I’ve just come across this article on the Taman Shud mystery man found in Adelaide, Australia in 1948. The whole story of his death, and its connection to the deaths of other people, is fascinating. I don’t think I’ve read a Wikipedia article that kept my attention for that long in quite some time.
What are some other fascinating Wikipedia articles (try to keep them suitable for a general audience, please).
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was the chartered flight of a Fairchild FH-227D from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, that crashed in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972. The accident and subsequent survival became known as the Andes flight disaster (Tragedia de los Andes) and the Miracle of the Andes (Milagro de los Andes).
The inexperienced co-pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Dante Héctor Lagurara, was at the controls when the accident occurred. He mistakenly believed the aircraft had re...
Not for the morbid yuck factor, but for the amazing tale of the human will to survive an extreme situation…
For mysteries, I always liked the Voynich manuscript or the Dyatlov Pass incident . For general fascinating reading, the siege of Stalingrad is haunting.
My favorite Wikipedia entry is this one, about a single piece of grafitti that hasn’t been visible for over a decade:
"Surrender Dorothy" is a famous special effect used in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch of the West flies on her broomstick to write the two-word phrase across the sky. The phrase later attained local fame as graffiti in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.
The first appearance of the phrase is in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz (it is not in the novel or any previous adaptations). In the scene, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) has reached the Emerald City with her comp...