While scientists, historians and experts may hold a lot of knowledge, being able to answer with ease why the sky is blue, the history of the Mona Lisa and how the Great Wall of China came to be, they can't know everything. Case in point? The unsolved mysteries on this list.
From how, exactly, eels reproduce to the way that Tylenol works, here are 21 fascinating things that even the world's smartest people don't know.
1
“There's a waterfall in Minnesota that falls into a large hole made of rock; scientists have tried ping pong floaties and dye and still don't know where the water goes.”
2
“In 1977 we received a signal from deep space that lasted 72 seconds. We still don't know how or where it came from.”
3
“We still don't know how bicycles really work. The physics behind why a bicycle is stable when in motion (even without a rider) are largely a mystery.”
4
“Scientists don't know what makes the stones curl across the ice in Olympic curling and despite a number of studies, it remains an unsolved mystery for physicists.”
5
“Historians don't know why important warlord Ivar the Boneless was called ‘boneless.’ Theories range from him losing a leg to impotence & beyond.”
6
No one — including scholars like Aristotle and Freud — have been able to figure out how eels breed.
7
“Coconuts and coconut cultivation are so old, we don't know where on Earth they originated.”
8
“We don't know where Point Nemo is. The coordinates of the most remote spot in the ocean have only been calculated using published coastline datasets. No one has ever taken GPS readings at the three closest land points to Point Nemo which is what it would take to calculate it precisely.”
9
“We don't actually know what William Shakespeare looked like. All remaining portraits of him were produced after his death. There are no surviving written descriptions of what he looked like either.”
10
“We don't know exactly how Pepto-Bismol works (or even its precise chemical structure).”
11
“We don't know who betrayed Anne Frank's hiding place and led to her death.”
12
“Scientists aren't really sure why we require sleep. According to one researcher with 50 years of experience in the field, ‘As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy.’”
13
Scientists don’t understand how sand works. Sand — and the physics of granular substances — has long served as a mystery among physicists.
14
“Scientists still don't know why we have blood types.”
15
“5,000 years ago, people in what is now Scotland carved intricate baseball sized stone [spheres] in varied shapes and we don't know why.”
16
“We still don't know what disease killed more than half the Native Americans in 1500.”
17
“We don’t know who named the Earth. Unlike other planets there are no records of how it got its name. The name Earth, and variations of it, date back 1000+ years.”
18
“Many medieval manuscript illustrations show armored knights fighting snails, and we don't know the meaning behind that.”
19
“We don't actually know what gravity is, just what it does.”
20
“Up to 1 billion years of the geologic record is missing worldwide, and scientists don't know what happened.”
21
“Scientists don't fully know how acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) actually works.”
