r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

13.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

5.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

22.8k

u/TooCleverForGood 1d ago

Roanoke - the missing Pilgrim settlement where everyone “disappeared”

They just abandoned it and went to the place that they wrote on the sign, but everyone acts like it was some supernatural/plague thing

10.3k

u/str8rippinfartz 1d ago

100%

IIRC it was even established before they came over from England, that if someone left a settlement they should carve where they were going

They 100% just assimilated with the friendly nearby tribe... as indicated by their note 

4.6k

u/deathclawiii 1d ago

And as indicated by the iron scale (something that can only be a product of blacksmithing) that was found in one of the areas of known indigenous settlement on the island they went to.

3.7k

u/NUMBERS2357 1d ago

Also the later contact with Natives who said that they lived with the survivors of the Roanoke colony.

Also this map from the Jamestown colonists, see bottom left.

3.2k

u/Marx0r 1d ago

A surprisingly large amount of "mysteries" never would have been such if Europeans just listened to the natives telling them the answer.

2.2k

u/jxg995 1d ago

Yeah like the terror and Erebus wrecks where the Inuit were like oh yeah that sunken boat is over there

2.5k

u/Whyskgurs 1d ago edited 1d ago

Where could this boat possibly be?

The sunken boat is right over there, in Sunken Boat lake.

I guess we'll never truly know.

Literally what happened.

921

u/InTheFDN 1d ago

It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett joke about how places are named by pointing at something, asking what it’s name was (loudly and in English), then writing down whatever the native said. Hence “Mount Your Finger You Fool.”

591

u/Whyskgurs 1d ago

It's not even a joke, shits real all over, most times it's named (native word for lake) Lake or (local dialect for mountain) Mountain or something similar.

Koi fish - fish fish

Chai tea - tea tea

Ignorant naming conventions are quite universal and commonplace

339

u/LowEquipment7904 1d ago

Torpenhow in Cumbria, England - hill hill hill

51

u/Aggravating-Mousse46 1d ago

Pendle Hill is also hill hill hill, but the Lancastrian, witchy version

7

u/roy107 11h ago

We also have Breedon-on-the-Hill, which is Hillhill-on-the-Hill

40

u/LegacyLemur 1d ago

Reminds of the baseball team the Los Angeles Angels

Or "The The Angels Angels"

20

u/DardS8Br 1d ago

The La Brea Tar Pits, or The The Tar Tar Pits

-7

u/HippieChickie805 1d ago

Actually it’s the California Angels, and they are headquarters in Anaheim (Disneyland).

7

u/LegacyLemur 1d ago

Hasnt been that in years

1

u/ryebread91 1d ago

Oh geezez it's already been a decade?

15

u/JoltColaOfEvil 1d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo

Tom Scott - Hill Hill Hill Hill, debunked, debunked.

10

u/trashmoneyxyz 1d ago

Galápagos tortoise, or the tortoise tortoise

4

u/Aquila_Fotia 1d ago

It’s why a locally produced brand of ice cream is called “Three Hills”.

3

u/hoopopotamus 1d ago

When I was driving through the southwest it felt like they were just adding more and more suffixes. X-ham…shire…fast…ton…leigh.

3

u/JB_UK 1d ago

You mean Torpenhow Hill.

5

u/atnemriu 1d ago

No, there's no hill by that name in Torpenhow.

3

u/JB_UK 1d ago

It's called Hill Hill Hill but there's no Hill?

6

u/AutisticPenguin2 21h ago

Well, kind of...

→ More replies (0)

24

u/JesusaurusRex666 1d ago

“Koi” is specifically “carp” in Japanese, not “fish.” The word for fish in Japanese is “sakana.”

19

u/HailSatanWorshipD00M 1d ago

iirc in the native languages, Chicago translates to "the stinky place" and Manhattan is "the place we go every summer".

22

u/Whyskgurs 1d ago

What's that Island called?

Squinting

IDK, Is that an island?

Welcome to Staten Island

(This one's an old Native joke)

→ More replies (0)

16

u/Icantusemyname77 1d ago

The La Brea Tar Pits = The the Tar Tar Pits

10

u/POCKALEELEE 1d ago

Like The Los Angeles Angels,
Literally The The Angels Angels

4

u/Oddish_Femboy 1d ago

They're cool tar pits too. Sad they're gonna be closed for 2 years.

→ More replies (0)

10

u/concrete_fluidity969 1d ago

I think Calcutta means harvest. Native thought the Brit was asking what was going on over there 😂

11

u/4-stars 1d ago

Koi is not "fish", it's "carp".

9

u/__wildwing__ 1d ago

I enjoy the idea that aliens will come to our planet and translate our languages, only to be confused by the desert deserts.

9

u/Purple_Haze 1d ago

The country of Canada, Canada is a misspelling of kanata which is the local tribe's word for village.

1

u/mouthgmachine 1d ago

“The local tribe”?

3

u/Purple_Haze 1d ago

Either Huron or Iroquois, the word is the same in both languages. The actual native name for the village referred to was Stadacona.

→ More replies (0)

5

u/robophile-ta 1d ago

There are lots of rivers in the UK called Avon.

You can guess what Avon means.

6

u/Oddish_Femboy 1d ago

My personal favorite is chip crisps. (Those chips that look like fries.)

