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The Cottingley Fairies

Cottingley, West Yorkshire

Two girls, a camera and the fairy photos that fooled Sherlock Holmes's creator.

In 1917 two young cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, took photographs of themselves with fairies by the beck at Cottingley. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, believed they were real and wrote about them.

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When
1917
Where
53.8250, -1.8160
Group
Unexplained

Visiting

Cottingley Beck is near Bingley. The cameras and photos are kept at the Science and Media Museum, Bradford.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Artifacts and Civilizations by Cale Mills
Read the full story in the book

The Ledger of Lost Artifacts and Civilizations

Not every mystery needs a lost continent. This book investigates fifty-nine real and often overlooked puzzles from the ancient and modern world: a temple older than farming itself, astonishing structures, out-of-place artifacts, and technologies lost to time. Each case is weighed honestly, with a clear ledger of the case for and against, so you can make up your own mind. Some cases collapse under scrutiny. Others remain genuinely unexplained. All of them are stranger than Atlantis.

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