History is cyclical. In the process of development, people invented something more than once, lost these technologies, and after a while they rediscovered them. Here are four ingenious inventions of the past, the secret of which is still unraveled.
Roman concrete
Many ancient Roman temples, aqueducts and roads are still in excellent condition. And even the harbors, which are more than 2 thousand years old, are surprisingly well preserved, despite the fact that they are constantly undermined by the sea. The secret is in a special building material.
In addition to sand, water, lime, and broken earthenware, Roman concrete also contained one secret ingredient: volcanic ash. It was he, according to modern scientists, who made concrete so durable and timeless. The ash prevents cracks in the material and protects buildings from destruction. The most striking evidence of this can be considered the Pantheon, which has been in Rome since 126 AD.
Fire of Archimedes
Archimedes of Syracuse was born in 287 BC. e. and became famous as one of the most outstanding mathematicians and physicists of his time. In particular, he is credited with the invention of concave mirrors, with which it was possible to destroy ships. To do this, it was necessary to correctly direct the sun's ray onto the mirror: it was refracted and set fire to the tree.
Hosts of the MythBusters attempted to recreate Archimedes' invention, but the temperature was too low to ignite the tree.
Antikythera mechanism
This is one of the most mysterious inventions of the past. The Antikythera mechanism was discovered in 1901 off the Greek island of Antikythera. The find is a bronze mechanism with 37 gears, wheels and dials.
The researchers suggest that the device was used to determine the astronomical position of the Sun, Moon and other planets. The Antikythera Mechanism is dated to the 1st-2nd centuries. BC e. Such mechanisms began to be used again only in the XIV century, so one can only guess how scientists were able to make such a device.
"Death ray"
Renowned inventor Nikola Tesla claimed to have been developing weapons based on directed energy for 40 years. In 1937, he announced that the weapon, called the "Ray of Death", was ready and had even already been tested. It is a particle accelerator capable of firing a beam of directed energy at a distance of up to 400 km. A "death ray" can even melt an airplane engine. Fortunately, the scientist did not find the money to implement his development and the world did not receive the new kind weapons.
What are these mystical circumstances and how can one disappear without a trace? After all, no one will ever know what really happened to these people.
1.Sigismund Levanevsky
In 1937, an event was held in Moscow dedicated to the launch of a new bomber. The great pilot Sigismund Levanevsky took off in front of hundreds of spectators. He was supposed to reach Alaska - but he was never seen again.
2.Henry Hudson
This brave traveler explored much of North America. Apparently the depths of the sea swallowed him up: Hudson went in search of the legendary Northern Passage to Asia, but the team, tired of endless ice, revolted. The ship came to the shore without Hudson: the sailors all swore that the explorer somehow just took it and disappeared right from the deck.
3.Jim Sullivan
He was never a big star, but he always remained in the party of movie stars. Album U.F.O. (the whole record is dedicated to a guy who was abducted by aliens) was released in 1969 and brought some fame to Sullivan. The producers invited the musician to record new material in Nashville, he got into his truck and hit the road. A month later, Sullivan's car was found in the New Mexico desert, with a guitar and the musician's belongings in the back seat.
4. Felix Moncla
In November 1953, a US Air Force pilot took to the skies to intercept a strange object that appeared near Lake Superior. The radar showed how Felix's plane came close to the object, and then disappeared. The UFO traveled alone north of the base, and no trace of Monkle or aircraft wreckage was found.
5 Roanoke Colonists
In 1587 large group of 115 British colonists landed on Roanoke Island, present-day North Carolina. Governor Walter White went to England a few months later to get supplies. He returned only three years later, the colony disappeared completely. No traces remain, except for the frightening word "Croatoan" carved into one of the houses.
6. Ambrose Bierce
The author and satirist, known for The Devil's Dictionary and The Owl Creek Bridge Incident, was known to be dark and rather cynical in nature. Relatives turned away from the wit and Bierce decided to go to glorious Mexico - he was not yet known there. The writer successfully crossed the Rio Grande, that's all that is known about this journey to posterity.
Mystery of the Panamanian jungle
In the spring of 2014, students from Amsterdam went to Panama to learn Spanish and spend their holidays in a warm country. On April 1, they left the tourist town of Boquete and went on an excursion to the Baru volcano. The girls never returned from their walk.