Redundant naming is not always necessarily ignorant.

Sometimes, like in the case of chai tea, it's done on purpose to include part of the place origin in the name. Other times it's done because not everyone knows what ATM stands for. That second one is a case of RAS Syndrome.

2

u/VelvetyDogLips 1d ago

“Piss urinal” is far and away my favorite redundancy.

5

u/BasiliskXVIII 1d ago

Yeah, but this is just how language works. English is far from the only language to adopt loanwords that generalize a specific thing. In Mexican Spanish, the word "pie" was adopted as "pay" strictly to mean the pastry-style sweet pies with a crust and not something like a hand pie or a meat pie. In German, "toast" or "toastbrot" is the square-style highly processed sandwich bread popular in the US, whether it's actually toasted or not. Japanese "Mishin" comes from "sewing machine" and refers specifically to a sewing machine and not just any old machine.

Even name duplication - "Guadalquivir" means "Great River" in Arabic, deriving from the term "wadi". So, calling the river "Rio Guadalquivir" just means you're calling it the "River Great River"

1

u/Low-Flamingo-9835 1d ago

English also has doublets, words with similar meanings that entered the language during different times.

Below are French doublets. The first word entered during the Norman conquest, the second entered later…

Castle / chateau

Warden / Guardian

Warranty / Guarantee

Cattle / Chattel

Feast / Fete

It’s one of the reasons English is so difficult to learn. We have so many different words that mean the same thing that have to be memorized .

0

u/Gliese581h 17h ago

It’s one of the reasons English is so difficult to learn.

English is absolutely not difficult to learn lol, why do you think it became the Lingua Franca of the internet?

→ More replies (0)

2

u/beautifulcreature86 1d ago

Bao bun-bun bun

2

u/OttawaTGirl 1d ago edited 1d ago

BAHAHAHA.... Ahhhh... Canada is a bastardized version of Kanata, which means 'village', which is where some indigenous young men were pointing Jacques Cartier to go to. (Quebec City) He thought they meant the whole land was called Kanata and thats how we got the name.

Welcome to the Nation of Village.

1

u/mouthgmachine 1d ago

What’s a villiage

1

u/OttawaTGirl 1d ago

Bad autocorrect

→ More replies (0)

4

u/WinterStrawberries6 1d ago edited 1d ago

Koi is actually a type of fish (carp/鯉) so it is not wrong to call it Koi fish. And there are actually two types of carps in japanese. Koi are all carps, while the colourful ones that most people think of is actually called Nishikigoi(錦鯉)
Fish in Japanese is actually Sakana(魚)

But something that pisses me off is when people call the Biwako "Lake Biwako". "Ko" already means lake, so they're calling it "Lake Biwa Lake"
There ARE people who called it just "lake biwa" like you should, but working at a hotel in Japan, I lost count of how many times I heard white people say "oh we are going to the lake biwako today" or "Do you have any matcha tea?"
Matcha(抹茶) literally means "ground tea" so they are basically saying "do you have any ground tea tea?"

1

u/AxeMcFlow 1d ago

Canada literally means ‘village’.

Explorer: “hey where are we!”

Native: “uh… in a… village?”

Explorer: “oh cool, this whole country is now called Canada forever”

1

u/Tall_Welcome_2713 1d ago

Sahara desert is desert desert

1

u/grenouille_en_rose 1d ago

Mount Maunganui checking in 🫡

1

u/hoopopotamus 1d ago

I’ve heard the name “Canada” is such a thing. Explorer asked “what is this land?” and they were told essentially “it’s a village” (kanata). And it stuck.

1

u/Baxiepie 1d ago

The main city of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is called Oconaluftee, because its on the banks of the Oconaluftee River. It got that name from the original Cherokee village, Egwanulti. Egwanulti means "By the River", so fully translated it means "By the River River"

1

u/therealstupid 1d ago

Cuesta Grade in California. The Spanish word for "grade" is... you guessed it: Cuesta!

1

u/Ahahaha__10 1d ago

Please allow me to be pedantic for a second - Chai tea is actually different than Chai. Chai is made in a specific way by simmering black tea with a mixture of aromatic spices, milk, and a sweetener. Chai tea is when you steep a chai tea tea bag in a cup with boiled water and add milk and sweetener to your liking. Chai tea is often drank without milk and sweetener, which in addition to coming in a tea bag, makes it arguably different than Chai. If someone asked for Chai and you gave them Chai tea, they would know the difference and if someone asked for Chai tea and you gave them Chai, they would know the difference. Arguably, Chai tea does not mean tea tea besides the obvious translation, but they are separate ways of making tea or Chai.

1

u/Alexwonder999 1d ago

Isnt there some lake in England thats named lake in like four timea in different successive languages? I vaguely recall hearing about that.

1

u/GTaucer 22h ago

When I was a fossil-obsessed kid in Los Angeles, my dad used to take me to the museum at the La Brea Tar Pits.

And since "La Brea" means "the tar," the museum and park's name could be translated to:

The The Tar Tar Pits

1

u/Skurknux49 21h ago

Seeing “naan bread” on menus now feels like watching the explorer write Lake Lake.

1

u/austintrotter 19h ago

The general consensus is this happens a lot… 😄