Random History's Best Kept Secrets (14 items)

(#1) A Solid Gold Buddha Once Hid In Plain Sight

From Redditor /u/Brackto:

The "Phra Phuttha Maha Suwan Patimakon," a nine-foot tall stucco Buddha statue, was actually solid gold underneath.

For over 600 years, a 9-foot-tall stucco Buddha statue sat in Bangkok, Thailand. Known as the Phra Phuttha Maha Suwan Patimakon, it was so heavy that it sat outside for years, with a simple tin roof covering the statue. Then, in 1955, the statue was accidentally dropped while being moved to a new location. Pieces of the stucco broke off, and the shocked onlookers realized the entire Buddha was solid gold.

Worth an estimated $250 million, the statue may have been covered with stucco to protect it from Burmese invaders back in the 1700s. The ploy worked in that case, as no one noticed for centuries.
(#9) No One Can Fully Crack The Secret Of Egyptian Hieroglyphics

From Redditor /u/Attican101:

Even though we have figured out one form of the hieroglyphs being the base system for taxes etc there are other meanings to each glyph we have no idea of and can only guess at.

For centuries, Egyptian hieroglyphs presented a mystery, a code that could not be cracked. In the 1820s, the Rosetta Stone helped scholars learn some hieroglyphic symbols, revealing they were not an alphabet at all, but rather symbols that could represent sounds or words.

While modern scholars have unraveled the secret of many symbols, some remain a mystery.
(#13) Greek And Roman Mystery Cults Practiced Secret Rites Underground

From Redditor /u/mynameisevan:

[Some] Greco-Roman mystery cults... were around for almost 2,000 years, but they died out when Christianity started to take over. We don’t know much of anything about what mysteries they taught because that stuff was secret and they didn’t write any of it down.

Ancient Greece and Rome saw the rise of many mystery cults, some of which met underground. Very few historical sources contain reliable information on these cults, thought to focus on the afterlife. While theories claim they practiced a type of proto-Christianity, most scholars acknowledge the groups undertook a variety of practices and purposes, with initiation rituals, magical rites, and sacred images.

Many of the mystery cults vanished after Roman emperor Theodosius outlawed polytheism and destroyed temples in 391 CE.
(#10) It's Unclear How China Maintained Its Valuable Silk Road Monopolies

From Redditor /u/Ginkgopsida:

Porcelain slowly evolved in China and was finally achieved (depending on the definition used) at some point about 2,000 to 1,200 years ago, but Europeans could only replicate it since about 1700.

China enthralled the rest of the world with its beautiful porcelain and silks, which the country sold on the Silk Road for centuries. Other countries, mainly Western European nations, clamored for the secret process behind making "white gold" and porcelain, but were unable to unlock the secret.

China successfully maintained a monopoly on silk for years, with silk production only reaching Korea in 200 BCE before slowly moving to Europe, when Italy first established the practice around 1100 CE.

China maintained its monopoly on porcelain even longer, until Europeans unlocked the secret in the 1500s and began mass-producing it around the 1700s.
(#6) Man in the Iron Mask
- Person
From Redditor /u/Eurymedion:

[No one knows] the true identity of the Man in the Iron Mask.

In the 1680s, King Louis XIV ruled France as an absolute monarch, even imprisoning a man for life who was locked in an iron mask to hide his identity. But who was the man in the iron mask, later made famous in a novel written by Alexandre Dumas?

Could he be the Sun King's own child? Or the king's cousin, who plotted revolt against the monarch? Or, as Dumas and Voltaire theorized, the king's twin brother, locked away and hidden to protect the ruler's legitimacy?

The mystery lingers, although one historian claims most serious researchers believe the prisoner was a lowly valet - but he and the others can't explain how the man earned such a punishment.
(#5) No One Knows The Volcanic Secret To Rome's Concrete Recipe

From Redditor /u/NotoriousTNT:

The ancient Roman formula for concrete [was] so closely guarded that to this day we still aren't 100% certain what the recipe was. It allowed them to build domes, which was borderline miraculous for the times.

Ancient Rome's most magnificent structures, the Colosseum and the Pantheon, still stand in the city today. That's thanks, in large part, to the Roman recipe for concrete, which remains something of a mystery even 2,000 years later.

Researchers know the Romans mixed volcanic ash into their concrete, and they sometimes used saltwater to strengthen it. And this recipe allowed the Romans to build monumental, long-lasting architecture.