c/history-mysteries

PSA: My great-grandpa's diary has a coded page from WWI.

How do I crack the code without damaging it?

Honestly, digging up ancient graves without family permission is just grave robbing with a fancy degree.

Can we talk about finding history in junk shop finds?

Picked up a weird coin at a flea market. Did some digging and it's from a failed colony. Now I check every old thing I see.

Charting lost voyages has me split on a classic sea mystery

I use my free time to follow routes of old ships that vanished, using captain logs and maps. This got me hooked on the Mary Celeste, found sailing alone with no crew in 1872. Some historians claim the people on board left fast because of a leak or bad weather. Others point to clues that suggest a fight or something weird scared them off. My own look at similar records from that year shows the sea was pretty calm around that time. So the weather idea feels weak, but a mutiny doesn't explain why they left all their gear. I'm really stuck between these two sides-what do you all think happened?

I began poking around abandoned mining towns and found an odd difference in the records.

Now I'm hooked on figuring out what really happened there. Anyone else get sucked into a local history puzzle?