← History Uncensored
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
A
An entire Colony, over 100 people, gone, leaving just a single word carved into wood. A mysterious man parachuting out of a plane into a howling storm. A ship found sailing across the Atlantic missing all of its passengers. 239 people on board a Boeing 777, the father of cinema. All of them vanished forever. These are history's most mysterious disappears appearances. And they're not gathering dust in cold case files. They're active investigations where new evidence is surfacing. And for some of them, we might finally have answers. It's November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving. Commercial air travel is routine, it's informal, and it's vulnerable. Hijackings are common enough that they don't yet carry this automatic assumption of mass death that they do today. There are no reinforced cockpit doors. There's no full passenger screening. That afternoon, a nondescript man walks into Portland International Airport. He appears to be in his mid-40s, about 6ft tall, quiet, ordinary. He pays cash for a one way ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. That ticket cost $20, and the name he gives at the desk is Dan Cooper. Nothing about him stands out, which is exactly the point. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper settles into his seat and orders a drink, bourbon in soda. Then, just after 3pm he hands a note to a flight attendant. At first she doesn't read it. She reportedly assumes it's another passenger just trying to proposition her. But he leans in and tells her calmly, you should read this. And the note says, miss, I have a bomb and I would like you to sit by me. She thought the other propositions were bad, so she does. And Cooper opens a cheap attache case and inside are wires, red sticks and a battery. Now he tells her to write down his demands. He wants four parachutes, $200,000, all in $20 bills. And that note is then passed to the cockpit. The plane lands in Seattle and Cooper releases all 36 passengers in exchange for the money and the parachutes. But he keeps the flight crew, two pilots, a flight engineer and a flight attendant. The aircraft refuels and Cooper gives new instructions. The plane is to fly to Mexico City via reno at under 10,000ft and a speed to slower than 200 knots. Just after 8pm somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Cooper lowers the rear stairs of the aircraft. And then he jumps. He jumps into darkness, into sleet and vicious winds above a wooded landscape. There are also reports of a thunderstorm, so Cooper is gone. The pilot then lands the plane safely. About three hours later, the FBI, meanwhile, is alerted while this crime is still unfolding and the investigation is given a name, Norjack for Northwest hijacking. And it becomes one of the longest and most exhaustive searches in FBI history. Agents scour the aircraft. They recover Cooper's black JCPenney tie, which he removed before jumping. And decades later, this tie would yield a partial DNA sample, though not anything conclusive enough to identify him. They examined the parachutes. Cooper had asked for four, and he jumped with two. But one of them was a reserve chute that was sewn shut for training. Something crucially that Cooper didn't notice. He used the cord from another parachute to tie the money bag shut. Hundreds of leads pour in, and by the five year anniversary, the FBI has considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated almost all of them. Then, in 1980, nearly nine years after the hijacking, something surfaces. A young boy finds a rotting package buried along the Columbia river north of Portland. It inside $5,800 in $20 bills. The serial numbers match the ransom money, and it is the only confirmed physical trace of Cooper ever found outside of the aircraft. So let's get to the theories. Well, the central question is a blindingly simple. Did Cooper survive? One theory is that he didn't, because the parachute he used couldn't be steered. His clothing and footwear were completely unsuitable for a rough landing, and he jumped at night in into a heavily wooded area in extreme wind conditions. The FBI eventually concluded that Cooper couldn't have been an experienced skydiver, in part because he failed to notice that one of the parachutes he took was unusable. So remember that bit for later. For decades, one name hovered over the case. Richard Floyd McCoy. McCoy hijacked a plane just five months later. He escaped by parachute with ransom money and was arrested. So on the surface, these parallels are striking. But the FBI ultimately ruled him out because they said that he didn't match the nearly identical physical descriptions of Cooper provided independently by two flight attendants. Plus, there were other inconsistencies, like McCoy was a Vietnam vet, a skydiver, and a capable parachutist. So they think he probably would have noticed a dud shoot. So officially, McCoy was eliminated. The name DB Cooper also adds to the confusion because it wasn't real. It was created by the press after a reporter misheard the alias Dan Cooper, which was the name the hijacker actually used when he bought his ticket. The FBI did question a man with the initials DB but he turned out not to be the hijacker. Decades later, though, the McCoy theory returned, this time