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The curious cases and unsolved mysteries that perplexed us in 2016.

From the Tromp family’s bizarre road trip to the Bangladeshi boy who looks like an old man — the mysterious news stories of 2016 prove truth can be stranger than fiction.

Here are some of the most baffling tales.

The Tromp family

In August this year, Mark and Jacoba Tromp and their adult children Ella, Riana and Mitchell left their home in Silvan, east of Melbourne, taking cash but leaving behind bank cards and mobile phones.

Police found the house unlocked, with paperwork everywhere.

As they drove towards NSW, Mitchell’s phone was thrown out the car window.

One day later he left the family trip at Bathurst, describing his parents as scared, paranoid and worried they were being followed.

The two girls left their parents at Goulburn, where Riana was hospitalised with stress-related issues.

The family’s car was later pulled over in Wangaratta, after police received a report it was following another car, and a man, believed to be Mark, ran away into a nearby park.

Meanwhile, Mitchell and Ella had made their way back to Victoria to find police at their home.

Their mother Jacoba was found the next day in Yass — where she too was assessed for stress-related concerns.

The search for the family came to an end when Mark was found on a street near Wangaratta airport in “good health”.

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Ella and Mitchell spoke to the media, saying their disappearance was “hard to explain” and referred to the situation as a “family matter”.

At the time, one police officer described it as “the most bizarre case in 30 years”.

The case, which made headlines around the world, remains a mystery, but theories have included drugs, financial troubles, mental illness and “shared delusions”.

Mysterious kangaroo deaths

Hundreds of kangaroos were found dead in far west New South Wales this year from what was described as a “mystery disease”.

Despite there being good feed and plenty of water around, something undetectable was knocking the roos off.

There were sightings of between 5-50 dead kangaroos at a time.

Former NSW Department of Primary Industry veterinarian Greg Curran suggested those figures indicated there were between 100-500 dead in any particular area.

“All the work we’ve done says it’s not a plant poisoning and it’s certainly not starvation,” he said.

“It’s possible it’s an infectious disease process, but so far we haven’t been able to pinpoint that.”

Earthquake lights in NZ

When a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near Christchurch in November, videos emerged that appeared to show the New Zealand sky lighting up in blue and green.

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People who said they witnessed the sky light up said it occurred at the peak of the earthquake.

“The lights happened right on the peak of the shaking … [and were] of colours mainly green and blue and white, but a bit of yellow and other colour was there too [sic],” said the uploader of one video, Zachary Bell.

Reports of lights occurring during earthquakes date back thousands of years, with similar accounts also emerging after the Christchurch earthquake in 2011.

A paper published in science journal Seismological Research Letters hypothesised that the phenomenon was a result of positive charge generated along stress gradients that “accumulate at the surface”.

High-density accumulations of charged atoms are thought to ionise pockets of air which form light-emitting plasma.

Bangladeshi boy who looks like an old man

This year it was reported that doctors were at a loss to explain the mysterious illness making a four-year-old Bangladeshi boy look like an old man.

Doctors at a top hospital in the capital Dhaka agreed to try to diagnose and treat Bayezid Shikdar for free after learning of his plight.

Bayezid was born with excess skin hanging from his limbs and face, and also suffers from related heart, vision and hearing problems.

Doctors initially suspected he suffered from progeria, which causes rapid and premature ageing shortly after birth.

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The symptoms are similar to those suffered by Hollywood actor Brad Pitt’s character in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

One of America’s most baffling crimes

The FBI announced this year that one of America’s most baffling crimes — that of hijacker Dan “DB Cooper” who jumped out of a plane with a parachute and ransom money 45 years ago — looks set to remain an enigma.

During the flight, DB Cooper gave a flight attendant a note indicating he had a bomb in his briefcase.

Cooper gave the flight attendant a glimpse of wires and red-coloured sticks inside his case, the FBI said.

He asked her to write a note and take it to the plane’s captain, demanding parachutes and $US200,000.

Once the plan had landed in Seattle, he exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for the money and parachutes.

With several crew members still on board, he ordered the plane to fly to Mexico City.

But somewhere along the way, he jumped from the back of the plane with a parachute and the money.

Nothing was heard from him ever again.

The FBI said after one of the longest and most exhaustive probes in its history, it would no longer actively investigate the case.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.


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