A Brief History On December 30, 1970, former heavyweight boxing champion Charles L. “Sonny” Liston lay dead on the bedroom floor of his Las Vegas home. There he would stay until his wife found his dead body on January 5, 1971, almost a week later. Officially, the Coroner said heart failure (your heart always fails when you die, just sayin’) and lung congestion. The body was already somewhat decomposed, making definitive analysis of cause of death difficult, and rumors started almost immediately. Digging Deeper Liston had won the heavyweight championship by beating Floyd Patterson in 1962 at the age of…
Browsing: The Unexplained
A Brief History On November 19, 1703, one of History’s most celebrated prisoners died while still in prison, an unidentified man known to us as “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Ironically (even the word “ironically” is ironic in this case!), the mask kept over the prisoner’s face was black velvet, not iron. The iron part of the story came from a work by Voltaire in 1771 when he claimed the mask was an iron one. Voltaire also claimed the man was an illegitimate brother of the French King, Louis XIV. Novelist Alexandre Dumas (he of The Three Musketeers fame)…
A Brief History On October 21, 1978, the Australian pilot of a Cessna 182 (small single engine propeller airplane) disappeared, but not before he radioed to Melbourne air traffic controller that he was being shadowed by “not an aircraft.” Digging Deeper The 20 year old pilot, Frederick Valentich, had 150 flying time under his belt, and was authorized to fly at night in clear conditions. Although strongly desiring a career in the Australian Air Force, he had been rejected on academic grounds and had failed key tests to start a career in commercial aviation. He was apparently a lackluster pilot,…
A Brief History On October 19, 1969, the fickle winds of fate must have been blowing awful hard, because the almost supernatural coincidence of cartoonist Trey Parker and self proclaimed psychic John Edward were both born on this day. Little did they realize that in September of 2002 Parker and his partner, Matt Stone, would feature Edward in the starring title role of the South Park episode known as The Biggest Douche in the Universe! (The 94th episode of the South Park animated cartoon series.) Digging Deeper Was this occurrence a cosmic joke? An example of fate? Or a mere…
A Brief History On October 16, 1972, a Cessna 310 light airplane carrying Congressman Nick Begich (D-Alaska) and Congressman Hale Boggs (D-Louisiana) along with the pilot and Begich’s aide disappeared on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. The disappearance of 2 members of Congress is a big deal, and a massive search was mounted, continuing for 39 days until no hope of finding the plane’s occupants alive remained. No trace of the plane or its passengers was ever found, and this incident led to legislation requiring Emergency Locating Transmitters on all US commercial flights. Digging Deeper Incredibly, both men were…
