More than a hundred years have passed and still these mysteries remain unsolved. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most enigmatic, infamous, and strangest occurrences during World War One, which still don’t have a solid explanation all these years later.
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00:00On such a day as this, they sailed from Dover, left those cliffs behind them,
00:06a merry mass of men going gaily towards Flanders and ten million graves.
00:13Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most enigmatic,
00:17infamous, and strangest occurrences during World War I,
00:21which still don't have a solid explanation, all these years later.
00:25They were on the roadside, covered with tarpaulin sheets.
00:28You could see nothing except a square outline.
00:32And then the officer said, these are supposed to be our shots.
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01:35Number 10, the Enigma of the Celtic Wood.
01:38In October 1917, the 10th Battalion of the 1st Australian Division
01:43fought German forces in the Celtic Wood in West Flanders, Belgium,
01:46as part of the Battle of Poelkapel.
01:48However, out of the 85 soldiers that entered the forest,
01:5237 of them were never seen again and seemingly vanished into thin air.
01:56The lack of accurate recordings and misinterpretation of what happened
02:00added fuel to this mysterious fire.
02:02While some chalk it up to supernatural occurrences,
02:05others believe the 37 soldiers were slain in the battle
02:08and deposited into a hidden mass grave.
02:10In 2008, researchers Robert Kearney and Chris Henschke claimed
02:15the soldiers were obliterated by shelling with no identifiable remains left behind.
02:20And the boys said, you know, Charlie was reading a letter from home
02:25and a shell came over.
02:27We couldn't find enough of Charlie to bury him.
02:32But so that you see, that's war. War is hell on earth.
02:37Number 9, the fate of the USS Cyclops.
02:40One of the most enduring stories of the Bermuda Triangle
02:44is the disappearance of the USS Cyclops in 1918.
02:49In February 1918, U.S. Navy ship the USS Cyclops left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
02:55carrying 306 passengers and crew along with a cargo of manganese ore.
03:00Concerns arose that the vessel was overloaded,
03:02which prompted an unscheduled stop in Barbados.
03:06Following a seemingly uneventful assessment,
03:08it resumed its journey bound for Baltimore, Maryland.
03:11Yet by March, the Cyclops hadn't arrived.
03:14Nothing is heard from the ship.
03:15There's no sightings.
03:20There's no radio communication.
03:23The ship was never seen again.
03:26The ship, its cargo, and all souls aboard
03:29were determined to have been inexplicably lost at sea.
03:32German records show they weren't involved, despite their presence in the West Indies.
03:36Other theories suggest the ship either succumbs to a storm,
03:39disappeared within the fabled Bermuda Triangle,
03:42or that its captain was a German sympathizer who handed them the Cyclops.
03:46It was difficult for somebody to understand how such a massive vessel,
03:51so many people, so much volume of metal,
03:57could just disappear off the face of the earth.
04:02After six weeks, we were informed that we were going to be posted overseas.
04:07They said, you're leaving tomorrow morning for an unknown destination.
04:11You were never told where you were heading for.
04:13In December 1915, Lieutenant William Spate sat in the trenches in Ypres, Belgium.
04:19The location was infamous for the brutal fighting which claimed approximately one million lives,
04:24including an unnamed friend of Spate.
04:26When the lieutenant looked up as someone approached,
04:29he was startled to see the ghost of his fallen friend.
04:32The next night, Spate brought another officer who also saw the specter.
04:36The ghost pointed towards an area on the floor of the dugout before vanishing,
04:40acting on the spectral guidance.
04:42Spate and other soldiers excavated the area.
04:44They found a tunnel created by the Germans below them that was filled with explosives,
04:49which were quickly diffused.
04:50This possible apparition saved many lives that night.
04:53We were expecting to get it pretty rough,
04:55but we never thought we were going to get it quite like we did.
05:01If you're fascinated by stories of royalty and royal power,
05:04there's nowhere better than this.
05:06With World War I dominating everyone's attention,
05:09in Russia, a revolution was underway to remove the monarch.
05:12To keep the country's gold reserves out of Bolshevik hands,
05:15Tsar Nicholas II had the White Army move it from St. Petersburg to Kazan, then to Siberia.
05:20Eventually, the Bolsheviks' Red Army got their hands on the treasure.
05:24Yet when they returned to Kazan, a large portion was missing.
05:28Valued at a possible $80 billion today, it hasn't been recovered since.
05:32One theory states that Czechian soldiers hid the
05:35missing gold when they returned it to the Bolsheviks.
05:37However, while transporting it, the train derailed and sank in Lake Bakal,
05:42along with its riches.
05:43Another idea is that it's buried near train tracks in Serbia.
05:47There was so much Russian art, and you could argue that, in fact,
05:50Russia had plundered all of Europe in the 18th century.
05:52Number 6.
05:53The Leaning Virgin
05:54One of the most prized possessions of Albert, France,
05:58was the Golden Virgin sculpture atop the Basilica of Our Lady of Brébière.
06:02In 1915, as the Allied forces fought Germany to take back the town,
06:07the church was heavily damaged, causing the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ statue to lean excessively.
06:13A superstition emerged amongst soldiers on both sides
06:16that the war would end when the sculpture fell.
06:19In April 1918, an intense skirmish between the British and Germans
06:23eventually caused the sculpture to fall.
06:25Only a few months later, the war was over.
06:27However, the fallen Golden Virgin disappeared in the fight and hasn't been seen since.
06:32A new version was recast and put on the Basilica in 1929.
06:36Number 5.
06:37Nurse Margaret Mall's Suitcase
06:39These nurses, or VADs as they became known,
06:42after the voluntary aid detachments they had joined,
06:45were often from sheltered middle and upper class families.
