Margie Profet was the "It Girl" of the 1990s, being awarded a McArthur Grant for her work in evolutionary biology in 1993 despite a lack of formal scientific training. Her papers on motherhood and the evolutionary influences on menstruation and morning sickness were hailed as revolutionary by some, but also dismissed as unscientific and criticized for numerous flaws in logic by others. As pressure mounted, she became more involved in her work, and less connected with her family and friends. [more inside]
posted by AzraelBrown on Jun 30, 2009 - 33 comments

Señor Misterioso: who is he, why is he here? And who trims his mustache? Is he an interstellar voyager, world traveler, or something of a swinging socialite? He may appreciate art, yet he is disdainful of music. His activities have been tracked; his friends, companions, ideals and literarary leanings noted. His words are few, but his stories are many. He is no one, yet he is everywhere.
posted by filthy light thief on Jun 10, 2009 - 14 comments

Wired's Mystery Issue, guest-edited by J.J. Abrams, is a quizzical amalgam of puzzling things both obvious and less obvious... apparently the print edition's misspelled words, irregular borders, and seemingly random placements of numbers are all part of the game too. While the "master puzzle" was recently solved, there are reportedly still some codes left to crack. [more inside]
posted by pokermonk on Apr 22, 2009 - 27 comments

Read all about it! Discover all the news! Read all about it! Track down all the clues!
With interesting people there's a mystery to be solved! An adventure is unfolding, so why not get involved? Come on and READ ALL ABOUT IT.
Young Chris is left an old coach house by his missing uncle. As he and his two friends fuddle with the lock, a strange figure watches. The kids do not yet know the building is the entrance to a mystery that spans time and space! Aided by Otto the IBM Selectric robot typewriter and Theta the spooky as hell talking viewscreen, they will find that the concerns of an alien tyrant reach into the government of their own town. (24 of 40 15-minute episodes, including the entire first season, of this early-80s TV Ontario-produced "educational" show are on YouTube.) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 5, 2009 - 20 comments

The Musical Mystery of Connie Converse
"To survive at all, I expect I must drift back down through the other half of the twentieth twentieth, which I already know pretty well, the hundredth hundredth, which I have only read and heard about. I might survive there quite a few years - who knows?"

This was the cryptic note Connie Converse left her family in 1974, and no one heard from her again. She had spent the 1950's in New York City, trying to promote her music- haunting, melancholy folk tunes, but never made a go of it. Her songs very nearly disappeared into the ether, but thanks to Lau derrete Records, her first album is now available to the public, fifty years after the songs were recorded. (via Spinning On Air)
posted by kimdog on Mar 15, 2009 - 13 comments

Today marks the 200th birthday of Edgar Alan Poe, and as happens every year the mysterious Poe Toaster marked the date by placing three red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac at his Baltimore grave. The identity of the toaster isn't the only question surrounding Poe - his presence in Baltimore and the circumstances of his death remain a mystery. Some speculate that he may have had rabies, others that he may have been a victim of cooping. And while Baltimore embarks on a year long celebration of Poe some argue that his body shouldn't be there at all.
posted by Artw on Jan 19, 2009 - 39 comments

Early Female Authors of Hard-Boiled Fiction. Chester Himes and Early African-American Detective Novelists. The Detective's Code. The Femme Fatale. Just a few of the many fascinating offerings at detnovel.com.
posted by mediareport on Dec 8, 2008 - 4 comments

Mongo the Magnificent. "Out of nowhere, believing that it is good for the soul to have one insane idea a day, whether you need it or not, the notion of a dwarf private detective came to me [...] I considered such a character bizarre and absurd, unworkable and unpublishable, and thus a waste of time to spend and length of time trying to develop it. I kept searching, but the damn dwarf just wouldn't go away. [...] It was to be a satire. Halfway through, I discovered a key to the man's character was a simple quest to be taken seriously, for dignity. That touched me, and I started over again, this time doing it "straight" (or as straight as I'm able). I gave Mongo dignity, and in return he gave me a career. The diverse background was, I thought, necessary in order to properly equip him in a "world of giants"."