from a new source. Two siblings, Shantae and Rick McCoy III, came forward to claim that their father, Richard McCoy, was in fact, the man who called himself Dan Cooper. They say that they know this because they found a parachute used in that hijack in their mum's shed. A retired pilot and YouTube host and investigator Dan Gryder says that this parachute is exceptionally rare and claims that the FBI examined it. He's also stated that the Bureau is now looking for a DNA connection between material recovered from the aircraft, including Cooper's, JCPenney, Tighe and McCoy. However, the FBI has not publicly confirmed that it is reopening the case, so the status of this one is unsolved, with one particularly stubborn suspect. In July 2016, after 45 years, the FBI officially redirected resources away from the DB Cooper investigation. So the case was closed, but never solved. Although who knows what's happening behind the scenes as these new leads heat up. And genealogical and DNA profiling is getting better at cracking cold cases. But the FBI have said that if any new physical evidence emerges, it should still be reported. In 1585, English settlers reached the New World and established a colony on Roanoke island in what is now North Carolina. By 1587, more than a hundred men, women and children were living there. Why did they go in the first place? Well, they were acting on a charter that was granted by Sir Walter Riley to Queen Elizabeth I. You see, England wanted to challenge Spain's monopoly in the New World, and Roanoke was strategically located to serve as a base for privateers to raid Spanish treasure fleets. Plus, Elizabeth also wanted to establish Protestantism in the Americas to counter the Catholic Spanish influence. Sometime between 1587 and 1590, over 100 English colonists disappeared without a trace. The colony's governor was a man named John White. He was a superb artist. In fact, his drawings of American Indian life remain invaluable to historians and anthropologists. But great artists. Not an ideal expedition leader. So the original plan for him and all the settlers was to settle in Chesapeake Bay, where soil was pretty good and relations with indigenous communities were thought to be less hostile. But the ship's pilot landed at Roanoke and refused to continue on north, possibly because he was more interested in privateering against Spanish ships than transporting settlers. And White agreed. But after just one month, White made a fateful decision. He was to return to England for supplies, leaving behind his daughter Eleanor and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, who is the first English child to be born in America. The colonists also insisted that he'd go. So I think it's possible they'd lost faith in his leadership and what followed was a catastrophic delay. So Sir Walter Riley, the venture's patron, fell out with Queen Elizabeth. The Spanish Armada was threatening England, so all ships were commandeered for war. Even after the Armada's defeat, permission to sail was really slow, so White wouldn't return to Roanoke for three years. On August 18, 1590, John White waded ashore on Roanoke island and not a soul remained. The houses had been dismantled, not destroyed, not burned, and the site showed signs of looting, with heavier items scattered about. I was reading John White's log, which he kept. It's quite detailed and he talks about heavy rods of iron and boxes thrown here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds. And he says that the chests that the colonists had buried had been dug up and opened with the goods spoiled and scattered. There were no bodies, but there were two messages. The first was a word croatone, carved into a wooden post and crow etched into a nearby tree. I'm quoting here from White's. We passed toward the place where there were left in sundry houses, but we found the houses taken down and one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off. And five foot from the ground, in fair capital letters, was graven Croatone, without any cross or sign of distress. So before leaving, the colonists had agreed on a system of communication. If they, for whatever reason, were forced to abandon the settlement in distress, they were going to carve a Maltese cross above any message that they left behind. No cross was ever found, which raises the question, why would they disappear, never to be found again, and take the time to carve a message but not leave the agreed signal of danger? There was a place nearby called Croatoan Island. It's now called Hatteras island. And obviously White attempted to sail there to find the colonists, because that's the word that was written. But he was prevented by a severe storm and a damaged ship, forcing him to go back to England. He'd never return. For centuries, the trail went cold. Then, in the 2010s, there was a breakthrough. 