6 Found unconscious, without identification or clothes, behind Burger King’s dumpster in 2004, Benjaman Kyle suffered severe dissociative amnesia. Despite extensive search and publicity, neither he nor anyone could identify him, until 2015. 

Benjaman Kyle was found in Richmond Hill, Georgia, on August 31, 2004, by a Burger King employee. He was sun-burnt, had three dents in his skull, and was also covered in red ant bites. Kyle woke up in the hospital with cataracts in his eyes which were only operated on nine months later after a charity raised money.

When asked for his name, he couldn’t remember and chose “Benjaman Kyle” instead. When he first saw himself in the mirror, he realized that he was 20 years older than he remembered.

After being discharged, Kyle was homeless and had to do odd jobs. He couldn’t find any employment as he was unable to recall his Social Security number or provide identity. A petition on We the People failed to get enough signatures by the deadline.

Kyle was invited to Dr. Phil show and his story was reported on the news, none of which helped find his identity. In 2011, he was the subject of a documentary titled Finding Benjaman which was also shown at the Tribeca Film Festival and Cannes. He also did Reddit AMA both in 2012 and 2013 to no avail.

The media coverage, however, helped him receive support from politicians and viewers alike who offered him work and shelter. On September 16, 2015, Kyle announced on his Facebook page that his identity has finally been established by a team lead by genetic genealogist CeCe Moore and his name was announced in November 2016 as William Burgess Powell. (source)

7 Deep Throat, who provided key details in 1972 about the involvement of Nixon’s administration in the Watergate scandal, remained anonymous for three decades. In 2005, his identity was finally revealed as Mark Felt, FBI’s Associate Director, the second-highest-ranking post. 

Following the arrest of five men on June 17, 1972, in the offices of the Democratic National Committee in Watergate Complex, Washington, reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward pursued the story for two years. In their book All the President’s Men, they wrote that their key anonymous informant was someone they dubbed “Deep Throat,” alluding to the “deep background status of the information” as well as a widely publicized pornographic film of the same name.

In the book, Woodward described their methods of communication. He claimed that, when they needed to meet, he would move a red-flagged pot in the balcony. If Deep Throat wanted to meet them, he would circle the page number 20 on Woodward’s The New York Times copy and draw a clock indicating the time. Their usual meeting place was an underground garage over the Key Bridge in Rosslyn.

On May 31, 2005, around 31 years after Nixon’s resignation and 11 years after his death, Mark Felt reportedly revealed in an online article by John D. O’Connor on Vanity Fair that, “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.” Woodward, Bernstein, and Benjamin C. Bradlee, Washington Post‘s executive editor at that time, confirmed the claims. (source)

8 Star Dust, a British South America Airlines airliner, disappeared in 1947 on a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago after sending the famous last message “STENDEC”. Its fate remained unknown until 1998 when mountain climbers found the wreckage in the Andes. The most likely explanation for the crash was a navigational error. 

After traveling from London on an Avro York airliner named Star Mist on July 29, and landing in Buenos Aires on August 1, the six passengers continued their journey to Santiago on Star Dust on August 2 at 1:46 p.m. with five crew members. At 5:45 p.m., the radio operator at the Santiago airport received the Morse Code message “ETA SANTIAGO 1745 HRS STENDEC.” As he did not recognize the last word, he requested clarification and received “STENDEC” twice before losing contact completely with the aircraft.

Despite extensive search operations by Chilean and Argentine teams, as well as by the British South American Airlines, no trace of the plane was found. The lack of hard evidence lead to wild theories, including sabotage for political reasons and alien abduction.

However, in 1998, two Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato in the Andes found an aircraft engine, twisted pieces of metal, and shredded clothes at an elevation of 15,000 feet (4,600 meters). In 2000, the Argentine Army found more wreckage and some human remains. In two more years, five bodies were found and identified through DNA.

It is believed that Star Dust flew into a jet stream, fast-flowing air currents not well understood back then, which slowed down the aircraft. The crew misjudged that they were traveling faster than they really were and thought they already had flown past the Andes. The clouds must have obscured Mount Tupungato causing them to crash.

The impact of the crash likely caused an avalanche that buried the wreckage, hiding it from the searchers. Over the years, the wreckage became incorporated into the glacier as the snow compressed into ice. More debris is expected to be found in the future due to glacier motion and melting. (source)

9 Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia was rumored to survive the extrajudicial killings by communist revolutionaries in 1918 who killed the rest of her family. Since then, several women falsely claimed to be her. Her remains found in 2007 and her identity confirmed through DNA tests. 

Anastasia was the 17-year-old daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. She had three older sisters and one younger brother. On July 17, 1918, she and her family, along with four retainers who chose to stay with them, were taken to Yekaterinburg where they were executed in a botched manner in a small basement by their drunken Bolshevik captors.

Despite the 70 bullets fired, most of the family was not hit and had to be bayoneted and shot in the head. To cover it up, they used sulfuric acid to disfigure the bodies beyond recognition, and two bodies were burned to the bone. They were buried few meters away of each other to throw off suspicion.

The Bolsheviks announced only the Tsar’s death at first and reported that his wife and son were sent to a secure location. This led to several impostors claiming to be members of the family.

The most famous of these impostors was Anna Anderson who managed to convince many that she was Anastasia. Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and the Tsarina’s brother, proved through a private investigation he funded that she was a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness.

The family’s burial site was discovered by an amateur detective in 1979 who kept it secret until the fall of the Soviet Union. The remains in the site were exhumed in 1991 and through DNA identification were proved to belong to the Tsar, Tsarina, and their three daughters.

In 2007, another small grave nearby was exhumed and tests confirmed them to belong to one daughter and the son. It confirmed that they include the remains of Anastasia. So, the remains of the parents, the four daughters, and one son are all accounted for as each had their unique DNA profile disproving rumors of her survival. (source)

10 In 2009, the Air France flight 447 disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 and no one knew why for two years. The reason for the crash was the formation of ice crystals that disconnected the autopilot, and manual piloting led to an aerodynamic stall from which the plane could not recover. 

AFR447 was a scheduled flight that was traveling from Rio de Janerio to Paris on June 1. It was crewed by three pilots and designed to be flown by two pilots while one rested. After the captain went to rest, the pilots warned the passengers of turbulence two or three minutes after which icing started. Though the engine’s anti-ice system came on, ice crystals formed in the pilot tubes, devices that provide critical information about the plant’s speed through the air, disengaging the autopilot.

After that, the two pilots began to fly manually, trying to adjust for the turbulence when the stall warnings sounded twice. An aircraft depends on how the air flows around it to be able to fly. Keeping the nose up just a little bit lets the aircraft fly up and maintain altitude while it moves forward using fuel.

The angle between the airflow and the aircraft should always be less than 15 degrees. If the angle increases, instead of flying forward it starts to climb up, a situation known as stalling, and after that starts to quickly lose altitude.

Due to the inconsistency in the readings and confusion in the cockpit as one of the co-pilots kept the nose up, the plane climbed to its maximum altitude of 38,000 feet (12,000 meters). As the plane began to descend, the angle reached 30 degrees, and, at 35,000 feet (11,000 meters), it was 40 degrees.

It soon began to descend at 10,912 feet per minute (55.43 meters per second) and crashed belly-first into the Atlantic. The plane broke up upon impact killing everyone instantly. It took two years to find the flight recorder and understand what happened. (source)