A list of some mysterious events that took place around the world
AD 1478 The Spanish conquer the Canary Islands. The native inhabitants,
the Guanches committ suicide rather than submit to foreign
domination.
AD 1541 Paracelsus dies. During his life, he discovered zinc, and was
the first to identify hydrogen. His fame as an alchemist was so great
that his tomb in Salzberg was opened because of rumors of great
treasures and alchemical secrets buried with him. However nothing was
found in the coffin. His famous sword, whose hilt contained the
so-called 'Philosopher's Stone', also had vanished without a trace.
AD 1548 In Palermo, Sicily, a giant skeleton, reputed to be thirty feet in length, is discovered.
AD 1550 In Palermo, Sicily, two more giant skeletons are discovered,
one thirty-three feet long, and a smaller one, thirty feet long.
AD 1561 (Apr) The early morning sky over Nuremburg, Germany is filled
with over two hundred cylindrical UFOs, spheres and spinning disks.
AD 1594 Pope Clement ends Church opposition to coffee when he baptises
it. 'We will not let coffee remains the property of Satan, for as
Christians, our power is greater than Satan's.'
AD 1666 (Aug) A strange fiery ball of light is observed in a clear,
sunny sky over Robozero, Russia, by villagers coming out of church.
AD 1681 In Illinois, Father Marquette, the Jesuit explorer, writes in
his journals of discoveries on the Mississippi River of large
petroglyphs of creatures which looked like pterodactyls, flying reptiles
of the Age of Dinosaurs. According to the Indians, they represent
monsters which ate the Indians ancestors hundreds of years ago.
AD 1698 Along the Mississippi River in Illinois Father Hennepin, the
discoverer of Niagara Falls, writes his journals about the petroglyphs
that Father Marquette described earlier. The Illinois Indians tell him
of monsters, called Piasa, which would periodically attack their
tribe and carry off hapless people. The two petroglyphs are visible
until about 1856, when the State Prison at Alton begins quarrying the
limestone which holds the carvings.
AD 1705 In Valencia, Spain, a twenty-two foot long skeleton is
discovered, and the thigh bone is preserved. Another skeleton is found,
the skull of which is reputed to be big enough to hold a bushel of
corn.
AD 1725 In Northern Tibet, Father Duparc discovers the ruins of Hsing
Nu, and describes some of the ruined temples and monoliths that he
found there. This city is of indeterminate age, but may well be
prehistoric.
AD 1753 Portuguese bandits discover - and pillage - ancient ruins
including a temple, walls and caves that had once been inhabited in the
Brazilian province of Bahia.
AD 1790 In Ohio, no less than 100 abandoned hills crowned with stone
fortifications are discovered. Similar fortifications are discovered in
Georgia and Tennessee.
AD 1799 The Rosetta Stone is discovered Napoleon's army in Rashid, or
Rosetta, Egypt. This stone provided the key to the oldest and most
difficult Egyptian writing system, hieroglyphics. The usefulness of the
Rosetta Stone was in the repetition of text in three writing systems:
hieroglyphics; demotic script, a later form of hiero-glyphics that
was used in everyday documents "for the people," as its name means;
and ancient Greek.
Bodies of mammoths, prehistoric elephant-like beasts are found in the
Siberian tundra, in the regions of present permafrost. The bodies are
perfectly preserved, and sledge dogs eat the flesh without any ill
effects. The flesh proves to be firm and marbled with fat and appears
as fresh as well-frozen beef, proving that these animals must have died
instantaneously and frozen within minutes of their deaths. Additional
proof comes with the discovery of remains of buttercups, plants that
grow hundreds of miles to the south, in their mouths and stomachs.
Years later, radiocarbon dating will prove that these animals died
about 9,000 years ago.
AD 1803 The Academy of Sciences in Paris determines that meteorites are stones falling from space.
(Sep) Convicted of theft and murder of a policemen, Joseph Samuels is
convicted and sentenced to hang. After three unsuccessful attempts
whereby the rope broke each time, he was returned to his cell. Later,
another man was found to be guilty and condemned to death by hanging.
This time, the execution was successful on the first try.
AD 1816 (06 Jun) A frost lasting three days kills crops in northern
North America, with snow falling to depths of eighteen to twenty inches
in northern New England.
(Jul) Another frost kills off replanted crops in New England. (20 Aug)
Temperatures drop again in New England, with frost as far south as
northern Connecticut. No explanation for this bizarre weather has ever
been forthcoming.
AD 1817 In Herculaneum, Missouri, two humanlike footprints are found
in a quarry. They appear to be made by a person not used to wearing
shoes, with feet 10.5 inches long, 4 inches wide across the toes and
2.5 inches across the heel.
AD 1820 In Circleville, Ohio, an intact iron furnace is discovered
containing the remains of a plate and a dagger of unknown age.
AD 1828 In Sparta, in White County, Tennessee, several burying grounds
are discovered containing the remains of extremely small people. The
tallest of the wee folk discovered is 19 inches. The story is reported
in Harper's Magazine in July 1869, and was also reported a work
published in 1853, "The Romance of Natural History" which also refers
to diminutive sarcophagi.
AD 1829 (Nov) In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a block of marble is
removed from a quarry, and is found to contain an indentation with
raised letters "I" and "U". It is unknown who carved these letters.
AD 1832 Captain John Symmes of the US Navy petitions Congress to allow
him to attempt to sail a small fleet of ships to the North Pole to
search for what he calls the 'Symmes Hole' which he believes will give
him egress to the inside of the crust of the planet. With Congressional
approval, the secretaries of the Navy and the Treasury order three
ships to be outfitted for the venture. Only the intervention of
President Jackson stops the effort.
(Nov) In Coosawattee Old Town, in Murray County Georgia, two silver
crosses are found in a burial mound. Indian relics are also found, but
the crofters of the crosses are unknown. The crosses bear strange
designs including the head of a horse - which was unknown on the North
American continent at that time, although NOT in prehistoric times.
AD 1838 George Grey, exploring the Australian outback in the area
around the Glenelg River, discovers paintings of figures in a cave.
These figures are shown wearing tunics and cowls, items which the
aborigines do not wear.
AD 1840 In Jersey County, Illinois, Professor John Russell explores
caves in which innumerable human bones litter the floor. Professor
Russell states that the bones offer mute testimony to the truth of the
AmerIndians' story of the Piasa, and it's craving for human flesh.
AD 1843 (05 Jan) Near the Connecticut River in Connecticut, a coin is
found, apparently copper, and about half the thickness of a penny, with
writing which is indecipherable.
AD 1848 (03 Mar) Human remains are found in a cave on the Rock of
Gibraltar. These later prove to be the first Neanderthal remains ever
found, although they won't be identified as such for many years.
AD 1850 A Frenchman named Angrand discovers Choquequirau, an former Inca stronghold.
AD 1851 (Jun) At Meeting House Hill, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a
metallic vessel, about 4.5" high by 6.6" at the base and 2.5" at the
top is found when "an immense stone" is blasted out of the bedrock.
(24 Dec) In California, Mr. Hiram Dewitt discovers an iron nail
embedded in a piece of auriferous quartz. When he accidentally drops
the mineral ore, the nail with a perfect head is found inside. Sir
David Brewster makes a report to the British Association for the
Advancement of Science about a block of stone from Kingoodie Quarry in
northern Britain in which was found a piece of manufactured nail,
including the head. Because of the great age of the geological strata of
this find, the nail's maker remains a mystery.
AD 1854 In Northern Tibet, the French explorer, Latour visits Hsing Nu
and discovers tombs, weapons, copper vessels and silver and gold
necklaces adorned with swastikas and spirals.
AD 1856 The first remains of Neanderthal Man are found in a gravel pit
in the Neander Valley of Germany. At first they are believed to be the
remains of a congenital idiot, but after further remains are
discovered, they are realized to be those of an extinct human species.
AD 1860 In Castenedolo, Italy, Professor Ragazzoni, an expert
geologist and teacher at the Technical Institute at Brescia, finds the
fragmentary vault of a human skull in a deposit of coralline stratum of
the Pleistocene glaciation, circa ten million years old.
AD 1863 At the Arno River, Italy while constructing the railroad
southward from Arezzo, a trench over fifty feet deep had to be dug. It
was during this excavation that the Olmo skull was unearthed. The skull
lay at a depth of nearly fifty feet beneath the surface in a deposit
that had been formed in the floor of an ancient lake. The blue clay in
which the skull was found was determined to be older Pleistocene
deposits.
AD 1864 At Holly Oak, Delaware, a 5.5 inch piece of whelk shell
bearing the distinct carving of a mammoth is found in a peat bog in this
town north of Wilmington. Core samples taken of this area indicate an
age of between 80,000 and 100,000 years before the present.
AD 1868 (Jun) Hiriam McGee, while prospecting for gold in the Antelope
Hills of Wyoming, discovers a large boulder which he mistakes for an
emerald. It later turns out to be nephrite jade, when McGee returns to
retrieve the rest of the boulder and search for more, he can't find
the valley where his adventure started.
AD 1869 (17 Dec) In Wellsville, Ohio, a group of miners, digging in a
coal bank, come upon a slate wall containing several lines of
indecipherable hieroglyphics. The lines in slate are reversed, possibly
because the pieces of coal contain the hieroglyphics as well, only
indented to the wall's raised letters.
AD 1870 Cyrus Read founds the Hollow Earth Society, succeeding in attracting thousands of members.
AD 1872 (Nov) The brigantine "Mary Celeste" leaves New York harbor for Genoa, Italy.
(02 Dec) The brigantine, "Mary Celeste", is seen off the coast of Europe, apparently proceeding normally on its way.
(04 Dec) The "Mary Celeste" is found floating adrift and unmanned off
of the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. Its crew of twelve and the
captain's family are never heard from again.
AD 1873 (27 Mar) In the Dardanelles, a Mr. Frank Calvert discovers
what he regards as conclusive evidence of the existence of Man in the
Miocene Period. Among his finds is a fragment of bone from either a
Dinotherium or a Mastodon on which has been carved the figure of a
horned quadruped.
AD 1874 (04 Apr) In Wildon, North Carolina, a veritable catacomb of
skeletal remains is found when workmen open a way for the railroad
between Wildon and Garrysberg. According to a contemporary newspaper
account, the bodies exhumed "were of a strange and remarkable
formation", the skulls being nearly an inch in thickness, and the teeth
being filed sharp, as those of cannibals, with the enamel perfectly
preserved. The femur was as long as the leg of an ordinary man.
AD 1876 In Parkersburg, West Virginia, a large stone was taken from
the hillside four miles north of the city, on the West Virginia side of
the Ohio River, which contained the imprint of a human foot, some
fourteen inches in length.
AD 1877 (Jul) Four prospectors near Eureka, Nevada discover gigantic
human remains in the hills of Spring Valley. They chip out leg and foot
bones encased in quartzite. In life, the person who had once walked
the earth was obviously huge, from knee to heel, the bone spanned 39
inches long. No other trace of the ancient giant was ever found.
AD 1879 (05 Dec) In Milton, in Sullivan County, Missouri, a silver and
iron death-mask is found by a farmer while plowing his field.
AD 1880 Dr. Otto Hahn, a prominent German geologist, claims to have
discovered fossils of corals in several meteorites taken from a fall
discovered near Knyahinya in Hungary. These fossils were examined by
Dr. D.F. Weinlander, a well-known zoologist, who agreed that the
evidence were indeed once-living creatures. This gives evidence of an
"extraterrestrial body which seems to have been overtaken by a great
catastrophe." At Castenedolo, a friend of Professor Ragazzoni's,
excavating in the same pit in which the professor found the cranial
fragments, found the scattered skeletal remains of two children. Later,
the skeleton of a woman is found within the same stratum.
AD 1882 (22 Jul) At Mt. Pisgah, North Carolina, objects are found,
consisting of partly human, partly animal in either full or bas-relief.
Some are utensils, and they appear to have been made with metal
instruments.
