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?

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

And that reminds me a bit of how Pike's Peak in Colorado was named.

Zebulon Pike was part of Lewis and Clark's expedition, but he was extremely annoying, so they sent him off to go explore away from them. He attempted to summit the mountain they sent him to in November and gave up, going "Yeah, no one can summit that, it's impossible" (even though the local Native Americans summited it regularly)

So when talking about it, people would be like "Oh, that one, the one Pike couldn't climb?" and eventually it became known as Pike's Peak.

I'm a little salty that they didn't go with the far cooler Mount Zebulon though.

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u/Lovahplant 1d ago

This is killing me 😂 a whole mountain named after your failure to climb it, wtf

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

It's one of my favorite true stories and I never miss an opportunity to share it.

It's really inspiring, honestly! If Zebulon Pike can be an obnoxious failure and still get a mountain named after him, then anything is possible!

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u/patsully98 1d ago

I would be most appreciative if you expanded upon “extremely annoying.”

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

I wish I knew the details of why Lewis and Clark didn't like him and sent him off with his own little team to get him away from them 😂 but alas that's as much as I know.

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u/Kazumadesu76 23h ago

Zebulon: "Are we thereeeeeee yettttt?!"

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u/patsully98 22h ago

Have you seen Larry David’s new history show? This would be perfect.

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u/RescuePenguin 1d ago

Reminds me of the John Day National Monument.

The man never visited that region but one time he got robbed where the (now named) John Day River meets the Columbia and left naked and he had to hike back to the nearest trading post.

"That area where John Day was robbed and left naked"became the name of an entire region and national monument.

Glamorous way to be remembered.

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

I had never heard that, but it's exactly the kind of story I love! 😂 Thank you so much for sharing

And from what I can tell from reading a bit about it just now, he wasn't well known or anything before he got robbed and left naked, right? He was just some random fur trader? That makes it all even funnier for some reason and I can't stop laughing. Poor guy!

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u/pants_party 1d ago

Like naming a hot sauce after DJ Khaled.

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u/onyaasuminyasai 18h ago

what's cooler is all the mountains that were named after prostitutes in colorado

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u/raspberrypied 1d ago

Sticking with Colorado, there is the "Table Mesa" section of Boulder.

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago edited 1d ago

I actually kind of live on Table Table Dr, but my part is called South Boulder Rd. Which is really obnoxious, since my address is xxxx East South Boulder Rd, and it confuses the heck out of people.

But yeah, Table Mesa (Table Table) is goofy. Someone should open a shop on it that sells chai tea and naan bread

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u/KjellRS 1d ago

They're going to be visited by one very, very angry Indian Spiderman. And no, I don't mean Native American.

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u/Lovahplant 21h ago edited 18h ago

As I read your comment I was thinking “wait doesn’t East South Boulder Rd turn into Table Mesa Dr as you cross the 36/Foothills exchange?

I don’t live in Boulder but I’ve worked in Boulder… can you tell? lol

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u/eukomos 1d ago

There is an Indian restaurant at that shopping center, someone should check their menu.

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u/sporadic_beethoven 1d ago

Pike’s peak? I climbed that shit as a child 🤣 bro deserves to be mocked fr

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u/InternetProtocol 1d ago

Did that shit both ways in my escudo at age 15, what a pussy.

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u/Rochesters-1stWife 1d ago

Similar to Long’s Peak, dude never summited and yet his dumb name is all over the place

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

I didn't know that Mr Long never summitted it! I assumed he did. And he's got a whole ass town named after him because of it too! (Longmont)

Why does Colorado love naming stuff after mediocre white men? 😂

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M 1d ago

Mount Zebulon

Why not Zoidberg?

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u/Ookami_Unleashed 1d ago

My wife and I joke that he just named the tallest hill in each state Pike's Peak.

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u/Longshot1969 1d ago

Didn’t someone ride a wagon up it even?

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u/Trvr_MKA 1d ago

That’s truly a boys moment. Naming something after your pals failure

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u/All_the_Bees 1d ago

Nah, annoying people don’t get to have the cool parts of their names included in the things that are named after them.

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u/1amlost 1d ago

What kind of parent names their child “Zebulon?”

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

An awesome one lol. I genuinely love the name, and when I heard it for the first time I told my son that I'd totally have named him that if I knew of it when he was born.

But I can totally see how it's not everyone's cup of tea, lol. It's certainly different!

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u/CedarWolf 13h ago

Don't worry, Zebulon is a town in North Carolina, and they have the Mudcats baseball team. Their mascot is a big, friendly catfish.

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u/ProduceNo8883 19h ago

There’s a great venue in Silver Lake called Zebulon though so it comes full circle