Outnumbered, cut off from any hope of rescue or support, operating secretly. The dramatic potential of troops or pilots conducting a raid has been well explored by film, television, and literature. The scenario even offers all the, for want of a better word, “fun” of being in the military without many of the responsibilities, such as looking out for the well-being of civilians or many other parts of protocol. It also offers the persons involved the potential for much more glory than most regular operations since the numbers are small enough that there’s less credit to spread around and less commotion for an individual’s contribution to be lost. 

Most raids are good primarily for wasting the enemy’s resources or extracting a specific target. Some, however, have changed the very shape of history and the courses of wars. While some are still kept under a shroud of secrecy that may never be lifted, some are so devastating in their impacts that they can’t be kept under wraps by either side. 

10. Operation Flipper

No one could say that the mission that Colonel Robert Laycock and his 59 other commandos were sent to on November 10, 1941, was unambitious. They boarded the submarines H.M.S. Torbay and Talisman intent on sneaking into Axis-controlled Tunisia, raiding Sidi Rafa. There they would kill Lt. General Erwin Rommel himself while also destroying the Italian high command in North Africa, effectively liberating the continent for the Allies. 

They didn’t even make landfall before things began to go wrong. A storm struck on November 14 and forced the Talisman aground, with only seven commandos arriving for the landfall. Despite around 50% of the personnel being knocked out without a shot being fired, Laycock decided to go ahead with the plan to assassinate Rommel and attack the Italian HQ. The weather continued to be a problem as they were bombarded with rain, but by November 17, they launched their two-pronged attack. 

While the commandos killed three German colonels and destroyed a supply dump, it turned out Rommel hadn’t even arrived, as the same weather that had given the commandos so much trouble had convinced him to stay in Rome. It turned out to be a steep price to pay as only two of the commandos returned to British lines at all, and that took them five weeks of subterfuge. A very loose and flattering film adaptation of the events called Raid on Rommel was released in 1971.  

Hopefully, this entry has gone to show that just because a raid was daring does not at all mean it was successful.

9. Raid on Boulogne 

As Napoleon Bonaparte said, if the French could be masters of the English Channel for six hours during the 1800s, they would be masters of the world. This was no idle boast to the British military, who watched the French draw together a navy with alarm. By 1804 the time had come to act, and the target was the 150 French ships in the fortified port of Boulogne. The British navy sent a flotilla of ships heavily laden with torpedoes, a brand new weapon designed by Robert Fulton. The raid actually inflicted light French casualties (about 14) and little damage on the French fleet. 

And yet it had an effect far out of proportion to material damage in one area: Morale. Spooked by the torpedo explosions, the morale of the French military sank, and the initiative to launch an invasion of the United Kingdom was replaced by panic. Ports were refortified instead of being prepared for an attack. Great Britain might have been saved by the Raid on Boulogne. Not bad for a raid that hadn’t cost the British a single casualty. 

8. The Great Raid of 1840

On March 19, 1840, leaders of Comanche and Penateka tribes in Central Texas were engaged in peace talks with Texas leaders. Owing to one freed hostage’s account, the Texan authorities threatened that unless all hostages were returned, every Native American participant could consider themselves a hostage. When the Comanche refused, a fight broke out which left more than 30 Comanche, including women and children, dead. So it was that by August 6, 1840, between 600 and 1,000 Comanche men under the command of Buffalo Hump rode into Texan territory in reprisal. 

First, they sacked the community of Victoria, killing fifteen as the rest huddled in the Southern district. The war party rode along the Guadalupe River, coming to a stop in and sacking the community of Linnville, outside San Antonio. The Comanches then retreated on August 8, but they made the mistake of carrying an oversized haul of loot and stolen horses with them, which slowed the party down enough for the Texans to organize a war party of their own. They caught up to the Comanches at Plum Creek and were estimated to have killed eighty of them in a surprise attack. As a result the Comanches never attempted anything like such a large and elaborate raid again, reverting to tried and true small-scale guerilla tactics.  

7. Morgan’s Raid

us is not an unabashed fan of Confederate raiders, considering what those under commanders like William Anderson did at Centralia.  Still, there’s no denying the daring and significance of many of their raids, especially in regards to lengthening the Civil War. Surely the one that John Hunt Morgan began on June 11, 1863, at the head of 2,400 cavalrymen was one of the boldest. He had been ordered to move from Sparta, Tennessee, and invade Kentucky to distract the Union armies, but he was not to cross the Ohio River under any circumstances. So on July 8, Morgan crossed the Ohio River with around 1,800 cavalrymen as the rest continued operations in Kentucky. While he was far from the largest Union armies, there were 100,000 Union troops against him, albeit widely scattered. 

It turned out Morgan’s orders had been much more reasonable than he would have liked, for the Union command quickly figured out where he was going. At Fayetteville, West Virginia the 23rd Ohio and 13th West Virginia Volunteers led by future president Rutherford B. Hayes ambushed Morgan on July 19th and cut his numbers in half. The Federals chased them to Salineville, Ohio, and captured Morgan and the remnants of his command on July 26. As we’ll see in a bit, that was nowhere near the worst thing to happen to the Confederate military that season.    

6. Belov’s Raids

TopTenz has written before about how the winter of 1941-1942 actually didn’t stop the Third Reich’s capture of Moscow and was quite bad for the Red Army’s counterattack. Still, one force of the Red Army came away from the largely disastrous counterattack with a massive credit under their belt. It was the 1st Cavalry Corps under General Pavel Belov. A large number of German divisions were positioned in a salient point in the Rhzev area, and Belov’s cavalry was sent behind the front in an attempt to cut the salient supply lines. 

The corps would find itself cut off, surrounded, and badly outnumbered. Yet Belov’s forces were sufficiently resourceful that they tied down seven divisions for six months, aided in no small part by the many partisans that were rallying against the Axis army as their extermination operations were making it clear they were not the heroic liberators many initially took them to be. Ultimately, Belov and roughly 2,000 under his command would break back out of the encirclement, and Belov would go on to become one of the most acclaimed Soviet commanders of the war.   

5. The Whitehaven Raid

For most of the American Revolution, it was taken for granted that all the fighting would take place in American territory as the crown had such an overwhelmingly superior army and navy. In 1778, John Paul Jones, who a year later would very famously capture the British ship Serapis after yelling “I have not yet begun to fight,” made to bring the fight to the home country by raiding the port town of Whitehaven in northwest England with its 400 merchant ships. Having sailed the Atlantic, Jones set out with thirty commandos in two boats to conquer the two forts and burn the merchant fleet to the waterline. 

