In this ever fast moving world, somethings or some events are just too hard to be explained by its unknown causes, here you will find some of the bizzare cases which are unsolved.
Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is a term encompassing reported cases of the combustion of a living (or very recently deceased) human body without an apparent external source of ignition. In addition to reported cases, examples of SHC appear in literature, and both types have been observed to share common characteristics regarding circumstances and remains of the victim.
Forensic investigations have attempted to analyze reported instances of SHC and have resulted in hypotheses regarding potential causes and mechanisms, including victim behavior and habits, alcohol consumption and proximity to potential sources of ignition, as well as the behavior of fires that consume melted fats. Natural explanations, as well as unverified natural phenomena, have been proposed to explain reports of SHC.
Spontaneous human combustion" refers to the death from a fire originating without an apparent external source of ignition; the fire is believed to start within the body of the victim. This idea and the term 'spontaneous human combustion' were first both proposed in 1746 by Paul Rolli in an article published in the Philosophical Transactions.[1] Writing in the British Medical Journal, coroner Gavin Thurston describes the phenomenon as having "attracted the attention not only of the medical profession but of the laity" as early as 1834 (more than one hundred years prior to Thurston's 1938 article).[2] In his 1995 book Ablaze!, Larry E. Arnold wrote that there had been about 200 cited reports of spontaneous human combustion worldwide over a period of around 300 years.The topic received coverage in the British Medical Journal in 1938. An article by L. A. Parry cited an 1823-published book Medical Jurisprudence, which stated that commonalities among recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion included the following characteristics:
the recorded cases have these things in common:
the victims are chronic alcoholics;
they are usually elderly females;
the body has not burned spontaneously, but some lighted substance has come into contact with it;
the hands and feet usually fall off;
the fire has caused very little damage to combustible things in contact with the body;
the combustion of the body has left a residue of greasy and fetid ashes, very offensive in odour."
Alcoholism is a common theme in early SHC literary references, in part because some Victorian era physicians and writers believed spontaneous human combustion was the result of alcoholism
Some hypotheses attempt to explain how SHC might occur without an external flame source, while other hypotheses suggest incidents that might appear as spontaneouscombustion actually had an external source of ignition – and that the likelihood of spontaneous human combustion without an external ignition source is quite low. Benjamin Radford, science writer and deputy editor of the science magazine Skeptical Inquirer, casts doubt on the plausibility of spontaneous human combustion, "If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion [The world's population reached 5 billion in 1987] people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks." Paranormal researcher Brian Dunning states that SHC stories "are simply the rare cases where a natural death in isolation has been followed by a slow combustion from some nearby source of ignition." He further suggested that reports of people suddenly aflame should be called "Unsolved deaths by fire", stating that an unknown cause did not necessarily imply that the fire lacked an external ignition source.
In 1981, author and publisher Byron Preiss traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that, once found, could be redeemed for one of 12 birthstone jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York.
The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America in 1982. It contained 12 paintings and 12 verses. The key to finding the casques Preiss had buried and subsequently winning the jewels was to match one of the paintings to one of verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging!
Solved: Chicago (1984) and Cleveland (2004)
Since the publication of the book over thirty years ago, only two of the 12 casques have been found. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago in 1984 by a group of students. See the original image (image 5) and the corresponding verse (verse 12). An annotated image and walk-through of the riddle can be found here.
The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Image 4 linked with verse 4, which in turn lead to the discovery of a casque in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. See an annoted version of the image and verse explanation here.
The Remaining Images
As none of these are solved, these are just theories
Image 1 is assumed to be linked with verse 7 and refers to San Francisco. Possible part solution here.
Image 2 is perhaps linked with verse 5 or verse 6 and is about Charleston (South Carolina).
Image 3 is assumed to be linked with verse 11 and is about Roanoke Island.
Image 6 is frequently linked with verse 9 and is assumed to be St. Augustine.