(17 Nov) At Carson, Nevada, some "supposed human footprints" are found in sandstone in a quarry in Nevada State Prison.
AD 1883 Over four hundred cigar-shaped and disk-shaped objects are
seen moving across the sun in Zacatecas, Mexico At Castendolo,
Professor Sergi, an anthropologist, examines the fossil remains found by
Professor Ragazzoni at Brescia and pronounces them as two children
and a woman of modern type.
AD 1885 At Voecklabruck, Isador Braun discovers a small (67mm x 47mm)
steel cube when a block of coal is broken open from a seam being worked
and could have only have gotten there before the coal beds were laid
down, tens of millions of years ago. A deep incision runs around it,
and the edges are rounded on two faces, indicating human manufacture.
Analysis shows its composition resembles nickel-carbon steel, a
manufactured substance. Most authorities that examine the object
declare that it must be of artificial nature, but cannot agree as to
its origin. The object rests in the Salzburg Museum until 1910, when it
disappears.
AD 1886 (14 Jan) In Lexington, Kentucky, a massive stone wall is
unearthed by men working in a rock quarry. It is thirty feet below the
surface of the surrounding soil, and shows evidence of being
constructed by skilled masons.
AD 1887 (Jul) In Eureka, Nevada, four men searching for gold come upon a large bone, reportedly human, in the Spring Valley.
(Aug) Two children are found in Spain coming from a Spanish cave. They
are reported to have slanted eyes, green skin and speak a totally
unknown language. One child, a boy, soon dies, but the other, a girl
eventually learns Spanish and tells a story about being transported
from a country which was always in twilight. Who these children were
and where they came from is never determined. The Galveston, Texas
Daily News reports the discovery of a wrecked ship of unusual design.
Little remains of the description, save that the width of the stern is
about fifteen feet, and "is composed of solid oak beams laid crosswise
over each other, secured with iron spikes." The ship is believed to
be possibly Roman of unknown age.
AD 1888 At Bat Creek, Loudon County, in Tennessee, a small, dark
stone, about the size of a Hershey Bar is found in a grave with
lettering in ancient Hebrew, which, when translated reads:" for the land
of Judah" or possibly "for the Judeans", and below is added, "the
year 1". The location of the stone indicates that it was buried with
the bodies, and not disturbed until its discovery. The find was turned
over to the Smithsonian Institution.
AD 1891 (Mar) In Bradley County, Tennessee, Mr. J.H. Hooper noticed
what appeared to be a headstone on a wooded ridge on his farm. He dug
around the stone expecting to see the dates and "rest in peace", but
found it to be covered in unknown characters in an indecipherable
language. Digging deeper, he found other stones that formed a wall about
two feet thick, eight feet high and about sixteen feet long, covered
with the letters, arranged in wavy, nearly parallel lines. The wall
was traced and found to go on for nearly a thousand feet. The stone is
a dark-red sandstone of unknown age.
(09 Jun) At Morrisonville, Illinois, a length of chain is found when a large lump of coal is broken open.
AD 1895 (Jul) A party of miners working near Bridalveil Falls in
California, find the remains of a woman whose skeletal remains indicated
that she had stood some six feet, eight inches in height. G.F.
Martindale, in charge of the miners, noticed a pile of stones that had
been shaped and fitted together. When his men removed these blocks,
thinking they had stumbled on buried treasure, they found the mummified
remains of a woman who was wrapped in furs, and covered with a fine
gray powder. She was clutching a child to her breast.
At Crittenden, Arizona, a sarcophagus is reportedly found containing
the remains of a person three meters long and having six toes on each
foot.
AD 1897 (27 Mar) Two hundred people, including the governor of Kansas
see a large object flying over Topeka, Kansas. "I don't know what the
thing is, but I hope it may yet solve the railroad problem."
(02 Apr) At Webster City, Iowa, a peculiar piece of rock was removed
from the Lehigh Coal Mine. The slab was found just under the sandstone,
which was 130' beneath the surface. The tablet was two feet by one
foot by four inches thick, and artistically carved with diamond-shaped
squares, each with the face of an old man in the square. The features
of each portrait are identical, with each bearing a strange mark in
the shape of a dent in the forehead.