For Jones’s boat, things went relatively smoothly. They landed, took their objective fort, and ruined the guns so that they could safely escape. The other boat, however, had problems that sounded like something out of Black Adder. First, the tide gave them so much trouble that they fell three hours behind schedule. Then when they belatedly made landfall, they went to the local pub and got drunk off liquor. When Jones caught up with them and understandably raged at the neglect of duty, he attempted to set fire to the town and ships, but the town’s fire brigade, bolstered as was English tradition since the 1666 London Fire, dutifully put the fires out promptly. Jones and company got away having neither suffered nor inflicted much damage, yet their exploit sent a wave of terror through the Isles that led to many sea towns being put on the alert for years afterward.    

4. The Doolittle Raid 

Anyone who’s seen Michael Bay’s 2002 film Pearl Harbor knows the Doolittle Raid was how the US Armed Forces saved face after the humiliation of four battleships being sunk and about 2,000 lives being lost during the sneak attack. On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25 Mitchells took off for Tokyo, starting more than half again over the original distance they originally intended. There would be no returning: They had to fly for China and hope they could land in airfields controlled by the Allies. 

The bombing killed 50 Japanese people, mostly civilians, and wounded about 400 others, but did little structural damage. So when the bombers were found to be too low on fuel to reach their airfield objectives and had to crash land, Commander James Doolittle’s belief that he would be court-martialed for losing 16 planes and three personnel while inflicting little damage on the enemy seems understandable. Considering the boost the attack had for US morale and the way it disrupted Japanese public sentiment to a point where it changed military strategy, it’s also understandable that he received the Medal of Honor instead. 

Initially ignored but increasingly more mentioned, the raid cost China’s population by far the most of any nation involved. Both because it revealed just how vulnerable Japan could be to air attacks from China and simply thirsty for revenge, the Japanese military launched a series of reprisals that by some accounts left hundreds of thousands of Chinese dead. If Doolittle’s men had given any sort of American gift to a Chinese person in compensation for kindness, they were very likely unknowingly giving that person a death sentence. It also seemed to influence the decision for just where to place the infamous Unit 731, as it was quite close to Chuchow, the Doolittle raiders’ intended destination. Such are the greatest sacrifices in war often overlooked.  

3. The Osel Air Raid

When the Third Reich launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and invaded the Soviet Union, they caught the Red military completely off guard, destroying 1,200 Soviet plans in a single day. By July they were launching bombing runs on Moscow itself. General Secretary Joseph Stalin caught wind of the effect the raids on Moscow were having on Soviet morale and so ordered air raids on Berlin itself in retaliation. 

This was no idle command, as Berlin was the best-defended city in Europe and tore through squads of Allied aircraft on the regular. So when 15 Ilushyin DB-3 bombers took off from Osel, Estonia for Berlin on July 7, 1941, the years’ obsolete planes were generally regarded as being sent on a suicide mission. Such was their condition that the crews needed to perform wing repairs on them in midair. 

Fortunately for them, Berlin’s anti-aircraft guns were pointed toward the United Kingdom and it was Reich policy to keep all peacetime lights on at night. When the DB-3s flew over the capital, they were largely misidentified as errant Luftwaffe aircraft and sent signals asking them who they were. Five bombers were able to reach their targets and put the fear of the proletariat into the Reich. Not that it had much material effect, as subsequent raids quickly found themselves running into fully alerted anti-aircraft, and as many as eighteen bombers would be lost in a night until the Wehrmacht conquered Osel in August 1941 and the raids ended. Still, the raids boosted Soviet morale at a time when any support was desperately needed. 

2. Harper’s Ferry Raid 

20 men versus the institution of slavery in the United States. That was what John Brown could bring to muster against the Virginian Harper’s Ferry Armory on October 16, 1859, with the intent of arming a slave revolt that would spread throughout the South. Brown hoped that if he seized the thousands of small arms in the armory, enough of the 18,000 slaves in surrounding counties would rise up that they could overwhelm all militias and marines sent to put them back down. Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman had denounced the plan, with Douglass warning Brown he was leading his insurrectionists into a “perfect trap.” 

While the raiders did seize control of the armory and took eleven hostages, one of the first people they killed was a free black porter named Hayward Shepherd, which likely contributed to the fact far fewer slaves rose up in revolt than Brown needed. Over the next two days, Brown’s men were surrounded by thousands of militia members and several attempts to negotiate their release resulted in an abolitionist being shot dead. By October 18, a force of 90 marines broke into the armory and captured the remaining raiders in less than three minutes. Brown and other captured raiders would be put to death on December 2, 1859. Only five of the original group lived to tell the tale.   

Once again, short-term failure turned out to be a long-term triumph because of how Brown conducted himself through his trial and execution. His belief that his martyrdom would provide the impetus needed to cleanse the sins of the nation with blood left him fearless in the face of the gallows. Millions throughout the nation were inspired on both ends of the political spectrum, with even many slavery supporters offering him a grudging respect. No less than John Wilkes Booth, who witnessed the execution, would despite his admiration for the Confederacy write admiringly of Brown for years after his execution and say that Lincoln wasn’t fit to follow in the footsteps of that “rugged old hero.” 

1. Grierson’s Raid

On April 17, 1863, Union soldiers under Ulysses S. Grant were in a tight spot. They had just run the guns at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and were to a significant degree cut off from their supply lines. If the Confederate troops under General John Pemberton moved swiftly, they could catch Grant with his back to the Mississippi and potentially destroy him as they almost did at Shiloh the year before. But Confederate eyes were largely turned away, following a force of 1,700 cavalrymen under the command of Benjamin Grierson. Their ride would take them from Tennessee, through Mississippi, and down to Louisiana. 

They would ultimately ride 600 miles in sixteen days while the raiders were outnumbered more than 20 to 1, inflicting hundreds of casualties while suffering less than 20 themselves. More importantly, they kept the Confederate Army too occupied to move south against Grant and thus allowed the Vicksburg victory that essentially did more than anything to doom the Confederacy. Pretty good results for a raid led by a man who before the war was a music teacher that despised horses. 

Dustin Koski cowrote the post-apocalyptic supernatural comedy Return of the Living with Jonathan “Bogleech” Wojcik. 

Medieval Europe was a violent place where ruthless kings ruled with iron fists. Assassinations were an easy way of removing a tyrant or political enemy, and they were often carried out with shocking brutality. Some of them were also fiendishly clever.

10Duke Conan II Of Brittany

In 1065, William of Normandy was preparing to invade England. To secure his borders, he proposed alliances with the surrounding lords. However, Duke Conan II of Brittany hated the Normans because he believed they had poisoned his father. Conan refused to ally with William and strongly implied that he would attack Normandy as soon as the army left for England.

This turned out to be a bit of a mistake since William quickly had Conan poisoned as well. According to Orderic Vitalis, William had to be clever about it since the Breton would obviously have been careful to avoid the same fate as his father. So instead of targeting Conan’s food, William’s assassin smeared poison on Conan’s riding gloves. While out riding, Conan wiped his mouth with the back of one glove and soon suffered a fit and died.

9Kenneth II Of Scotland

Kenneth II was assassinated in AD 995. The death is primarily notable for the absolutely insane story of the booby trap that did it. According to John of Fordun, the princes Constantine and Gryme persuaded a noblewoman named Finnguala to do the deed. Since Kenneth had killed her son, she was happy to oblige.

Finnguala rigged up her house with multiple crossbows hidden behind tapestries. The crossbows were connected by strings to a statue in the middle of the room. Finnguala then invited the king to inspect the statue. As soon as he touched it, the crossbows went off, firing a dozen arrows through him at once.

We can say for sure that Kenneth was killed in AD 995 and that Constantine and Gryme were blamed. However, most historians are skeptical of a crazy crossbow statue as the murder weapon.

8Louis, Duke Of Orleans

Charles VI of France was insane. (Among other things, he believed that he was made of glass and might shatter at any moment.) This prompted his nobles to struggle among themselves for power.

The immediate winner was the king’s brother, Louis of Orleans, who seduced the queen and effectively became regent. Louis was opposed by John the Fearless of Burgundy, who even tried to kidnap the king’s son. In response, Louis may have tried to rape John’s wife.

Things came to a head on November 23, 1407. Louis was leaving the queen’s house in Paris when he was attacked by a gang of eight hooded men. An eyewitness said that they struck Louis repeatedly “as if they were beating a mattress” until his brains were all over the road. John didn’t even try to deny ordering the murder, insisting that it was “for the good of the realm.”

7John The Fearless

The murder of Louis of Orleans sparked a civil war between his Armagnac supporters and John the Fearless of Burgundy. This was the last thing France needed because it was the middle of the Hundred Years War and the English were invading.

In 1419, the two sides agreed to meet to resolve their differences in a special enclosure in the middle of the Montereau Bridge. However, as soon as John the Fearless arrived, three old friends of Louis of Orleans pulled out swords and killed him in revenge.

Although the Armagnacs insisted that the murder was not premeditated, John’s son Philip allied with the English, changing the tide of the war. It was later joked that the English entered France through the hole in John’s skull.

6Peter The Inquisitor

In the 13th century, the Catholic Church was campaigning against the Cathars, a heretical sect that believed in two gods, one good and one evil. The Albigensian Crusade had devastated the Cathar stronghold in southern France, while the Inquisition was established to hunt them throughout Europe.

One of the best inquisitors was Peter of Verona, who was known for his humble lifestyle and was unusually successful at persuading Cathars to rejoin Catholicism. As a result, the Cathar underground in Milan gathered funds and hired a pair of hit men. The killers tracked Peter to a lonely spot on the road, where they jumped him and put an axe through his head.

Peter was immediately declared a saint, and Pope Innocent IV released a bull allowing Inquisitors to use torture for the first time. Interestingly, one of the hit men, Carino of Balsamo, later repented and is now considered something of a holy man.

5Philip De Montfort

Philip de Montfort had an interesting family history. His father and uncle were leaders of the Albigensian Crusade, while his cousin Simon was the lover of Queen Isabella of England. The couple eventually overthrew and murdered Isabella’s husband, Edward II.

Philip was Crusader Lord of Tyre. His talented leadership alarmed the Egyptian Sultan Baibars, who asked the notorious Hashishin (“Assassins”) to take care of the problem.

A Syrian Assassin was sent to Tyre, where he successfully disguised himself as a Christian and prayed daily at Philip’s church. Once the Assassin was a familiar face, he wandered up behind Philip while he was kneeling at prayer and stabbed him in the back. Baibars attacked the Crusader states a few months later.

4Godfred Of Denmark

Godfred was king of Denmark around AD 800 when the famous Frankish Emperor Charlemagne dominated Europe. Charlemagne had conquered the pagan Saxons and forcibly converted them to Christianity, which was quite alarming to the pagan Godfred. In anticipation of a confrontation, he greatly expanded the Danevirke, a mighty series of earthen fortifications in southern Denmark.

When the Baltic city of Reric allied with Charlemagne, Godfred attacked and destroyed it. In 810, his fleets ravaged Frisia and Godfred began to talk of reconquering Saxony. According to Frankish chroniclers, Godfred boasted that he would stable his horses in Charlemagne’s palace. Furious, the emperor began building a fleet of his own.

It seemed that everything was set for a huge war between the Franks and Vikings until Godfred was suddenly stabbed to death by one of his own warriors. Many historians have suggested that the murder was ordered by Charlemagne, who presumably found assassins cheaper than fleets.

3Godfred Of Frisia

Murdering Danes named Godfred seemed to run in the family because Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Fat did the same thing. Charles had named a Viking called Godfred as the Duke of Frisia. In return, Godfred agreed to stop raiding Frankish lands and to keep other Vikings from doing the same.

Unfortunately, Godfred got greedy. Frisia was poor land, so Godfred demanded that Charles give him some rich, wine-producing areas along the Rhine. This attempt at extortion seriously annoyed the Franks. They invited Godfred to discuss the issue on an island in the Rhine. To Godfred’s surprise, the previously meek Franks showed up armed to the teeth and hacked him to death.

2Harthacnut

It’s often forgotten now, but the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror was actually the second time that England had been conquered in 50 years. Cnut (aka Canute) of Denmark made himself king of England in 1018. After his death, the throne eventually passed to his son Harthacnut.