The mysterious disappearance off the traveled path, the confused testimony of people who saw the girls last, gave rise to many rumors about what happened that day. Their disappearance was blamed on a guide who was supposed to lead the students to the volcano, as well as local residents - allegedly they could rob and kill tourists. All search expeditions ended in nothing. Only a few months later, a backpack found near the river was brought to the police - a few kilometers from the hiking trail.
The girls' mobile phones were in the backpack. The experts managed to restore the photographs - dozens of pictures capture the beauty of nature and satisfied tourists climbing the volcano. And then something went wrong in their walk...
The search expedition found new footprints. Two plastic bags stretched between the branches clearly indicated an attempt to collect rainwater. Zippered denim shorts lay on the ground.
Forensics later found a lace-up boot with a human foot inside. As the examination showed, the remains belonged to one of the girls. Nearby, a fragment of the pelvic bone of another tourist was found, and almost two months later, her rib. That's all. No other body parts were found. This is despite the fact that in this area there are not large enough animals that can destroy, for example, a human skull.
Most likely, one of the girls became ill during the ascent. It could have been a reaction to an insect bite, or it could have just been smashed, slipping on the rocks. Probably, a friend tried to help her, and then guarded the body so that wild animals would not take it away. Even earlier, the tourists lost their way, but, obviously, they hoped that they would still be found. They repeatedly tried to call the emergency services, but the signal was too weak. Story mobile phones indicates that one of the girls was alive for at least another eight days.
But there are still more questions than answers. How did the Dutch girls end up ten kilometers from the trail? Where are the other body fragments? Why were one of the girls' shorts taken off and laid out on a rock? Criminologists did not find any biological materials on them, although in all the photos the girl is dressed in them. Well, the most mysterious moment - photos from mobile phones.
At night, 90 photographs were taken on one of the phones, only three of them show details of the environment, the rest show darkness. What prompted the hostess to photograph the jungle at night? There are many versions, but there are still no answers to all questions.
The mystery of the man with the scrap of paper
 |
|---|
On December 1, 1948, the body of a man in a sweater and double-breasted jacket was found on the Australian coast at Somerton Beach. All the labels on the clothes were cut off, the man did not have any documents. There were no signs of violence on the body of the deceased, and the cause of death was not reliably established. Presumably, he could have been poisoned or poisoned himself.
In a secret pocket of their trousers, the men found a piece of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" cut from a rare copy of the collected works of Omar Khayyam. In the original language, the words mean "finished" or "completed". The volume from which the phrase was cut out was later discovered. There was an incomprehensible inscription on the book, the meaning of which has not yet been deciphered. In the course of further investigation, the investigators found a lot of evidence, but they failed to compile a single reliable version of events.
Since the body was found during the years of the Cold War and the blockade of West Berlin by the USSR, the investigation had a version that the unknown person was a Soviet spy. In the decades that have passed since the discovery of the body of the "Man from Somerton", they tried to connect his death with several other mysterious murders, but none of these assumptions has been documented.
Nearly 70 years have passed since the body was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, over the years the case has become part of Australian folklore. The case is still shrouded in mystery, like the identity of Jack the Ripper in England. Australian tabloids always pay attention to when the next amateur sleuth leads new version, no matter how ridiculous it is, and homegrown detectives around the world are once again trying to solve this mystery.
Mystery board MH370
 |
|---|
On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared over the Indian Ocean. Controllers from Malaysia and Vietnam tried in vain to contact the crew.
After the loss of communication, the plane abruptly veered off course and headed towards the Indian Ocean. He flew for about seven more hours. So far, only a few fragments of the aircraft have been found, and in unexpected places. And although the airline itself officially recognized everyone who was on it as dead, there is still no full-fledged version of what happened.
Of course, this story gave rise to a lot of conspiracy theories: from assumptions that the plane was hijacked by the Americans, in order to later simulate the crash of another flight of the same airline over the territory of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic (according to this version, there were corpses on the plane, and a bomb was remotely detonated on it), - until the recent hypothesis that the pilot sent the plane into the ocean deliberately, thus committing suicide. This, however, is refuted by Australian researchers, stating that he was unconscious in the last minutes of the disaster.
A technical malfunction is another possible cause. While there is no official clarification, conspiracy theories continue to circulate.
Up ▲ — Reader reviews (0) — Write a review ▼ - Print version
There are mystical stories in the world, the secrets of which have not yet been revealed. We have compiled a selection of the most interesting and mysterious of them. 13 most mystical stories with photos.1. Mysterious murders at the Hinterkaifeck farm
In 1922, the mysterious murder of six people committed on the small farm of Hinterkaifeck shocked all of Germany. And not only because the murders were committed with horrendous cruelty.
