For 25 years, cosmic gamma ray bursts (GRBs) have been one of the great mysteries of modern astronomy. GRBs have given us several clues as to what they might be. GRBs were seen to occur frequently and appeared to be spread evenly over the sky. Their distribution on the sky indicated that they were the result of events happening either very close or very far (in other galaxies). The events were not, for example, seen to be concentrated in the plane of our Galaxy.
