GREAT EXPLOSION:
volcanic eruption
On 27 August 1883, the Indonesian island of Krakatoa erupted so violently that the sound was heard by people 4,500 km away, and the shock waves were felt as far as California. The volcanic dust circled the globe, producing vivid sunsets in many parts of the world, for months afterwards.
A large part of the island collapsed into the sea but what caused the worst damage were the tsunamis that followed the eruption. Tsunamis are giant waves that race through the sea following an underwater earthquake or a volcanic eruption. The tsunamis produced by the Krakatoan eruption raced inland in nearby Java and Sumatra, sweeping away trees and houses. Nearly 40,000 people lost their lives.
A few years later, a small volcanic island which was named Anak Krakatau (Son of Krakatoa) came up at the site of the eruption. The island has been growing and erupting since 1928.
INCREDIBLE TALES:
It happened in a small town in Missouri, USA in the 70's. A boy rushed excitedly into his classroom and announced that he had seen a cat with two tails. Nobody believed him. His teacher coming in just then, heard him insisting that he had seen a cat with two tails and punished him for telling a fib.
He became known as a liar. Shunned by his friends, scorned by his teachers, he lost interest in his studies and social activities. One day he did not return home. They went to look for him and found him hanging from a tree. He had taken his own life.
At his funeral, his former friends and his teachers were horrified to see a cat running over the graves. The animal had two tails.
This story is told by Erich von Daniken at the start of his fascinating but controversial book 'According to the Evidence', published in 1977. Like all his other books beginning with 'Chariots of the Gods', which sold over 40 million copies and catapulted him into fame, this one too puts forward the idea that extra-terrestrials visited Earth in prehistoric times. Daniken would have us believe that it was these aliens who made our planet habitable and created and cultivated the various species, including man. He argues that such marvels of engineering as the pyramids of Egypt and the airfields in the plain of Nazca, in Peru could never have been built without the help of advanced technology and that this technology could only have been provided by extra-terrestrials.
Daniken's books though thought-provoking are full of errors and fabrications which is perhaps why he eventually lost credibility and faded into oblivion.
ORSINI MYSTERY:
One of the most baffling murders ever, occurred in the US, in March1981.
Roy Orsini, a 38-year-old engineer, a model husband and father, and as far as it was known, a man without an enemy in the world, was found dead in his bedroom. He had been shot in the back of the head and he was lying face down on the bed, clad in his pyjamas. The door and windows had been securely locked from the INSIDE. It was not a case of suicide. Though there was a gun in a drawer some distance away from the bed, it was a Smith and Wesson. The fatal bullet had been fired from a Colt.
Roy Orsini had clearly been murdered, but by whom? And how did the murderer manage to lock the door from the inside? The case remains unsolved.
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS:
There was a time when Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) created headlines in the press, whenever they were sighted; now people don't get so excited about them, probably because they know that most so-called UFOs are actually meteors or experimental balloons or optical illusions or clouds, or even fakes. But witnesses from around the world continue to report strange lights and weird craft, and some of these sightings leave even scientists baffled. One sighting that falls in this category is the Rendlesham UFO.
On the night of 27 December, 1980, unusual lights were seen in Rendlesham Forest beyond the rear gates of an American air force base called Woodbridge in Suffolk, England. It was thought that a plane had crashed, and three security men were sent to investigate. The men saw a strange glowing object in the forest. It was metallic in appearance and triangular in shape. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top, and a blue light emanated from its underside. The security men could not make out whether it was hovering or was on legs. As they approached, it zigzagged through the trees and disappeared. Later in the night, a strange red ball was seen. It broke up into five white objects, and vanished.
The next day it was learnt that the animals in a nearby farm had gone into a frenzy, the previous night. An examination of the ground over which the object had been seen by the security men, revealed three depressions such as would have been made by a spacecraft on landing. Radiation levels in the depressions were slightly higher than normal.
Both the American and the British authorities at first denied that any UFO had been sighted near the Woodbridge base, but later admitted that the incident had taken place. The event was subsequently mentioned both in the British House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Ministry of Defence said they could not offer "any explanation for the phenomenon" or the radiation.
The Rendlesham incident is considered a landmark in the history of Unidentified Flying Objects, by UFOlogists. They are convinced that a spaceship from another world landed there on that cold December night in 1980.ed.
Winchester Mystery House :
In the Santa Clara Valley of California, in the U.S. stands a remarkable house. It has 40 bedrooms, three lifts, and six kitchens. Not impressed? It originally had 2000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces and at least 40 stairways. Sounds cluttered? It is!