Edward the Confessor was the son of the overthrown Anglo-Saxon king of England. Thanks to some complicated family politics, he was also Harthacnut’s half-brother. (They shared a mother.) If Harthacnut died, Edward was in line for the throne. As luck would have it, Harthacnut did die after suffering a mysterious fit at a banquet at age 25.

So what’s suspicious about that? Well, after Edward took the throne, the rebellious Earl Godwin of Wessex also died after suffering a mysterious fit while eating dinner with the king. Meanwhile, Edward’s half-brother dropped dead days after returning to England from exile in Kiev. Which starts to seem a little suspicious, really.

1Pedro The Cruel

Pedro the Cruel was not a nice guy. As king of Castile, he was accused of numerous crimes. This included the murder of his brother Fadrique, who was dining with Pedro when a guard walked up behind Fadrique and hit him with a mace. When Pedro noticed that Fadrique was still moving, Pedro gave a knife to a page to finish the job while Pedro continued eating.

Fadrique’s twin, Enrique, soon rose in revolt and besieged Pedro in his castle. Enrique was supported by the famous French knight Bertrand du Guesclin. Bertrand had a reputation as a bit of a weasel, so Pedro offered him a bribe to help him escape. Since Bertrand was actually a huge weasel, he accepted and then informed Enrique, who agreed to match the bribe if Bertrand handed Pedro over.

On March 23, 1369, Bertrand helped Pedro sneak out of the castle and led him to a tent. To Pedro’s surprise, Enrique was waiting for him. The Spanish princes immediately started throwing insults, calling each other “son of a whore” and “son of a Jew.” Then they started wrestling. Pedro was winning until someone pulled him off and sat on him while Enrique stabbed him in the stomach.

From Columbus to Magellan, the famous travelers of the Age of Exploration have become household names. Before that, we tend to think of the world as a parochial place, with people barely aware of what lay beyond their own backyard. But the truth is that daring explorers flourished in the Middle Ages, crossing vast distances and changing how Medieval people thought about the world.

10Friar Julian

Around 895 A.D., the Hungarians swept out of Eastern Europe, raiding across Europe and establishing themselves firmly in the Carpathian Basin. But they always remembered their distant homeland somewhere across the mountains. In particular, they mourned the Hungarians who had been split from the main group by a Pecheneg attack and left behind before the great migration into Europe. In 1235, King Bela of Hungary asked four Dominican friars to travel east in search of the missing Hungarians and their lost homeland.

Of the four explorers, only a friar named Julian survived the whole journey. He wrote that they had started their search around the Crimea, before trekking across the Caucasus and journeying up the Volga River. According to Julian, he found the Eastern Hungarians living there in a region he called Magna Hungaria (“Great Hungary”). However, by this time Julian had realized that a great threat was brewing. The Mongols were invading Russia and Julian correctly feared that this invincible new force would soon reach Hungary. He hastened back to Europe, where he provided the first detailed warning of the Mongol approach, and the Eastern Hungarians once again passed out of the history books.

9Gunnbjorn Ulfsson

It is fairly well-known that Erik the Red was the first Viking to sail to Greenland and settle there. But Erik did not actually discover Greenland. That honor goes to his relative Gunnbjorn Ulfsson, who reported the existence of a land west of Iceland in the early 10th century.

According to the sagas, Gunnbjorn was sailing to Iceland when he was blown off course by a storm. He reported seeing some skerries (small, uninhabitable islands) rising from the sea to the west and deduced that a larger landmass must lie beyond them. However, modern historians believe that Gunnbjorn was actually seeing the “hillingar,” a well-known mirage caused by “optical ducting” off the Greenland coast.

In any case, Gunnbjorn was right to suspect that a large island lay beyond whatever he saw. This new land was eventually settled by Erik the Red and used by his son Leif as a launch point for his famous voyages to the Americas.

8Rabban Bar Sauma

Often called the Marco Polo of the East, Rabban bar Sauma was born in China in 1220 A.D., not far from modern Beijing. He became a Nestorian Christian monk and became known for his fervent acts of devotion. He eventually decided to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, requiring him to trek across the Asian landmass. He eventually made it to Baghdad, but a war in the Holy Land meant he could not journey on to Jerusalem.

After a few years in an Armenian monastery, the Mongol ruler of Iran asked Rabban to undertake a diplomatic mission to Europe. The fearless monk was feted in Constantinople and narrowly wriggled out of a difficult situation in Rome, where some cardinals suspected that he was a heretic. He stayed with King Philip of France and made it to the Atlantic Ocean near Bordeaux, where he met with King Edward “Longshanks” of England.

After returning to Persia in triumph, Rabban retired to found a monastery in Azerbaijan. He carefully kept a diary of his travels, providing modern historians with a fascinating outsider’s perspective on Medieval Europe.

7William of Rubruck

After the initial Mongol invasion of Europe, the European powers would send several ambassadors on the long journey to the court of the Great Khan. By far the most insightful was the monk William of Rubruck, who actually was not an ambassador at all and mostly wound up in Mongolia by accident.

During the Seventh Crusade, William asked King Louis XI of France for permission to travel from Palestine to modern Russia, where he hoped to minister to the Christians enslaved by the Mongols during their attack on Hungary a decade earlier. But when he rocked up in Russia, the Mongols completely misunderstood his mission and assumed he was a formal ambassador. As such, they sent him on to the court of Mongke Khan in Mongolia.

William was in no position to argue and found himself swept along to Karakorum, where he spoke with Mongke and participated in a formal debate between Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists (everyone ended up blackout drunk before Mongke got around to picking the winner).

He returned to France around 1255, where he wrote a detailed and often humorous account of his travels (a highlight is a lengthy religious discussion with some Buddhists which suddenly ends because “my interpreter was tired and . . . made me stop talking). Among other breakthroughs, he alerted Medieval Europe to the existence of Buddhism and persuaded mapmakers that the Caspian Sea was landlocked.

6Afanasy Nikitin

Afanasy Nikitin was a merchant from Tver who became arguably the greatest Russian explorer of the Medieval period. He initially left Tver in 1466 on a trading expedition to the Caucasus but was attacked and robbed on the Volga. With his finances in ruins, he decided to seek opportunities further afield and traveled on through Persia to Hormuz, where he took ship for India.

