A line in the dust

Ambrose Bierce was an American writer who practically walked straight into a revolution in Mexico. In 1913, he headed down south to a place where Pancho Villa’s forces were fighting, with some reports claiming he was around during the Battle of Tierra Blanca.

Hardly the most relaxing place for writing. He wrote several letters, and his last one was dated December 26, 1913, and was sent from Chihuahua. Nobody knows what happened to him after that because Bierce disappeared completely.

The ticket that stalled

A train ride. That’s all it took for French motion-picture maker Louis Le Prince to disappear on September 16, 1890. He was planning to take some of his work to the United States, and he went to visit his brother in Dijon, France, before going to America. He never made it.

No luggage, no body, no evidence, the police found absolutely nothing and actually declared him dead seven years later. It’s unclear what exactly happened to him, though some people believe he might’ve drowned or been assassinated.

North into white air

Polar exploration was kind of normal for Roald Amundsen, especially since he’d already made a name for himself in the field. That is, until June 18, 1928, when he took off from Tromsø, Norway, in a French Latham 47 flying boat, and was never found again.

He was trying to find survivors from Umberto Nobile’s airship Italia, though Amundsen himself was the one who vanished. Most historians believe that his plane probably went down in the Barents Sea, but we just don’t know.

A profit left hanging

By 1803, George Bass had already helped to map huge parts of Australia’s coast and even had a strait named after him. That apparently wasn’t enough, however, as he started chasing trade money shortly after, leading to him sailing from Sydney on February 5, 1803.

He was on the Venus and might’ve been aiming for South America so he could sell some goods, but he never actually made it there. It’s generally believed that Bass died at sea, although nothing has actually been proven.

Three ships, then two

Time for another explorer. This time, it’s Gaspar Corte-Real, a man whose final voyage was so dramatic that it sounds made-up, but it’s not. He left Portugal in 1501 and crossed the North Atlantic to reach either Newfoundland or Labrador.

He left with three ships. But only two came back to Lisbon, and the third, the one with Corte-Real on it, never returned. Bizarrely enough, Gaspar’s brother went looking for him a year later and disappeared as well. Talk about bad luck.

A note left behind

Ettore Majorana was an Italian physicist who left Naples in 1938 and appeared to be heading toward Palermo, although he ended up vanishing on the way. His colleagues believed he had committed suicide, but others had some more interesting theories.

They said he could’ve emigrated to Venezuela or Argentina, perhaps he even became a monk in a monastery. Some historians believe that he was kidnapped or murdered, too, to stop him from helping build an atomic weapon. Who knows?

Bright sails, rough water

The Sea Dragon was a Chinese junk ship that was supposed to go from Hong Kong to San Francisco for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. Explorer Richard Halliburton was one of the people on board, but he didn’t reach his destination.

A little after the boat left, a typhoon struck the Pacific, and the ship lost radio contact. The U.S. Navy did go looking for the boat, yes, but they never found a wreck or any bodies, either.

Clouds over the estuary

Amy Johnson wasn’t trying to make her January 5, 1941, flight legendary or anything, but that’s exactly what happened. She took what was meant to be a delivery job from Blackpool, England, to Kidlington, although bad weather made the whole thing more difficult.

Sailors on the HMS Haslemere claimed they saw a parachutist and heard a woman calling for help, so they tried to assist, yet they sadly couldn’t. Johnson disappeared, and her remains were never found.

Tea waiting on the table

On March 26, 1967, Jim Thompson was staying at the Moonlight bungalow in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, and he was relaxing with his friends. Everything seemed great. He was so calm, in fact, that he decided to go for an afternoon walk, nothing major or anything.

Thompson never came back. Searchers checked roads and jungle paths, yes, but they never managed to find Jim or work out where he vanished to. The only things they found were his jacket and bed, back at the bungalow.

A walk after shopping

Dorothy Arnold was a socialite who, on December 12, 1910, left her home in Manhattan to go shopping for a dress. She bought some chocolates and picked up a book before talking to a friend near 27th Street. Apparently, she was going to walk home through Central Park.

What happened next is uncertain, but what we do know is that Dorothy didn’t come back by dinnertime, or ever. Was she killed? Did she have an accident? We just don’t know.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

15 historical figures that were terrible people behind closed doors

We often remember historical figures for their accomplishments, but some of history’s most admired names had a very different side that rarely appears in textbooks.

15 historical figures that were terrible people behind closed doors

Fidel Castro

It’s not like you had to wait long to see the reaction to Fidel Castro’s death. The former Cuban dictator died on November 25, 2016, and Cuban exiles around the world started celebrating. That includes Miami. Yes, they started gathering in Little Havana within half an hour of the announcement.

Thousands of people banged pots and waved Cuban flags to celebrate Castro’s death. Some played music, and some danced well into the night. Cuba, however, went in completely the other direction and announced nine days of mourning. It was a very different kind of reaction.

John Wayne Gacy

Hundreds of people gathered outside Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. They were there for the execution of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. They had signs and were playing songs, with some reports claiming people were cheering, too.

