These famous individuals continue to baffle historians. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down the most mysterious and secretive people throughout history, not including religious figures.
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00:00 "Hello, this is Melvin Beli. Who am I speaking with?"
00:05 "This is the Zodiac speaking."
00:08 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down the most mysterious and secretive people throughout history,
00:14 not including religious figures.
00:16 "He didn't need to have a name. He spoke for the masses, the many who'd been silenced."
00:26 Mystery surrounds the death of Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning in the 1930s,
00:32 his resting place was visited by a shadowy figure known only as the Poe Toaster.
00:37 Every year on Poe's birthday, a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf would visit Poe's grave
00:43 and toast the dead writer with a bottle of cognac.
00:45 After a brief visit, the man would leave behind both the unfinished bottle and three roses.
00:51 "You know, again, roses, cognac, you know, speaking to the Poes in Latin as a tribute. You gotta love it."
01:00 On occasion, the toaster would also leave a note, one of which read,
01:04 "Edgar, I haven't forgotten you."
01:06 Despite visiting Poe every year for over 60 years, no one knows who this man was,
01:11 or even if it was more than one person.
01:14 "Back in 2009, the mysterious person all of a sudden just disappeared.
01:18 So the Maryland Historic Society and Poe Baltimore held a competition to find a new Poe Toaster.
01:24 And keeping this tradition alive, this man's identity is remaining a mystery."
01:29 Any man who goes by multiple names is bound to be mysterious.
01:36 The Count achieved popularity in the 18th century for supposedly making great achievements in various academic fields.
01:42 Throughout his life, the Count went by various names and monikers,
01:45 including Chevalier Schoening, Prince Ragazze, and the Marquis de Montferrat.
01:49 He was also sardonically dubbed "The Wonder Man" by French philosopher Voltaire, owing to his many exaggerated claims.
01:56 "Others called him 'The Man Who Would Not Die.'"
01:59 The Count never wanted to be known,
02:01 and he told deliberately confusing and contradictory stories to keep his identity secret.
02:06 To this day, no one knows much about his personal life, not even his real name.
02:11 "St. Germain neither confirmed nor denied anything said about him.
02:16 How old was he? 100? 200? 2000 years?
02:21 He either smiled or responded with cheerful evasiveness."
02:25 There's something about a good spy story that captures our imaginations.
02:31 Spy stories have been popular for decades, with James Bond being the genre's primary figurehead.
02:36 But unlike many movie heroes, spies are actually real, and their life stories are endlessly fascinating.
02:42 Take, for example, a Soviet officer named Sergei Tretyakov.
02:46 Tretyakov worked for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service,
02:49 but he also served as a double agent who fed the American government valuable information.
02:53 "So you say that we're still a target for Moscow?"
02:57 "Yes. Yes."
03:00 Tretyakov eventually defected to the United States in October 2000,
03:04 being given $2 million and a new identity.
03:07 He lived in Florida for 10 years before dying in 2010,
03:11 with some suspecting that he was assassinated by Russian forces.
03:14 In reality, he supposedly choked on a piece of meat.
03:18 The gravestone of Monsieur Chouchani reads, quote,
03:23 "The wise Rabbi Chouchani of blessed memory.
03:26 His birth and his life are sealed in enigma."
03:29 That about sums it up.
03:30 These beautiful words were written by Elie Wiesel,
03:33 a Holocaust survivor and writer of the famous memoir "Night."
03:36 Wiesel was one of Chouchani's many pupils.
03:38 It was said that Monsieur Chouchani had a vast understanding of academic subjects,
03:42 including an encyclopedic knowledge of the Talmud,
03:45 the primary text of Rabbinic Judaism.
03:47 Chouchani hoped that his teachings would speak for themselves, and they did.
03:51 To this day, no one knows anything about his personal life,
03:55 and his real name remains a complete mystery.
04:01 This German man had a very short life, dying at just 21 in 1833.
04:06 Yet he left behind a lasting legacy.
04:08 Hauser claimed that he spent most of his early life locked in a dungeon.
04:12 Hauser himself didn't enter the public record until 1828,
04:15 when the 16-year-old was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg.
04:19 One popular rumor of the time posited that Hauser was of royal lineage
04:23 and that he was hidden away for many years.
04:25 Others, including expert psychiatrists, argued that Hauser was a swindler.
04:29 The story gets even more mysterious,
04:31 as Hauser was stabbed on December 14, 1833, and died three days later.
04:36 Hauser told an elaborate story of his stabbing,
04:39 but contemporary writers theorized that he had stabbed himself for publicity.