2012, the British Museum. It's one of my favourite places on Earth. Centre of London. The curator is examining one of John White's original maps. This is a 16th century watercolour painted between 1585 and 1593. It's just been sitting in the museum's collection for over a hundred years. But something has been hiding in plain sight. The curator notices something odd. Two small paper patches glued Onto the vellum surface of the map. Now, this was common practice. Artists use patches to correct errors or cover mistakes. This is not particularly unusual, except why would he patch this particular spot? The team decides to look a little closer. So they bring in advanced imaging technology, infrared light, x ray spectroscopy tools, so they can see through layers without damaging this centuries old document. They put the map under the equipment and that is when they see it. So beneath the northern patch, hidden for over 400 years, is a fort symbol. On the surface of the patch itself, too invisible to the naked eye, there's some kind of faint image, possibly drawn in what's known as sympathetic ink. So the kind that appears when heated or subjected to certain conditions, Like a ghost symbol. So what could this mean? Well, John White or someone in his circle deliberately hid this location. They drew a fort symbol, then covered it with a patch and possibly marked that patch itself with invisible ink that would only reveal itself under specific conditions. Why would they do this? So England and Spain were at war. Spanish intelligence and spies were everywhere. So if this map fell into Spanish hands, then they wouldn't be able to know where. England had planned to establish an inland fort where English colonists might be hiding. Maybe White concealed it. And that hidden fort, it marked exactly 50 miles inland from Roanoke. That's the precise distance that White had recorded. The colonists planned to travel a secret hidden for over 400 years, potentially leading them straight to where the lost colonists had actually gone. This discovery gave archaeologists an exact target to look at. Right where Salmon Creek opens into Albemarle Sound. The fort itself was obviously gone, but just outside where its village walls once would have stood, Archaeologists uncovered fragments of English pottery, 24 pieces in fact, at a site they called Site X. Radar surveys then identified another location nearby, which they called Site y. And when excavators in late 2019 had a look around there, they found something extraordinary. These domestic ceramics from across England and Europe. These weren't trade items either. They were bowls and jars used for preparing and storing food. That is signs of permanent settlement. So that brings me to the theories. What happened to the colonists? Well, the first one is there's some kind of catastrophe. So for decades, the earliest explanations focused on perhaps the colonists were killed by hostile tribes or attacked by Spaniards operating in the region. Maybe famine or disease, a deadly storm wiping them out. All of these are, in fact, quite plausible, Given the dangers of early colonial life. However, none fully explained the evidence left behind. The settlement was dismantled, it wasn't destroyed. There was no clear sign of a final struggle and crucially there was no distress signal carved alongside this mysterious message that they left. Theory two is relocation and assimilating with the locals. So in January 2025, archaeologists found buckets of this thing called hammerscale, which is a kind of blacksmithing residue, on Hatteras island, formerly Croatone island, the key place. And to them, that showed that there were English people living in an Indian village for decades, because that's how they worked metal. So more than a decade of excavation uncovered thousands of artifacts buried 4 to 6ft deep, like sword parts, rings, writing slates, gun parts, glass, mixed directly with indigenous pottery and arrowheads. And that points to shared living. And other clues as well. Written ones corroborate this. So there are 17th century Jamestown accounts that mention Roanoke colonists living with Native Americans. So quite a few pieces of evidence pointing to that theory. The third theory is scattering. So the evidence doesn't seem to point to a single destination. You've got Croatia island as a likely candidate, plus that hidden fort symbol discovered on John White's map. And then you have sites X and Y, which are inland and closely correspond to that secret map location. So where does this leave us? Well, for a 400 year old mystery, the evidence has done an incredible job of pushing the case forward in recent years, because it now seems likely that Roanoke colonists didn't vanish, they scattered. Some moved to Hatteras island, others moved inland, others assimilated into indigenous communities, keeping some English goods, adapting their lives. It was, after all, essentially an unstable border zone. And we know that settlers having disputes and splitting up was pretty common. So I would say this is solved almost. Well, that's what I think anyway. And I've watched a lot of National Treasure, so take my word for it. Louis le Prince in 1890. The race is on to create moving pictures, and it's pretty chaotic across Europe and the United States. Inventors are circling the same how to capture motion and how to make it playable. Glass plates crack, paper, film tears. Celluloid is new and kind of dangerous. No one quite knows yet what cinema is, apart from at least one man who appears to understand exactly what he's building. It's October 14, 1888, and Louis Le Prince films what's now known as the roundhead garden scene in Leeds. A few seconds of ordinary life shot using his single lens camera, capturing continuous motion film. He later films traffic and pedestrians on Leeds