George C. Chesbro, RIP [more inside]
posted by lupus_yonderboy on Nov 21, 2008 - 18 comments

What happened to Dorcas Snodgrass? I don't know who did this research on this nurse, but she's haunting me and the articles hint at a tragic mystery but leave many unanswered questions.
posted by chickaboo on Oct 3, 2008 - 25 comments

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator. Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950)
posted by Navelgazer on Sep 24, 2008 - 8 comments

The author of the Fletch novels, Gregory Mcdonald, has died. [more inside]
posted by Confess, Fletch on Sep 12, 2008 - 22 comments

Something exploded over and under Lake Huron near the US/Canadian border on July 31, 2008. Nobody knows what it was. Initial published reports identified the cause as a meteor shower (without attribution). A week later more details emerged and meteors were ruled out. So what was it? [more inside]
posted by maxpower on Aug 14, 2008 - 52 comments

All MST3K episodes available in .avi format. That is all. I need to lie down.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan on Aug 13, 2008 - 99 comments

In March 2007, the FermiLab Office of Public Affairs in Batavia, IL "received a curious message in code" via USPS. In May 2008, scientists posted a facsimile image of the letter to their blog in the hopes of soliciting cryptologists to decipher the letter. [more inside]
posted by subbes on Jul 16, 2008 - 45 comments

The Lido was a shop on a busy road in East Vancouver that was always closed -- yet clearly occupied and maintained. It's been an intriguing mystery for locals for many years. Following the recent death of the owner, an elderly woman who lived above the shop, cleanup crews found old furniture, cans of dry goods -- and more than $400,000 in antique banknotes. [more inside]
posted by PercussivePaul on Jul 11, 2008 - 30 comments

"Nobody in the antipoverty community and nobody in city leadership was going to welcome the news that the noble experiment that they’d been engaged in for the past decade had been bringing the city down, in ways they’d never expected. But the connection was too obvious to ignore, and Betts and Janikowski figured that the same thing must be happening all around the country." American Murder Mystery. Page 2. Page 3. Page 4.
posted by wittgenstein on Jul 7, 2008 - 57 comments

Footloose. No, not the movie, and not the song, but the continuing mystery of feet washing up in the Strait of Georgia. Previously, previously and previously.
posted by Neiltupper on Jun 18, 2008 - 91 comments

It began when Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”
Sometimes when you make a simple suggestion about the remodeling of your $8.5 million 5th Ave. apartment, the designer goes a little overboard. In an awesome way. Don't miss the slideshow.
posted by Who_Am_I on Jun 12, 2008 - 81 comments

Who put Bella in the witch elm? [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena on Jun 1, 2008 - 11 comments

Why don't you get yourself a little something? It's only $10!
posted by jonson on May 12, 2008 - 103 comments

Hammer quiz. Identify the intended use of speciality (mostly vintage) hammers. A sister site of Puzzle Photos (previously). [more inside]
posted by Mitheral on Apr 3, 2008 - 28 comments

Bobby Dunbar was a four year-old boy that vanished in 1912, while on a fishing trip with his family in a Louisiana swamp. For weeks, searchers combed the area looking for him. The lake where he went missing was dynamited. Alligators were captured and had their bellies slit open to see if the body was inside. Nothing was found except a set of child's footprints leading to an old railroad trestle. Eight months later, the police found Bobby in the company of a drifter with a horse-drawn cart. He protested his innocence but was arrested and charged with kidnapping. Another woman came forward and claimed Bobby was, in fact, her son. But she was an unmarried fieldworker, and her claims were dismissed. The crime became a nationwide media event and the boy was returned to his parents, and their hometown held a parade in his honor. Bobby returned to his life. Ninety-one years later, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter uncovered the truth.
posted by smoothvirus on Mar 19, 2008 - 78 comments

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night at around -30 degrees Celsius for no obvious reason, casting aside skis, food, boots and most of their clothes. Soon they would be dead, some with injuries more suited to car crash victims, and apparently dosed with radiation. Their deaths are still unexplained, 49 years later. The Mystery of the Dyatlov Pass Accident. [more inside]
posted by Henry C. Mabuse on Feb 22, 2008 - 122 comments

Last summer two right feet washed up on shore within a week of each other on two separate tiny islands in British Columbia. Today a third right foot has just washed up.
posted by joelf on Feb 15, 2008 - 93 comments

Mystery Meat.
posted by Pinback on Feb 4, 2008 - 33 comments

September 11, 2001. It's 10:15 am and the South Tower just went down. Millions of French people are watching the live coverage of the events on TF1, France's major TV channel, with star anchorman Poivre d'Arvor doing a running commentary. Then, for a split second, a character from a famous movie happily tells us (in French subtitles) that he "did it" (18 s in the video) (Dailymotion video). [more inside]
posted by elgilito on Jan 9, 2008 - 84 comments

