Random Strangest Solved Mysteries (12 items)

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  (#10) A Man Missing for Nine Years Spotted on Google Maps

  72-year-old David Lee Niles disappeared after leaving a bar in Byron Township, Michigan. Missing since 2006, Niles had been suffering from both cancer and depression, so his family had assumed he'd taken his own life, even putting out an obituary for him in 2011. It took nine years for them to figure out what happened—but the answer would turn out to be startlingly obvious.

  A maintenance worker installing Christmas lights with a crane on a nearby funeral home saw a car in a small lake nearby, and police divers confirmed that it was Niles when they found his wallet. But the twist is that the car was clearly visible on Google Maps. Anyone looking at the lake could have seen it.
  
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  (#11) The Iron Pillar of Delhi

  Likely built sometime around 450 CE, the 23-foot-tall iron pillar found in Delhi's ancient Qutb Complex amazed both locals and scientists because of its seeming resistance to rust. Theories about the "out-of-place artifact" abounded, with one explanation being that it was built by aliens, since local people at the time couldn't have built such an element-resistant object.

  But recent scientific analysis showed that not only was such a feat well within the capabilities of ancient people, it also revealed exactly why the pillar doesn't rust. It's coated with a thin layer of iron hydrogen phosphate hydrate (also called misawite), which keeps the elements out. The film likely ended up on the pillar through a combination of impurities in the iron and the primitive ovens the metallurgists were using. No ancient astronauts needed.
  
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  (#3) The Death of Bill Sparkman

  In September, 2009, the body of teacher and US Census field rep Bill Sparkman was found tied to a tree in rural Kentucky, naked save for his socks, his hands, feet, and mouth bound with duct tape. Most mysteriously, the word "fed" was written on his chest in felt-tip marker. The death was immediately blamed on local residents with an anti-authoritarian bent, especially given the controversy about political activism group ACORN being involved with the census.

  While media and pop culture speculation centered on lurid anti-Obama and anti-government conspiracies, the Kentucky State Police came out with a much more believable explanation. Sparkman was a cancer survivor, but likely believed his cancer had returned. He committed suicide and staged it to look like a homicide, in order to collect a $600,000 life insurance policy, which would go to his family.
  
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  (#6) Why the Mayans Vanished

  It's one of the most prominent societal collapses in human history. The Mayans seemingly abandoned their complex civilization and disappeared into the Central American jungle. For centuries, people puzzled over the disappearance, theorizing everything from an internal peasant revolt, to conquest by an outside and unknown people, to a UFO holocaust.

  It wasn't until 2005 that a legitimate theory was put forward to explain what happened, a theory confirmed in 2012. The Mayan civilization collapsed due to a self-created environmental disaster. The Mayans chopped down too many trees, which reduced the land's ability to absorb solar radiation. This made rainfall more scarce, which caused a crippling drought. The Mayans abandoned their land not due to aliens or revolt, but to find food.
  
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  (#4) The Blood Rain of Kerala

  Over two months in the summer of 2001, the state of Kerala in India was deluged by a mysterious, red-colored rain. Over a hundred thousand pounds of red particles fell, coating everything in the area. While the red rain phenomenon had happened before (documented cases go back to 1818) and would happen again, the blood rain over Kerala grabbed the imagination of scientists and pseudo-scientists alike when two researchers published a paper claiming the red particles were alien spores from an exploding, life-seeding comet.

  While the paper quickly became an accepted explanation for the rain, the actual cause was identified almost immediately, albeit with far less fanfare: airborne spores from local green algae. While such spores are commonly found in the atmosphere, and have been found in the other red rains around the world, there's still no explanation for why so many rained down for so long. 
  
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  (#12) The Bermuda Triangle

  The small patch of water between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda is legendary for its strange phenomenon, vanishing ships, mysterious weather, and numerous planes and crafts that have gone in, but never come out. Innumerable books and documentaries have sold the Bermuda Triangle as an earthly black hole, gobbling up ships for decades.

  Except it's not that at all. The Triangle has been thoroughly investigated, and ship losses aren't any higher there than any other place. Ships sink in the Triangle for the usual reasons ships sink—and much of their wreckage has been recovered. The Coast Guard doesn't recognize the existence of any strange phenomenon, and countless ships and planes go through it every day without incident.
  

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