10 Unsolved Mysteries That May Have Finally Been Solved

Beachgoers in Adelaide Australia were shocked to find a slumped corpse there on 1 December 1948. It was a man who looked between 40 and 50 years old, had on him no formal ID or wallet, but did have some seemingly trivial items including bus and train tickets.

To make things stranger, all of the tags from his clothes had been removed and he also had with him a scrap of paper that said "It is finished" on it. He was then dubbed the Somerton Man after the beach on which he had been discovered, and was buried with a grave that listed him as as unknown man found on Somerton Beach.

The suspected cause of death was poisoning, with theories regarding his death relating to him being a spy, which would explain the absence of clothing tags and people unable to identify him.

The mystery remained unsolved for 74 years until professor Derek Abbott was able to analyse a single hair of the Somerton Man. Alongside forensic expert Colleen Fitzpatrick, Abbott built an extensive family tree of over 4,000 people connected to the Somerton Man.

This was eventually narrowed down to one name: Carl Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne.

The identification of the Somerton Man also led to so many more questions and opened up a whole new avenue for investigation. None of Carl Webb's living descendants had ever met or known him in person. We also have no known photographs of Webb which could definitively name him as the Somerton Man