Beyond the Known

Alex traces Boston's Great Molasses Flood of 1919, from a flawed riverside tank and a crowded North End neighborhood to the wave, the rescue, the six-year trial, and what experts still don't know.

Alex explores the dancing plague that seized Strasbourg in the summer of 1518, from one woman's dance to the city's failed remedies, and the theories and unanswered questions that remain.

Alex explores the Taos Hum, a low drone reported by a small minority in Taos, New Mexico, and the 1993 investigation that found no matching source, from the theories it inspired to what experts still do not know.

Alex explores the Antikythera mechanism, a bronze geared device recovered from a Greek shipwreck that tracked the Sun and Moon, predicted eclipses, and marked the Olympic Games, and why much of how it worked remains debated.

Alex traces the 1587 Roanoke colonists from John White's delayed return and the carved word Croatoan to the theories of assimilation, relocation, and drought, and why their fate remains unproven.

Alex explores the Voynich manuscript, a fifteenth-century book in an undeciphered script, from its 1912 rediscovery to the theories about what it might be and why it still cannot be read.

Alex explores the Roman dodecahedron, a 1700-year-old bronze object with twelve sides whose purpose is still unknown, from its discovery to the theories about what it was for.