The 100 best mystery novels of all time. Here they are, with links... [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Dec 2, 2007 - 111 comments

The Mystery of the Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa. One of the most interesting mysteries of Death Valley National Park is the sliding rocks at Racetrack Playa (a playa is a dry lake bed). These rocks can be found on the floor of the playa with long trails behind them. Somehow these rocks slide across the playa, cutting a furrow in the sediment as they move. Some of these rocks weigh several hundred pounds. That makes the question: "How do they move?" a very challenging one. [Via]. For more in-depth information, including maps and additional pictures, see Paula Messina's website about the Sliding Rocks.
posted by amyms on Dec 2, 2007 - 37 comments

It's Saturday night. You're here browsing on the internet. Why not do something intellectual for a change? [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Dec 1, 2007 - 27 comments

Unmasking D.B. Cooper: On a rainy night in 1971, the notorious skyjacker jumped out of a 727 and into American legend. But a chance lead to a Manhattan P.I. may have finally cracked the case, despite the fact this isn't the first time someone has claimed to be D.B. Cooper.
posted by fandango_matt on Oct 31, 2007 - 27 comments

Picking Up Women 101, courtesy of the Internet. (warning: Youtube linkfest) Author Neil Strauss (The Game) introduces us to the concept. Celebrated PUA Mystery (of VH1's 'The Pick Up Artist' fame) shows us some of his moves and espouses. (Conan O'Brien makes light of it all.) Self-described 'nerd' Ross Jeffries (who claims to be this inspiration for this character) sells his line of Speed Seduction using a hypnosis-based strategy called NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) to get into girls' panties. You might want to check out a more straight-forward approach, highlighted by UK Channel 4's 'Speed School.' (parts 1 2 3 4 5). [more inside]
posted by Mach3avelli on Sep 16, 2007 - 245 comments

T.R.A.N.S.I.T. is, by a wide margin, my favorite animated short ever produced. Set in the art deco Europe of the 1920's and (and released in 1997) it tells the story of a journey throughout several major vacation destinations of a wealthy tycoon, his young wife with wandering eyes, and a murderous turn of events. The story is told in reverse, from the final stage of the "vacation" back through each prior stop, and the artwork for each segment is painted in the style of the luggage travel sticker for that stop.
posted by jonson on Sep 2, 2007 - 14 comments

In the 1890s, an unknown woman was found drowned in the Seine. Known as the l'Inconnue de la Seine, her death mask became a fixture in the homes of artists and writers, and her look the ideal of the age. Many have speculated on her identity, and she has inspired a long list of artistic works by Nabokov, Rilke, Man Ray, and others. She has since become the "most kissed girl in the world" thanks to the Norwegian toymaker that used her mask to create Resusci Anne, the standard CPR doll.
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 21, 2007 - 56 comments

Shedding light on one of Baltimore's most famous modern-day mysteries, 92-year-old Sam Porpora is claiming to be the man who first visited Edgar Alan Poe's grave every year on his birthday.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Aug 17, 2007 - 15 comments

Wired presents an extraordinary look at "one of the most ambitious search-and-rescue missions in history," after one of Microsoft's researchers, Jim Gray, and his boat, the Tenacious, went missing in the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco in January 2007. Cartography meets law meets 2.0 technology. "First the Coast Guard scoured 132,000 square miles of ocean. Then a team of scientists and Silicon Valley power players turned the eyes of the global network onto the Pacific." Eventually, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the US Navy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium jumped in – "as did astronomers from leading universities." To this day, Jim Gray has never been found, and his disappearance cannot be explained. Read Wired for more.
posted by BLDGBLOG on Jul 22, 2007 - 35 comments

HelpMyBabyLive.com It comes down to this. If we can't raise the $50,000 in the next 3 months, we'll have to choose abortion. And you thought Save Karyn was bad. Via
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jun 28, 2007 - 176 comments

The Mysterious Holes of Peru. While the world is generally familiar with Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines, another mystery has come to light through the modern science of satellite photography.
posted by Burhanistan on Mar 21, 2007 - 49 comments

The Codex Seraphinianus, that rare and amazing volume, has been scanned in high-res glory and posted to Flickr. If you are lucky enough to afford it, copies are available. Previously.
posted by suckerpunch on Mar 20, 2007 - 59 comments

Sherlock Holmes and the Murder of Lord Waterbrook. Excellent new Russian animation (well, kinda new, anyway). Here's part 2.
posted by jbickers on Mar 14, 2007 - 8 comments