Image 8 is linked with verse 1 and is probably situated in Houston.
Image 9 has no verse links yet but is likely to be either Montreal or St. Louis. Possible part solution here.
Image 10 is linked with verse 8 and is likely to be in Milwaukee. Possible part solution here.
Image 11 is assumed to be teamed with verse 3 and is maybe Boston. Discussion on it here.
Image 12 is often linked with verse 6 or verse 10 and is assumed to be New York. Possible part solution here.
Sadly, Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005. This means that the keys will no longer be exchanged for jewels but the hunt for the ten remaining buried casques continues. I really want them to be found!
The Terracotta Army or the "Terracotta Warriors and Horses" is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.
The figures, dating from approximately the late third century BCE, were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong District,Xi'an, Shaanxi province. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Estimates from 2007 were that the three pits containing the Terracotta Army held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remained buried in the pits nearby Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum.[2] Other terracotta non-military figures were found in other pits, including officials, acrobats, strongmen and musicians.
The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 to the east of Xi'an in Shaanxi province by farmers digging a water well approximately 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) east of the Qin Emperor's tomb mound at Mount Li (Lishan), a region riddled with underground springs and watercourses. For centuries, occasional reports mentioned pieces of terracotta figures and fragments of the Qin necropolis – roofing tiles, bricks and chunks of masonry.[6] This discovery prompted Chinese archaeologists to investigate, revealing the largest pottery figurine group ever found in China
Since 2006, an international team of researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have been using analytical chemistry techniques to uncover more details about the production techniques employed in the creation of the Terracotta Army. Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry of 40,000 bronze arrowheads bundled in groups of 100, the researchers reported that the arrowheads within a single bundle formed a relatively tight cluster that was different from other bundles. In addition, the presence or absence of metal impurities was consistent within bundles. Based on the arrows’ chemical compositions, the researchers concluded that a cellular manufacturing system similar to the one used in a modern Toyota factory, as opposed to a continuous assembly line in the early days of automobile industry, was employed.
Grinding and polishing marks visible under a scanning electron microscope provide evidence for the earliest industrial use of lathes for polishing. Documentary video
The Baigong Pipes are a series of pipe-like features found on and near Mount Baigong, about 40 km southwest of the city of Delingha, in the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China.Some of the Baigong Pipes are reported to be associated with three caves in Mount Baigong. These caves are reported to occur within the front face of Mount Baigong. The mouths of the two smaller caves have collapsed. Only the largest cave, which is 6 meters (18 feet) high, can be entered. The vague resemblance of the top of Mount Baigong to a pyramid has been the focus of much fringe speculation.Two Baigong Pipes have been reported from the largest cave. One of these is described as being 40 cm (16 in) in diameter and preserved as a reddish-brown "half-pipe". Within the same cave, another pipe-like feature of similar diameter was also found. "Dozens" of upright pipe-like features, about 10 to 40 cm (4 to 16 inches) in diameter, were also found protruding from Mount Baigong above the largest cave.
Additional Baigong Pipes were found on shore and within Toson Lake, which lies 80 meters (260 feet) from the mouth of the largest cave. On the beach of Lake Toson, about 40 meters (130 feet) from the mouth of the largest cave, apparently flat-lying, hollow, pipe-like features were found. These reddish-brown pipe-like features range in diameter from 2 to 4.5 cm (0.8 to 1.8 inch) and have an east-west orientation. Another group of pipe-like features, presumably vertical, either protrude from or lie just below the surface of the lake.
Associated with these pipe-like features are "rusty scraps" and "strangely shaped stones". Analysis of the "rusty scraps" by Liu Shaolin at a "local smeltery" reportedly found that they consist of 30 percent ferric oxide and large amounts of silicon dioxide and calcium oxide. Because any metallurgical analysis reports the composition of a material analyzed, not in terms of the actual minerals comprising it, but only in terms of percentages of the oxides of the specific elements present, the calcium present in the "pipes" could have been in the form of calcite, a mineral that naturally forms concretions.