Nikitin arrived in India in 1469. At that time, the country was virtually unknown in Russia, but he fit in well and traveled widely through the Deccan. He found he got along better with the local Hindus than their Muslim rulers, who kept trying to talk him into converting. He wrote extensive descriptions of the local temples and religious practices and made visits to Calicut and Sri Lanka, where he described the famous Adam’s Peak as a holy site for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims.

In 1472, Nikitin became homesick and decided to make the journey back to Tver. Along the way, he visited Ethiopia and Oman, but he sadly died in Smolensk, Russia, just a short distance from his beloved Tver.

5Li Da and Chen Cheng

Li Da and Chen Cheng were two Chinese eunuchs who undertook a dangerous expedition through Central Asia in the 1410s. Li Da was by far the more experienced traveler, having already made two trips into the heart of Asia. But he did not write about them, so he has been almost forgotten. But Chen Cheng did keep a detailed diary, so he gets all the glory, although he was always subordinate to Li Da.

The two eunuchs set out in 1414, on a diplomatic mission for the Yongle Emperor. They journeyed through a desert for 50 days, then navigated the barren terrain of the world’s second lowest depression, and clambered past the Tian Shan mountains. They waded through salt marshes and lost most of their horses crossing the Syr River. Finally, after 269 days, they reached Herat, presented their gifts to the sultan and went home. Astonishingly, Li Da would make the same journey twice more, always making it through without a scratch.

4Odoric of Pordenone

Beginning in the late 13th century, the Franciscan monks began a determined effort to establish a presence in east Asia. They sent out missionaries like John of Montecorvino, who became the first Catholic Bishop of Peking (Beijing), and Giovanni de’ Marignolli, who journeyed widely through China and India. Perhaps the best traveled of all was Odoric of Pordenone, a Franciscan of Czech extraction who set out for the east around 1316.

After some time in Persia, Odoric preached throughout India before taking ship for modern Indonesia, where he visited Java, Sumatra, and possibly Borneo. Arriving in China, he based himself in Beijing but continued to travel widely (he was particularly impressed with Hangzhou) for the next three years. He then decided to return home via Lhasa, Tibet.

After returning to Italy, he dictated his biography from his sickbed (which may explain why they abruptly end after Tibet). He died in Udine in 1331. His memoirs became enormously influential—but not in the way he might have hoped. An unknown hack rewrote them to add all sorts of ludicrous events and fantastical beasts and published them as “The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville,” which became a smash medieval bestseller.

3Naddodd and Gardar

According to the saga of Ari the Wise, the first Viking to discover Iceland was a settler in the Faroe Islands called Naddodd, who was blown off course by a storm to a place he called “Snowland.” This accidental discovery was followed up by a Swede named Gardar Svarsson, who explored the coast of the island and wintered there before sailing back to Scandinavia, full of praise for the new land. Thanks to Gardar’s daring and Naddodd’s ability not to die in a storm, the Vikings would quickly settle in Iceland, where their descendants remain to this day.

Oddly, the sagas insist that Noddodd and Gardar were not the first Europeans to reach Iceland. According to Ari, Scottish or Irish monks known as Papar were already living as hermits in Iceland when the Norse arrived, but they quickly left as “they did not want to share the land with heathens,” leaving behind “Irish books.” Of course, Ari was writing 250 years later, and supporting evidence for the Papar’s existence is thin, so use your best judgment there.

2Benjamin of Tudela

Very little is known about Benjamin of Tudela since his travelogue remains the only source for his life. He was a Jew who set out from Tudela in Spain around 1160 and kept a careful record of his travels. After journeying through Barcelona and southern France, he spent some time in Rome before traveling south through Greece to Constantinople.

From Constantinople, he took ship for the Holy Land and journeyed through Palestine and Syria to Baghdad and Persia. His writings then describe Sri Lanka and China, but the descriptions become fantastical, and most historians believe he did not make it farther than the Persian Gulf.

Benjamin’s primary value to historians was his focus on the Jewish communities he encountered everywhere on his travels, which tended to be ignored by later travelers. His writing remains the best travelogue of this hidden Medieval world.

1Ibn Battutah

It is impossible to write about medieval travelers without mentioning Ibn Battutah, the greatest traveler of his age and arguably of all time. While most medieval explorers journeyed for trade, diplomacy, or religion, Ibn Battutah simply loved traveling: he was a natural tourist. As a result, it has been seriously suggested that he covered more miles than anyone else until the invention of the steam engine.

Born into a wealthy Moroccan family, Ibn Battutah was sent on a pilgrimage to Mecca as a youth. It was supposed to prepare him for a career as an Islamic judge, but instead, it awakened his wanderlust. Instead of returning home, he crisscrossed the Middle East and then sailed down the East African coast to modern Tanzania.

Running low on funds, Ibn Battutah then decided to journey to Delhi, where he had heard the sultan was extremely generous. Typically, he went via Turkey, Crimea, Constantinople, and the Volga River in what is now Russia. Finally, he reached Afghanistan and crossed the Hindu Kush into India, where the sultan showered him with gifts and sent him on a diplomatic mission to China.

Unfortunately, he was robbed, caught in a war, and shipwrecked (in that order), losing all the gifts the sultan had asked him to present to the Chinese court. Too afraid to return to Delhi, he spent a few years hiding out in the Maldives, then visited Sri Lanka, Bengal, and Sumatra, before finally making it to China around 1345.

Returning to the Middle East two years later, he found the region ravaged by the black plague and quickly returned to Morocco. After a quick jaunt to Spain, he embarked on his last great journey, crossing the Sahara and exploring the Malian Empire. In 1353, he returned to Morocco, wrote his memoirs, and promptly vanished from history.

While big guns and large armies are an important part of modern warfare, they’re ineffective without a network of highly-specialized covert operatives working behind the scenes to support their objectives. Some of the most successful military missions in history have been carried out by small, nameless groups of individuals that could be classified as both spies and soldiers, their exploits usually only coming to light decades later when documents about their missions are finally declassified.

10. Operation Fortitude

Operation Fortitude was a crucial Allied deception operation during the Second World War, designed to mislead Nazi Germany’s high command about the main Allied invasion of Europe in 1944. Officially beginning in 1943, it was organized by a secret group of military officers called the London Controlling Section, and formed a part of the much-larger global operation called Operation Bodyguard. 

