50,000th army lost in the desert
Cambyses II was a Persian king from the Achaemenid dynasty. in 524 BC. to. To suppress the prophecy of the god Amun, he sent an army of 50,000 men to the oasis of Siwa in western Egypt, which was subject to the Persians. However, this army disappeared without a trace in the desert west of Thebes before it could reach its destination. According to local residents, the army was covered by a sandstorm from which not a single person could escape.
It is common for entire men or detachments to disappear in battle, but Cambyses’ lost army was indeed a large one. Also, the Persians were well organized and enjoyed the services of guides, and although sandstorms are dangerous, they do not bury people alive.
For example, a powerful storm covered the advancing US-British troops during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It covered all the equipment with dust, penetrating the crevices of the clothes and sticking to the gun. But bad weather only delayed progress and caused minor problems.
Although the authoritative ancient Greek writer Herodotus mentions this, historians do not believe that the Persian troops disappeared due to the sandstorm. Contrary to the skepticism of professional Egyptologists, 20th century archaeologists searched the desert for the lost army, and some are still searching. Excavation participants reported success several times, but the finds always turned out to be either relics from another period or falsification.
Modern historian Olaf Kaper of Leiden University (Netherlands) analyzed many historical records and archaeological sites and then concluded that the death of an army in a sandstorm was a deliberate hoax.
It was even destroyed as a result of an ambush set up by the army of Pharaoh Petubast III, who rebelled against the Persian rule. The pirate managed to find a memorial inscription about this event.
During the reign of King Darius I, Petubast’s revolt was suppressed, and the Persians decided to avoid any mention of him. Since they still had to explain the disappearance of the huge army, they made up a story about the storm.
The secrets of the Masons went to the grave
Born in the 18th century, American William Morgan was an ordinary stonemason from Virginia. His business continued with varying success, but the master had an uncertain reputation; many described him as a drunkard and a gambler. He said that he served in the army with the rank of captain in the war with Great Britain in 1812, but there is no documentary evidence of this.
Morgan gained fame in connection with the Freemasons. He joined the New York Royal Arch Lodge in 1825, but when he tried to join other Masonic organizations, the Freemason’s nomination was rejected. Disturbed by this, he promised to publish a book in which he would reveal the Masonic lodges and explain the details of their internal structure. He even got a broadcast advance from one of the publishers and almost finished the job, but suddenly he started having problems.
First they tried to set fire to the printing house that was going to print the book. Morgan was later accused of defaulting on debt and stealing shirts and ties. He was sent to Canandaigua prison, but learning of this, the publisher came and paid his “debt”. After his release, Morgan was arrested again for nonpayment of a two-dollar bill in a tavern.
While the prison guards were away, a group of foreigners helped the bricklayers escape. After that, Morgan got into the car that was going to another city, and no one else saw him.
There were rumors that the possible whistleblower had been seen elsewhere and was offered $500 to keep quiet. But neither the court nor the public were convinced of the version that Morgan suddenly fell so in love with travel and decided to leave his home, wife and children. It is believed that the stonemason was thrown into the Niagara River.
As a result, Eli Bruce, the Niagara County Sheriff, and Mason were suspended and prosecuted for complicity in the kidnapping. Although no evidence was found, he remained in prison for 28 months. At least three other members of Masonic lodges were imprisoned in this case, and public outcry sparked a strong anti-Masonic movement in the United States.
This story is often cited in conspiracy theories as a clear example of the Masons’ desire for world domination. Masonic lodges were indeed popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries: they housed prominent statesmen and criminals such as George Washington. But historians agree that there is no mention of a worldwide conspiracy. Around the same time as Morgan’s disappearance, exiled Napoleon Bonaparte described the Freemasons as “a group of idiots who got together for a good mood and did a lot of ridiculous stupidity.” The old emperor knew what he was talking about: his brother Joseph was actually the chief Freemason of France.
Loss of two boats with Russian sailors in America
In 1741, the small research vessel St. Paul’s package ship reached the coast of North America south of the modern state of Alaska. He needed to map coastal landscapes, find coves and deposits of precious metals. On 17 July, a group of ten sailors and soldiers on a boat were sent ashore by a pack boat. He was supposed to return the same day, but a week’s worth of supplies were distributed as the fog might have prevented this.
