CH 37History & exploration
Lead, scurvy and a long winter
Franklin expedition
Franklin expedition, 1845–48: what the evidence says about why it failed
Dossier · 7 case files · 1845–2014
Unsolved mysteries, investigated with evidence.
A vanished airliner, a deadly night in the Urals, a signal from deep space and an ancient bronze calculator: what the evidence can and cannot settle.
Backdrop: The ruins of Northumberland House on Beechey Island, Nunavut, in September 2015. Gordon Leggett · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons. Figure: John Rae. Arctic explorer and searcher for Franklin's lost ships (1853). Stephen Pearce · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons.
Some cases end without a confession or a final answer. What remains is a set of observations that any explanation has to fit: satellite timings, injuries and snow conditions, a single radio detection, corroded bronze seen through X-rays. The interesting work is deciding which explanations fit all of the evidence and which only fit the parts they were built from.
These investigations stay on the record. They set out the strongest current explanation, the evidence behind it and the gaps that remain, without treating an open question as licence for any theory at all.
In date order of the event. Each file is a full investigation: briefing, source-linked evidence, reasoning steps and findings.
CH 71History & technology
Gears inside the rust
Antikythera mechanism
Antikythera wreck, 1901: how did X-ray CT turn corroded fragments into an astronomical calculator?
CH 48Science & Discovery
The skull assembled to deceive
Piltdown Man hoax
Piltdown, Sussex, 1912-1953: how a celebrated fossil was shown to be a composite forgery
CH 22History & exploration
When the destination stops mattering
Endurance expedition
Endurance, 1915–1916: revise the mission as the evidence changes
CH 70History & exploration
The tent under the shoulder
Dyatlov Pass deaths (1959)
Dyatlov Pass deaths, 1959: could a small slab avalanche explain the damaged tent and the injuries?
CH 81Science & Discovery
The signal that might have been a cloud
Wow! signal (1977)
Wow! signal, 1977: what can one unrepeated 72-second detection tell us?
CH 77History & technology
Seven handshakes with a satellite
MH370 disappearance (2014)
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, 2014: where did the satellite data place the aircraft?
From the journal
The ideas behind these cases.
Hindsight bias: judging decisions with the ending in viewKnowing how an event ended makes earlier choices look obvious. Learn how hindsight bias distorts investigations and how to rebuild what was known.
Living with uncertainty: what evidence leaves openSome conclusions stay partly open. Learn to state what evidence supports, what remains disputed, and why a sound mechanism can have contested details.- Provenance and physical traces: testing whether a claim holdsClaims earn trust through documented history and independent evidence. Learn to test provenance, dating and physical traces before accepting them.
Other topicsSoftware failures 15Aviation and spaceflight 16Bridges, buildings and structures 12Energy and power grids 7Medicine and public health 11Extraordinary claims and replication 9Markets, money and fraud 6Weather, climate and the Earth 11Ships and the sea 9Investigations from the 2020s 12Astronomy and physics 13