Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors ponder the most puzzling conundrums from the past
Where is Alexander the Great's body?
The ambitious conqueror’s bones remain lost in the mists of time
After the Macedonian leader’s death in Babylon in 323 BC, his body was to be transferred back to Greece for burial. On the way, though, it was hijacked by one of his generals, Ptolemy, and instead was taken to Egypt. There Ptolemy created a tomb and used his ‘ownership’ of Alexander’s body to bolster his claim to rule Egypt as his former commander’s successor.
That plan worked. Ptolemy and his descendants controlled Egypt for almost 300 years until the fall of Cleopatra – the famed pharaoh who was defeated by Octavian’s Roman forces and then committed suicide in Alexandria along with her lover and ally, the Roman general Mark Antony. Octavian – who took the title Augustus on becoming the first Roman emperor – reportedly then visited Alexander’s body to pay homage to this great and visionary leader. (It’s said that he got too close, and accidentally knocked off Alexander’s 300 year-old nose!)
The body remained in Alexandria through the centuries of the Roman empire, but disappears from sources after the fourth or fifth century AD – and neither the tomb nor the body it contained have ever been located by archaeologists. Some believe that both are still in Egypt’s second city, others that the body may have been stolen away, perhaps mistaken for the relics of a Christian saint. Some suggest that the tomb was destroyed by fire or rising sea levels. For now, the bones of one of history’s greatest figures remain lost.
Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick
How many people did the Second World War kill?
Accurately counting the dead is an impossible task
The Second World War was arguably the most significant event in global history – especially recent history. But how many people were killed in that conflict? I have seen estimates ranging from 50 million to 70 million, but the truth is that nobody really knows. That war was so destructive, so chaotic, that it was impossible for any nation to keep count.
The standard way to estimate such gruesome statistics is to compare the population of a country before and after the war. You can use mathematical models to work out what the population should have been in 1945, based on prewar numbers and typical population growth. The shortfall between that figure and the actual recorded population after the war would, theoretically, give the number of deaths caused by the conflict.
However, this is a very, very vague method of accounting. It relies on census data from individual countries, but that data is often severely compromised. For example, all of Poland’s borders changed in 1945, so the country before the war was not the same as the country afterwards. Millions were displaced or fled Poland to live in other countries – so how does one account for those people?
Frightened families often stopped having children during the war, but a baby boom followed in peacetime. How did that affect the demographics? Then there is the time-lag problem. In the Soviet Union, the first postwar census wasn’t taken until 1959, 20 years after the previous survey. A lot of things happened in those 20 years, and the war was only one of them.
When people ask me how many died in the Second World War, I never quite know what to tell them. Perhaps the only true answer would be: “Lots.” Or, more aptly: “Too many.”
Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)
- Read more | In 1940, Winston Churchill made a decision that may have won WW2. So why did it make him cry?
Where is the Cinco Chagas?
A Portuguese vessel laden with a fabulous hoard of gems lies lost in the Atlantic
On 23 June 1594, during the Anglo-Spanish War, a Portuguese ship was sunk by English privateers led by the Earl of Cumberland; it caught fire and disappeared beneath the waves in the Azores. This vessel was called the Cinco Chagas – ‘Five Wounds’ – a reference to the wounds of Christ.
Its location has never been discovered. And many have tried – because it was laden with the most extraordinary cargo: 22 chests containing diamonds, rubies and pearls thought to be worth the equivalent of more than £800m in today’s money, along with valuable spices.
The Cinco Chagas was a carrack – a four-masted ocean-going sailing ship – of about 1,200 tons. Some 45 metres long and 14 metres wide, it was built in Goa, India, which at the time was in the hands of the Portuguese. With their deep hulls and high sterns, carracks were designed to carry substantial cargoes; the Cinco Chagas, though, seems to have been heavily overloaded. As a result, it was unable to react deftly to the English attack, and swiftly caught fire and sank, perhaps in waters south of Pico island.
Of the 1,000 or so people on board, many of them enslaved, 500 drowned. Thanks to the survivors, we have some idea of what happened. Surrender was never an option: the cargo was intended for the king of Spain and Portugal, who would have rewarded the captain by making him viceroy in the Indies.
More than four centuries after it sank, the Cinco Chagas still lies lost on the floor of the Atlantic, hundreds of metres beneath the surface, its treasure appreciated only by denizens of the ocean depths.
Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford
What happened to the Norse Greenlanders?
After centuries of occupation, the settlers vanished – why?
Greenland was settled around AD 985 by Erik the Red, who had been temporarily outlawed from Iceland for murder. He spent three years exploring the west coast of Greenland, then returned to Iceland and persuaded his family and followers to sail west with him and settle on that ice-clad island. From what the sagas tell us, he used an early form of marketing, naming it ‘Greenland’ so that people would be more inclined to move there.
There were two main settlements on Greenland, both on the western coast. The bigger one, which had its own bishopric, was dubbed the Eastern Settlement. The other, called the Western Settlement, was about a third of the size and lay several hundred miles farther up the coast in the fjords around what is now Nuuk, Greenland’s modern capital. The Norse also named Northern Hunting Grounds, beyond the Arctic Circle, where they hunted walruses for ivory and hides.
By the early 15th century, though, it seems that all Norse had left Greenland. The Western Settlement was the first to go, possibly in the middle of the 14th century. The Eastern Settlement held out a bit longer; the last textual records of that outpost date from the first decade of the 15th century. When missionaries arrived in Greenland in the 18th century, they were coming to save the Nordic souls of those still living in this colony. They found none to save.
There are plenty of theories, but what happened to the last inhabitants is still a captivating mystery.
Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands (Profile, 2024)
- Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster
Who was Jack the Ripper?
The identity of the Victorian serial killer still grips the public imagination
As a historian of Victorian Britain, this is the question I get asked more than any other. Everyone has a theory. Last week, a cabbie told me that the murderer must have been a doctor. A group of ladies at the local Women’s Institute are convinced he was a member of the royal family. My barber confidently explained that DNA evidence had proven the killer was a man named Aaron Kosminski. When I mentioned that the science behind this claim had been thoroughly debunked, he seemed a little disappointed, but I think I did him a favour. Discovering the truth would rob the story of all its fascination.
Ever since the discovery of the bodies of the first victims in 1888, people have been drawn to the mystery of the Ripper. Newspapers were filled with articles speculating about the killer’s identity, and amateur detectives stalked the streets of Whitechapel hoping to catch the murderer. Since then, thousands of people – historians, scientists, novelists, retired detectives – have followed in their footsteps. But the evidence has always been thin, and nobody, in my view, has come close to cracking the case.
I think there are two versions of Jack the Ripper. There’s the person – or people – who brutally murdered five women in the East End; we still know almost nothing about them. Then there’s the Ripper of the popular imagination: a sinister figure conjured by the Victorian press who lives on in horror films and walking tours. We picture him in a top hat and cape, stalking foggy streets with a bloody knife. This is the version people want to unmask – but the truth is that this version never really existed.
Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University
Who were the Sea Peoples?
The identity of the enemy that assailed ancient Egypt is still unknown
Around 1200 BC, the eastern Mediterranean world began to unravel. Great powers such as the Hittites and Mycenaean Greece, as well as cities across the Levant, collapsed or were violently destroyed. Egyptian records from the reign of Ramesses III describe a formidable enemy arriving “from the sea”. This coalition is now known as the Sea Peoples.
This enemy wasn’t named as a single group in antiquity. Instead, inscriptions list the Sherden, Shekelesh, Peleset and Denyen, among others, suggesting a loose confederation rather than a unified force.
These attackers are depicted in Egyptian reliefs as warriors with distinctive feathered headdresses, horned helmets and round shields, fighting both on land and sea. According to the inscriptions in the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu near Luxor, they brought not only armies but also families travelling with ox carts.
Though this description appears to hint more at migration than invasion, the identity of these incomers remains unclear. Some scholars have linked these migrants to displaced populations from the Aegean, perhaps connected to the collapse of Mycenaean palace societies. Others think that they were a mixture of groups from Anatolia, the central Mediterranean and the Levant, driven to relocate by famine, instability or climate pressures. There are even attempts to identify individual groups – the Peleset with the Philistines, for example – though such connections remain debated.
What is certain, however, is their impact. Whether as cause or symptom, the Sea Peoples are tied to one of the most dramatic turning points in ancient history: the end of the Bronze Age world. Yet their true identity remains out of reach.
Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author of The Lost Voices of Pompeii (Mudlark, 2026)
What happened to the Princes in the Tower?
Debate still rages over the fate of the two children imprisoned by Richard III
In 1674, during the demolition of the old royal palace at the Tower of London on the orders of Charles II, workmen found a large wooden chest holding the skeletons of two children. An eyewitness wrote: “This day I… saw working men dig out of a stairway in the White Tower the bones of those two Princes who were foully murdered.”
They were Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, aged 12 and nine at the time of their disappearance in the summer of 1483. Charles II was so convinced that the skeletons were those of the two princes that he ordered their reburial in Westminster Abbey, where they remain to this day.
The boys had been placed in the Tower by their uncle Richard of Gloucester, allegedly named Lord Protector by their father, Edward IV, shortly before his death in April 1483. The last recorded sighting of the boys in the Tower was on 16 June 1483.
Many believed at the time – as many still do today – that the two princes were quietly murdered. If so, then at whose hands? Richard III has long been the prime suspect: he had his nephews declared illegitimate and seized the throne. But there were others with a vested interest in getting them out of the way – not least Henry Tudor and his Lancastrian supporters.
Another theory that has gained support in recent years is that one or both of the princes escaped.
The mystery continues to attract controversy and conspiracy theories. However, unless fresh evidence comes to light, it is unlikely ever to be solved.
Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster
Who was DB Cooper?
The mysterious money-seeking hijacker disappeared without trace
There was a moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s when hijacking planes seemed to be as ubiquitous as mood rings or pet rocks. Between 1968 and 1972, someone tried to hijack a plane once every 5.6 days on average. Over that five-year period, 137 hijackings were attempted in the US alone – about one every two weeks. Hijacking become so rampant that, speaking in the language of epidemic, writers Elizabeth Rich and Charles Whelton talked about a “skyjack virus”.
In 1971, at the height of this trend, a nondescript middle-aged white man who called himself Dan Cooper boarded a plane in Portland, Oregon. Once in flight, he told the crew he had a bomb and that, unless he received $200,000 upon landing at their destination in Seattle, he would use it. The airline complied. Cooper released the passengers in Seattle, took his money and four parachutes, and redirected the plane to Mexico City. He escaped by leaping into the night sky somewhere before it reached Reno, Nevada.
Many prominent hijackers in that era had some connection to decolonisation or social protest. Dan Cooper – DB Cooper, as most popular media dubbed him – rose to legendary status because his skyjacking was for profit, not politics. It was simultaneously elaborate and terribly planned: who wears a suit and parachutes into the woods at night? With law enforcement still stymied 55 years later, three key questions remain unanswered: who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what on earth was he thinking?
Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University
This article was first published in the August 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine