The most terrible secrets of mankind. Why did Alexander the Great die? In what direction is the Earth's core spinning?

This list includes the most famous "mysteries of the century", from stones sliding through the desert to incomprehensible underwater sounds that people still managed to solve.

Richard III's grave found

The remains of Richard III, the last English king to die in battle, have been discovered under a car park in the British city of Leicester. It was one of the most striking archaeological finds of recent decades.

Source of the Nile

This may seem too obvious, but even a response like "Lake Victoria" was not that easy to get. It required the use of the most modern technologies to get the final clue, because the true location of the source of the Nile remained a mystery for a long time.

Why is the temperature of the "solar atmosphere" higher than the temperature of the surface of the Sun

The answer sounds too scientific, however, one way or another, the mystery was solved in 2009 thanks to a study by a group of European scientists. They managed to find an explanation for the fact that the temperature of the solar "atmosphere" reaches several million degrees Celsius, while the surface of the sun is much "colder" - only 5 thousand degrees Celsius. The answer is that it is the magnetic field that is the source of energy that causes solar flares and coronal plasma ejections.

Finding the flooded

The discovery in 1985, more than 70 years after the disaster, of a sunken ship was completely accidental and can only be explained by the greatest luck of the researchers.

Loch Ness monster

After decades of countless controversy and speculation, the photographer behind the world famous original image loch ness monster, admitted recently that it was a hoax.

Troy

For centuries mankind considered Troy mythical city, and the Trojan War is mostly a legend. This was before the discovery of the remains by the German self-taught archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann ancient city, also called Ilion

"Magic" circles in the Namib Desert

For a long time, people have associated this phenomenon with anything from radioactive radiation to space alien camps. Only relatively recent studies have led to the final conclusion that the "culprits" of such a long intrigue are ... termites! (However, there are other explanations that we wrote about earlier)

The fate of Martin Bormann

One of the top leaders of the Nazi Reich was not located after World War II, despite intensive searches around the world. According to the most known version, he managed to avoid retribution and hide somewhere in South America, to which there were numerous testimonies that were exaggerated in the press for many years. However, in 1999 his corpse was found in an unmarked grave near the bunker where Hitler committed suicide.

"Fish flatulence" instead of Russian submarines

In the 1980s, Swedish sailors discovered underwater sounds of unknown origin. Many experts attributed them to Russian submarines threatening free world. The answer caused an explosion of ... laughter - the source of mystical underwater sounds turned out to be the release of digestive gases from clusters of fish. The Swedes were subsequently awarded the so-called. Shnobel Prize.

Tomb of Tutankhamun

With this most "popular" ancient Egyptian pharaoh, a story reminiscent of the "Trojan" was associated. Until the discovery in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings of the completely untouched tomb of Tutankhamen, it was the subject of countless legends and hoaxes.

Eternal Roar

When researchers from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered in the summer of 1997 in the southern part Pacific Ocean a low-frequency sound of unknown origin, at first its origin was attributed to some mysterious, incredibly large and loud animal. Later, however, most scientists agreed that this roar (The Bloop) was caused by the movement of ice masses.

Why do corals pulsate

The pulsation of coral colonies remained an unassailable mystery and the subject of much conjecture for several decades of the last century. This movement could not be explained by any pressing need. In the end, scientists were able to establish that in this way the corals maintain a low oxygen content in the surrounding waters and thereby attract a certain type of migratory algae, which forms the basis of their diet.

In what direction is the Earth's core spinning?

For a very long time, scientists could not understand how the solid inner core of our planet rotates in one direction, while the liquid outer core rotates in the other. Researchers from the University of the British city of Leeds have finally found the answer: the reason lies in the "equiopposite" interaction of near-Earth magnetic fields.

Do women blush in the dark

This question may sound stupid to you, but even Charles Darwin tried to get an answer to it. After all, if you think sensibly, in the dark it is impossible to see if she blushed, and if you turn on the light, then what happens next will no longer take place in the dark, regardless of the result. Fortunately, German researchers have thought of using special cameras that react to thermal radiation to put an end to painful doubts. Yes, women blush in the dark, how!

Antikythera mechanism

The fact that this ancient Greek "computer" was probably used for navigation purposes was known for a very long time (since the device was discovered among the wreckage of a ship). But the fact that a device of a comparable level of complexity was next built by people only a thousand years later is true hard to explain.

Causes of stomach ulcers

For many years, the pharmaceutical industry has made very good money selling anti-stress drugs to treat stomach ulcers. This continued until Australian scientists discovered that ulcers are often caused by a bacterial factor and are very easily cured.

The nature of absolutely black bodies is inexplicable within the framework of classical physics

Classical physics states that an ideal black body in a state of thermal equilibrium will radiate an infinite amount of energy. This is inconsistent with what is actually happening in the real world. To explain this phenomenon, the laws of quantum mechanics were required.

sliding stones

If you don't know, there are rocks in different deserts around the world that "slide", that is, move on their own. After several experiments, this effect was explained as follows: the movement of the stones, in all likelihood, is caused by the wind and the presence of ice on the desert surface.

As soon as sometimes a person does not call himself? And the king of nature, and the crown of creation, and Homo sapiens. But is it really so? Both on the planet Earth and in the Cosmos there is a lot of unexplored secret and mysterious things. Man cannot unravel the secrets of nature, riddles ancient civilizations, comprehend the inexplicable and mystical phenomena. And I want to know everything!

Twins are a truly amazing phenomenon, especially when you consider that there are twins not only in the flesh, but also ghostly. And sometimes they arise not only spontaneously, but also deliberately, according to someone's will, and then the boundaries of being a ghost and a being in the flesh literally disappear.

Each of us at least once! heard about monsters living in the depths of some reservoirs. The most famous of them, of course, is the mysterious animal from the Scottish Loch Ness. But it also has its own mysterious underwater creatures, encounters with which do not bode well. Some consider them relic lizards or fish preserved from ancient times, others - a play of the imagination or a consequence natural anomalies. But what are these monsters really?

Along the pages of Slavic epics and legends, in addition to gods and heroes, dozens of amazing creatures roam freely, no less interesting. But we know much less about them.

Probably, many have heard about the miraculous weeping and bleeding icons. There are many legends about their miraculous acquisition and renewal. But there are icons that have very strange properties. Sometimes this is the work of human hands, and sometimes it is very difficult to explain the "anomaly".

Kiev Pechersk Lavra is one of the ancient monasteries in the world. For centuries, legends have been told about him. But the most mysterious of them is cursed treasure the black prince of Mafawa, who to this day haunts treasure hunters.

At all times in Rus', people treated icons with reverence. In almost every house, holy images hung in the most honorable place - in the red corner. In trouble and illness, they turned to them for help. There are many cases when icons helped to overcome adversity. However, studying the healing power of icons, scientists discovered that the impact of some of them can be ... dangerous for humans.

Even those who do not particularly like forest walks know that the swamp is a dead place.
True, mushroom pickers and hunters are not embarrassed. After all, it is in the swampy area that there are many berries and mushrooms, and hunting there brings rich trophies. The Tikhvin swamps on the Veps Upland, north of St. Petersburg, are especially notorious.

Our world is full of secrets and mysterious events. Some of them yesterday seemed mysterious and mystical, and today their secrets have been unraveled by scientists. We invite you to learn the secrets of some mysterious objects and phenomena that have not been scientifically explained for a long time.

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1. Moving stones of the Valley of death

Stones in Death Valley

death valley is nothing but the bottom dry lake Racetrack Playa in the USA. And it is known for a very interesting phenomenon - its moving stones. As if an unknown force moves these stones from place to place from time to time, leaving only small grooves on the dried mud. The sizes of stones can be different, from several kilograms to hundreds of kilograms ( up to a maximum of 300kg.) No one saw these stones in motion, but it was obvious that the stones moved without the help of people or animals.

This phenomenon gave rise to many speculations about its nature. Almost all explanations of the phenomenon of moving stones were reduced to the influence of supernatural forces.

From the middle of the 20th century moving stones representatives of science began to actively study. Many scientific explanations for this movement have been proposed, but most of them have not been supported by anything. Thus, the only correct answer to the question " what or who sets these stones in motion? The scientists didn't.

Heavy stone in Death Valley

The only more reasonable explanations were in which the stones could be set in motion by the force of the wind under certain conditions. weather conditions such as moisture on the surface of the earth. But it was hard to imagine how the wind could move a 300 kg block.

In the 70s of the last century, a theory began to take shape, according to which the stones were set in motion by a wind load, and a thin layer of ice, which could form from moisture during the rainy season, helped them slide. This theory has been more and more confirmed by scientific calculations and research.

In 2011, a group of young American researchers decided to investigate the moving rocks in Death Valley, they set up a time-lapse camera, a weather station to measure wind gusts, and installed GPS beacons on 15 different rocks in Death Valley.

The hardest part was the wait. No one could know exactly when the stones would move. It is known that stones can stand for years without moving. But they were lucky. In December 2013, the stones "floated" and their mystery was completely solved.

The reason for the movement of stones was heavy rain and snow, which left behind a 7-centimeter column of water at the bottom of the lake. This water froze at night, turning into layers of ice, which, under the midday sun, broke up into large floating patches of ice.

In turn, the stones, doused with rain, formed a small crust of ice on their surface during the night, which significantly reduced the coefficient of friction with the surface. Thus, ice floating on the surface, icy rocks and a light wind turned out to be those rare ideal conditions for the drift of stone blocks. The rocks left footprints in the mud below the icy surface. After a few months, these marks dried up, leaving only small grooves on the surface.

Bale Cipher

The Bale Cipher is a set of three ciphers that purportedly reveal the location of one of the greatest buried treasures in the world. American history: many thousands of pounds of gold, silver and precious stones. The treasure was originally mined by a mysterious man named Thomas Jefferson Bale in 1818 during a gold mining operation in Colorado.

The deciphered text pointed to the area where the treasure was located: Bedford County, Virginia, but its exact location appears to be encrypted in one of the remaining ciphers. Today, treasure hunters scour the (often illegally) hills of Bedford County for this untold treasure.

rongorongo

Rongorongo is a system of mysterious signs inscribed on various artifacts found on Easter Island. Many believe that they represent a lost writing system or proto-writing, and may be one of three or four independently invented writing systems in human history.

The signs still remain undeciphered, and their true meaning - which some believe holds clues to the fate of the vanished civilization that built the statues on Easter Island - is likely lost forever.

Voynich Manuscript

Named after the Polish-American antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who purchased it in 1912, the Voynich Manuscript is a detailed 240-page book written in absolute unknown language. Its pages are also filled with colorful drawings and strange diagrams, depictions of incredible events and plants unlike any known species, adding to the intrigue of a document that cannot be deciphered. The author of the manuscript is unknown, but radiocarbon analysis has shown that its pages were made somewhere between 1404 and 1438. The manuscript has been called "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World".

There are many theories about the origin and nature of the manuscript. It is considered by some to be a pharmacopoeia describing the various knowledges of medieval and early modern medicine. Many pictures of herbs and plants also suggest that he was something like a textbook for alchemists.

The fact that many of the diagrams seem to depict astronomical phenomena, coupled with unidentifiable biological sketches, has even led some of the more ingenious theorists to speculate that the book is of extraterrestrial origin.
But there is one thing almost all theorists agree on: that this book is hardly a hoax, given the amount of time, money, and painstaking work it took to produce it.

Zodiac Letters

The Zodiac Letters are a series of four encrypted letters believed to have been written by the famous Zodiac, serial killer, which terrorized the people of San Francisco in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s. The letters were probably written as a way to tease journalists and the police, and although one letter was deciphered, the other three remain unsolved.

The identity of the Zodiac has also never been established, although no more Zodiac murders have been identified since the 1970s.

Phaistos disc

The Phaistos Disc Mystery is like an Indiana Jones story. Discovered by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in 1908 in ruins Minoan palace in Phaistos, the disk is made of baked clay and contains mysterious symbols, which may represent an unknown form of hieroglyphs. It is believed that it was made somewhere in the second millennium BC.

Some scholars believe that these characters are reminiscent of the characters for "Linear A" and "Linear B" writing, in other words, written languages that were once used in ancient Crete.

Tamam Shud case

The Tamam Shud case is considered one of the most big mysteries Australia, and revolves around an unidentified man who was found dead in December 1948 on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. Apart from the fact that the man was never identified, the matter became even more mysterious when a tiny piece of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" was found in a secret pocket sewn into the man's trousers.

This phrase translates as "finished" or "completed" and is used on the last page of Omar Khayyam's collection of poems "Rubaiyat". In addition to this mystery, a copy of the Rubaiyat was soon found, which contained a strange cipher, supposedly left by this dead man himself. Due to the content of Omar Khayyam's poems, many believe that this message was a posthumous note of some kind, but it still remains unsolved, as well as the case itself.

Kryptos is a mysterious, cipher-covered sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn located in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It is so mysterious that even the CIA itself could not fully decipher its code.

The sculpture contains four ciphers, and although three of them have been deciphered, the fourth one has not yet been deciphered. In 2006, Sanborn gave a hint that the first cipher contained clues to the fourth, and in 2010 revealed another one: the characters 64-69 NYPVTT in the fourth part mean the word BERLIN.
Maybe you can decipher it?

Cipher from Chaboro.

Take a look at the 18th century Shepherd's Monument in Staffordshire, Britain, from afar, and you might think it's a sculptural reproduction of Nicolas Poussin's famous painting The Arcadian Shepherds. But take a closer look and you will notice the strange sequence of letters DOUOSVAVVM - a code that has not been deciphered for more than 250 years.

Many of the greatest minds of our world have tried to decipher this code and failed, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

Wow! signal

One summer night in 1977, Jerry Eman, a SETI volunteer, may have become the first person to receive a message from another planet. Eman was scanning radio waves from deep space in the hope of accidentally stumbling upon a signal bearing the hallmarks of a sentient race when he noticed a jump in his measurements.

The signal lasted 72 seconds - the maximum possible measurement duration that the equipment and Eman's scanning range allowed. It was loud and seemed to be coming from a place no human had ever been: the constellation Sagittarius from a point near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light years from Earth.
Eman wrote the word "Wow!" on the original printout of the signal, which is why it was called "Wow! signal."
All attempts to catch the signal again failed, leading to much debate about the nature of its origin and its meaning.

Guiding Stones of Georgia

The Georgia Waystones, sometimes referred to as the "American Stonehenge", is a granite monument erected in Elbert County, Georgia in 1979. The stones are engraved in eight languages - English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian - and each contains ten "new" commandments for the "Age of Reason". The stones are also installed taking into account some astronomical considerations.
And although the monument does not contain encrypted messages, its purpose and origin remain a mystery. It was erected by a man whose identity has never been definitely established, and who was hiding behind the pseudonym R.C. Christian.

Of these ten commandments, the first is perhaps the most controversial: "Keep the number of mankind below 500 million in eternal balance with wildlife." Many believe that this is a calling to reduce the human population to the specified number, and critics of the Waystones even demanded their destruction. Some fans of conspiracy theories even believe that they were created by the "Secret Society of Lucifer", calling for a new world order.

– Cowanchee

Few stories have the ability to capture our attention like those that have not yet been solved. Ciphers, riddles and coded public messages tease us with their intrigue: Why is this message encrypted? What great secrets can it hide in itself?

Go figure it out

Despite the efforts of the best historians, brilliant cryptographers and the most dedicated treasure hunters, history is full of mysteries that continue to confuse us to this day. Fictional stories like those in the book The Da Vinci Code and the movie National Treasure have nothing to do with these secrets from real life. Take a look at our list of the ten most mysterious unsolved mysteries and unsolved ciphers.

