Dear Professor,
In keeping with your advice that "a gentleman does the things he must do before the things he would do", I've finished the research project you sent me; the sheaf of papers beneath this note is it. I hope the information I found will come in handy on our next case. If needed, you will find me in the park feeding the ducks.

Yours sincerely,
Luke.

Great Mysteries of the World - by Luke
Since the start of time, the world has known many mysteries and unexplained phenomena. Through the years some have been worked out like puzzles, explained away, or exposed as hoaxes, yet still some remain unsolved.

The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and until the 19th Century the tallest man-made structure in the world, the Great Pyramid is thought to have been originally built as a burial chamber for a Pharaoh called Khufu. The entire structure is evidence that the ancient Egyptians had an understanding of extremely complex mathematical concepts but the real puzzle is how the Pyramid was actually built. How did the ancient Egyptians plan and assemble such a large structure (without cement) so precisely that you can’t even fit a piece of paper between the stones of the inner chambers? A Greek historian once guessed that it would have taken around 2.3 million blocks of stone and 100,000 slaves to build it but we're still stumped about how they did it.
STATUS: STILL HAVEN'T A CLUE

The Loch Ness Monster
A mythical creature reputed to live in Loch Ness in Scotland. While Loch Ness may not be the biggest Loch by surface area, it is the biggest by volume due to its depth – apparently giving plenty of space for a monster to hide in. The monster has been spotted countless times, with sightings dating back to the 7th Century, and despite the fact that a lot of photographs, video footage and sonar readings have been collected they have never been clear enough to prove anything definitive. It is unknown what the monster might be but popular opinion leans toward the idea it may be some kind of dinosaur that survived the ice age and is living in seclusion today.
STATUS: MYSTERY REMAINS IN MUDDY WATERS

The Cottingley Fairies
Five photographs taken in 1917 and 1920 by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths (young cousins who lived near the town of Cottingley) show the girls posed near a tiny gnomish man or little ladies with wings. When asked, the girls said they were friendly with the fairies. Open debate was held in the press of the time and opinion was divided, but many people (including the famous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) accepted the photographs to be genuine proof of the existence of fairies.
STATUS: SOLVED. As grown ups, the girls owned up, admitting that the photographs were fake and the fairies were simply paper cut-outs held up by hat pins! It also emerged that the fairies were very similar to drawings from a children’s book published in 1914. Looking at the photographs and facts though, this one was almost too easy!

Nazca Lines
Discovered when airlines began to cross the Peruvian Desert in the 1920's, the Nazca lines are 'geoglyphs': enormous pictures and shapes drawn on the surface of the Earth. The lines were made between 200BC and 600AD (a very long time ago) and spread over 400 square miles of desert - which must have been an awful lot of work. The most confusing thing about them is that they can only be seen from the air, so how did the ancient peoples draw such gigantic pictures and miles of perfectly straight lines properly without being able to look at them? Not even today's boffins know that - or why the lines are there in the first place!
STATUS: STILL STUMPED

Pandora's Box
The ancient Greek legends tell of a lady called Pandora, the first woman ever made by the gods, who among other things was given a box by the great god Zeus and told that she should never open it. However, the gods also gave Pandora the gift of curiosity so she opened the box anyway. Inside the box were terrible things (diseases, evil and work) that were unleashed upon the world, but at the very bottom of Pandora's Box, beneath all of the suffering, was Hope. Though perhaps not the exact box of the legend, a dangerous artifact called the Elysian Box is often referred to as Pandora’s Box. Still in existence today (though its whereabouts are unknown) legend has it that any who open the box will meet with a sudden and untimely death.
STATUS: AS YET UNSOLVED.

Professor Layton and Pandora's Box is out now for the Nintendo DS.