| | c. 600–300B.C.- Laozi, author of The Tao Te Ching, immediately after writing which at the Han Gu Pass he vanishes from contemporary accounts. |
| | c. 30 AD - Religious leader Jesus; see Death and resurrection of Jesus and Ascension for analysis of the controversy surrounding the disappearance of the body of Jesus. |
| | 711 - K'inich K'an Joy Chitam (Kan Xul II) – king of Palenque – 711. Ruled until August 30, then disappeared from history. Probably taken prisoner by Tonina. |
| | 900s - Muhammad al-Mahdi; According to Twelver Shi'as Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi (or Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ali) is believed by followers of the Shi'ite sect of Islam to be the twelfth Imam and the Mahdi, the ultimate savior of mankind |
| | 1174 - Madoc – semi-mythological Welsh prince. |
| | 1412 - Owain Glyndwr – Welsh rebel leader, went on the run |
| | 1463 - François Villon – French poet and criminal – whereabouts unknown after banishment from the city of Paris. |
| | 1483 - Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, the two young sons of King Edward IV of England (see Princes in the Tower). |
| | 1499 - John Cabot – Italian explorer. Disappeared, along with four other ships, during a voyage to find a western route from Europe to Asia. |
| | 1502 - Miguel Corte-Real – Portuguese explorer. Disappeared while searching for his brother Gaspar. |
| | 1587 or 1588 - Virginia Dare – Born August 18, 1587, the first child of English parents to be born in the Americas, disappeared along with other Roanoke colonists in 1587 (or possibly 1588). |
| | 1611 - Henry Hudson – English explorer. Disappeared after a mutiny by his crew while exploring the Hudson Bay region. |
| | 1809 - Benjamin Bathurst a British diplomat vanished mysteriously at an inn in Perleberg |
| | 1826 - William Morgan of rural New York disappeared around the time his book critical of Freemasonry was published. |
| | 1828 - William Hare, Irish-Scots serial killer, avoided trial and eventual fate unknown |
| | 1847 - Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin FRGS and the entire crew on his last expedition to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. Years later a letter was found stating the Admiral perished on June 11, 1847, but his body was never found. |
| | 1860 - Leopold Frankenberger, the possible father of Alois Hitler, disappears and is never seen again after he had been banished from his hometown of Graz, Austria in the 1860s. |
| | 1872 - Crew and passengers of the Mary Celeste. |
| | 1879 - John Wise and passenger, in a balloon that left East St. Louis, Illinois, over Lake Michigan. |
| | 1888 - Charles E. Bolles a.k.a. "Black Bart" – Old West outlaw. Disappeared shortly after his release from San Quentin State Prison in January 1888. |
| | 1888 - Boston Corbett - Army sergeant who fatally shot the escaping John Wilkes Booth. Believed to have perished in a forest fire, the Great Hinckley Fire, although his remains were never found. |
| | 1890 - On September 16th, Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince disappeared after departing on a train at Dijon, France to return to Paris, France. |
| | 1896 - Albert Jennings Fountain – and his eight-year-old son Henry disappeared near Las Cruces, New Mexico. |
| | 1900 - In December, three lighthouse keepers working on the Flannan Isles (off the northwestern coast of Scotland) disappeared. |
| | 1907 - German scientists Walter von Knebel and Max Rudloff visited Askja in Iceland to study the caldera. While exploring Öskjuvatn in a small boat, they disappeared without a trace. |
| | 1909 - Etta Place – associate of Butch Cassidy and the girlfriend of the Sundance Kid. |
| | 1909 - Joshua Slocum – an American seaman and adventurer (the first man to sail single-handedly around the world) disappeared in November 1909 while aboard his sloop-rigged fishing boat that he had named Spray. |
| | 1909 - Passengers and crew of the Waratah (ship), which disappeared in the Indian Ocean on a voyage from South Africa. |
| | 1910 - Dorothy Arnold – Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, last seen in New York City on December 12, 1910. |
| | 1913 - Ambrose Bierce – American author and journalist, disappeared without a trace during travels in Mexico. Last confirmed alive December 26, 1913 in Chihuahua. |
| | 1918 - Although accounts of their execution emerged early on, the main members of the ruling Romanov royal family of Russia were officially missing from 1918 until 1991, when all but two of their bodies were found in a mass grave in the woods outside Yekaterinburg in Russia. Not present were the bodies of the Tsarevich Alexei and one of his older sisters (believed to be either Maria or Anastasia), and so they are still considered missing (although some Russian scientists dispute this). Anastasia's identity was claimed by Anna Anderson, but DNA testing disproved her claim. |