According to news stories, the pipes were first discovered by a group of scientists from the United States who were seeking dinosaur fossils. The scientists are said to have reported the pipes to local authorities in Delingha. However, the pipes did not attract attention until a report, possibly one of six made by Ye Zhou, appeared in the "Henan Dahe Bao" in June 2002. Quin Jianwen, a local official, discussed the pipe-like features with journalists of the Xinhua News Agency on June 16, 2002. The local government now promotes the pipe-like features as a tourist attraction, with road signs and tourist guides.According to an 2003 article in the Xinmin Weekly, Chinese scientists using atomic emission spectroscopy found the Baigong Pipes to contain organic matter of plant origin. In addition, the news article also stated that tree rings were found in sections of these rock formations and, as a result, they were judged to be fossil trees or tree roots. However, like many other aspects of the Baigong Pipes, this news report remains unsupported by either any scientific publication or other reliable primary or secondary source that discusses and documents these findings in any detail.
The state run newspaper People's Daily reported on a 2007 investigation where a research fellow from the Chinese Earthquake Administration reported they had found some of the pipes to be highly radioactive. Documentary video
Hinterkaifeck, a small farmstead situated between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen (approximately 70 km north of Munich), was the scene of one of the most bizarre and puzzling crimes in German history. On the evening of March 31, 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a mattock. The murder remains unsolved to this day.
The six victims were the farmer Andreas Gruber and his wife Cäzilia their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel and her two children, Cäzilia and Josef and the maid Maria Baumgartner Hinterkaifeck was never an official place name. The name was used for the remote farmstead of the hamlet of Kaifeck, located nearly 1 kilometre north of the main part (another two farmsteads) of Kaifeck and hidden in the woods (the prefix Hinter, part of many German place names, meaning behind), part of the town of Wangen, which was incorporated into Waidhofen on October 1, 1971.
A few days prior to the crime, farmer Andreas Gruber told neighbors about discovering footprints in the snow leading from the edge of the forest to the farm, but none leading back. He also spoke about hearing footsteps in the attic and finding an unfamiliar newspaper on the farm. Furthermore, the house keys went missing several days before the murders, but none of this was reported to the police.
Six months earlier, the previous maid had left the farm, claiming that it was haunted; the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, arrived on the farm on 31 March, only to die a few hours later.
Exactly what happened on that Friday evening cannot be said for certain. It is believed that the older couple, as well as their daughter Viktoria and her daughter Cäzilia, were all lured into the barn one by one, where they were killed. The perpetrator(s) then went into the house where they killed two-year-old Josef, who was sleeping in his cot in his mother's bedroom, as well as the maid, Maria Baumgartner, in her bedchamber.On the following Tuesday, 4 April, some neighbors went to the farmstead because none of the inhabitants had been seen for several days, which was rather unusual. The postman had noticed that the post from the previous Saturday was still where he had left it. Furthermore, young Cäzilia had not turned up for school on Monday, nor had she been there on Saturday.
Inspector Georg Reingruber and his colleagues from the Munich Police Department made immense efforts investigating the killings. More than 100 suspects have been questioned through the years, but to no avail. The most recent questioning took place in 1986, fruitlessly. In 2007 the students of the Polizeifachhochschule (Police Academy) in Fürstenfeldbruck got the task of investigating the case once more with modern techniques of criminal investigation. They came to the conclusion that it is impossible to completely solve the crime after that much time had passed. There is a lack of evidence because the investigation methods then were rather primitive. In addition, evidence has been lost and the suspects have since died. Nevertheless, the students were able to identify one person as the main suspect. They do not directly name that person in the report, however, out of respect for still-living relatives.