06:49With only basic first aid training,
06:51it was a shock to find themselves suddenly nursing and comforting men close to death.
06:56In 2013, the Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland,
07:00found a suitcase in the psychology department
07:02that appeared to belong to World War I nurse Margaret Mall.
07:06But what makes it strange is that Mall has no recorded connection to the university,
07:10and little is known about her, within the case were faded photographs,
07:14a newspaper article she wrote, and her diary, dating back to 1914.
07:18In the diary, Mall detailed her reluctance to treat injured Germans
07:23at the Dartford War Hospital in Kent, England,
07:25as her brother was killed by one in the war.
07:27But over time, her writings indicated those feelings diluted,
07:31as she treated both German and Allied soldiers.
07:34The case also had a book that contained autographs and sketches by her patients.
07:38Number 4.
07:39The End of John Parr
07:41The Belgian landowner said to the Germans,
07:43you can have this land for free,
07:45so long as you treat the German and the British dead the same,
07:48so long as you commemorate everybody equally and give them equal burial rights.
07:53In 1912, teenager John Parr lied about his age to join the British Army.
07:58By August 1914, he was working as a scout for the 4th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment.
08:04The private and another soldier were sent on bicycles
08:07to gather information on the German forces in Oberg, Belgium.
08:10However, exactly what happened here is unknown.
08:13This is John, and John was in the Middlesex Regiment before the First World War,
08:18and he comes across with the British Expeditionary Force,
08:20and they're searching for the Germans here in Belgium, near the Belgian town of Mons.
08:25One eyewitness claimed Parr held off the Germans to allow his fellow scout to escape,
08:30before getting shot.
08:31This is a version of events most believed,
08:33making Parr the first British fatality of the war.
08:36However, another theory cast doubt on the presence of a German battalion in the area,
08:41instead claiming Parr met his end from friendly fire during the Battle of Mons.
08:47John is killed in action, and he becomes the very first British combat casualty
08:53on the Western Front, dying on the 21st of August, 1914.
08:56Number three, the fall of the Red Baron.
08:59Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
09:02He's the most famous fighter pilot of all time.
09:05In World War One, he downed 80 Allied aircraft,
09:08before he too was shot out of the sky.
09:11In the history of fighter pilots,
09:12one of the best to take to the skies was Manfred von Richthofen,
09:16nicknamed the Red Baron.
09:18After all, he's credited with 80 air battle victories,
09:21and led the famed Flying Circus Unit.
09:24But in April 1918,
09:26the 25-year-old was shot down near Vaux-sur-Somme, France, and didn't survive.
09:31Yet the exact circumstances of his final flight remain a mystery.
09:35On the fateful day,
09:36he was in the air fighting Canadian pilots in the British Royal Air Force.
09:40A single bullet seemingly struck the German hero, causing his demise.
09:44But where it came from is up for debate.
09:47While the RAF attributes it to one Canadian pilot,
09:50others claim it came from anti-aircraft weaponry firing from the ground.
09:55Gunner Robert Buey, this is following from General Rawlinson,
09:59begins, please convey to the 53rd Battery, 5th Division,
10:03my best thanks and congratulations on having brought down
10:06the celebrated German aviator.
10:09And that's all the proof you need.
10:10That's all the proof I need.
10:11Number two, the Angels of Mons.
10:14It's August 22nd, 1914,
10:17and World War I is just two weeks old,
10:20as the British forces are on their way to assist the French military
10:24in their defense against the advancing German army.
10:27In August 1914,
10:28the vastly outnumbered British army had the impossible task
10:32of holding the German forces at Mons, Belgium.
10:35Yet somehow, rather than being overwhelmed and destroyed,
10:38the British managed to resist the Germans before they eventually retreated.
10:42According to some who witnessed the combat,
10:44this was due to supernatural intervention.
10:47And it gave rise to one of the most famous stories of the war,
10:51the miracle of how they were rescued by heavenly guardians,
10:55the Angels of Mons,
10:57blocking the Germans' path and guiding our boys to safety.
11:02Following the battle, Arthur Macken, inspired by these tales,
11:05published The Bowmen,
11:06which involved ghostly archers helping the British.
11:09Although Macken clarified that his work was fictional,
11:12rumors of specters and angels supporting the Allied forces soon began to spread,
11:17boosting morale among soldiers and civilians in the UK.
11:20Even years later,
11:21former soldiers spoke about the angels that saved them to their descendants.
11:26The apparitions stunned the German troops.
11:28The sun went dark in a deadly rain of arrows.
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11:48Number 1. The Vanishing of Bella Kiss
11:51July 29th, 1916.
11:54Three soldiers were to confiscate gasoline barrels on Bella Kiss property for war use.
12:00What they discovered in the barrels was not gasoline.
12:04In 1916, the owner of a house near Budapest, Hungary,
12:08wanted to renovate the property previously rented to Bella Kiss.
12:11Kiss had been conscripted into the army for World War I, leaving the property empty.
12:16However, upon investigation, workers discovered several metal drums containing human remains.
12:22They had stumbled upon a serial killer who had taken the lives of over 24 people.
12:27With that, the hunt was on to find Kiss amid the chaos of war.
12:31Police eventually traced him to a Serbian hospital, but upon their arrival,
12:36he had vanished, leaving behind a deceased soldier in his bed.
12:40After Kiss' escape, sightings of him sprung up across Europe and even in New York City,
12:45but he was never seen again.
12:47Do you have an explanation for any of the mysteries mentioned in this video?
12:50Or perhaps one of the ones we didn't cover, such as the missing Florentine Diamond,
12:55or the artist only known by the initials J.M.? Let us know below.
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