| | 1918 - Arthur Cravan, French proto-dadaist writer and art critic, disappeared near Salina Cruz, Mexico in November, 1918, most likely drowning during a sailing trip in the Pacific Ocean. |
| | 1920 - Victor Grayson – British socialist politician, probably murdered |
| | 1921 - Charles White Whittlesey – American soldier who received the Medal of Honor for commanding the Lost Battalion during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He disappeared from a passenger ship bound for Havana, Cuba. |
| | 1924 - Andrew Irvine and his climbing partner George Mallory did not return from a two-man climb toward the summit of Mount Everest. After being missing for 75 years, Mallory's body was found in 1999. Irvine's body is still missing. A Chinese climber believed in 1975 that he had sighted it, but his own accidental death not long after meant the find was never confirmed. Some experts believe he had seen Mallory's body. |
| | 1925 - Percy Fawcett – British archaeologist and explorer. Disappeared with his son Jack while searching for a lost city believed to exist in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil |
| | 1927 - Charles Nungesser – French aviator who disappeared with his navigator, Francois Coli, on May 8, 1927 while attempting an east-to-west flight to North America, only two weeks before Lindbergh's successful flight from New York to Paris |
| | 1928 - Six members of Umberto Nobile's Italia expedition to the North Pole, carried off by the remains of their airship after it crashed. |
| | 1928 - Roald Amundsen – Norwegian explorer – In 1928, his plane crashed in the Arctic Ocean while heading to join the Nobile rescue effort. His body was never found. |
| | 1928 - Glen and Bessie Hyde – Newlyweds who disappeared while attempting to raft the Colorado River rapids of the Grand Canyon. |
| | 1930 - Joseph F. Crater – Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court, last seen August 6, 1930, entering a New York City taxi cab. His disappearance became the subject of widespread media attention and a grand jury investigation. |
| | 1930 - Emil Kauppi – Finnish composer, disappeared, last seen on October 1930. |
| | 1934 - Wallace D. Fard, founder of the Nation of Islam. In 1934, after conferring leadership of the Nation of Islam to his protegé Elijah Muhammad, he left Detroit, where he had been living, and disappeared without a trace while in the custody of the Chicago police department. The Nation of Islam maintained that he had returned to Mecca, but rumors persisted that he had been murdered by the Chicago police or by Elijah Muhammad. |
| | 1934 - Everett Ruess, American writer and artist known for his vagrant lifestyle and his statements on life and adventure. At the age of 20 he went into the Utah desert with two burros and never returned. His remains have never been found. |
| | 1936 - Joseph Rodriguez – 4-year-old child and resident of Spanish Harlem, New York City, who disappeared in 1936 while playing with friends. Although Rodriguez' aunt received a telegram informing her that her nephew had been injured and would return home shortly, Joseph never appeared. There was no further communication from the writer and no trace of Joseph's body was ever found. |
| | 1937 - Amelia Earhart – Famous American aviator, missing since July 2, 1937, while in flight in the South Pacific (along with her navigator) while attempting to circumnavigate the globe. There are various theories, rumours, and legends regarding her disappearance. |
| | 1937 - Fred Noonan – Also missing since July 2, 1937; was Earhart's navigator. |
| | 1937 - Sigizmund Levanevsky, a famous Soviet aviator, missing since about Aug. 13, 1937. He and a six-man crew attempted to make a historic flight from Moscow to the United States by way of the North Pole. They did not reach their destination, and their last radio message mentioned weather problems. |
| | 1938 - Ettore Majorana, Italian physicist. Disappeared during a boat trip from Naples to Palermo. |
| | 1938 - Andrew Carnegie Whitfield – nephew of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, disappeared while piloting a small airplane over Long Island, New York. |
| | 1939 - Richard Halliburton, author and adventurer. On March 3, 1939, Halliburton set off from Hong Kong aboard a custom-built Chinese junk, intending to sail to San Francisco in time for the World's Fair. On March 24, a typhoon overtook the ship, and neither the ship nor Halliburton were ever recovered. |