04:43 Unsurprisingly, not much is known about Fulcanelli, a French alchemist.
04:50 We certainly don't know his real name,
04:52 and we don't know much about his upbringing or credentials.
04:55 But what he is known for are two far-fetched incidents of transmutation.
05:00 In 1922, Fulcanelli and his pupil Eugène Conselier
05:04 supposedly changed 100 grams of lead into gold.
05:07 He purportedly performed this feat again at the Château de Leray in 1937,
05:12 this time transforming lead into gold and silver into uranium.
05:16 Unfortunately, Fulcanelli disappeared from recorded history after World War II,
05:21 having vanished during the liberation of Paris in 1944.
05:24 He was never heard from again,
05:26 leaving his life and works a tantalizing mystery.
05:29 Surely you've heard of Project MKUltra.
05:34 If not, it was a secret and highly illegal experiment
05:37 conducted by the CIA on unsuspecting and unwitting citizens.
05:41 The CIA spent 25 years and $25 million on secret mind-control research.
05:47 Brainwashing could be a powerful ideological weapon,
05:51 and the US had to have it.
05:53 And when the agency didn't undertake its own studies, it funded someone else's.
05:57 The project hoped to uncover secret brainwashing and mind-control techniques
06:01 that could force suspected criminals to confess.
06:03 It was a very controversial study,
06:05 and was halted in 1973 after 20 years of covert operation.
06:09 Everyone from unwitting housewives to soldiers to even criminals
06:14 like gangster Whitey Bulger is tested.
06:17 You know, what the CIA really dreamed of was sort of like
06:20 a drug you could give to someone, get them to commit all sorts of unspeakable acts,
06:25 and they wake up the next day and they don't remember what they've done.
06:28 This contentious project was headed by a man named Sidney Gottlieb,
06:31 whose work during MKUltra was both highly dangerous and shrouded in mystery.
06:35 For example, he often dosed unwitting subjects with LSD.
06:39 In 1953, he personally dosed bacteriologist Frank Olson,
06:43 who died under violent and mysterious circumstances just nine days later.
06:49 Of course, there are no great biographies of Ötzi,
06:52 who is about 5,000 years old.
06:54 But despite his age, we do know a few key details about his personal life.
06:59 Back in 1991, two German tourists were walking in the Ötztal Alps
07:03 when they stumbled across a mummified body frozen in the ice.
07:07 This was Ötzi, who to this day is Europe's oldest mummy.
07:10 Following intensive study, it was determined that Ötzi was born
07:14 in present-day Bolzano around 3275 BCE.
07:17 Ötzi's gear, well-preserved by the icy glacier,
07:21 provides a critical insight into prehistoric culture.
07:25 That's about all we know of the historic man,
07:27 but we're getting more answers as the years progress.
07:30 In 2023, Ötzi's entire genome was mapped, revealing darker skin,
07:35 a penchant for baldness, and shared ancestry with Anatolian Neolithic farmers.
07:40 Ötzi, the Iceman, lived and died five millennia ago.
07:44 Yet his final resting place now lets us see that he was very much like one of us today.
07:50 Number 12. Babushka Lady
07:52 No presidential assassination has resulted in more conspiracy theories than John F. Kennedy's.
07:57 Of the people present on that fateful day, questions persist about two figures,
08:02 the first being the supposed second gunman,
08:05 and the second being a little old lady wearing a scarf around her head.
08:08 That piece of headwear resulted in the nickname we know her by today.
08:12 The reason she's shrouded in speculation is that she can be seen filming footage of the events that afternoon,
08:18 but her identity and film have never been recovered.
08:21 Could the information she captured confirm or put to rest the conspiracy theories surrounding the event?
08:27 It seems likely at this point that we'll never know.
08:30 Number 11. Harold Holt
08:32 The 17th Prime Minister of Australia,
08:34 Holt went out for a swim in the water of Cheviot Beach near Victoria in 1967,
08:39 and was never seen again.
08:41 The thing that's mystified followers of the incident ever since was the fact that zero trace of him was ever recovered,
08:47 despite the fact that one of the largest search operations in Australian history commenced shortly after his disappearance.
08:53 "In Washington, where secret servicemen keep the president under strict surveillance,
08:57 they were surprised that a prime minister could be allowed to swim without being closely watched."
09:02 Speculations that Holt may have either taken his own life or faked his own death persist to this day.
09:08 And even more sensational, some theories suggest he ran away with his mistress,
09:12 or was actually a Chinese spy.
09:14 "He had been claimed by the sea he knew and loved."
09:18 Number 10. Tommy Wiseau
09:20 "I did not hit her, it's not true, it's bullshit, I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi Mark."