To this day, many hobby investigators continue to investigate the case.The police first suspected the motive to be robbery, and interrogated several inhabitants from the surrounding villages, as well as travelling craftsmen and vagrants. The robbery theory was, however, abandoned when a large amount of money was found in the house. It is believed that the perpetrator(s) remained at the farm for several days – someone had fed the cattle, and eaten food in the kitchen: the neighbours had also seen smoke from the chimney during the weekend – and anyone looking for money would have found it.The death of Karl Gabriel, Viktoria's husband who had been reported killed in the French trenches in 1914, was called into question. His body had never been found. Despite this, most of his fellow soldiers reported seeing him die and their reports were believed by police.The following day, on 5 April, court physician Dr. Johann Baptist Aumüller performed the autopsies in the barn. It was established that a pickaxe was the most likely murder weapon. The corpses were beheaded, and the skulls sent to Munich, where clairvoyants examined themwithout result. The autopsy also showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault. Lying in the straw, next to the bodies of her grandparents and her mother, she had torn her hair out in tufts.
Real Name:Maurice Antonio, Martha Lee, Louis Erico, Jennie Irene and Betty Dolly Sodder
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Fayetteville, West Virginia
Date: Christmas Eve, 1945
On Christmas Eve, 1945, the Sodder family home burned down. The cause was traced to defective wiring despite the fact that Christmas tree lights were still on after the fire started. The oldest two sons and daughter and the youngest daughter survived, but the five middle children were missing and no trace of their remains were found. Believing that the fire was a cover for the abduction of their children, George and Jennie Sodder spent a fortune on detectives to investigate.
Several pieces of evidence and eyewitnesses backed up George's kidnapping belief. In 1968, a photo was mailed to the surviving family; on the back was the message: “Louis Sodder, I love brother, Frankie. Ilil boys A90132 (or 90135)” Detective C.C. Tinsley was hired to investigate the photo and where it came from, but he vanished and was never seen again.
A billboard describing the family mystery was erected near the site of their house. Local law enforcement did not do any investigation into the children’s whereabouts. The coroner's report declared them legally dead.
George Sodder eventually died in 1969; Jennie in 1988. The billboard now no longer stands.
Suspects: None known, but speculation suggests the kids were abducted by an illegal child-selling agency similar to Georgia Tann's with help from the local police. Two months before the fire, the Sodders had an argument with another Fayetteville resident who tried to sell them life insurance. He warned that their house would burn and the children would vanish. He was also a member of the coroner’s jury which ruled the fire accidental. Other amateur sleuths point out that Mr. Sodder owned a coal trucking business. The coal industry was under constant pressure from the Mafia, which may have been involved in the children's disappearance. "90132" was a postal code for Palermo, Sicily at the time. The Sodders themselves were of Italian descent; the original name was Soddu.
‘One of the most CONVINCING SUPERNATURAL CASES Of all time’
– Richard Felix, Most Haunted.
Over the last several years, one small tomb in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Cemetery has become famous as the lair of a malevolent paranormal entity. The tomb is known as the ‘Black Mausoleum’ and is located behind the high walls and locked gates of an area known as the Covenanter’s Prison.
The entity has been named ‘The Mackenzie Poltergeist’.
I will readily admit to having a soft spot for Mackenzie. I’ve already written a book about it called The Ghost that Haunted Itself and I used to live in a house in the graveyard, right across from the Covenanter’s Prison. Not that I’m weird or anything like that – the rent was cheap. I even started City of the Dead Tours to explore the entity.
Sounds obsessive but, honestly, it isn’t. Most authors who write about a famous supernatural case (should they be crazy enough) are unfamiliar with the location, the people involved and the more intimate details of the situation. Here I was living a few feet away from a paranormal case that was attracting massive media attention. It was too good an opportunity to turn down. Not long after the initial sightings of the Mackenzie Poltergeist, the Covenanter’s Prison was locked by City of Edinburgh Council. I obtained permission to set up tours that would unlock and enter the site, to see if anything unexplained happened. It also gave me access to every witness to any paranormal phenomena.