Fortitude’s primary goal was to divert German attention away from the real invasion site at Normandy. To achieve this, it focused on two main areas – while Fortitude North kept Germany’s attention on Norway, Fortitude South reinforced the German belief that the invasion would occur in the Pas-de-Calais region of France, as it was closest to the English coast. 

The Germans were led to believe that the fictitious First United States Army Group (FUSAG) was stationed in southeast England under General George Patton, complete with dummy landing crafts, tanks, vehicles, and fake radio traffic to back up the plan. The operation was wildly successful by the end of it, as the Germans continued to believe in the existence of FUSAG even after the D-Day landings in June 1944. 

9. Operation Farewell

Operation Farewell was a CIA campaign of computer sabotage during the Cold War in 1981. It began when French President François Mitterrand informed President Ronald Reagan about a high-level KGB officer, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, who had decided to switch sides. Vetrov provided what is now infamously known as the Farewell dossier, exposing how the Soviets were systematically stealing or buying advanced technology from the West.

Under the guidance of Gus Weiss, the CIA planted deliberately flawed designs for technology, including computer chips, stealth technology, and space defense, that would appear fine at first but failed during operation. For the USSR, the primary purpose of operations was to obtain computer control systems for a new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The manipulated software caused a massive explosion in June 1982, leaving the Soviet authorities in shock and raising doubts within the administration about the reliability of stolen technology from the West.

8. The Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five was a spy ring of British double agents that infiltrated the UK government and passed sensitive intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union during the early stages of the Cold War. The members were Kim Philby (pictured above), Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross, recruited by the KGB during their time at Cambridge University in the 1930s. 

They were later found to be openly communist and believing in the Soviet cause, leading them to spy on the British government and undermine its foreign policy, including the development of the British nuclear bomb. The ring had a huge impact on global affairs, especially in its effect on the British relationship with post-war allies like the USA. The Cambridge Five stole and passed on classified documents from British intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office to Soviet authorities throughout the duration of their operations. 

7. Operation Gladio

Operation Gladio was a secret, stay-behind network of anti-communist fighters set up by the CIA, British secret service, NATO, and other European military agencies in Western Europe after the Second World War. Specially trained by Green Berets and SAS Special Forces, these soldiers were armed with explosives, machine guns, and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and forests across the continent. 

Codenamed ‘Gladio’, the Italian branch of the network was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, revealing similar stay-behind armies in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and other European countries. These secret armies were usually directly coordinated by NATO and the Pentagon, and were originally created during the Cold War as a defense against a potential Warsaw-block invasion. Gladio would eventually evolve into an extensive NATO-operated network, often involving civilians trained by intelligence operatives. 

6. The Lavon Affair

The Lavon Affair, named for former Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, is a media-nickname given to a failed covert operation carried out by Israel against Egypt in 1954. It was a highly controversial mission that had lasting consequences for relationships within the Middle East, as it involved activating an Israeli sleeper cell of young Egyptian Jews to set off bombs across Egypt with the intention to destabilize Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government. 

That didn’t turn out too well, however, as the Egyptian authorities discovered the plot during its planning stages, leading to arrests, trials, and harsh treatment of the spies. Two members of the cell were executed, while others received lengthy prison sentences.

The affair triggered a series of events – a retaliatory military incursion by Israel into Gaza, an Egyptian-Soviet arms deal that angered Western leaders, the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt, and a failed invasion of Egypt by Israel, France, and Britain to topple Nasser. France accelerated its nuclear cooperation with Israel in the aftermath, enabling the latter to eventually develop nuclear weapons.

5. Operation Washtub

Operation Washtub was a clandestine program developed during the 1950s amid Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The initiative aimed to create a network of civilian sleeper agents in Alaska who would stay behind in the event of a Soviet invasion, providing intelligence on enemy activities and establishing escape routes for stranded American military personnel. 

Led by US Navy Captain Minor Heine, the plan received approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1950, and was eventually overseen by the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations with support from the FBI. The FBI’s role involved recruiting, training, and equipping the stay-behind agents, strategically chosen from various local occupations like miners, pilots, fishermen, and others with survival skills and knowledge of Alaska’s geography. The agents were trained in espionage, survival techniques, and were equipped with caches of supplies, including weapons and gold in case of emergencies. 

4. Operation Wrath of God

Operation Bayonet, also known as Operation Wrath of God, was a covert Israeli campaign initiated in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Massacre, where terrorists belonging to the Black September group killed Israeli athletes and coaches during the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. Directed by Mossad, the operation was a retaliatory measure aimed at assassinating those responsible for the attack and deterring future terrorist actions against Israel. 

The campaign was authorized by Prime Minister Golda Meir, and the target list included over two dozen individuals affiliated with Black September and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The assassinations began in mid-October 1972, with Mossad agents targeting individuals in various countries across Europe and the Middle East. 

In April 1973, a related operation called Operation Spring of Youth involved a raid on several PLO compounds in Lebanon, resulting in several dozen deaths, including individuals connected to the Munich Massacre. The campaign continued for years until Ali Hassan Salameh, the alleged mastermind of the Munich Massacre, was killed in 1979.

3. Operation Gunnerside

On February 27, 1943, a covert group of nine Norwegian commandos raided a German-held hydroelectric plant called Vemork, just outside Rjukan, Norway. Their mission – now officially known as Operation Gunnerside – was to sabotage the facility by destroying the water pipes in its basement. 

While unaware of its significance at the time, the operatives later discovered that their successful sabotage hindered Germany’s atomic bomb program that relied on heavy water production at the plant. The Germans had been using heavy water – or deuterium oxide – as a moderator for their nuclear reactor to sustain a chain reaction necessary for the bomb. The lack of coordination and support among the German leadership, however, along with heavy water’s technological limitations, prevented them from achieving a successful reaction. 

2. The Red Orchestra

Named by the Nazis, the Red Orchestra was a network of communist spies and resistance fighters operating across Germany during the Second World War. Led by Leopold Trepper, a Polish-born communist, the group provided intelligence to the Soviet government and acted as a resistance organization against the Nazis. 

Trepper established the network in the mid-1930s, and when the war began, he turned it into a spy ring aimed at gathering Nazi secrets for the Soviet army. Operating divisions, or rings, were established in Nazi-occupied France, Belgium, Holland, and neutral Switzerland, as they successfully infiltrated Nazi offices, intercepted intelligence information, and even obtained leaked documents about the Nazi plan to invade the Soviet Union. This crucial intelligence, however, was completely ignored by the Soviet government. 