Bridge. Interesting choices on his part, but this is key. Multiple sources agree that Le Prince's films predate Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers by several years. By early 1890, according to accounts by his wife Lizzie and his assistant Fred, Le Prince is preparing to travel to New York to hold what would have been the first public motion picture screening in history. But he never gets there. September 16, 1890. Louis Le Prince is in France. He's visiting his brother Albert in Dijon before returning to England and then onwards to the United States. He boards a train departing Dijon for Paris. This is the last confirmed sighting of him. He doesn't arrive in Paris as planned. He doesn't meet his friends, he doesn't board his onward journey. So French police are alerted. Scotland Yard also becomes involved and searches are carried out for both Le Prince and his luggage. Nothing is found. No witnesses report seeing him disembark the train. No belongings are recovered. The trail ends on that train platform. The first piece of evidence is the disappearance itself. So Le Prince vanishes without a trace after boarding the train on September 16, 1890. Despite extensive searches by authorities in two countries, neither his body nor possessions are recovered. The second piece of evidence is what happens immediately after. Within weeks of Le Prince's disappearance, Thomas Edison files a caveat, which is a preliminary patent application for a motion picture camera described as strikingly similar to Le Prince's design. Edison's earlier caveats looked nothing like it. In May 1891, the New York sun announces that Edison has a new latest invention, the kinetograph and kinetoscope. Lizzie Le Prince, the wife of Louis Le Prince, reacts immediately to this. Friends familiar with her husband's work contact her in outrage. And one of them, Henry Wolfe, who had known Le Prince's camera from its earliest days back in Leeds. Picturing those exciting scenes, he states unequivocally that Edison's machine was an infringement on Le Prince's machine. Later on that same spring, Lizzie is returning by boat from New Jersey to Manhattan, and she says she spots Edison himself standing on deck in conversation with William de Mehren Guthrie, who's an attorney who had once served as Le Prince's patent advisor. To Lizzie, this is confirmation, circumstantial, that her husband's work has been taken and that his disappearance cleared the way. Third piece of evidence is a possible body and a problem. So in October 1890, less than a month after the Prince is last seen alive, a drowned man is recovered from the scene. One account describes facial trauma being consistent with the beating, and another says that the body bore a strong resemblance to Le Prince. But there is a critical discrepancy here, so the medical examiner's report contains no reference to the height of this person. Now, le Prince, was 6 foot 3, exceptionally tall for that era. Later claims state that the body was too short to be him. Fourth, there was financial pressure. So by 1890, Le Prince is in debt. He'd fallen behind on repayments, and later accounts place his debts at over £600, so nearly $70,000 today. At the same time, he was waiting on a large payment from his brother Albert, 60,000 francs, the agreed value of Louis share of their mother's Paris townhouse. So according to one account, Albert showed no signs of repaying it. There's also a controversial documentary claim that I should mention. So a 2008 article reports that a graduate student, Alexis Bedford, discovered an Edison notebook in a New York library archive. The notebook contains an entry, dated September 20, 1890, allegedly written in Edison's own hand, stating that a call came from Dijon and that Prince is no more. Many people think this is very dubious, but I'm just mentioning it. So what are the theories? First, murder. Le Prince's widow believed Edison had stolen her husband's invention and suspected that he had him killed to remove a rival. A later biography notes that Edison had documented use of hired muscle in other disputes, raising the question of how far he might have taken that. Second, was it a family dispute over money? Le Prince's brother Albert was the last person known to have seen him, and Louis was reportedly financially desperate and waiting on this large inheritance payment from his brother. Another option which has been posited is suicide. Under this financial strain, some suggest that Le Prince, feeling overwhelmed by debt and pressure, took his own life. And they link that theory often to that drowned man found in the same. But the lack of description and height means that we'll never know. Lastly, some people think it could be robbery and murder by chance. So perhaps Le Prince arrives late in Paris, he takes the cab he's targeted by thieves, struck and thrown in the river, consistent with reports of attacks on solo travellers at the time. So the status of this one is unsolved. Louis the Prince was never found. He was legally declared dead in 1897, survived by his inventions. In 1872. Sailing across the Atlantic is dangerous, but it's normal. The Mary Celeste is an American merchant ship and it's got a history of bad luck. It was built in 1861, originally called the Amazon. Its first captain died shortly after the maiden voyage, it ran aground. It