11. Ambrose Bierce vanished in Mexico
Ambrose Bierce was an American reporter and writer, whose The Devil’s Dictionary has been called one of the greatest masterpieces of American literature (the first entry, Accuracy, is defined as “A certain uninteresting quality carefully excluded from human statements”). Bierce wrote in several genres, including realist fiction, a style in which he is recognized as one of the pioneers. His work in horror fiction has been ranked as equal to that of Edgar Allen Poe, and by the early 1900s he was considered one of the preeminent writers and journalists in the United States. Ernest Hemingway later cited Bierce as one of his influences when it came to covering war in both fiction and non-fiction. He also wrote poetry and fables. But it is for his Devil’s Dictionary that he is best remembered today, a work which is frequently cited by writers and speechwriters in the twenty-first century.
In the fall of 1913 the 71 year old Bierce, a veteran of the Civil War, toured several of the battlefields on which he served before heading to Mexico, where he attached himself to Pancho Villa’s band as a journalist and observer. In December Bierce was in Chihuahua, where his last known communication with the world was sent in the form of a letter to his friend Blanche Partington, a writer and journalist in San Francisco. He then vanished without a trace. US authorities conducted an investigation into his disappearance, which found nothing. There were rumors that he was executed by Mexican authorities as a revolutionary, and others that he was executed by Villa’s men, but the mystery of what happened to Ambrose Bierce and why has never been solved.