| | 1940 - Eleanor Jarman was a convicted robber, one of the more violent female criminals of her time, who escaped from jail in 1940 and became a fugitive from justice. Although she was placed on the FBI ten most wanted fugitives list, she was not caught. In 1975, in an incident that was not disclosed for years, she secretly visited relatives. She refused to turn herself in or reveal how she had been living. She would now be well over 100, and is presumed to have died under an alias. |
| | 1944 - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French author and aviator. Apparently died when his Lockheed P-38 Lightning crashed off the coast of Marseille. Though the aircraft was recovered in 2003, his body was never found. |
| | 1944 - Glenn Miller – popular American jazz musician and bandleader. Disappeared on December 15, 1944, en route from England to Paris to play for troops in the recently liberated city. Neither his remains nor the aircraft in which he was riding were ever recovered. |
| | 1944 - On 6 August 1944, a ship named the Island Queen vanished completely from Grenada. A second ship, the Providence Mark, which made the same journey on the same night arrived safely with no hint of trouble. Not a trace of the Island Queen or the people on board was ever found. |
| | 1945 - Raoul Wallenberg — Swedish diplomat who is credited with saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. |
| | 1945 - Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose — one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian Independence Movement; he disappeared after his plane crashed on August 18, 1945 (and is believed to have died), but this conclusion is the subject of great dispute. |
| | 1945 - Hans Kammler - SS general and perhaps the third-ranking member of the Nazi hierarchy during the last months of World War II. There are at least four differing accounts of his death, but his remains have never been located. |
| | 1953 - Felix Moncla disappeared while hunting an unidentified flying object |
| | 1956 - Jesús de Galíndez, a professor at Columbia University, the Spanish national, a critic of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, disappeared in March 1956 in New York City and was never seen again. Many theorists believed that he was kidnapped from his apartment (15F) at 30 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhattan at the request of Trujillo, transported secretly back to Santo Domingo and tortured to death. The 2002 film Galindez discusses the investigation of his disappearance.[1] |
| | 1957 - Moira McCall Anderson was an 11-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared while on an errand for her grandmother in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland. She has never been found and it is surmised that she was abducted for child sexual abuse. The Moira Anderson Foundation has been established in memory of her. |
| | 1961 - Michael Rockefeller – son of Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared during an expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern New Guinea. |
| | 1966 - The Beaumont children – Jane (9), Arnna (7) and Grant (4), all disappeared from an Adelaide, Australia beach on 26 January. |
| | 1970 - Sean Flynn, American photojournalist and son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita; believed captured by factions of Viet Cong and/or Khmer Rouge in 1970; believed killed 1971, Bei Met, Cambodia |
| | 1971 - D. B. Cooper – skyjacker, true identity unknown – Jumped from a hijacked Boeing 727 over the Pacific Northwest on November 21, 1971. |
| | 1972 - Roberto Clemente — Puerto Rican baseball player who died in a plane crash off the coast of Puerto Rico. Body was never found. |
| | 1975 - Jimmy Hoffa – president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. |
| | 1975 - Lyon Sisters – two pre-teen girls who disappeared on their way home from a neighborhood mall |
| | 1976 - Bradford Bishop – bludgeoned his spouse, three children and mother to death in 1976. He was indicted for the murders and is still at large as a fugitive from justice. |
| | 1978 - Eddie Aikau – famous Hawaiian surfer and life-guard. |
| | 1978 - John Brisker – former ABA and NBA player, disappeared after flying to Uganda. |
| | 1978 - Mel Lyman – cult leader – 1978. Claimed by cult members to have died 1978, but no body, death certificate, or other proof were ever produced. The date of death and burial place are unknown outside the "Lyman Family". |
