Unsolved Mysteries From 1948: “The Body on Somerton Beach”

Edith Zimmerman
The Hairpin
Published in
1 min readSep 21, 2011

“He must be dead to the world not to notice them.”
— A beachstroller to his girlfriend upon coming across a smartly dressed man on his back in the sand with a cloud of mosquitoes over his face. It turned out the man was actually dead, and that no one could ever figure out who he was, how he died, why he was on the beach, what the mysterious note in his hidden pocket meant, why the unnamed nurse almost fainted when she saw him, or how to crack the secret code in the book they traced the note to. The story is amazing, let’s solve it. [Via]

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Edith Zimmerman
The Hairpin

Spiralbound editor. Formerly at The Hairpin. Also now making a newsletter: https://drawinglinks.substack.com