If you could have the factual answer to any one question about any historical event of the past 3000 years, what would your question be? Mine: Who killed Lizzie Bordan’s father and step-mother? (Personally, I think it was Bridget the maid, but noone knows for sure.)
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
The factual answer to that would have some pretty far reaching implications.
But, you see, I already know the answer to that question. (In my original posting I was going to exclude religious questions because I feared we’d get off track. Maybe I should have.)
Where are the WMD’s? Soon enough to make a difference, please!
I think the question of who killed JonBenet Ramsey is far more intriguing, since I don’t believe her parents were involved. It’s probably not the biggest mystery of the last 3000 years, but it’s pretty damn strange.
Roswell, Marilyn Monroe and Kennedy - in that order.
Nothing earth-shattering, but I’d really like to know what the hell the story of the Voynich Manuscript really is.
There are so many.
Who was Kaspar Hauser and who killed him?
Who fired the first shot at the O.K. corral gunfight?
Where did everyone go when they left the Marie Celeste?
What happened to the Templar treasure?
and on and on and on…
Who was The Ripper?, of course.
What was said in the missing eighteen and a half minutes?
That would be my second. My third would be What happened to Jim Thompson?
Was Jesus of Nazareth really supernatural in any way, (healing powers/son of God/Water to wine/etc) or did all that get added later to make the story better?
What was in the ‘Money Pit’ ?
Several good theories but we’ll never really know.
The article on the money pit in the March-April, 2000 issue of Skeptical Inquirer convinced me that there was in fact nothing there. I hated the article because it destroyed one of my favorite mysteries. (My father grew up in the neigborhood of the money pit, my closest “contact” with any of the world’s mysteries.)
Was the Charge of the Light Brigade a miscommunication? If not, whose hare-brained scheme was it?
Where is the nearest planet (if any) harboring a species of sentient life?
Trailing that, distantly:
Atlantis? A real civ? Where, when?
Who is the greatest individual commissioner of art thefts in the world and which masterpieces is he hoarding?
Where is the original “Amber Room” now, or if it was destroyed, where & when?
Did Gus Grissom “screw the pooch” and blow the hatch door himself, or did it just go off on its own accord?
Er, upon rereading the OP, I’d have to rephrase my top question as “were any reported sightings of possibly extraterrestrial UFOs actually valid sightings of the real deal?”
What–or whom–spoke to Joan of Arc? Was she schitzophrenic? Did she have divine colloquies? Was it ghosts? Or something else?
What was on the erased 18 1/2 minutes of tape from the Nixon White House? (A few years ago, I’d have asked who Deep Throat was, but we now know that. So these things do sometimes get answered.)
Are there such things as aliens and ghosts?