| | 1978 - Frederick Valentich disappeared while flying across Bass Strait, in what has been claimed by some people as a UFO encounter. |
| | 1978 - Genette Tate - 13 year old girl who disappeared whilst doing a newpaper round in August 1978. |
| | 1979 - Etan Patz – schoolboy, disappeared while walking to New York City bus stop. |
| | 1979 - Louis Cafora- An armed robber from New York |
| | 1979 - Joanna Cafora- The wife of armed robber Louis Cafora |
| | 1979 - Ian Mackintosh - Scottish naval officer, novelist and screenwriter; disappeared with two companions in a light aircraft over the Gulf of Alaska. |
| | 1980 - Azaria Chamberlain, presumed to have been taken by a dingo near Uluru. Some clothing items were later recovered, but her remains have never been found |
| | 1982 - Paul Amrica – actor. After a failed attempt to reach Andy Warhol by telephone, he disappeared without a trace. |
| | 1982 - Johnny Gosch – Paperboy in Des Moines, Iowa, abducted while delivering papers. His image was one of the first national missing children notices to appear on milk cartons, and later the cover of Newsweek. |
| | 1983 - Emanuela Orlandi – a citizen of Vatican City. |
| | 1984 - Kevin Andrew Collins San Francisco youth |
| | 1985 - Andrew Fluegelman – programmer, considered the father of shareware business. |
| | 1986 - Suzy Lamplugh, a British estate agent who disappeared on 28 July 1986 in Fulham, West London. |
| | 1987 - Licoric McKechnie, a.k.a. 'Likky Lambert', singer-songwriter from the Incredible String Band, disappeared from L.A.. |
| | 1987 - Glen Stewart Godwin – escaped from Folsom Prison in California (in 1987) where he had been serving a 25-year-to-life sentence. He is presently number two on the list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. The FBI has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture. |
| | 1989 - Jacob Wetterling, kidnapped on October 22 in St Joseph, Minnesota, USA. Was never found. |
| | 1990 - Teddy Wang, Hong Kong billionaire kidnapped in April and never seen again. Declared presumed-dead and his estate was inherited by his wife Nina Wang. |
| | 1991 - Sarah MacDiarmid – young female, disappeared from Kananook station in Melbourne, Australia. |
| | 1991 - Ben Needham – 21 months old male, disappeared from the island of Kos in Greece, 24th of July. He has never been found. It was believed Ben was abducted and several suspects in Kos and Veria, Northern Greece were suggested as being responsible, no-one was ever charged with abduction. The British media claimed the Greek police did not handle the case correctly. |
| | 1991 - Michael Dunahee – (born May 12, 1986) is a missing child from Victoria, British Columbia who disappeared when he was five years old, presumed to be abducted, and has never been found. He disappeared from the playground at Blanshard Park Elementary School, also known as the Blanshard Street Playground, in Victoria, British Columbia on March 24, 1991. Michael was last seen around 12:30 P.M. playing at the school playground as his mother, Crystal Dunahee, was participating in a softball tournament and father was a spectator. Michael was abducted meters from his mom and dad. No witnesses to Michael's disappearance ever came forward. |
| | 1991 - Timothy Wiltsey was a 5 year old boy in Sayreville, NJ who was reported missing by his mother, Michelle Lodzinski, on May 25, 1991 from a local carnival. Timmy’s remains were discovered in a creek that runs through a remote, marshy area behind Raritan Center, a vast industrial park in Edison, NJ where Lodzinski once worked as a secretary. His murder has never been solved. |
| | 1994 - Michael Anthony Hughes has been missing since his abduction from Indian Meridian Elementary School in Choctaw, Oklahoma by Franklin Delano Floyd (who claimed to be his father) on September 12th of that year. Floyd has claimed that Hughes is still alive somewhere in the U.S., but has not disclosed his location. |
| | 1995 - Whitey Bulger – leader of the Winter Hill Gang organised crime group. Fled FBI prosecution in 1995, included in the Ten Most Wanted list. |
| | 1995 - Richey James Edwards – member of Welsh rock band the Manic Street Preachers. His car was found abandoned next to a bridge notorious for suicides. He was suffering from an array of mental health problems up to his disappearance, but was never considered suicidal. |
| | 1995 - Jodi Huisentruit – Early on the morning of June 27, 1995, KIMT news anchor Jodi Huisentruit was abducted outside her apartment while on her way to work. Huisentruit was never found and the case was never solved. |
| | 1996 - Kristen Denise Smart – a student at California Polytechnic State University who disappeared after leaving a party. |