If something unexplained happened to a visitor in the Covenanter’s Prison, the City of the Dead guide would take their name, address and statement. We even developed a control experiment. While telling people about the entity, the guides would include a false piece of information about typical supernatural occurrences. If this detail cropped up in a witness statement, we concluded that this particular onlooker was trying a little too hard and disregarded it. In short I had the perfect set up to study an alleged paranormal location as well as the poltergeist it contained. Some of my more superstitious friends think I have paid a high price for that.
The Black Mausoleum seems to differ from Edinburgh’s other haunted locations for two reasons. One is the frequency of the poltergeist sightings. The other is the severity of the incidents. The period between the first recorded sightings in 1999 and the present, have seen hundreds of documented ‘attacks’ in the Black Mausoleum and Covenanters Prison. Of these attacks, an astonishing 140 have caused the witness to collapse. I now have 75 pages of eyewitness accounts, and there are probably many more people who encountered the poltergeist but didn’t write to me with their stories.
Over the years, there have been numerous reports of hot spots, cold spots and cuts, bruises and burns on witnesses’ bodies – often under their clothes. Photographs have been taken of these marks as well as many pictures of an unidentified shape in the tomb. There have been sightings of a white figure, unexplained smells, and auditory anomalies – including knocking noises under the ground and inside the tomb itself. Dead animals are found, unmarked, in front of the Black Mausoleum. People have complained that an unseen apparition has pulled their hair, grabbed their legs and arms and hit them. One or two have even claimed to be possessed. The area has been exorcised twice – both times unsuccessfully.
Poltergeist activity has been reported in four different houses around the graveyard and a large fire broke out in the residences behind George Mackenzie’s tomb in 2002.
Then, in October 2003, a fire swept though my house and the tour company offices – both overlooking the graveyard. It destroyed years worth of letters, photographs, records and statements concerning the Mackenzie Poltergeist, as well as every possession I had in the world. None of the surrounding properties were damaged and an official cause for the fire was never established. Fortunately I had saved most of the sightings and eyewitness accounts on a computer in another building – about the only thing that did survive. I’ll not be outsmarted by something that hangs around in a tomb.
Mind you, I live somewhere else now.
I don’t know what the Mackenzie Poltergeist really is. I don’t know if it’s a supernatural entity, a pheromone cloud, a demon or a set of psychosomatic and hysterical reactions. All have been suggested. But I know it has become the best documented supernatural case of all time and probably the most conclusive.
Let me put it this way – if the Mackenzie Poltergeist isn’t a genuine supernatural entity then I don’t think there’s any such thing. Not anywhere in the world.
On November 17, 1986, the Japanese crew of a JAL Boeing 747 cargo freighter witnessed three unidentified objects after sunset, while flying over eastern Alaska, USA. The objects seemed to prefer the cover of darkness to their left, and to avoid the brighter skies to their right. At least the first two of the objects were observed by all three crew members: Captain Kenju Terauchi, an ex-fighter pilot with more than 10,000 hours flight experience, in the cockpit's left-hand seat; co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji in the right-hand seat; and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba.
The routine cargo flight entered Alaska on auto-pilot, cruising at 565 mph (909 km/h) at an altitude of 35,000 ft (11,000 m).[5] At 5:09 PM, the Anchorage ATC advised a new heading towards Talkeetna, Alaska.
As soon as JAL 1628 straightened out of its turn, at 05:11 PM, Captain Terauchi noticed two craft to his far left, and some 2,000 ft (610 m) below his altitude, which he assumed to be military aircraft. These were pacing his flight path and speed. At 5:18 or 5:19 PM the two objects abruptly veered to a position about 500 ft (150 m) or 1,000 ft (300 m) in front of the aircraft, assuming a stacked configuration.