The Red Orchestra started breaking down some time in 1942, when several agents were arrested in Belgium. The Gestapo subsequently captured Trepper in Paris and eliminated many members of the network, though some rings continued to operate on a smaller scale.

1. Operation LUSTY

Operation LUSTY – short for ‘Luftwaffe secret technology’ – was a post-WW2 effort spearheaded by the US Air Force to collect and study captured German aircraft, technology, and scientific documents. Led by Col. Harold E. Watson, the Air Technical Intelligence teams were tasked with locating enemy systems and equipment listed on ‘Black Lists’ collected throughout the war. After the fighting ended in May 1945, the ATI’s focus shifted to post-war investigations and the acquisition of advanced German technology.

As a part of the operation, Watson’s team of pilots, engineers, and maintenance personnel sought to recover enemy aircraft and weapons for further study in the United States. In total, Operation LUSTY collected 16,280 items, adding up to about 6,200 tons of captured German equipment.

There was a time when there was no greater calling than that of an explorer. So much of the world was still unknown to us and it was up to a few brave and curious adventurers to probe the deepest, darkest corners of the planet to illuminate the rest of us.

It was dangerous work and many lives were sacrificed during the pursuit of this noble endeavor. As you are about to see, some men who probed the unfathomable abyss were never heard from again.

10. The Vivaldi Brothers

Not much is known about Vadino and Ugolino Vivaldi. We know that they were two brothers from the Republic of Genoa who lived during the second half of the 13th century and that they were both thriving maritime merchants. Whether or not the siblings had a history of exploration and adventure, we cannot say, but in 1291 they set off on a very ambitious journey – to try and find a sailing route from Europe to India via Africa. 

Basically, it was the cape route that they were looking for – the sea lane that traversed the South Atlantic Ocean, rounded Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, and then crossed the Indian Ocean. It served, basically, as the most important shipping route in the world for centuries, but the Vivaldi brothers attempted to sail it almost 200 years before it was actually discovered by European explorers. 

Suffice it to say that things did not go to plan. The brothers left Genoa in May 1291 aboard two galleys, possibly named the Sanctus Antonius and the Alegrancia. They were known to have made it out of the Mediterranean and to have sailed off the coast of Morocco, but once they hit the open ocean, they were never heard from again.

9. John Cabot

Like the Vivaldi brothers, Giovanni Caboto was an Italian explorer, but he sailed under the auspices of King Henry VII of England, hence the anglicized version of his name, John Cabot. The adventurer undertook three voyages for England, but it is his second journey in 1497 that he is most famous for. Simply known as the Cabot Expedition, this trip saw the intrepid explorer reach the coast of North America, becoming the first European to do so since the Vikings. The exact spot where he landed is still under debate, although the Canadian Government recognizes Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland as Cabot’s landfall.

Since this voyage was a success, Cabot intended to repeat it a year later, with the full backing of the king. This time, he had more ships, and they had been loaded with merchandise, suggesting that Cabot was looking to trade. 

The fleet set off from Bristol in May 1498. We know that one of the ships was damaged early on during a storm and had to return to England. From that point on, the expedition and John Cabot himself simply disappeared from the historical record. Possible outcomes for them included the obvious – that they were lost at sea – or that they reached Canada, but shipwrecked and died at Grates Cove on the Avalon Peninsula.

However, some historians believe that Cabot did make it back to England in 1500 and died there a few months later, although this doesn’t really explain why there is no mention of his return or death. 

8. Henry Hudson

A hundred years after Cabot, there was another navigator who sailed under the English flag and explored the northeastern coast of North America. He was Henry Hudson, the man who gave his name to the Hudson River, the Hudson Strait, and a few other places.   

There are quite a few similarities between Henry Hudson and our previous entries. Like Cabot, he undertook several successful voyages to the New World during the early 1600s. Then, like the Vivaldi brothers, Hudson embarked on a very ambitious mission that proved to be his doom. In his case, it was the search for the Northwest Passage, the sea route that connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by passing through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. 

The first man to successfully complete this route was Roald Amundsen in 1906, so we already know how things went for Hudson who attempted it 300 years earlier. The explorer set off from London in 1610 aboard the Discovery with a crew of 23, including his son, John Hudson. He reached the Arctic Ocean, but got trapped in ice in James Bay and had no choice but to go ashore and wait out the winter. 

Miraculously, the expedition only lost one man during the coming months but, by the time spring came around, most of the crew wanted to return back to England. They mutinied and placed Henry Hudson, his son, and seven loyal shipmates in a boat and cast them adrift, and they were never seen again.

7. La Pérouse 

During the late 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment was in full swing, and expeditions of scientific exploration were the new hot ticket. Following the voyages of James Cook, France felt like it was lagging behind England slightly, so in 1785 King Louis XVI ordered his government to organize an expedition around the world and complete Cook’s exploration of the Pacific.

The man chosen to lead this scientific mission was Jean-François de Galaup, Count of La Pérouse, a senior naval officer who had distinguished himself fighting against England during the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution. La Pérouse was given command of two frigates – La Boussole and L’Astrolabe – fully stocked with the most modern scientific equipment of the day, plus a sizable library, and a crew that included multiple scientists.

The expedition left France in August 1785 and, for three years, things went very well. La Pérouse started by sailing to South America, then rounding Cape Horn and traveling northwards all the way to Alaska. He then crossed the Pacific and reached East Asia before heading south to Polynesia. In January 1788, the two ships reached Australia, where they docked for a month-and-a-half. They left in early March and were never seen again.

Their disappearance was considered a national tragedy in France and several rescue missions could not find a trace of what had happened to them. Even King Louis XVI, on the day of his execution, was reported to have asked his captors on the way to the guillotine if there was any news of La Pérouse.

It wasn’t until almost 50 years later that sailors found remnants that suggested that both ships smashed against the reef of an island called Vanikoro and sunk, but this still did not explain the fates of the crewmen. Local oral history said that survivors spent months on the island, building a schooner before setting out to sea again and disappearing once more.

6. Douglas Clavering

Scottish naval officer Douglas Clavering made a name for himself as an Arctic explorer, leading an expedition that surveyed Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago in 1823. That, however, had nothing to do with his mysterious disappearance. After making his successful return to England, Clavering was given a different commission as part of the West Africa Squadron, Britain’s recent anti-slavery initiative. 

