Mysteries and Histories

His name is on some of the most famous plays ever written, but could William Shakespeare have been a cover for someone else? Centuries after his death, gaps in his biography fuelled theories that the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon could not have created such extraordinary works.Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, have all been proposed as the hidden author. Supporters point to supposed codes, biographical parallels, and aristocratic knowledge, but none has produced convincing evidence that another writer secretly created Shakespeare’s plays.Contemporary references identify Shakespeare as a writer, and mainstream historians accept his authorship. This episode explores how a literary legacy became a conspiracy and why the search for a hidden genius can seem more compelling than the evidence in plain sight.

Throughout the 1980s, women and girls were found murdered near Ohio highways and truck stops. Several victims were sex workers, and investigators suspected a killer who travelled the interstate routes. One chilling lead gave the case its name: a truck driver reportedly used the CB radio handle “Dr. No.Witness accounts and similarities between the deaths suggested a connection, but investigators struggled to establish which murders belonged to the same series. The truck stops offered a disturbing advantage: an offender could encounter a victim and leave the area before anyone realised she was missing.Decades later, DNA linked former trucker Samuel Legg III to several truck-stop killings from the 1990s, prompting claims that Dr. No had been caught. But those discoveries did not conclusively identify the offender behind the earlier series. The “Dr. No” mystery remains unresolved, including whether one killer was responsible for all the deaths attributed to him.

In August 1951, hundreds of people in the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit fell ill with stomach pains, insomnia, and terrifying hallucinations. Some believed animals were attacking them; others became dangerously disoriented. Several people died, and dozens were admitted to psychiatric hospitals as doctors struggled to explain the outbreak.Investigators traced the poisoning to bread from a local bakery. Doctors initially blamed ergot, a fungus that contaminates grain and can cause convulsions and hallucinations. But that explanation remained disputed, with later researchers proposing mercury contamination or other chemicals used in flour production.The incident became known as the “cursed bread” affair. Claims of a secret CIA experiment involving LSD added another layer of intrigue, but remain unproven. More than 70 years later, the precise cause of the poisoning is still debated, a haunting mystery rooted in something as ordinary as a loaf of bread.

In January 1989, Chicago television station WMAQ ended its overnight broadcast with a haunting missing-person notice: a grainy photograph, the name Joanna Lopez, and a phone number. There was no age, no description, and no explanation of when or where she had disappeared.Decades later, the footage drew internet sleuths into a mystery with remarkably little evidence. Researchers reported finding no matching entry in major missing-person databases, leaving Joanna’s identity and the circumstances behind the broadcast unverified.Was she a missing girl whose story slipped through the records or was there another explanation? The notice exists, but it does not establish what happened to her. And the lack of records is not proof she never existed: the mystery remains unresolved.

On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team, relatives, and friends crashed high in the Andes while travelling to Chile. There were 45 people aboard. Those who survived the impact faced freezing temperatures, serious injuries, and almost no food, then an avalanche buried their makeshift shelter inside the wreckage, killing eight more.With rescue no longer coming and their supplies exhausted, the survivors made an agonising decision: to eat the bodies of those who had died. They sheltered in the broken fuselage and relied on one another while two of the men, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, eventually trekked across the mountains for ten days to find help.Their journey led rescuers back to the wreckage. On December 22 and 23, the remaining survivors were airlifted to safety, ending an ordeal lasting 72 days. Sixteen people returned alive, a story of devastating loss, impossible choices, and extraordinary determination to survive.