changed owners and eventually it was refitted, renamed and sent back to Sea. In October 1872, the ship gets a new captain, Benjamin spooner. Briggs, he's 37 years old. He's experienced, respected, not known to drink either. And he carefully selects a crew of seven men. He also brings his family along, so his wife Sarah and their two year old daughter Sophia, their seven year old son stays behind for school. On November 7, 1872, the Mary Celeste leaves New York City, heading for Genoa, Italy. The cargo, and this is important, is more than 1,700 barrels of industrial alcohol. So not for drinking, it's used for manufacturing. For the next two weeks, the ship struggles through pretty rough weather. Nothing catastrophic, but definitely not easy going either. The last log entry is written on November 25 and it states that the ship is within sight of the azores. Then nothing. December 5, 1872. About 400 miles east of the Azores, the British ship Dei Gratia spots a vessel drifting strangely. Captain David Morehouse recognises it immediately. It's the Mary Celeste. And this is alarming because the Mary Celeste left New York eight days earlier than his ship, so it should already be in Italy. So Morehouse sends a boarding party. They climb aboard. The ship's empty. No sign of anyone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And it's not damaged or wrecked, it's just abandoned below deck. The crew's clothes and belongings are still there. Six months of food and water are untouched and the alcohol cargo is still on board. There are no bodies, there's no blood or signs of a struggle. But there are some oddities. So the ship's only lifeboat is gone, One pump has been dismantled and there's three to three and a half feet of water in the hold. But despite this, the ship is definitely seaworthy. And we know this for sure because the Dei Gratia crew later sail it 800 miles to Gibraltar. In Gibraltar, British authorities open an investigation. At first, suspicion falls on the crew of the DEI Gratia. Salvage money is at stake. Could they have killed the Mary Celeste crew? The evidence says no. And let's walk through what it was that the investigators found. First of all, no signs of violence. Marks that initially they thought could be blood are tested and they're not blood. Second, there's no robbery because the alcohol is still there. Only nine of the 1701 barrels are empty. And records show that those barrels were made of red oak, which leaks easier. Third, there were no pirates, so pirates would have taken the cargo or the ship. And neither of those things happened. Fourth, there's no mutiny. The alcohol was denatured and undrinkable. The crew's valuables were untouched. There's no obvious motive there either. And fifth, the lifeboat is missing, which suggests that the crew didn't vanish, that they elected to abandon ship. And sixth, there's the pump. So as I mentioned, one of the ship's pumps is taken apart, and that suggests it wasn't working properly and someone was making an effort to fix it. And seventh, there are a few of these. The water. So there's water in the hold, but not enough to sink a ship. However, with the hold pack full, the captain maybe couldn't see how bad it really was. And eighth, the sounding rod. So this is a tool used to measure flooding and it's found on deck. Again, meaning this was likely being used right before the ship was abandoned. Someone was trying to figure out how bad the situation was. But after three months, the court finds no evidence of foul play. So the case is closed. Though the mystery is definitely not. Over the years, people have blamed everything imaginable for this, from sea monsters, giant octopus, pirates, mutiny, waterspouts, even the Bermuda Triangle, which isn't remotely nearby. So none of those fit the evidence. Today, there are two explanations with real scientific backing. And both offer reasons why an explanation experienced captain might make an unthinkable decision. Theory 1. In 2006, scientists at university College London tested a long dismissed idea. What if alcohol fumes exploded without leaving burn marks? Chemist Dr. Andrea Seller built a replica of the Mary Celeste cargo hold. And he simulated leaking alcohol fumes using gas. Then he ignited it. And the result was shocking. A huge blast. A ball of flame, enough force to blow open the hatches. And no soot and no scorching. The explosion created a pressure wave, not a fire. Records show that hundreds of gallons of alcohol had leaked, so about 300 to 500 gallons from the nine barrels would be more than enough to cause this. So if true, that blast would have been terrifying. Really loud and sudden, leaving almost no trace. Enough for a captain to shout, abandoned ship. A second explanation, supported by a Smithsonian back study, focuses more on fear. So researchers reconstructed the ship's path using historical weather data. And they found something a little strange. So the Mary Celeste could have drifted from its last logged position to where it was found without anyone on board. In other words, it could have sailed itself that distance. The then Attorney General. His name was Solly Flood. His notes become crucial here because they suggest that Captain Briggs believed he was closer to land than he really was. Likely due to a faulty chronometer. Researchers concluded Briggs was probably 120 