09:27 The room is just as strange and elusive as the man who created it.
09:31 The personal life of Tommy Wiseau is shrouded in mystery,
09:34 despite his nearly mythical status as a cult movie legend.
09:37 Much of what we know about Wiseau comes from Greg Sestero's 'The Disaster Artist',
09:41 but Sestero's information comes directly from Wiseau himself,
09:44 and many of his claims have not been independently verified.
09:48 Furthermore, Wiseau has a penchant for misleading and exaggerating stories,
09:52 having given many contradictory accounts about his upbringing.
09:55 As it is, Wiseau enjoys his privacy, telling Entertainment Weekly,
09:59 "I think private life should be private life. The professional life should be the professional life."
10:04 "Get out, get out, get out of my life!"
10:07 Number 9. William Shakespeare
10:10 Despite being undoubtedly one of the most well-known and highly regarded literary figures in history,
10:15 there are few details of the man's life or work that are actually agreed upon.
10:19 "Sorry, is this what you do for entertainment nowadays?"
10:22 "Yes, it is, yes. I think I prefer the theatre."
10:25 His birthday is celebrated as April 23rd,
10:28 but likely only because some 18th century academic wrote it down wrong.
10:32 He was probably educated at King's New School in Stratford,
10:36 but there are no surviving records to back that up either.
10:39 The largest question of them all, of course,
10:41 is whether he actually wrote the works that led him to become famous to begin with.
10:45 "What makes this story so remarkable is the fact that the Times most celebrated playwright and actor,
10:50 a man who must have been the toast of London, should have been considered a person untraceable.
10:56 That is, of course, unless he was."
10:58 Number 8. Tank Man
11:00 We may not know his name, but we sure know the images of the supremely brave man standing in front of
11:05 and blocking a large column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square.
11:08 "It's absolutely extraordinary. You could look at him as unusually brave, but he probably wasn't.
11:16 He was probably just an ordinary person who was so disgusted at what he had seen for the last few days."
11:22 The day before, the Chinese government, in their Tiananmen Square massacre,
11:26 slaughtered a large number of civilians and political protesters demanding reforms.
11:31 Despite some extensive efforts, no one has been able to identify the Tank Man,
11:36 and no one knows what happened to him.
11:38 Some claim that he was arrested and executed.
11:40 Others claim that nothing happened and that he continues to live a quiet life on the Chinese mainland.
11:46 We just don't know, and we likely never will.
11:49 Number 7. Nikola Tesla
11:51 The Internet's favorite inventor,
11:53 his expansive list of discoveries and theories, which includes the Tesla coil and alternating current,
11:58 has resulted in a reputation as a mad scientist.
12:01 "His inventions helped America grow into a powerful industrial nation.
12:06 His ideas created billion-dollar corporations.
12:10 But Tesla was not a practical man.
12:14 Always driven toward the next great breakthrough, he failed to protect his commercial interests."
12:20 And when you discover that he created both a death ray and a supposed earthquake machine,
12:25 allegedly experimented with time travel,
12:28 and believed he knew how to make a building crumble if he could just discover the correct pitch through trial and error,
12:34 it's not hard to understand why.
12:36 "Did Tesla, in fact, see into the future?"
12:39 Seemingly fearless about the potential dangers his creations may have posed to him and humanity as a whole,
12:45 the image of him sitting alone working while electricity crackles around him has turned the man into an almost mythical figure.
12:51 And the loss of many of his notes only increases that.
12:55 Number 6. Alistair Crowley
12:57 An English occultist, artist, ritual magician, and religious leader who is a heroic figure of freedom for some,
13:04 but was also labeled the wickedest man in the world during his lifetime,
13:07 Crowley is a unique figure.
13:09 Considered by some a Satanist who was rumored to be a cannibal and murderer of children,
13:14 the extreme fashion in which he lived led many to demonize him.
13:18 The founder of a religion known as the Lima,
13:20 it seems like at one time or another, every evil deed was attributed to Crowley,
13:25 and as a result, the line between what the man did and didn't do is almost completely blurred.
13:30 "Crowley ultimately is as magnetic and exciting as he is repellent.
13:36 There are aspects of his character which are very difficult to admire or even tolerate."
13:40 Number 5. D.B. Cooper
13:42 On November 24, 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper bought a one-way plane ticket to Washington.
13:50 After the flight took off, the man in question politely told a flight attendant that he had a bomb,
13:55 and he proceeded to hijack the flight.
13:57 He demanded $200,000, four parachutes, and that a refueling truck be waiting for them when they touched down.