All the circumstances associated with this crime were very strange, even mystical, and to this day it remains unsolved.
During the investigation, more than 100 people were interrogated, but no one was ever arrested. Not a single motive that could somehow explain what happened was also identified.
The maid who worked in the house ran away six months ago, claiming it was haunted. new girl arrived just a few hours before the murder.
Apparently, the attacker was on the farm for at least a few days - someone fed the cows and ate in the kitchen. In addition, neighbors saw smoke coming from the chimney during the weekend. The photo shows the body of one of the dead, found in a barn.
2. Phoenix Lights
The so-called "Phoenix Lights" are several flying objects that on the night of Thursday, March 13, 1997 were observed by more than 1000 people: in the sky over the states of Arizona and Nevada in the USA and over the state of Sonora in Mexico.
In fact, two strange events occurred that night: a triangular formation of luminous objects that moved across the sky, and several motionless lights hovering over the city of Phoenix. However, in the latest US Air Force, they recognized the lights from the A-10 Warthog aircraft - it turned out that at that time military exercises were taking place in southwestern Arizona.
3 Solway Firth Astronaut
In 1964, the family of Briton Jim Templeton was walking near the Solway Firth. The head of the family decided to take a picture of his five-year-old daughter with Kodak. The Templetons claimed that there was no one else in these marshy places except them. And when the pictures were developed, one of them showed a strange figure peeking out from behind the girl. The analysis showed that the photo was not subjected to any changes.
4. Falling body
The Cooper family has just moved into their new house in Texas. In honor of the housewarming, a festive table was laid, at the same time we decided to take some family photos. And when the pictures were developed, a strange figure appeared on them - it seems that someone's body is either hanging or falling from the ceiling. Of course, the Coopers did not see anything like this during the shooting.
5. Too many hands
The four guys were fooling around taking pictures in the yard. When the film was shown, it turned out that one extra hand appeared on it from nowhere (peeps out from behind the back of a guy in a black shirt).
6. Battle of Los Angeles
This picture was published in the Los Angeles Times on February 26, 1942. To this day, conspiracy theorists and ufologists cite it as evidence of extraterrestrial visits to Earth. They claim that the photo clearly shows that the beams of searchlights fall on an alien flying ship. However, as it turned out, the photo for publication was pretty retouched - this is a standard procedure, which almost all published black-and-white photographs were subjected to to heighten the effect.
The incident itself, captured in the photo, was called a “misunderstanding” by the authorities. The Americans had just survived the Japanese attack, and in general the tension was incredible. Therefore, the military got excited and opened fire on the object, which, most likely, was a harmless weather balloon.
7. Lights of Hessdalen
In 1907, a group of educators, students and scientists set up a scientific camp in Norway to study a mysterious phenomenon called the Hessdalen Fires.
On a clear night, Bjorn Hauge took this picture using a shutter speed of 30 seconds. Spectral analysis showed that the object must be composed of silicon, iron and scandium. This is the most informative, but far from the only photo of the Hessdalen Lights. Scientists are still scratching their heads as to what it could be.
8. Time Traveler
This photo was taken in 1941 during the opening of the South Forks Bridge. The attention of the public was attracted by a young man who was considered by many to be a "time traveler" - because of his modern hairstyle, zip-up sweater, printed T-shirt, fashionable glasses and a soap camera. The whole outfit is clearly not from the 40s. On the left, a camera is highlighted in red, which was actually in use at that time.
9. Black knight
The first photograph of an unknown object, called the "Black Knight", was taken in 1960 by one of the first satellites of the Earth. In polar orbit, an unidentified object is clearly visible, which could not be either a satellite of the USSR or a satellite of the USA. Since then, this object has been seen repeatedly - it appears and disappears at certain time intervals. After carefully studying the images of the object, scientists are inclined to believe that this is a piece of artificial origin.
10. 9/11 attack - the woman from the South Tower
In these two shots, a woman can be seen standing on the edge of the hole in the South Tower after the plane crashed into the building. Her name is Edna Clinton and, not surprisingly, she was on the list of survivors. How she did it is beyond me, considering everything that happened in that part of the building.
