I solved the century-old mystery of a shipwreck survivor

He was picked up by a lifeboat. There is no mystery; he had made clear himself multiple times that this is how he was rescued.

Yeah I mean it was an ok article, and I understand we're all trying to make a living, but it could be summarized in one sentence. "The reporters made up a story and he couldn't convince them to report the truth: that he had been picked up in a lifeboat." Because yes the mystery is solved by knowing he was in a lifeboat, but it's also critical to determine how the falsehood originated.

Both are clickbait both false, "man swims 6k to shore" versus "I solved the mystery".

The point of the article is not to solve deep problems but to entertain. It did that. If it were one sentence long it would not be entertaining.

This story is not about some dude in a lifeboat.

This story is about how stories, themselves, do not always get told accurately.

For me the most interesting aspect is that the original newspaper reporter altered the facts, and then some decades later, another researcher dug deeper and got the facts straight, long after the incident.

Contextually - in light of recent insanity regarding state sanctioned mass murder - this is quite relevant to those of us observing the state of information warfare.