In doing so they activated "a kind of reverse thrust, and [their] lights became dazzlingly bright".To match the speed of the aircraft from their sideways approach, the objects displayed what Terauchi described as a disregard for inertia: "The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it [appeared to be] standing still. The next instant it changed course. ... In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity." The "reverse thrust" caused a bright flare for 3 to 7 seconds, to the extent that captain Terauchi could feel the warmth of their glows.
Air traffic control was notified at this point (i.e. 5:19:15 PM), who could not confirm any traffic in the indicated position. After 3 to 5 minutes the objects assumed a side-to-side configuration, which they maintained for another 10 minutes. They accompanied the aircraft with an undulating motion, and some back and forth rotation of the jet nozzles, which seemed to be under automatic control, causing them to flare with brighter or duller luminosity.Each object had a square shape, consisting of two rectangular arrays of what appeared to be glowing nozzles or thrusters, separated by a dark central section. Captain Terauchi speculated in his drawings, that the objects would appear cylindrical if viewed from another angle, and that the observed movement of the nozzles could be ascribed to the cylinders' rotation. The objects left abruptly at about 5:23:13 PM, moving to a point below the horizon to the east.
Where the first objects disappeared, Captain Terauchi now noticed a pale band of light that mirrored their altitude, speed and direction. Setting their onboard radar scope to a 25 nautical miles (46 km) range, he confirmed an object in the expected 10 o'clock direction at about 7.5 nmi (13.9 km) distance, and informed ATC of its presence. Anchorage found nothing on their radar, but Elmendorf ROCC, directly in his flight path, reported a "surge primary return" after some minutes.
As the city lights of Fairbanks began to illuminate the object, captain Terauchi believed to perceive the outline of a gigantic spaceship on his port side that was "twice the size of an aircraft carrier". It was however outside first officer Tamefuji's field of view. Terauchi immediately requested a change of course to avoid it. The object however followed him "in formation", or in the same relative position throughout the 45 degree turn, a descent from 35,000 to 31,000 ft, and a 360 degree turn. The short-range radar at Fairbanks airport however failed to register the object.
Anchorage ATC offered military intervention, which was declined by the pilot, due to his knowledge of the Mantell incident. The object was not noted by any of two planes which approached JAL 1628 to confirm its presence, by which time JAL 1628 had also lost sight of it. JAL 1628 arrived safely in Anchorage at 18:20.Captain Terauchi cited in the official Federal Aviation Administration report that the object was a UFO. In December 1986, Terauchi gave an interview to two Kyodo News journalists. JAL soon grounded him for talking to the press, and moved him to a desk job. He was only reinstated as a pilot years afterwards, and retired eventually in north Kanto, Japan.
Kyodo News contacted Paul Steucke, the FAA public information officer in Anchorage on December 24, and received confirmation of the incident, followed by UPI on the 29th. The FAA's Alaskan Region consulted John Callahan, the FAA Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations branch, as they wanted to know what to tell the media about the UFO. John Callahan was unaware of any such incident, considering it a likely early flight of a stealth bomber, then in development. He asked the Alaskan Region to forward the relevant data to their technical center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he and his superior played back the radar data and tied it in with the voice tapes by videotaping the concurrent playbacks.
A day later at FAA headquarters they briefed Vice Admiral Donald D. Engen, who watched the whole video of over half an hour, and asked them not to talk to anybody until they were given the OK, and to prepare an encompassing presentation of the data for a group of government officials the next day. The meeting was attended by representatives of the FBI, CIA and President Reagan’s Scientific Study Team, among others. Upon completion of the presentation, all present were told that the incident was secret and that their meeting "never took place". According to Callahan, the officials considered the data to represent the first instance of recorded radar data on a UFO, and they took possession of all the presented data. John Callahan however managed to retain the original video, the pilot's report and the FAA's first report in his office. The forgotten target print-outs of the computer data were also rediscovered, from which all targets can be reproduced that were in the sky at the time.