Winchester House once belonged to Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester who owned the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. The firm manufactured rifles, the most popular of which was the Winchester '73, 'the gun that won the West'. William Winchester died in 1881. Sarah inherited his wealth, but it brought her no comfort. She grieved not only for her dead husband but also the loss of their only child.
Mrs. Winchester sought solace from a spiritualist who told her that her family was being victimized by the spirits of thousands of people who had been killed by the rifles manufactured by the Winchester Company. She was advised that only sounds associated with construction activity could keep the spirits from getting at her too.
Mrs. Winchester bought an 8-room farmhouse in 1884, and began re-constructing it. The construction crew was told to work non-stop, so work went on day and night, 365 days of the year - for over three decades. The farmhouse grew into a seven-storied monstrosity. It finally contained 160 rooms, and was crisscrossed with staircases, many of which led nowhere. Three floors had to be pulled down after being damaged in an earthquake in 1906, and that is perhaps the only time that the building really required the services of a construction crew. The First World War came and went but the work never stopped. It went on till the day of Mrs. Winchester's death at the age of 85, on 5 September 1922. It is said that when the workmen learnt of her death they immediately downed their tools, and the sound of hammering that had started 38 years earlier finally came to a stop.
Mrs. Winchester was buried beside her husband and daughter. Her house, now known as the Winchester Mystery House, is a tourist attraction. It is also listed as a National Historic Site.
MURDER IN ALPS :
In 1991, hikers in the Italian Alps stumbled upon a body half-buried in snow. It proved to be that of a Stone Age man that had been preserved in a glacier for 5000 years.
The man's inner clothes were made of plant fibre and leather. Over this he was wearing a coat of leather and goat fur. His cap was made of brown bear fur. The weapons he had, included a stone dagger, a copper axe, a bow, and a leather quiver that contained fourteen arrows. He also carried an arrow repair kit in a small leather bag.
His icy tomb had preserved all his organs. As he had been found in the Italian Otzal Alps, he was named Otzi. Scientists subjected Otzi to a battery of tests, and they were able to find out a number of things about how people lived in those parts, in the Stone Age. But about Otzi himself they could find out very little, except that he was between 40 and 53 years of age and that he had eaten meat and grain 8 hours before he had died. They could not determine his profession or the cause of his death. Some were of the view that he had been caught in a blizzard and had perished of cold and hunger; others said he might have accidentally fallen into a crack in a glacier. Painstaking detective work on the part of various scientists finally uncovered the truth in 2001, a decade after he had been found. Otzi, they discovered, had been murdered, shot in the back with an arrow.
Who shot Otzi and why?
The scientist-detectives are trying to find out. The 5000-year-old trail is cold, but they might still get their man.
...and his condition today. Skin and bones, but his organs are intact.
TALL ORDER:
A Somali named Hussain Bisad who lives in England, claimed to be 2.36m tall, and therefore, taller than Tunisia's Radhouane Charbib who stands 2.33m in his socks. Officials of the Guinness World Records measured him 6 times in the course of a day (since height varies slightly according to the time of day), and worked out his average which came to 2.32m, making him the world's second tallest man. But record holders can't rest easy. Charbib has another challenger in 29-year-old Fourar of Algeria who also claims a height of 2.36 metres.
If Fourar's claim is true, he would be a towering figure, but he would still have to stand on a stool to match the height of a life-size statue of a man that stands in the town of Alton, in the U.S. The statue is that of Robert Pershing Wadlow who is recognized as the tallest man who ever lived. Wadlow was born in 1918. At the age of 13, he was the world's tallest boy scout, with a height of 2.23m. In 1937, at the age of 19 he exceeded 2.54m, which was, at that time, the greatest height recorded for any person (an Irishman who died in 1877 had achieved this height).
Wadlow's clothing required three times the normal amount of cloth, and his size 37 shoes were especially made for him by the International Shoe Company for which he later became a goodwill ambassador. Crowds gathered wherever he went, and his quiet manner earned him the sobriquet Gentle Giant.
Wadlow's condition was caused by an overactive pituitary gland for which there was no treatment in those days. He died young. A foot infection got out of control, and the Gentle Giant passed away in his sleep, on 15 July 1940, at the age of 22. His height was an incredible 2.72m (8 ft 11.1in).
Note: There's a life-size statue of Wadlow in his hometown Alton.
MYSTERY OF THE MARY CELESTE :
Captain Briggs of the Mary Celeste and Captain Morehouse of the Dei Gratia dined together in New York on 6th November 1872. The next day the Mary Celeste set out for Genoa, Italy with a cargo of 17,000 barrels of alcohol.
On board were Captain Briggs, his wife and baby daughter and seven crewmen.
