Meriwether Lewis by Charles Wilson Peale

October 11, 1809: Thirty-five year old Meriwether Lewis dies … of something. After returning from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Lewis was rewarded with 1,600 acres of land. He intended to publish the Corps of Discovery journals, but was having editorial difficulties. In 1807, Thomas Jefferson made Lewis governor of the Louisiana Territory. His record as governor is mixed but much of what is seen as negative comes from letters written by Frederick Bates, the territorial secretary. Bates has been accused of undermining Lewis because he, himself, wanted the governorship.

Lewis had funded a mission to return a Mandan chief to his tribe. Because of a letter written by Bates, the promised reimbursement from the federal government was rescinded. Lewis’s creditors called in their notes and Lewis was forced to sell off most of his private property, including his land, to pay them. He was…

1 – City of Paititi

Much like El Dorado or Atlantis, Paititi is a legendary hidden city that is rumored to be located in the southeastern part of Peru. The legend of the city of Paititi says that the Incas used this city to keep their treasures hidden from the Spanish. Most people took the stories about Paititi just to be legends until it was likely discovered east of the Andes Mountains.

2 – Patiala Necklace

Made for the reigning Maharaja of Patiala at the time, the House of Cartier designed this 234.65 karat diamond necklace in 1928. This massive and ridiculously expensive necklace held over 2,900 diamonds and several Burmese rubies. Twenty years after the necklace was designed it disappeared. Thirty-four years after the necklace’s mysterious vanishing it reappeared at an auction in Geneva, Switzerland. When the necklace was found once again in 1998 it was missing a few…

The odd and the obscure have always fascinated me. As have mysteries. When I was younger, I fantasized about driving around the country in a van with close friends of mine solving mysteries like in “Scooby Doo,” but in our case, we would prove the mysteries to be true, or so I thought. We even did a little bit of this around Washington, DC, where as teenagers we investigated urban legends of Goatman, Boaman, and local sightings of Bigfoot. We never saw anything, but got ourselves pretty scared. Well, it’s hard to be scared of by rocks, but rocks that ring for no reason is intriguing, and so on two separate occasions, I made my way with friends to this quiet corner of Southeastern Pennsylvania to experience the eerie sounds of ringing rocks, one of only a handful of places in the world where such phenomena exists.