Voynich Manuscript

Named after the Polish-American antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912, the Voynich Manuscript is a detailed 240-page book written in a completely unknown language. Its pages are also filled with colorful drawings and strange diagrams, depictions of incredible events and plants unlike any known species, adding to the intrigue of a document that is impossible to decipher. The author of the manuscript is unknown, but radiocarbon analysis has shown that its pages were made somewhere between 1404 and 1438. The manuscript has been called "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World".

There are many theories about the origin and nature of the manuscript. It is considered by some to be a pharmacocopy describing the various knowledges of medieval and early modern medicine. Many pictures of herbs and plants also suggest that he was something like a textbook for alchemists. The fact that many of the diagrams seem to depict astronomical phenomena, coupled with unidentifiable biological sketches, has even led some of the more ingenious theorists to speculate that the book is of extraterrestrial origin.

But one thing that almost all theorists agree on is that this book is hardly a hoax, given the amount of time, money, and meticulous work it took to create it.

Cryptos

The sculpture contains four encryptions, and although three of them have been deciphered, the fourth one has not yet been deciphered. In 2006, Sanborn gave a hint that the first cipher contained clues to the fourth, and in 2010 revealed another one: the characters 64-69 NYPVTT in the fourth part mean the word BERLIN.

Maybe you can decipher it?

Bale Cipher

The Bale Cipher is a set of three ciphers that supposedly reveal the location of one of the greatest buried treasures in American history: many thousands of pounds of gold, silver, and precious stones. The treasure was originally mined by a mysterious man named Thomas Jefferson Bale in 1818 during a gold mining operation in Colorado.

Of the three encryptions, only the second was decoded. Interestingly, it seems that the key to the cipher is the American Declaration of Independence - amazing fact, given that Bale's name is the same as the author of the Declaration.

Phaistos disc

The Phaistos Disc Mystery is like an Indiana Jones story. Discovered by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in 1908 in the ruins of a Minoan palace at Phaistos, the disk is made of baked clay and contains mysterious symbols that may represent an unknown form of hieroglyphs. It is believed that it was made somewhere in the second millennium BC.

Some scholars believe that these hieroglyphs are reminiscent of the symbols for "Linear A" and "Linear B", written languages that were once used in ancient Crete. Then what is the problem? The fact that "Linear A" is indecipherable.

To date, the disc is one of the most famous riddles in archeology.

Cipher from Chaboro

Many of the world's greatest minds have tried to decipher this code and failed, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

Tamam Shud case

Considered one of Australia's biggest mysteries, the Tamam Shud case revolves around an unidentified man who was found dead in December 1948 on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. Apart from the fact that the man was never identified, the matter became even more mysterious when a tiny piece of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" was found in a secret pocket sewn into the man's trousers.

Wow! signal

The signal lasted 72 seconds - the maximum possible measurement duration that the equipment and Eman's scanning range allowed. It was loud and seemed to come from a place no human has ever been to: the constellation Sagittarius from a point near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light years from Earth.

Eman wrote the word "Wow!" on the original printout of the signal, which is why it was called "Wow! signal."

All attempts to catch the signal again failed, leading to much debate about the nature of its origin and its meaning.

Zodiac Letters

The Zodiac Letters are a series of four encrypted letters believed to have been written by the notorious Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized the people of San Francisco during the latter half of the 1960s and early 1970s. The letters were probably written as a way to tease journalists and the police, and although one letter was deciphered, the other three remain unsolved.

The identity of the Zodiac has also never been established, although no more Zodiac murders have been identified since the 1970s.

Guiding Stones of Georgia

And although the monument does not contain encrypted messages, its purpose and origin remain a mystery. It was erected by a man whose identity has never been definitely established, and who was hiding behind the pseudonym R. C. Christian.

rongorongo

The signs still remain undeciphered, and their true meaning - which some believe holds clues to the fate of the vanished civilization that built the statues on Easter Island - is likely lost forever.