Gacy had murdered 33 boys and young men. He’d then buried many of them under his house. Gacy’s execution didn’t exactly go smoothly, though, as equipment trouble caused a delay, but then he was finally pronounced dead at 12:58 a.m. The crowd definitely noticed.

Pablo Escobar

Pablo Escobar’s death was something like a movie scene. Colombian forces tracked down the cartel boss and eventually found him, shooting Escobar dead on a Medellín rooftop on December 2, 1993. Then the celebrations began.

Members of the Search Bloc posed beside his body and smiled for the camera because they’d spent months tracking him down. Even the Colombian government treated the killing as a victory; it was that big of a deal. His funeral was more like a big national party in Medellín than a time for mourning.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

On June 7, 2006, two 500-pound bombs hit a house near Baqubah, Iraq, ending the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was now dead. Al-Zarqawi was the former leader of the terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, and he was having a meeting with associates at the time.

He’d been linked to bombings and kidnappings, along with filmed beheadings. So it’s no surprise that American and Iraqi officials were quite happy about his death. There wasn’t a street party or anything, but there sure was a lot of open happiness.

Timothy McVeigh

Things were a little strange in the city of Terre Haute, Indiana on June 11, 2001. That was the day that the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was set to be executed. Vendors sold souvenirs, and people talked about parties as they counted down the minutes.

Crowds gathered around the federal prison where he was held, too. McVeigh had previously killed 168 people and was pronounced dead at 7:14 a.m. local time. Over in Oklahoma City itself, however, the mood was much quieter, with around 300 people watching remotely. It wasn’t as celebratory over there.

Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer’s death was different from the other ones on this list because it wasn’t something scheduled. No, he was attacked by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver on November 28, 1994, inside Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. Dahmer died roughly an hour after the attack.

He had been serving 16 consecutive life sentences for the murders of 17 boys and young men. Not everyone reacted to his death in the same way. Some of the victims’ families argued that death let him escape years of punishment. Still, there were many who openly welcomed the news or felt satisfied about it. 

Che Guevara

Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia on October 8, 1967, just as his guerrilla campaign was already collapsing. He was a leading figure in the Cuban Revolution. Bolivian soldiers executed him the day after capturing him, then they displayed his body to journalists.

That was mostly to prevent any arguments over whether he was really dead. Even so, the Bolivian authorities and many anti-Castro figures welcomed the result. Many American officials celebrated it, too, although in Cuba, the people were mostly in mourning.

Charles Manson

Murderer and cult leader Charles Manson died in 2017 after spending nearly half a century behind bars. He passed away due to numerous health issues in a California hospital on November 19 at age 83 after being transferred from Corcoran State Prison.

The news of his death soon brought a lot of celebration. Critics and public figures who remembered the 1969 murders carried out by his followers were happy. They said they felt free. Not everyone reacted the same way, though, as some said his death changed nothing. That’s fair enough.

Rush Limbaugh

It’s no surprise that the reaction to radio host Rush Limbaugh’s death was so divisive. He sure was a controversial figure. He died on February 17, 2021, at age 70 after battling advanced lung cancer. His wife announced it during his own syndicated show.

There were many conservatives who paid tribute to him, but there were also many online critics who did the opposite. They brought up his comments about race, women, and gay people. They were hardly dancing downtown, but they sure were happy he was gone.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died near Tehran on June 3, 1989, but the celebrations of his death were visible as far away as Los Angeles. Roughly 5,000 Iranian exiles gathered outside the federal building in Westwood, the next day. They danced and sang. They also cheered.

Not just because they were happy he was dead, but also because they could actually sing and dance. Many of them had fled Iran’s oppressive regime after the 1979 revolution. They hated the government Khomeini created and the restrictions he’d placed on ordinary people.

Anita Bryant

Most people didn’t think about Anita Bryant’s entertainment career when she died at 84 on December 16, 2024. No, they thought about her 1977 Save Our Children campaign against gay-rights protections in Miami instead.

A lot of LGBTQ activists and publications celebrated openly about her death because of her comments against LGBTQ people. She’d once been a singer and orange-juice spokesperson. The jokes about orange juice came back almost immediately once she passed away.

George Lincoln Rockwell

A laundromat parking lot. It’s an odd place for someone today, and especially for someone who’s a political extremist. But that’s exactly where American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell was killed on August 25, 1967.

He walked out in Arlington, Virginia, and was shot by John Patler, a former member of Rockwell’s own group. Rockwell’s followers grieved, yes, but plenty of Americans were clearly relieved. They were happy that his years of Nazi rallies and antisemitic campaigning seemed to be over.

David Koch

There were two very different reactions to the announcement of David Koch’s death on August 23, 2019. His supporters talked about his enormous donations to museums and hospitals. His critics went the other way.

They spoke about how Koch had spent huge sums supporting conservative and libertarian causes. These included groups that fought environmental regulations. So, some of Koch’s opponents celebrated online when the news broke, and they took their joy straight to social media.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

Ten most famous last words

Some final words became famous because they captured a person’s courage, humor, regret, or the extraordinary moment in history they were living through.

Ten most famous last words