miles off where he thought he was. The ship had recently been renovated previously it had carried coal and apparently coal dust and debris may have clogged the pump. So with the pump failing, perhaps Briggs couldn't tell how much water was coming in the night before the final log entry. We know that the ship faced rough seas and strong winds, so this could have been Briggs mindset. Within sight of land, unsure if your ship is going to sink, your wife and toddler aboard. Maybe he ordered everyone into a lifeboat, believing that safety was just a short distance away. But in fact, it was much further and no lifeboat has ever been. So the status of this one is there is no final answer. The 10 people aboard the Mary Celeste, Captain Briggs, his wife, his child and seven crewmen were never seen again. The ship sailed on until 1885, when a later captain deliberately ran aground off the coast of Haiti in a failed insurance scam. And the wreck remains there today. It is very weird, though. A seaworthy ship, plenty of food, no violence, no chaos, ostensibly, and a calm, experienced captain who chose the open ocean over a solid deck. It's March 8, 2014, early hours. A routine international flight. Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The aircraft is a Boeing 777. On board are 227 passengers and 12 crews, so that's 239 people in total. And the passengers are from more than a dozen countries. Just under two thirds are Chinese nationals. There are 38 Malaysians and others from Australia, Indonesia, India, France, Ukraine and the US and several more. In modern aviation, even in 2014, we assume that certain things are impossible. We assume that planes don't just disappear, but that is what MH370 does. I'm going to take you through the timeline, which is quite well known by now, but obviously it's key. So, 12:41am local time, the flight takes off. 1:01am, it reaches its cruising altitude, 35,000ft. And then, bit by bit, the plane begins to fall out of the world systems. 1:07am, the aircraft's ACAR system sends its last transmission and then fails to send the next1@1:37am so it switched off sometime between those two times. ACARS automatically shares operational flight data about engine health, maintenance and fuel to reduce pilots having to talk to ground systems constantly. 1:19am is the last voice communication from the crew. The pilot, identified by authorities as likely being the first officer, said, Good night. Malaysian370. This is customary when transitioning between airspaces and in this case, moving from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace. 1:30am, Malaysian military primary radar are still tracking something they don't yet know might be MH370. The plane turns around, flies southwest over the Malay Peninsula, then northwest over the Strait of Malacca. In the 2am hour, Malaysian military radar loses contact over the Andaman Sea. But something still hears it. An EMRSAT satellite in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean receives hourly signals from the aircraft. The satellite last detects the plane at 8.19am Malaysian time. That suggests that MH370 has been flying for hours. First, searches focus on the South China Sea. Then investigators determine the plane turned west and the search shifts to the Strait of Malacca and the andaman Sea. On March 15, a week after the disappearance, the Amarsat contact is disclosed. And then the case fractures into two terrifying possibilities. Analysis of the signals can't locate the plane precisely, but it shows that the aircraft could have been anywhere along these two arcs. A southern arc stretching from Java into the Indian Ocean, southwest of Australia, or a northern arc stretching across Asia from Vietnam to Turkmenistan. The search expands. We're talking gigantic areas and vast uncertainty. The southern Indian Ocean and across Southeast Asia, western China, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia. On March 24, Malaysia's Prime Minister announced that based on the analysis of the final signature, Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluded that the flight crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean about 2,500 km southwest of Australia, making survival extremely unlikely. But the ocean is obviously immense and that evidence is not enough. The first physical clue was July 29, 2015. The right wing flapperon is found on the French island of Reunion, around 3,700 km west of the search area. Over the next year and a half, 26 more pieces are found on the shores of Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar and Mauritius. Of those pieces, three are positively identified as coming from MH370. Seventeen are thought to have likely come from the plane. Two pieces come from the cabin interior, suggesting that the plane broke up, though investigators can't determine whether it broke up in the air or on impact. Anyone watching this will know that there have been so many theories. The first, and probably the most widely adhered to, is it was someone in the cockpit. This is a theory that investigators return to most often because the systems went dark that can be disabled from incident inside the aircraft. So early on, nothing suspicious was found in the behaviour of the captain or the first officer or cabin crew. But speculation about a purposeful act by the pilot, like