(19 Apr) A cigar-shaped object, believed to be a spaceship, crashes
into the home of Judge J.S. Proctor in Aurora, Texas. The pilot,
described as a 'little man', is killed in the crash and buried in the
local cemetery. Over the years, the exact location of the grave is lost
to memory.
(20 Apr) Alexander Hamilton, a LeRoy, Kansas farmer, claims to have seen a
U.F.O. hovering over his cow pasture at a height of 30' with his son
and a farmhand. Within it, the farmer and his companions seen "the
strangest beings [that he] ever saw". He also claimed that it lassoed
one of his cattle and hauled it into the ship. The next day, the
remains of the calf were recovered from a nearby farm, legs, head and
skin. Should Hamilton's credibility be questioned, it must be pointed
out that he was a member of the House of Representatives, and people
who knew him for thirty years never heard a word of his questioned.
(Apr) At Elysian Park, a collection of fossilized imprints are found
cut out of a rock at least seventy feet above the bottom of a little
canyon by workers who are making a deep cut for a new wagon road. The
fossils include ferns, leaves, twigs, a fish and what appears to be a
boot print from a shoe of normal size.
At Alicante, Spain, a limestone bust some 21 inches in height is
discovered. Believed to be a local divinity, it comes to be known as
"the Lady of Elche", and has a clear resemblance to certain well-known
finds in Columbia and Honduras.
AD 1900 (Easter) Off the island of Antikythera, Greece, a sponge diver
brings up a misshapen bronze curiosity which will in 1958, be
discovered to be a computer designed to plot the movements of the sun,
moon Earth and planets. The find is described as amazing as "a jet
plane in the tomb of King Tut".
(20 Oct) Although gynecology is virtually unknown at this time,
surgical instruments as sophisticated as those in use after the Second
World War are found in the ruins of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins in
the destroyed city of Pompeii.
AD 1902 (28 Oct) The steamship Fort Salisbury encounters a metallic
structure in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa. As the
officers and crew watch, the vessel sank beneath the waves.
AD 1908 (30 Jun) An explosion as powerful as a hydrogen bomb rocks
Siberia. There is nothing to account for it. In 1927, when Soviet
scientists found the site, they claimed there was no evidence that a
meteor had struck. Almost eighty years later, scientists determined that
the explosion was made by either a bolide, a type of meteor that
exploded in the atmosphere, or a comet, whose resulting blast wave
leveled the Russian forest.
AD 1911 Hiram Bingham discovers Machu Picchu, a former Inca stronghold, high in the Andes mountains.
AD 1912 (04 May) The New York Times reports of a find of gigantic
humans made while excavating a mound at Lake Delevan, Wisconsin.
According to the news account, eighteen skeletons are found in one large
mound at a Lake Lawn farm.
At Thomas, Oklahoma, two employees of the Municipal Electric Plant use
a sledge to break up a chunk of coal too large for the furnace. An
iron pot topples out from the center of the lump, leaving an impression
in the coal. The coal had been mined near Wilberton, Oklahoma.
AD 1913 (9 Feb) Strange flying objects are seen traveling horizontally
in groups, more slowly than meteorites, by farmers and astronomers in
Canada, Bermuda, Brazil and Africa. Astronomer W.F. Denning reported
seeing lighted windows in one of them.
AD 1920 At Bear Creek, Montana, in a coal mine known as Eagle No.3 two
enormous molars are reportedly found. It is claimed that they are
three times the size of normal human teeth, and had been found in
deposits at least thirty million years old.
AD 1921 At Harappa, India, an ancient city is discovered whose
inhabitants enjoy a city as well laid out as any in Twentieth Century
Europe.
AD 1924 (13 Sep) Charles Manier finds artifacts northwest of Tucson,
Arizona which indicate that Roman explorers may have been in that part
of the world. The artifacts,, including sixty-two crosses, daggers,
batons, spears and sword-like weapons are made of lead and encrusted in
caliche - a sheet of hard, crusty material that 'grows' due to a
reaction of chemicals and water in desert soils over man.