After a three-month investigation, the FAA formally released their results at a press conference held on March 5, 1987. Here Paul Steucke retracted earlier FAA suggestions that their controllers confirmed a UFO, and ascribed it to a "split radar image" which appeared with unfortunate timing. He clarified that "the FAA [did] not have enough material to confirm that something was there", and though they were "accepting the descriptions by the crew" they were "unable to support what they saw".The McGrath incident was revealed here amongst the ample set of documents supplied to the journalists.
The sighting received special attention from the media, as a supposed instance of the tracking of UFOs on both ground and airborne radar, while being observed by experienced airline pilots, with subsequent confirmation by an FAA Division Chief.
December 20, 1980. On bitterly cold morning in Lengby, Minnesota, a man opened his back door to find his 19-year-old neighbor, Jean Hilliard, laying in the snow. She was literally frozen solid.
The night before, Jean’s car had ran off the road and gotten stuck. Jean was trying desperately to reach her neighbor’s house. The temperature was twenty-five degrees below zero.
At the small local hospital, Dorothy Killian of the nursing staff was stunned:
“She was so cold, it was like reaching into a freezer, like picking out a frozen stick of wood. Her face was absolutely white. Just this ashen, death look. We did hook her up to the monitor, and we got this agonal rhythm-- like one beat. It was just like one and nothing. Then two. We knew that we had something, but that's a death rhythm.”
Dr. Ryan Kelly was called in:
“She was severely frostbitten. None of her limbs would bend or move. And, really, things looked very grim. When a person gets frostbite, what we're basically talking about is freezing of the limbs. That actually means ice crystals forming in the cells, and in so doing, they destroy many of the cells of the body. After the hands and feet maybe start the initial stages of frostbite and the core temperature of the body drops, the heart, the lungs, the internal organs of the abdomen, the brain, when those start to cool, it becomes more and more difficult for them to perform their functions, until finally they stop. At that point, the patient would more than likely die.”
The hospital staff was doing everything it could. But Rosie Erickson, a hospital office worker, worried it wouldn't be enough. She knew that Jean needed a miracle:
“I called the pastor of our church and I stated simply that Jean Hilliard from the Lengby area was brought into the hospital in a frozen condition, very critical, and that she needed prayer.”
With the blessing of the family, the word went out. A prayer chain started about 9:00 that morning. Within 10 minutes, more than 30 people were praying for Jean.
The odds against Jean were enormous. But two hours later, Jean suddenly went into violent convulsions. It was a good sign, but the danger was far from over. Doctors worried that even if Jean regained consciousness she might have serious brain damage. And the frostbite was so severe that amputating Jean’s legs seemed inevitable. Then Jean regained consciousness:
“I woke up in the hospital about noon. Things were kind of hazy and people were asking me questions as to who I am and things like that. And I couldn't figure out why they were talking to me that way or why they were treating me that way. Of course, I knew these people. Of course I knew who I was. I mean, what's the big deal?”
Sandra Klicker, Jean’s sister, was there:
“When Jeanie first came to and we knew that she was going to live, it was an extreme relief. But what was more miraculous to me was her legs recovering. Every time we lifted the sheet, we could see the white just moving down. The black was disappearing little by little, and to me, I still think that was just unbelievable.”
Jean spent 49 days in the hospital. In defiance of everything her doctors knew about frostbite, she recovered completely. Dr. Ryan Kelly was amazed:
“It was enough that she survived. That was a wonderful enough thing. But to have this added gain of not losing any fingers or toes, and in fact, just having what I guess would be minor scars, this is remarkable.”
Jean credits her survival and astonishing recovery not only to the doctors and nurses who cared for her, but also to the friends and neighbors who prayed for her:
“There are other people across the nation that same night that were found in the same condition I was in. And they died. I just think without all those people that I might not have survived.”
