About How Many People Dissipeared and Wernt Heard From Again?

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It turns out that a number of people throughout history have mysteriously disappeared. Some were famous when they went missing and became even more than legendary afterward, and some reached celebrity status but considering they disappeared. Hither are nine strange tales of people (aside from Amelia Earhart) whose disappearances still haunt us today.

Al-Hakim

Al-Hakim was a 10th–11th-century ruler of the Fatimid dynasty who was known for his erratic and contradictory leadership. He led for 25 years (996–1021) of his known 36 years of life, during which time he, for instance, established a generous policy to support the poor simply to follow it with some astonishingly harsh or strange edict such as forbidding women to leave their homes then forbidding cobblers to make or sell women'due south footwear. 1 nighttime in February 1021 al-Hakim rode out of Cairo. He was never heard from over again, nor was his trunk ever found.
Edward V of England

Edward 5, Edward IV, and Elizabeth Woodville
Edward V (lower right) with his father, Edward 4, and mother, Elizabeth Woodville, illumination from Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, 1477; in Lambeth Palace Library, London.
Courtesy of the Lambeth Palace Library; photograph, Royal Academy of Arts

The eldest son of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was born while his father was abroad in Holland. When Edward IV returned to his imperial position, he named his son the prince of Wales. Only upon the king's expiry, a dispute erupted between the kid'due south maternal and paternal uncles concerning the legitimacy of the king'south union to Elizabeth. Ultimately, Edward V and his blood brother Richard, knuckles of York, were locked away in the Tower of London. It is presumed that they were murdered and that skeletons found in the tower in 1647 were those of the boys.
The Lost Colony of Roanoke

The disappearance of some 100 settlers from their colony on Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina) in the late 1580s remains an unsolved—and however compelling—mystery embedded in American history. The colony was established by Gov. John White, who promptly returned to England to fetch supplies. By the time he returned in 1590, the settlement and all its people were gone. The only trace was the word "CROATOAN" carved on a fencepost and "CRO" on a tree. Croatoan was the name of the Native American tribe that lived on Roanoke too equally the proper name of present-day Hatteras Island. Several theories arose and archaeological exploration continues, but nothing definitive has surfaced well-nigh the settlers' disappearance.
Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup: image from Twelve Years a Slave (1853)
Portrait of Solomon Northup printed in his memoir of slavery, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton fiber Plantation most the Red River in Louisiana (1853).
From Twelve years a slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington Metropolis in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River, in Louisiana; Derby and Miller (Auburn, Buffalo; 1853)

Solomon Northup'due south is a story of tremendous misfortune and resilience. Though he was born a free person in New York almost 1808, Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. He was owned past a series of sadistic masters until he was able to find a way to ship letters to his family unit in 1852. His liberty was legally reinstated in 1853, and Northup went on to cowrite a memoir—Twelve Years a Slave—that sold similar hotcakes. He became a national celebrity and lectured throughout the country. His kidnappers were somewhen indicted, but the charges were dismissed in 1857. Northup so promptly retreated from the public eye. It is likely that he joined the Underground Railroad, but the date and circumstances of his death are unknown.
Ambrose Bierce

Bierce, Ambrose
Ambrose Bierce, detail of an oil painting by J.H.E. Partington.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Ambrose Bierce, a newspaper and short-story writer, was well known for his satirical column "Prattler," which ran in a number of West Coast papers such as the San Francisco Examiner. He served in and survived the American Civil War (his experiences in which he detailed in his best-known stories) and eventually married and had three children. While he continued every bit a newspaper columnist, he also wrote many novels and short stories every bit well as The Devil'south Dictionary, a book of social commentary disguised as a collection of night and witty definitions for well-known terms. He left the U.Southward. for Mexico about 1913, during the Mexican Revolution. After December of that year there remains no record of him, though numerous theories have been put forth over the past century.
George Mallory

