5 ‘Unexplained’ Mysteries That Have Totally Been Explained

5 The Egyptian Pyramids

How could the ancient Egyptians have hauled all those big rocks across hundreds of miles of desert? Well, they didn’t. Archeologists have long theorized that they were floated to their final resting place along some waterway that’s since dried up, and in 2024, they found it: a branch of the Nile that’s been buried under the desert for a thousand years. From there, it was a straightforward system of ramps and pulleys. They’re not explaining stacking to you.

4 The Bloop

In 1997, underwater listening stations thousands of miles apart picked up an extremely low-frequency sound that, if it came from some ocean creature, would have to be the biggest, most terrifying thing we’ve ever seen in the ocean, and that place is already a nightmare factory. Key word: “if.” In 2012, it was confirmed that the sound was identical to what we now know are “icequakes,” cracks and breaks in glaciers that happen all the time. There’s definitely still a planet-size whale out there, it’s just unrelated.

3 The Bermuda Triangle

The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle hasn’t been solved so much as its been proven not to exist. There simply aren’t a statistically greater number of shipwrecks and disappearances in that part of the ocean than anywhere else. We also can’t agree on exactly where it even is, so it physically doesn’t exist. You’re not going to find it on a map marked “here there be vengeful sea ghosts.”

2 The Sailing Stones

There’s a spot in Death Valley where rocks appear to have glided through the sand of their own volition, leaving a trail not accounted for by gravity or wind or anything else that makes rocks move. In 2013, scientists realized sheets of ice were freezing over the rocks in the winter, allowing them to slide through the sand underneath as they melted. That’s also why nobody ever sees them move. We thought they were just shy.

1 The Somerton Man

In 1948, a man was discovered dead on an Australian beach, with no ID or money, dressed impeccably in what were clearly somebody else’s clothes, and carrying a scrap of paper printed with the words “tamám shud,” or “it’s finished.” People believed he must have been James Bond in the flesh or something, but in 2022, DNA analysis identified him as Carl Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne who became a drifter the previous year. The clothes, labeled “T. Keane,” probably belonged to his brother-in-law, Thomas Keane, and the scrap of paper was probably just something he’d ripped off to write down a list of horses he bet on. 

Let this be a lesson to never imagine that something might be cool.