The Dei Gratia left a week later. On 5th December the crew of the Dei Gratia saw a ship ahead of them. It seemed to be drifting. The captain looked through his telescope but could see no one at the steering wheel. He ran up a signal but there was no answer.
The Captain sent three of his men in a boat to investigate. When the boat neared the ship the men were able to read the name printed on the stern - it was the Mary Celeste.
Two of the seamen clambered on board. The ship was in good condition, the cargo was intact, there was plenty of food and drinking water, the crew's possessions were neatly stored in their sea chests. Later it was found there were gold lockets, jewellery and money in the ship's safe. Only, there was no one aboard the ship, not a soul.
The last entry in the ship's log was on 25th November, ten days earlier.
What had happened to Captain Briggs, his wife and child and his crew? Everything suggested they had abandoned the ship in a hurry. But why? What had frightened them? The ship was in good condition and could not have been sinking. If there was a storm they would have been safer on the ship than in a small boat in the open sea.
The disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste remains one of the great mysteries of the sea.
SPRINGHEEL JACK :
IN the late 1830's in London, people reported seeing a cloaked figure leaping past them in the streets.
The man or whoever he was took giant leaps that sometimes carried him to the tops of roofs. He was nicknamed Springheeled Jack.
One night in February 1838 there was a violent knocking on the door of a house in which a young woman named Jane Alsop lived with her two sisters and father. When she opened the door, the man standing in the shadows near the front gate identified himself as a police officer and asked for a light. "We've caught Springheeled Jack in the lane," he explained.
Jane found a candle and rushed out to give it to the man. But he did not take it. Instead, he grabbed her by her neck, put her head under his armpit and began to claw at her dress and body.
Her sister raised the alarm on hearing her screams and Springheeled Jack, for that was who he was, fled.
Jane described him thus: "...his eyes were like balls of fire. His hands had great claws and he belched blue and white flames."
Springheeled Jack made frequent appearances after that. He would jump out in front of people and claw them or spit flames. He even terrorised sentries at an army camp. He would slap them with 'an icy hand' or leap onto the sentry boxes. The army set traps for him but could not catch him.
The townspeople of Lincoln shot at him when he appeared in the streets of the town in 1877, but Springheeled Jack just laughed and vanished into the darkness.
He was last seen in 1904, in Liverpool, where he started a panic by bounding up and down in the streets and leaping onto rooftops.
He has not been seen since. Nobody knows who or what Springheeled Jack was or what happened to him eventually, but he held England in the grip of terror for more than 65 years.
RIDDLE OF TUNGUSKA :
So far, two objects from outer space have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city.
The first time it happened was in June 1908, when something fell out of the sky and exploded in Siberia near the Tunguska River. According to eyewitnesses, there was a blinding flash of light, followed by intense heat and then a ball of fire rose into the sky. Afterwards a black rain fell over the region. The explosion was several times more powerful than the one that flattened Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped on it in 1945. About 100,000 people died in Hiroshima. Tunguska being uninhabited, not a single human life was lost, but trees were scorched and uprooted over a vast area and scores of animals must have perished.
Nobody knows for sure what caused the Tunguska blast. At first it was thought that a meteorite had crashed to Earth, but no evidence of a meteorite crash was ever found in Tunguska. A large meteorite hitting the Earth creates a huge hole or crater at the point of impact. Famous examples are the Arizona crater in the Nevada desert of the USA and the Lonar crater in Maharashtra. No crater has been found in Tunguska. Some scientists say the object may have been a gaseous comet or an asteroid that exploded in mid-air.
A few scientists are of the view that the Tunguska blast could have been a nuclear explosion. The first to put forward this idea was a Russian scientist, Dr Kazantsev, who had made a thorough study of the Hiroshima bombing. He found similarities in the devastation caused in Hiroshima and Tunguska and came to the conclusion that the scale and pattern of destruction in Tunguska could only be explained in terms of a nuclear explosion.
Later he wrote a science fiction story based on the incident. In his story, a nuclear-powered spaceship from Mars develops serious trouble while flying over Earth. The commander of the craft knows that all is lost. He cannot save himself or his crew. All he can do is try to minimise the danger to the people on Earth. In a last manoeuvre he steers the spacecraft to a remote area of the planet and it crashes in the uncharted wilderness of Siberia.
The second time a large object from space fell to Earth was in 1947 - again in Siberia.
It was a meteorite. Hundreds of people saw a brilliant ball of fire speeding across the sky for a few seconds. Then it vanished from view and a pillar of brownish smoke rose into the atmosphere.
Later, investigators found pieces of meteoric iron strewn all over the Sikhote Alin mountains where it had crashed.