Mount Everest: 1921 expedition
George Mallory (seated, far left) and Guy Bullock (seated, 3rd from the left), planners of the reconnaissance trek to Mount Everest in 1921. The other mountaineers shown are (clockwise from peak left) A.F.R. Wollaston, Charles Howard-Coffin, Alexander Heron, Harold Raeburn, Henry T. Morshead, and Oliver Wheeler.
From Mountain Everest, the Reconnaissance, 1921, past Charles Howard-Bury and other members of the Mount Everest Expedition, 1922

George Mallory was a schoolmaster in England and a seasoned mountain climber. He had trained on the most-hard routes up the Alps before existence recruited for the kickoff major climbing expedition up Mountain Everest in 1921. That first endeavor was thwarted by high winds, and a second attempt in 1922—which also failed—involved an avalanche and the death of seven porters. Finally in 1924 he prepare out on a third expedition. Mallory and another climber, Andrew Irvine, went off to try the summit on June 8 and were never seen once more. They left the globe to wonder what had taken place on that fateful mean solar day, including whether before disappearing they had become the first climbers ever to reach the summit. Irvine's axe was establish in 1933 at about 27,750 feet (viii,460 meters), which seemed to bespeak that they did not make it to the height and probable cruel to their deaths. Seventy-five years afterwards, in 1999, an trek discovered Mallory'southward body at 26,760 feet (8,160 meters). Equally of 2015, Irvine'due south remains had not been constitute, and the exact circumstances of their deaths are as still undetermined.
Wallace D. Fard

Wallace D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam (NOI), rose from being a silk peddler on the streets of Detroit to go a preacher and self-identified savior of the African American people. He had a short but influential stint as the outspoken NOI leader in Detroit from 1930 to 1934, with a number of run-ins with the law during that fourth dimension. Very little documented biographical information nearly him exists, though several stories about his origins circulate. He claimed to accept been born in Mecca, though the FBI's findings propose that he was born in New Zealand and led the life of a small-scale scofflaw in one case he arrived in the United States. He disappeared in 1934. Oft referred to as "the Prophet" and idea to be the incarnation of Allah by followers of the Nation of Islam, he is historic each twelvemonth on February 26, Saviors' Day.
Raoul Wallenberg

Wallenburg, Raoul
Raoul Wallenburg, c. 1930s.
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Raoul Wallenberg was from a well-connected and upstanding Swedish family. He'd been a star educatee of architecture and became a successful man of affairs. Because of his family and business organization connections throughout Europe, he was recruited as a special envoy for a major rescue operation of Hungarian Jews in 1944. Between March and June of that year, the Nazis had deported most 400,000 Jews, virtually of them to the Auschwitz death camp. Wallenberg distributed documents to the Jews of Budapest and convinced Hungarian authorities to let the documentation (chosen a Schutz-Pass) function every bit passports. Those passports saved some 15,000 Jews from sure death. In January of 1945 Wallenberg was arrested for unknown reasons by Soviet troops, who later claimed he died of a heart set on in 1947, but no i knows for certain if he died then or what happened to him after his arrest.
Jimmy Hoffa

Savvy, smart, and no-nonsense, Jimmy Hoffa started out as a spousal relationship organizer and by 1958 had climbed the ranks to get the president of the Teamsters, the largest labor union in the United States. It was widely known that many of the Teamsters' dealings were securely corrupt. He was avidly pursued past federal regime, whom he managed to evade until 1964, when he was sent to federal prison for jury tampering and a host of other crimes. Fifty-fifty from backside bars, information technology seemed that Hoffa succeeded in controlling Teamster activities. He was released in 1971 under the status that he would steer clear of union activities. On July xxx, 1975, Hoffa went to a eatery in suburban Detroit for what is thought to have been a meeting with Teamster officials. He was never seen over again and was legally declared "presumed dead" in 1982. His remains i of the most-compelling mysterious disappearances of the 20th century.