The 10 Most Mysterious Disappearances in History

In July 1937, the famed aviator and her navigator Fred Noonan were near the end of an attempt to fly around the world when they vanished over the central Pacific. They were trying to reach tiny Howland Island; the U.S. Coast Guard cutter waiting there picked up her increasingly anxious radio calls, and then nothing.

The mainstream conclusion is that they ran out of fuel and went down in the ocean. Others argue they landed on the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro and died as castaways — a theory kept alive by scattered artifacts but never confirmed. No trace of the plane has ever been definitively found.

In 1587, more than a hundred English settlers established a colony on Roanoke Island, off present-day North Carolina. Their governor, John White, sailed back to England for supplies. War with Spain delayed his return for three years, and when he finally landed in 1590, the settlement was empty.

The only clue was a single word carved into a post: “CROATOAN,” the name of a nearby island and its Native people. No bodies, no sign of a struggle. The leading view is that the colonists moved in with, or were absorbed by, local tribes — plausible, but still unproven after four centuries.

On the night before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 over the Pacific Northwest, collected $200,000 in ransom, and then did something no one has repeated: he lowered the plane’s rear stairs in mid-flight and parachuted into the night, somewhere over the wilderness.

He was never found. In 1980 a boy dug up a rotting bundle of the ransom cash along a river, which only deepened the puzzle. The FBI worked the case for 45 years before closing it in 2016 without ever identifying the man or knowing whether he survived the jump.

The American merchant ship Mary Celeste was found adrift in the Atlantic in December 1872, in good enough shape to sail but with not a soul aboard. The cargo of alcohol was largely intact, personal belongings were still there, and the single lifeboat was gone.

The captain, his family, and the crew were never seen again. The most credible explanation is that they abandoned ship in a panic — perhaps fearing an explosion from alcohol fumes — and were lost at sea. It remains one of maritime history’s great open questions.

Colonel Percy Fawcett was a British explorer convinced that a lost ancient city — which he called “Z” — lay hidden in the Brazilian Amazon. In 1925 he set off into the Mato Grosso with his son Jack and a friend, and sent back one final message before disappearing entirely.

Dozens of would-be rescuers went looking over the following decades; some died or vanished themselves. Most historians believe Fawcett’s party perished in the jungle, whether from illness, starvation, or a hostile encounter. His fate has never been established.

Jimmy Hoffa was one of the most powerful labor leaders in America, head of the Teamsters union, with well-documented ties to organized crime. In July 1975 he drove to a suburban Detroit restaurant for a meeting he’d told others about — and never came home.

He was declared legally dead in 1982. The FBI has long suspected a mob hit and has dug up fields, driveways, and building sites for decades chasing tips. His body has never been recovered, and no one has ever been charged.

Ambrose Bierce was a celebrated American writer and journalist, famous for his dark wit and The Devil’s Dictionary. In 1913, at 71, he traveled to Mexico to witness its revolution firsthand, reportedly attaching himself to Pancho Villa’s army.

His last known letter was sent from the city of Chihuahua in December 1913. After that, he simply drops out of history. It’s widely assumed he died in the chaos of the revolution, but no record of his death or grave has ever surfaced.

On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder family home in West Virginia. The parents and four of their children escaped. Five other children were never accounted for — but here’s the eerie part: despite the blaze, no bones or remains of the five were ever found in the ruins.

The grieving parents refused to accept that the children had died and spent the rest of their lives convinced they’d been abducted, even putting up a billboard appealing for information. It remains genuinely unresolved. Whether the children died in the fire or somehow survived it has never been proven either way.

Louis Le Prince was a French inventor who, in 1888, shot what many consider the earliest surviving motion pictures — years before Edison and the Lumière brothers. He was preparing to unveil his work publicly when, in September 1890, he boarded a train in Dijon, France, bound for Paris.

He never arrived. No body and no luggage were ever found, and no cause was ever established. Theories range from accident to foul play, but all of them are speculation. His disappearance left the paternity of cinema to be claimed by others.

In March 2014, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 people vanished during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Satellite data and radar suggest the plane turned sharply off course and flew for hours before ending its journey somewhere in the vast southern Indian Ocean.

A handful of confirmed pieces of debris later washed up on Indian Ocean shores, but the main wreckage — and the flight recorders that could explain what happened — has never been located, despite some of the largest search efforts in aviation history. It is the most modern entry on this list, and one of the most baffling.