11 Skunk Monkey
In 2000, a woman who wished to remain anonymous took two photographs of the mysterious creature and sent it to the Sarasota County Sheriff (Florida). The photographs were accompanied by a letter in which the woman assured that she photographed a strange creature in the backyard of her house. The creature came to her house three nights in a row and stole the apples left on the terrace.
12. UFO in the painting “Madonna with Saint Giovannino”
The painting “Madonna with Saint Giovannino” is by Domenico Ghirlandai (1449-1494) and is currently in the collection of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Above Maria's right shoulder, a mysterious flying object and a man who is watching it are clearly visible.
13. Incident at Lake Falcon
Another encounter with a supposed extraterrestrial civilization took place near Lake Falcon on May 20, 1967.
Someone Stefan Michalak was resting in these places and at some point noticed two descending cigar-shaped objects, one of which landed very close. Michalak claims to have seen the door open and heard voices coming from within.
He tried to speak to the aliens in English, but there was no answer. Then he tried to get closer, but came across an "invisible glass", which, apparently, served as a protection for the object.
Suddenly, Michalak was surrounded by a cloud of air so hot that his clothes caught fire. The man suffered severe burns.
Our amazing planet is still full of secrets. We are trying to explore space, we think what is hidden in distant galaxies, but in fact we don’t even suspect what surprises the bowels of the Earth hide. The simplest (at first glance) natural phenomena remain great mysteries for mankind. Analyze, suggest - that's all that modern scientists can do. Look, for example, at the list of these riddles. Some of them have been tormenting humanity for hundreds of years!
Animal migration
Animals migrate along the same routes for many years. Fish, birds, even insects also change places of hunting, guided by a certain algorithm. However, scientists simply cannot explain the very existence of this important instinct in the genetic patterns of such diverse creatures.
Great Sphinx of Giza
The small head of the Great Sphinx is causing controversy in the scientific community. Robert Schoch, a British geologist, suggests that the statue originally had the face of a lion, from which one of the pharaohs ordered an enigmatic smiling face to be carved. Another archaeologist, Graham Hancock, has established a correlation between the three surrounding pyramids and the stars in the constellation Orion, which also defies any scientific explanation.
Firefly Sync
Instead of flickering randomly, fireflies of the same group light up "flashlights" at the same time, every 1-2 seconds. Jonathan Copeland, a firefly specialist at the University of Georgia, suggests that this is a ritual. But no one knows which one it is.
Meredith Stone
This stone was found in 1872 during earthworks in the town of Meredith on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee (New Hampshire, USA). It is a piece of skillfully worked quartz - but there has never been quartz here, and the stone is too well worked for primitive tribes. Scientists are at an impasse.
Taos rumble
For many years, the inhabitants of Taos have heard a low-frequency rumble coming from the depths of the desert, as if tanks are moving along the highway. main feature phenomenon that only local residents hear it, no one has yet been able to capture the sound on film.
Stone labyrinths of the Big Zayatsky Island
No one knows where the labyrinths on the Big Zayatsky Island came from. 14 low spiral structures have stone altars with solar symbols in the center. Here, archaeologists also found traces of ritual sacrifices, but they could not find the culture that created all this.
Yonaguni Monument
Off the coast of the Japanese island of Yonaguni, divers have discovered a real underwater city. It is simply amazing why research is not continuing even now - the find is really frightening and inspiring at the same time. Stone formations are dated at 16 thousand years old, similar structures were found off the islands of Okinawa. And in the strait between Taiwan and China (on the other side of Yonaguni) there are other underwater structures that most of all resemble roads and walls.
Red glow over the Pacific Ocean
This strange red light was first seen by Christian van Heyst. He flew from Hong Kong to Alaska on a Boeing 747-8, and the radiance seemed to be born under him after a flash of lightning. At present, the phenomenon remains in the category of inexplicable.
Stone ball in Bosnia
Some believe that our distant ancestors created such balls as symbols of certain celestial objects. Other archaeologists find only landmarks in them, but no one really knows how things are.
Mount Rushmore Mystery
During the construction of this famous monument, the architect Gutzon Borglum wanted to create a Hall of Records inside the rock. To do this, he excavated a cave behind the head of Abraham Lincoln. In 1998, more than 50 years after Borglum's death, the US government did, in fact, place the memoirs of presidents, the bill of rights, and a copy of the declaration of independence here. But what was here before? Conspiracy theorists believe that the CIA used the cave as a secret laboratory.
