feel a cold coming on or, better yet, want to build up your zinc levels as cold season approaches, start eating oysters.

The strange thing is that fried and breaded oysters contain more zinc than the raw ones, which is good news for people who don’t have fresh oysters. If you don’t already know it, zinc helps to fight off cold symptoms because zinc aids in the function of our white blood cells. And it’s the white blood cells that fight viral and bacterial infections in the body.

Other sources of food rich in zinc are legumes, so you might think of making a pot of lentil soup. Also, dairy products, spinach, and meat are excellent sources of zinc.

1 Turnips

Who would guess the lowly turnip is an expectorant?

An expectorant aids in quieting coughing and can loosen mucus in the body when sick. Turnips are also loaded with vitamins A, B, and C. In Iran, it’s very common for people suffering from a cold to cook up a plate of turnips, mash them and devour them to reduce their cold symptoms.

Or you may want to try making a turnip concoction to relieve your sore throat or painful, persistent coughing!

Simply peel and cut up a turnip into pieces. Take 150 grams of these pieces and boil them in a pot with a liter of milk. Simmer for a good forty minutes. Strain the liquid off, and let it cool for a bit before drinking it. To make it more palatable, add some honey. This concoction reduces coughing due to a naturally occurring sulfurous ingredient that loosens and eliminates phlegm and disinfects the respiratory tract.

And finally, if eating mashed turnips or drinking milk infused with turnips isn’t appealing, you might prefer a turnip syrup. Make the syrup by first peeling a turnip. Next, cut it into thin slices. In a bowl or plastic container, lay down a slice of turnip, sprinkle on some brown sugar, add another slice of turnip, and so on. Cover the container and let the turnip and sugar sit for twelve hours. Drain off the turnip syrup and store in a bottle. Sip as needed.