Do love experts work? It's a year round profession for pick up artists and professional bad boys. Well, folks, I've tried them all and I have had fewer girlfriends than Hitler.
posted by CameraObscura on Feb 14, 2007 - 17 comments

Mirin Dajo (1912-1948, born Arnold Henske) was pierced thru the torso (YouTube) with fencing foils and skewers many times, without bleeding or showing any sign of injury. Warning: some links contain graphic content.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Feb 9, 2007 - 17 comments

They shut down part of Austin last week, thousands did it in Esperance, Western Australia, record numbers in England and thousands more along I-84 in Idaho. Conspiracies abound; could it be poison, or testing EM weapons, "some kid with a BB gun" or drunk on hackberries or maybe it is global warming?

Sometimes the explanation is pretty simple but mostly, scientists are scratching their heads and wondering what is causing bird to drop dead out of the skies all over the globe at an alarming rate.
posted by DragonBoy on Jan 15, 2007 - 43 comments

The strange story of June and Jennifer Gibbons.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 29, 2006 - 9 comments

"This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia..." (via Digg). The image is an imperfect reproduction of a particular postcard dated 1972. A blogger (in Russian) claims his psychiatry professor found one aspect of this eerie painting that reveals the patient's disorder. Allegedly, only one of his students in the past 15 years has figured it out. The psychoanalytic mystery has piqued the interest (in Russian) of the online community. A number of supplemental hints from the professor and thousands of guesses later, the case remains unsolved. Skeptics have already decried the mystery as a traffic-boosting hoax, but a few signs still point to its authenticity. Most notably, the artist's reproduction of another classic painting contains the following note: "transferred in 1990 from Moscow mental hospital."
posted by themadjuggler on Dec 3, 2006 - 113 comments

Boris Weisfeiler disappeared in Chile. The authorities claim that the experienced outdoorsman had drowned trying to ford a four-foot river. Uncovered documents tell a different story - that Pinochet's military had mistaken the vacationing mathematics professor for a "Jewish spy" and sent him as a political prisoner to the 37,000 acre German expatriate Nazi apocalyptic cult enclave of Colonia Dignidad. There, he was kept alive for at least two years before Paul Schaefer, the founder of the enclave, a Luftwaffe nurse and a serial child molester, most likely had him killed.
posted by Sticherbeast on Nov 22, 2006 - 20 comments

In case of The Missing Diver Mystery, all is not as it seems...
posted by Acey on Sep 8, 2006 - 9 comments

Wittgenstein, in a letter to Norman Malcolm, wrote: "...A couple of years ago I read with great pleasure a detective story called Rendezvous With Fear by a man Norbert Davis. I enjoyed it so much that I gave it not only to Smythies but also to Moore to read and both shared my high opinion of it. For, though, as you know, I’ve read hundreds of stories that amused me and that I liked reading, I think I’ve only read two perhaps that I’d call good stuff, and Davis’s is one of them... It may sound crazy, but when I recently re-read the story I liked it again so much that I thought I’d really like to write to the author and thank him. If this is nuts don’t be surprised, for so am I..."
Though it is discussed by both Ray Monk, in his biography of Wittgenstein, and Edmonds and Eidenow, in their popular book about Wittgenstein's philosophical clash with Popper (and an aging Russell), it is always interesting to read about this strange man's love of detective fiction. Though I don't necessarily agree with the linked author's conclusions, it makes for a good read.
posted by voltairemodern on Jun 19, 2006 - 22 comments

Who took these photos of young girls with letters written on their foreheads, and why? via
posted by Afroblanco on Jun 12, 2006 - 49 comments

There's a myspace page for Q Lazzarus but you know she didn't create it herself. One of the biggest mysteries of modern Hollywood, how a singer could get a song on "Silence of the Lambs" but not appear on its soundtrack album, and a song on "Philadelphia" but not appear on its soundtrack album. And drop off the face of the earth. The mystery? In the age where one-hit wonders will to suffer any indignity to make a comeback attempt, Q Lazzarus disappeared. She's nowhere to be found. Maybe she's driving a taxi again.
posted by surplus on May 30, 2006 - 26 comments

Linda Rayburn and her son Michael Berry were brutally murdered by her husband, David Rayburn, on February 3rd, 2004. Rayburn then hanged himself in the basement of their home, leaving behind a handwritten cryptogram.
posted by tranquileye on Feb 11, 2006 - 11 comments