The Georgia Guidestones, sometimes referred to as the "American Stonehenge," is a granite monument erected in Elbert County, Ga., in 1979. The stones are engraved in eight languages — English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian — each relaying 10 "new" commandments for "an Age of Reason." The stones also line up with certain astronomical features.
Though the monument contains no encrypted messages, its purpose and origin remain shrouded in mystery. They were commissioned by a man who has yet to be properly identified, who went by the pseudonym of R.C. Christian.
Of the 10 commandments, the first one is perhaps the most controversial: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." Many have taken it to be a license to cull the human population down to the specified number, and critics of the stones have called for them to be destroyed. Some conspiracy theorists even believe they may have been designed by a "Luciferian secret society" calling for a new world order.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was a scheduled international passenger flight that disappeared on 8 March 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China. The flight last made voice contact with air traffic control at 01:19 MYT (17:19 UTC, 7 March) when it was over the South China Sea, less than an hour after takeoff. The aircraft disappeared from air traffic controllers' radar screens at 01:22.Malaysian military radar continued to track the aircraft as it deviated from its planned flight path and crossed the Malay Peninsula. It left the range of Malaysian military radar at 02:22 while over the Andaman Sea, 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) northwest of Penang in northwestern Malaysia. The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations.
A multinational search effort began in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the flight's signal was lost on secondary surveillance radar, and was soon extended to the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea.Analysis of satellite communications between the aircraft and Inmarsat's satellite communications network concluded that the flight continued until at least 08:19 MYT and flew south into the southern Indian Ocean, although the precise location cannot be determined.Australia took charge of the search effort on 17 March, when the search shifted to the southern Indian Ocean. On 24 March 2014, the Malaysian government noted that the final location determined by the satellite communication is far from any possible landing sites, and concluded that "flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean." The current phase of the search is a comprehensive search of the seafloor about 1,800 kilometres (1,100 mi) southwest of Perth, Western Australia, which began in October 2014. Despite the largest and most expensive search in aviation history, nothing was found of the aircraft until 29 July 2015, when a piece of marine debris, later confirmed to be a flaperon from Flight 370, was found on Réunion Island. The bulk of the aircraft has still not been located, prompting many theories about its disappearance.
Malaysia established the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate the incident, working with foreign aviation authorities and experts. Neither the crew nor the aircraft's communication systems relayed a distress signal, indications of bad weather, or technical problems before the aircraft vanished. Two passengers travelling on stolen passports were initially suspected in the disappearance, but they were later determined to be asylum seekers and terrorism has been ruled out. Malaysian police have identified the Captain as the prime suspect if human intervention was the cause of the disappearance, after clearing all other passengers of any suspicious motives. Power was lost to the aircraft's satellite data unit (SDU) at some point between 01:07 and 02:03; the SDU logged onto Inmarsat's satellite communication network at 02:25—three minutes after the aircraft left the range of radar. Based on analysis of the satellite communications, the aircraft turned south after passing north of Sumatra and flew for five hours with little deviation in its track, ending when fuel was exhausted.
If the presumed loss of all on board is confirmed, Flight 370 would be the second deadliest incident involving a Boeing 777 and the second deadliest incident in Malaysia Airlines' history, behind Flight 17. Malaysia Airlines was struggling financially, a problem which was exacerbated by a decline in ticket sales after Flight 370 disappeared and before the crash of Flight 17; the airline was renationalised by the end of 2014. The Malaysian government received significant criticism, especially from China, for failing to disclose information in a timely manner during the early weeks of the search. Flight 370's disappearance brought to the public's attention the limits of aircraft tracking and flight recorders, including several issues raised four years earlier—but never mandated—following the loss of Air France Flight 447. A task force set up by the International Air Transport Association, with the support of the International Civil Aviation Organization, proposed a new standard that commercial aircraft must report their position every 15 minutes by December 2015. The Malaysian Ministry of Transport issued an interim report on 8 March 2015
