HISTORIC MYSTERIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 387, 22 November 1946, Page 15

HISTORIC MYSTERIES

Dramatic Series from ZB's HAT could have happened to the liner Waratah after she left Durban for Capetown on July 26, 1909? Do you believe in the legend of the Wandering Jew? Was John Wilkes} Booth, actor, and brother of the famous Edwin Booth, really the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln? And, did a man in the 19th Century anticipate the splitting of the atom by playing a chord on the violin? These, and other historical mysteries, are being discussed on Sunday evenings by the ZB stations and Station 2ZA. The general title of these half-hour sessions is History’s Unsolved Mysteries, and the producer is Dorovan Joyce. Listeners are given the bare facts from evidence that has been gathered concerning each case. There is no pretence at a solution and listeners may please themselves what they. accept. For instance, there is the story of the early colonisation by Raleigh of the island of Roanoke, off Virginia. . Until 1937, we are told, it was thought that the colony had perished, either from starvation or from marauding Indians. A discovery in 1937, however, altered the more than 300 years’ old idea of what teally happened, antl some people now believe that the settlers did survive. Though there are in this series none of the screams and gurgles which usually signal murder on the air, there are one or two excursions into crime-but from the purely academic angle. The actors . speculate as to the identity of one of the strangest murderers ever known, the man called Jack the Ripper. The "curse of the Pharaohs" which set the world speculating after Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen comes into the series, And reference to spiritualism and psychicab ‘research. has not been left out, for there is a discussion as to whether Daniel Dunglas Home, one of the best-known mediums of the last century, wes a clever fake or a genuine medium. : These are just a few of the episodes from History's Unsolved Mysteries which are being presented from 1ZB at 7.10 p.m., 2ZB at 7.30 pm., 3ZB at 7.0 p.m., 4ZB at 8.0 p.m., and 2ZA at 3.0 p.m. +