Tamam Shud case

The Tamam Shud case, also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, on Somerton beach, Glenelg, just south of Adelaide, South Australia.The Advertiser, "Tamam Shud", 10 June 1949, p. 2

It is named after the Persian phrase tamám shud, meaning "ended" or "finished", printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. 

The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám. Tamam was misspelt as Taman in many early reports and this error.While the words that end The Rubaiyat are "Tamám Shud" (), it has often been referred to as "Taman Shud" in the media, because of a spelling error in early newspaper coverage or police reports which has persisted. In Persian,  tamám is a noun that means "the end" and  shud is an auxiliary verb indicating past tense, so tamam shud means "ended" or "finished".

Jessica Thomson living in nearby Glenelg was questioned in connection with the case, her phone number was found in the book.The Advertiser, "Police Test Book For Somerton Body Clue", 26 July 1949, p. 3 Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to a boy with the same rare ear trait as the unidentified man.Stateline South Australia, "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 27 March 2009. . Retrieved 27 April 2009.

On 26 July 2022, a professor Derek Abbott with genealogist Colleen M. Fitzpatrick, claimed to have identified the man as Carl "Charles" Webb, born in 1905, based on  DNA of the man's hair. South Australia Police and Forensic Science South Australia have not verified the result, but said they were "cautiously optimistic" about it.
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References

Category:1948
Category:1940s in Australia
Category:Unexplained deaths