intentional depressurization and hypoxia of the passengers grew from the earliest days. In 2016, reporting by New York magazine added a disturbing detail to this, Captain Ahmed Shah had flown a simulated route over this southern Indian Ocean on his home flight simulator less than a month before MH370 disappeared, a route said to closely resemble the aircraft's projected final path. And that discovery, combined with disclosures about the captain's personal life, led weight to the idea of deliberate human action, including the possibility of a premeditated pilot induced mass murder suicide. Tony Abbott, who was Prime Minister of Australia at the time of MH 370's disappearance, stated that he was very clear from early on, based on what he was told from the highest levels of the Malaysian authorities, that they believed it was a murder suicide. The official 2018 report from Malaysia's Ministry of Transport doesn't endorse that conclusion, but it doesn't rule it out either. It says only that the plane's controls were likely manually manipulated and stopped short of naming who was responsible for that. Theory 2 Hijacking the early loss of communications and the plane's turn away from its planned route obviously fuelled speculation about hijacking. But this theory has some serious problems, mainly that no individual or group has ever credibly claimed responsibility and it is difficult to explain why hijackers would fly the plane for hours only to crash it in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean. Investigators never ruled hijacking in or out, but the theory lacks a clear motive or endpoint. However, one of the conspiratorial theories that has been talked about in documentaries is that it could have been a geopolitical distraction to divert attention away from a state's activity. An example given is Russia's annexation of Crimea, which took place from mid February to mid March. 20 theory 3 fire another possibility raised is a fire in the cockpit, cargo area or elsewhere. There are precedents. Other aircraft have suffered catastrophic fires that have disabled communications and flight controls, but MH370 appears to have continued flying for hours, changing course more than once, which is behaviour that's hard to square with a rapidly spreading incapacitating fire. Though a few former pilots have suggested that the changes in the flight path could have been an attempt to get to the nearest airport if there had been a fire, while others think there may have been a darker psychological cause for those diversions, like a pilot wanting to see the view of his home state of Penang before dooming the flight. Importantly, none of the recovered debris shows evidence of fire damage. There were marks initially thought to be burns or burn related, but they were later attributed to material discolouration, not heat or flames, so it can't be ruled out. But the physical evidence that they found so far doesn't support it. A freak accident. Some people have suggested an extraordinary sudden failure, like a freak event so catastrophic that it incapacitated the crew. A meteor is one of the fringe ideas. But again, the data resists that explanation entirely because military radar and satellite records the plane continuing to fly long after it vanished from air traffic control and how it changed direction. So that suggests ongoing control. Another important element to the investigation is this debate over how the plane hit the water. So the evidence here is contested. Analysis of the first flapperon and a piece of a wing flap found in Tanzania led Australian investigators to conclude that the plane didn't undergo a controlled descent, meaning that it wasn't deliberately guided. But some aviation experts argue that the damage patterns on certain components could actually be consistent with what they call a controlled ditching or a controlled water landing. A sixth theory is that it was shot down after debris was discovered. Some speculated that that is what happened to MH370. But investigators found no evidence of shrapnel or projectile damage on the recovered fragments. Which doesn't prove that a shoot down was impossible. The whole wreckage has never been found. But it does mean that the physical material that the investigators have doesn't support that scenario. So the status of MH370 indisputably still a mystery. One of the modern world's most confounding. The official multi government search was called off in January 2017. In July 2018, Malaysia issued its final report. Manual inputs, likely mechanical malfunction, extremely unlikely, but no determination of motive or responsibility. In 2025, Malaysia approved a fresh search of the Southern Indian Ocean, again under a no find, no fee term with ocean infinity. $70 million I believe if the wreckage is found. A Boeing 777. Hundreds of lives tracked by radar, followed by satellites and still able to vanish into the ocean's blank space. Given all of these cases have had either plausible new theories, new evidence turned up, or solves in the last decade or two, that really shows that we should never stop looking. So if there is a mystery that you can't let go of, or a theory or piece of evidence that I've missed, or one that you think changes everything, do leave it in the comments because I'd love to see and I'll see you next time on History Uncensored.