Heading towards the cove visible from the ship, the boat disappeared behind the rocks. No shot was fired, signaling the impossibility of landing from a small gun, nor were the flares that were supposed to be fired ashore.
Toward evening the weather deteriorated and “St. Paul” had to move away from the bay. In the following days, the coast was covered with dense fog, which only dissipated on 23 July. From 4 p.m. the entrance reads: “We saw a fire on the shore, no matter how close they walked to land, there were no fires anywhere on the shore, no buildings, they were looking forward to being caught by the servants sent from us, and no ships and other signs of shelter were seen on the shores” .
As cannons were fired from the ship, the fire intensified as if the sailors were trying to signal. Later on 24 July, the ship’s officers decided that the boat sent for reconnaissance was damaged and could not sail. Eventually it was decided to send another boat of five crew members for rescue.
They agreed with their crew on a complex signaling system; Depending on the situation, two, three or four fires would be lit. However, despite the clear weather and calm sea in the evening hours, not a single signal could be received from the ship. A brief flash appeared on the shore in response to the shot of the ship’s cannon, as if from a gun, but without sound.
A flashing fire was lit on the beach at night, but no agreement was reached on such a signal. st. Paul was unable to land on the foreign shore and there were no boats on him.
The next day they saw two boats leaving the bay and went to meet them. It soon became clear that these were not the missing sailors. “Then we found that the rowing boat did not belong to us because the hull was sharp and could not be rowed,” the report said. Unidentified people sitting in the boats, when they saw the ship, buried it back in the bay with the cries of “agai, agai”. On July 27, St. Paul’s commanders decided to sail for the port as the ship ran out of fresh water.
According to one version, sailors died in eddies and currents. (special whirlpools with “boiling” water). But it seems incredible that two experienced crew members calmly died in the same safe-seeming place. According to another version, the Indians attacked the Russian researchers and they fled, shouting “agai”.
But Indians don’t tend to attack first comers, especially well-armed adult male foreigners. It is also necessary to find out who made a fire on the shore – in these places the locals did not communicate in this way.
Presumably the boats did indeed hit the rocks and the surviving crew could not signal with damped rockets.
What happened to the fifteen Russian sailors and soldiers is unknown. At the beginning of the 19th century, rumors were circulating among the Indians of this place that white-faced and blond-haired people were born, but it is impossible to confirm them. In addition, many years later European traders saw unusual items in the local population, such as a piece of bayonet and an old rifle. Perhaps desperate to return to the ship, the sailors began to live among the savages.
Intrigue after returning
But not all mysterious disappearances remained a mystery. For example, in the middle of the 20th century, a famous French lawyer and leftist activist Jacques Vergès lived. He fought in North Africa as part of Free France during the Second World War and engaged in the anti-colonial struggle after the war. Vergès was the advocate for many terrorists and murderers, including SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie, who was convicted of mass executions and torture. Verges hated the Western world and supported all manner of rebels, from Algeria to Palestine and Cambodia, where he loved the leader of the Khmer Rouge. (A trend in the country’s communist movement) Pol Pot.
He disappeared on February 24, 1970. He was last seen at an anti-colonial rally in Paris. Given the number of political enemies the activist had, many assumed she had been killed. However, in 1978 he appeared in public again, refusing to answer where he was and why he had left his wife and friends. Someone believed that he joined the Khmer Rouge, someone believed that he lived a quiet life in Switzerland.
“It’s funny how no one can figure out where I’ve been in our modern police state for almost a decade now,” he told Spiegel magazine.
It was only in 2007 that it became possible to learn that Vergès was living among militants of the ultra-left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, partners of Fatah at the time of his disappearance. (“Palestine National Liberation Movement”) and its leader, Yasser Arafat.
bad experience with LSD
The story of Scottish singer Shelagh McDonald turned out to be even simpler. He was a promising folk-rock musician of the late 1960s and managed to release two successful albums, after which he disappeared without a trace in 1971. Until 2005, he came to the Daily Mail and told his story.
During the recording of the third album, he tried the LSD drug, and the experiment was unsuccessful – Macdonald began to experience bouts of hallucinations and paranoia.
After that, the singer lived with a family that kept the girl in isolation, and after a while MacDonald married a bookstore. She was not interested in music again until the 2010s.
As Stephen King wrote in his short story of the same name: “Sometimes they come back.”