The grassy knoll. And don’t use that silly Oliver Stone movie as reference material.
There is an excellent book called Ancient Mysteries (Peter James and Nick Thorpe) which your daughter might find interesting. Easter Island statues, the Sphinx, Dracula, King Arthur, this book has it all.
Okay, I will start the “conspiracy theories”
My favorite one is “the car that will run for months on one tank of gas” Surely you have all heard it. A car has been invented that uses practically no gas. You can go for hundreds of miles on one tank of gas. Detroit automakers bought the design from some poor mechanic, making him sign a privacy agreement and have kept it secret from the public.
My favorite take on this is from a co-worker who SWEARS that a shade-tree mechanic that lived near him as a child (when gas was like 29cents a gallon) modified a car to do this and they rode all over and never filled that tank. Yeah, RIGHT. Why did the guy die poor? he coulda made a fortune modifying every car in the state!
Okay, I will start the “conspiracy theories”
My favorite one is “the car that will run for months on one tank of gas” Surely you have all heard it. A car has been invented that uses practically no gas. You can go for hundreds of miles on one tank of gas. Detroit automakers bought the design from some poor mechanic, making him sign a privacy agreement and have kept it secret from the public.
My favorite take on this is from a co-worker who SWEARS that a shade-tree mechanic that lived near him as a child (when gas was like 29cents a gallon) modified a car to do this and they rode all over and never filled that tank. Yeah, RIGHT. Why did the guy die poor? he coulda made a fortune modifying every car in the state!
Hm, I can go about 400 miles on one tank of gas, if it is primarily highway driving, it drops to about 375 if it is less HW driving…
A few of my favorites, for some reason disappearances have always fascinated me:
In the UK, there is the famous disappearance of Lord Lucan – pretty interesting, imho. And there are some links at the bottom of the page to other crime stories/mysteries.
In Thailand, there was the disappearance of Jim Thompson, an American silk trader.
Someone already mentionned Roanoke Island, where a whole colony disappeared.
Amelia Earhart.
On another note, the Ernest Shackleton account of the Endurance is a fascinating story of survival, not exactly a mystery or conspiracy but for some reason it pops into my head as an interesting topic to research along with the others I mentionned.
Cheers,
Powers
I think my favorite mystery is the Philadelphia project. I did a research project on it, in fact.
Interesting to note how soon Nikolas Tesla happened to die during the Philadelphia project… :dubious:
I told my daughter that I posted this thread…and that I already had twenty-some responses.
So, according to my daughter, you are all “so cool” for giving her some ideas to research.
“These must be smart people you know, Mom,” she says to me.
Well, of course. 
Juarez Murders
sofia, if your daughter wants to read the story “He Walked Around the Horses” it is in the short story collection Paratime, by H. Beam Piper. Out of print of course, but easily found. Go to www.abebooks.com and enter Paratime in the title block and H. Beam Piper in the author block, to search. It can be had for as little as $2.00 plus s&h. Actually, the whole book is fun but that one is on my top five list of science fiction short stories. And googling on Benjamin Bathurst and Charles Fort will throw up links to the tale of the missing diplomat.
The Voynich Manuscript. What is it? A 13th-Century alchemical treatise written by Roger Bacon? A 16th-Century forgery? No one knows.
A researcher claims to have debunked the mystery, apparently having broken the code, but his findings aren’t completely conclusive.
It’s a cool story, though.
PS. Here are pictures of some of the Voynich Manuscript’s pages.
gallows fodder, I spent some time the other night looking at the Voynich Manuscript too. Kinda cool…but the pictures weren’t so hot.
I know I can do a search for this…but just off the top of your collective head, what was the name of the brothers who were found in their apartment (in New York, was it?)…they’d been living amidst piles of papers/magazines/mail and whatnot for years…
I know, not much information…but you are all so good.
I’m awful with names, but I can remember pieces of the stories…like the woman who kept building onto her house…very odd.
The Nova Scotia money pit. I would love to know what (if anything) was buried there, and if it could have been recovered with better-planned expeditions.
Ah, you’re thinking of Sarah Winchester. It has its own web page
As I remember it, she was afraid that the angry ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles would come for her, so she built the house in such a way as to confuse them. IIRC, she consulted a medium who told her that she’d be protected from the spirits if she never stopped building.
The Winchester House, built by the heiress of the Winchester gun fortune. She was obsessed with those who’d been killed by the family’s claim to fame and fortune, and believed that nothing horrible would happen to her as long as she was adding onto her house.
And enthusiastic agreement for Gr8Kat’s idea of the Money Pit. It really is a fascinating thing. IIRC FDR became interested in it and spent a summer during his youth trying to help excavate it. I’d read about it so made a point to go see it on a trip to Canada. Very spooky; the current owners do not encourage or tolerate guests, no matter how harmlessly curious. Get near it and very scary, slit-eyed men come walking toward you. So the violent tradition continues to this day, or at least did a few years ago when I tried to visit.
Veb
I believe the Winchester Mansion is open to visitors. I would LOVE to visit someday-it’s just so beautiful!
(I just love eccentrics!)
Damn, I wish I lived in a haunted house.
Oh, what about the story of Resurrection Mary, Chicago’s most famous ghost?
[QUOTE=GuinastasiaDamn, I wish I lived in a haunted house.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, ho, ho, no. You think you do now. But believe me; you do not. 
I lived almost a full year in a haunted dorm in college…it was cool initially, but later it got decidedly weird.
…Had you been there, we’d have had fun, though.
And thank you all for remember and citing for me. This is awesome!
I’ve thought the Lizzie Borden story was very cool ever since I read the Straight Dope column about it.
Speaking of which, my number one favorite mystery is the 1920s style death ray.
Fortean Times One of my favorite magazines and if that isn’t endorsement enough, I don’t know what is. it is rather odd ( It took me about a week of reading and re-reading it to *get[./i] it.) and if left in your bathroom where guests will see it may may them rather nervous about you and your mental state.
It will expose you to a whole new world outside of Cosmo/People. Not that *you *read that kind of stuff.It has newspaper clippings of paranormal/cult/oddities from around the world. Strange deaths and cultural phenomena’s that are just so damned interesting.
It pokes into stories: did Pokemon cause kids in Japan to convulse or what? ( can’t remember exactly, but I think it was hysteria.) Was Padre Pio a loon or a saint? Mothman (truly a fascinating thing there.), Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, In Search of the Orang-Pendek, The Cult of Elvis, UFO’s, Raelians ( you know, the “we cloned a human” cult.) Vampires!, Zombie Assassins! and a whole bunch of other fascinating articles.
It also doesn’t take itself too seriously either, which I admire. It’s a fun read.
Its found usually in either the New Age section or Cultural section of Magazines at a nearby discrimating bookstore. ( It is a pain to find, IMHO.)
**My name is Shirley Ujest and I endorse this post and it’s contents. **
Conspiracies that I like
Princess Diana was murdered. This is the new Grassy Knoll conspiracy. I just love it and all its sordidness.
The Holy Grail stuff.
Most of the aboveforementioned conspiracies and about fifty that I am totally forgetting right now.