| | 1998 - Tom and Eileen Lonergan – American couple stranded while SCUBA diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef due to a faulty head count. Left to fend for themselves in shark-infested waters. They are presumed to have perished. Alternate theories surrounding their disappearance include suicide, murder-suicide, or staging their disappearance. The film Open Water is based on their story. |
| | 1998 - Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, Patricia Partin, Kylie Lundahl and Amalia Marquez, known as Carlos Castaneda's witches, disappeared soon after Castaneda's death in April 1998. Patricia Partin's skeleton was identified in Feb. 2006. The rest remain missing. The people still at Castaneda's compound say that the women "are traveling." |
| | 1999 - Mikelle Biggs – child from Mesa, Arizona. |
| | 2000 - Bruno Manser – Swiss born activist who fervently campaigned for the preservation of rainforests in Sarawak. |
| | 2001 - Peter Falconio - A British man, thought to have been shot in Australian outback. Body never found. |
| | 2002 - Bison Dele – former NBA player, thought to have been murdered in the Pacific Ocean by his brother, body never found. |
| | 2003 - Ben Charles Padilla – a small-aircraft pilot and a jet-aircraft mechanic, disappeared on May 25, 2003 while in-flight aboard a Boeing 727 which took off from Luanda, Angola without permission. |
| | 2004 - Dominick Arduin – a French-born explorer in Finland. Disappeared while trying to reach the North Pole by skiing. |
| | 2004 - Tooker Gomberg – Canadian politician and activist. |
| | 2004 - Maura Murray – an American college student from Massachusetts, who disappeared after a one-car accident in New Hampshire |
| | 2004 - Staff Sergeant Keith Maupin – Captured by insurgents in Iraq on 16th April. |
| | 2005 - Natalee Holloway – U.S. teenager, disappeared in Aruba. |
| | 2005 - Ray Gricar – District Attorney in Pennsylvania, United States |
| | 2005 - Charles Rutherford Jr. – Attorney who disappeared with his girlfriend in Lake Huron, her body was later found. |
| | 2005 - Patrick McDermott – partner of Olivia Newton-John; disappeared on return from a fishing cruise off San Pedro |
| | 2006 - Actor Joe Pichler has been missing since January 5, 2006.[3] His car was found January 9, 2006 in Bremerton, WA, at the Manette Bridge adjacent to the Port Washington Narrows. Inside it was a note in which he said he was sorry that he hadn't been a better role model for his younger brother and asked that his belongings go to (then 17-year-old) A.J. However, he was not reported as officially missing by his family until 16 January. At or around that date, the aforementioned note from the car was reported as explicitly suggesting that Joe may have been suicidal. |
| | 2006 - Richard Lee McNair escaped from a federal maximum-security prison facility in April 2006 (located in Pollock, Louisiana) and is a fugitive from justice. His current location is unknown; McNair had been serving two life sentences for murder, attempted murder, and burglary.[4] |
| | 2006 - On 8 December 2006, 25 year-old Laura Gainey, daughter of Montreal Canadiens general manager Bob Gainey went missing when she was swept overboard while sailing in the North Atlantic. Gainey temporarily passed his GM duties on to assistant manager Pierre Gauthier while awaiting word on Laura. She was sailing on the barque Picton Castle, a sail-training ship based out of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada destined for Grenada. Gainey, a professional crew member with the rank of leading seaman, was swept off the boat during a storm around 9:30 p.m. and is presumed drowned. On 11 December, 2006 at 6pm EST the United States Coast Guard held a press conference in Portsmouth, Virginia to confirm that the search for Laura Gainey has been halted. |
| | 2007 - Jim Gray, a Microsoft research scientist, Turing Award winner and a database pioneer; went on a sailing ship and was presumed lost at sea on 28 January 2007. |
| | 2007 - Between 15 April and 18 April 2007, Derek Batten, and brothers Peter and James Tunstead were lost at sea off the coast of Queensland, northeast Australia. Their ship, the Kaz II, a 12-metre catamaran, was discovered unmanned near the outer Great Barrier Reef. See Ghost ship |
| | 2007 - Madeleine McCann, a four-year-old British girl, vanished from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on 3 May. As of July 2nd, the search continues and remains highly publicized. |
| | 2007 - Andrew McAuley, Australian adventurer who disappeared while attempting to be the first person to kayak across the Tasman Sea. |