This Week In History News, August 6 – August 12

Published August 11, 2017
Updated February 27, 2024

Jack The Ripper Identified? Diary Containing Confessions Proven Authentic, New Research Claims

James Maybrick Jack The Ripper

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

For the last 120 years, his crimes have endured as some of the most grisly in the history of serial killing, and his identity has remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of its time.

But now, thanks to groundbreaking new research, Jack the Ripper’s identity may be a mystery no more.

Author Robert Smith is set to publish a new book, 25 Years of The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The True Facts, in which he claims to have verified the authenticity of a document containing one man’s confession to being Jack the Ripper.

Dig deeper here.

Jimmy Hoffa Mystery Finally Solved, Criminologist Claims

Jimmy Hoffa

Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesJimmy Hoffa at the Teamster’s Union Convention in Florida. October 1957.

The mystery of what happened to union leader Jimmy Hoffa has baffled the public ever since his disappearance from a Michigan parking lot 42 years ago.

Now, CBS Detroit reports that James Buccellato, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northern Arizona University, has a new theory that Hoffa was murdered at a home in Bloomfield Hills near where he disappeared on July 30, 1975.

See what may have happened next here.

The New Biggest Dinosaur Ever Has Been Found And It’s 10 Times Larger Than A T-Rex

Worlds Largest Dinosaur

G. Lio/PAPatagotitan Mayorum

Aureliano Hernandez — an Argentinian shepherd — saw a bone sticking out from under a rock in 2013.

Paleontologists were contacted, but Hernandez passed away before they had a chance to make it out to the farm where he worked.

Aureliano would never know, then, that his discovery was actually the thigh bone of the largest dinosaur ever uncovered.

Read more here.

Explorers Find 106-Year-Old Fruitcake Perfectly Preserved In Antarctica

Fruitcake

Antarctic Heritage TrustA century-old fruitcake

No one likes the person who brings a fruitcake to the Christmas party.

But what if it was a perfectly preserved 106-year-old fruitcake?

I can’t decide if it would make it better or worse, but conservationists from the Antarctic Heritage Trust now have that option.

See more here.

Museum With Replica Of Hitler’s Bunker Unveils New Exhibit On Nazis’ Rise To Power

Hitler Berlin Bunker

William Vandivert/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesFuhrer Adolf Hitler’s command center conference room partially burned out by SS troops and stripped of evidence by invading Russians, in bunker under the Reichschancellery after Hitler’s suicide.

For a long time after World War II, talking about Adolf Hitler was a sort of taboo in Germany.

People would pay tribute to the Holocaust’s six million Jewish victims, discuss the brutal concentration camps and analyze the war as a whole — but focusing singularly on the man at the epicenter of it all seemed almost like validation, and was astutely avoided.

But this has begun to change in recent years, notably with the recent recreation of a room in the bunker where the Nazi leader spent his final days as well as the first to-scale model of the place — commonly called the Führerbunker — in its entirety.

The set accompanies a new Berlin exhibit that strays away from the classic “What happened?” and tries to investigate the “Why?”

Read on here.

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All That's Interesting
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Established in 2010, All That's Interesting brings together a dedicated staff of digital publishing veterans and subject-level experts in history, true crime, and science. From the lesser-known byways of human history to the uncharted corners of the world, we seek out stories that bring our past, present, and future to life. Privately-owned since its founding, All That's Interesting maintains a commitment to unbiased reporting while taking great care in fact-checking and research to ensure that we meet the highest standards of accuracy.
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John Kuroski
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John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.