14:03 "The identity of D.B. Cooper has been a mystery since November 24, 1971,
14:09 when a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked and threatened to blow up a passenger jet flying from Portland to Seattle."
14:16 When his demands were met, they landed,
14:18 and the man allowed all other passengers and non-essential personnel to de-bark before they took off again.
14:24 Once they were back in the air, all remaining people other than Cooper were placed in the cockpit,
14:28 and the calm, polite man presumably jumped from the plane with his ill-gotten gains, never to be heard from again.
14:35 "While probability now points to D.B. Cooper's death, without hard evidence, many people today still believe that he survived."
14:46 The man identified as Eustache Dauger is possibly the most famous prisoner of all time,
14:54 purportedly spending 24 hours a day wearing a mask, sometimes described as velvet, often categorized as iron.
15:01 This inmate spent over three decades imprisoned, with guards taking many special precautions with his care.
15:07 Yet despite his fate, he was never said to be angry or to complain to his jailers.
15:12 There are several theories as to the true identity of the prisoner,
15:15 but the most popular calls him out as a relative of the king at the time, Louis Quetel's,
15:20 who would have threatened his claim to the throne.
15:22 "Alexander Dumas' theory is that it was the twin brother of King Louis XIV of France.
15:29 And of course, you can't have two kings, so what better than put one in an iron mask and put him away?"
15:36 Whatever his true identity, his life will always be shrouded in mystery.
15:41 The person known as the Zodiac Killer is a serial killer that terrified California during the late 1960s and early 1970s,
15:51 and then stopped his attacks as quickly as they started.
15:54 Confirmed to have killed five people and to have injured another two,
15:58 the Zodiac claimed another 37 deaths were attributable to him in letters he sent to newspapers and investigators.
16:04 "As terrifying as Zodiac's official rap sheet was, in reality, he may have been even deadlier."
16:10 "This guy is just a killer, and you have no motive."
16:13 In those letters, he gloated about his superiority over those who were looking for him,
16:17 and even provided police with a cryptogram that he claimed would provide them with his identity if solved.
16:22 When the code was eventually cracked, that was proven false.
16:25 But it's those types of theatrics that made it all the more surprising when the letters and killings stopped unexpectedly.
16:31 "In 1974, he writes his last letter indicating he has killed 37 people."
16:36 "The Zodiac Killer has never been found."
16:40 The man known as the Mad Monk was the focus of mystery.
16:46 Recognized by many as a central figure in the collapse of the Russian monarchy and the Romanov dynasty due to his weakening of the Tsar's credibility,
16:53 he was said to have mystical powers of healing and prophecy.
16:56 "Rasputin was instrumental in wiping out the 300-year-old dynasty and changing the history of Russia forever."
17:04 The Russian people felt Rasputin wielded complete control over the entire royal family,
17:08 which allowed the population to blame him for their country's ills.
17:12 Just like his life, Rasputin's death is also the subject of conjecture,
17:16 as some accounts claim that he survived poisoning and being shot in the back and head before he was finally drowned.
17:22 Most historians reject this version of the story,
17:25 but it's a great example of the myths that landed Rasputin in the second position on this list.
17:30 "No one can be sure whether Rasputin was simply a misunderstood peasant or a devil in the flesh.
17:37 Whatever the truth, his image has become a modern icon of evil and darkness."
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17:57 Between August 31st and November 9th, 1888,
18:04 five sex workers were murdered in the Whitechapel district of London in grisly fashion,
18:09 sparking the legend of Jack the Ripper.
18:11 "The murders shocked the Victorian world with their brutality,
18:15 and the world's most famous serial killer came into being."
18:18 Remarkably similar to the story of the Zodiac,
18:21 the Ripper also sent letters to authorities taunting them
18:24 and providing them with evidence that could have led to his capture,
18:27 in one case even including what's believed to be part of one of his victims' kidneys.
18:31 Despite the combined brainpower of millions of amateur detectives in the years since his crimes,
18:36 the closest anyone has come to identifying Jack the Ripper came in 2014,
18:41 when one armchair detective claimed DNA evidence identified him as Polish hairdresser Aaron Kosminski.
18:46 But the conclusiveness of that test was called into question, so it's still anyone's guess.
18:52 "As a consequence, the murders are now turned almost into a street pantomime,
18:58 and five sordid East End murders became an international phenomenon,
19:02 and the unknown miscreant responsible for those murders was elevated to the realm of legend."
19:07 Do you know any fun facts about these mysterious figures? Let us know in the comments.
19:12 "There's an awful lot to be learned by studying the way in which he created."
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19:26 [outro music]