The squadron was formed in 1808, following the passing of the Slave Trade Act, and it consisted of a fleet of Royal Navy ships that patrolled the waters off the coast of West Africa in an effort to suppress slavery. Captain Clavering became part of this squadron in 1825, after being appointed commander of the brig-sloop HMS Redwing. 

Although the West Africa Squadron seized around 1,600 slave ships during its 50-year existence, little is known of Clavering’s personal involvement. What we do know is that two years after his appointment, the Redwing set sail from Sierra Leone and was never seen again. Bits of wreckage that washed ashore suggested that the vessel might have caught fire, perhaps from a lightning strike.

5. Baron von Toll

In 1900, geologist and explorer Baron Eduard von Toll was commissioned by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences to lead a new Russian polar expedition to the arctic to survey an archipelago called the New Siberian Islands. Specifically, he was to search for the mythical Sannikov Land and prove, once and for all, whether or not the island actually existed.

This landmass had been first spotted a hundred years earlier and, ever since then, several explorers claimed to have seen it, including von Toll himself during an earlier expedition. This made him perfect for the mission so, in June 1900, he set off for the arctic with a 19-man team aboard the Zarya. 

Unfortunately for von Toll, Sannikov Land did not exist and this proved to be his undoing. After two years in the arctic, his team gathered plenty of scientific data, but no sign of the elusive island. With the expedition coming to a close, von Toll tried one last bold gamble. After the winter of 1902 passed, he and three crewmen left the Zarya and went on a separate journey using sleighs and canoes to maneuver easier through the archipelago. They were supposed to rendezvous with the rest of the team on Bennett Island, but the thick ice prevented the ship from getting anywhere close. From that point on, the fate of von Toll and his three crewmen became a mystery. Months later, a search party found their camp on Bennett Island along with several notes written by the explorer, but no trace of the men could ever be found.

4. Joshua Slocum

In 1898, Canadian sailor and adventurer Joshua Slocum turned into a worldwide sensation after becoming the first man to single-handedly sail around the world. He had spent the last three years traveling 46,000 miles aboard his sloop named Spray. Slocum then wrote an account of his experience titled Sailing Alone Around the World, which became an international bestseller.

Slocum’s success also provided him with some financial stability, which allowed him to buy some land and settle down. However, the old seadog soon realized that he was more at home on the open ocean than on terra firma, so he resumed his sailing, often traveling between the United States and the West Indies or South America. 

Unfortunately, it was one such trip that led to Slocum’s demise. In November 1909, he left Massachusetts and headed for the Caribbean aboard his trusty Spray. He was last seen resupplying in Miami before disappearing. Neither man nor ship was ever found. Although the obvious scenario suggests Slocum perished at sea, especially since he apparently never learned to swim, there is another idea that suggests that the adventurer faked his disappearance in order to start a new life away from his family.

3. Roald Amundsen

In the pantheon of polar explorers, the name Roald Amundsen probably rings out greater than any other, but not even he was spared an untimely and uncertain demise.

In 1906, Amundsen led the first expedition that successfully navigated through the Northwest Passage. Five years later, he became the first man to reach the South Pole. Those were his two biggest claims to fame, but Amundsen stayed involved with arctic exploration until the very end.

On May 25, 1928, the polar airship Italia crashed somewhere in the Svalbard archipelago. This prompted an international rescue mission, which included an aging Amundsen, who boarded a Latham 47 flying boat prototype with a team of five to help search for the wreckage. The plane left Tromsø, Norway on June 18 and disappeared without a trace over the Barents Sea. 

The wreckage of the Italia was eventually found and multiple survivors were rescued, but the same could not be said for Amundsen’s Latham 47. Even modern searches using the latest sonar technology and underwater vehicles have yielded no results so, for now, the final resting place of one of the greatest arctic explorers remains a mystery.

2. Michael Rockefeller

Michael Rockefeller was born into the fabulously wealthy Rockefeller family, but unlike his predecessors, he eschewed the worlds of business and politics and opted, instead, for a life of adventure. 

After studying history and economics at Harvard, Rockefeller took an interest in ethnology and anthropology. In 1960, he joined an expedition to serve as the sound man on a documentary about the Dani people in Western New Guinea, back then part of the Netherlands. While there, Michael encountered another group of people called the Asmat, who fascinated the young Rockefeller with their artwork.

The following year, he funded his own expedition back to New Guinea, hoping to study the Asmat people in detail and even organize an art exhibition back in New York. The team consisted only of him, Dutch anthropologist Rene Wassing, and two local Asmat teenagers. For three weeks, the expedition went well, as Rockefeller visited and traded in 13 different villages, amassing a sizable collection of Asmat artifacts.

Things went wrong on November 16, while the team was sailing down a river to the next village. Some powerful waves and crosscurrents overturned the boat, plunging all four men into the water. The two Asmat teenagers quickly swam ashore and went to get help, but Wassing and Rockefeller had no choice but to hold onto the overturned raft and drift down the river. After an entire night like this, Rockefeller tried to make it to shore…and that was the last time that anyone ever saw him. Wassing was spotted from a helicopter and rescued the following day.

Rockefeller’s official cause of death was drowning, but in the years that followed, a story went around that he had actually been murdered and cannibalized by the people from a village called Otsjanep. However, by then, Western New Guinea was no longer part of the Netherlands, so no official investigation was ever carried out.

1. Peng Jiamu

We end with the most recent entry on our list, which goes to show that even in modern times, there are still plenty of unknown parts of the world that hold hidden perils. By 1980, Peng Jiamu had already established himself as one of China’s premier biochemists, having taken part in multiple scientific expeditions over the previous 25 years to study the wildest, most remote regions of the country. That year, he left to explore the Lop Nur, a desert in the Tarim Basin. Five days into the mission, Peng vanished without a trace, seemingly swallowed by the vast emptiness of the desert. 

It appeared that the scientist left the camp alone in the middle of the night to search for water and got lost in the desert. This was very puzzling given that Peng was an experienced explorer who would have known better. Add to that the fact that extensive searches by the Chinese government uncovered no signs of him and this prompted several conspiracy theories that suggested that Peng could have been murdered by his colleagues, kidnapped by the Russians or Americans, or even defected of his own will. The truth remains a mystery.