The World's Most Mysterious Places!

The World's Most Mysterious Places!

Nature never stops to amaze us with its magnificent phenomenon just like these inexplicable holes in the ground. These holes make an excellent tourist attraction. Check out these unreal photographs and location descriptions of 9 of world's most famous pits and sinkholes. (Courtesy of National Geographic)

1. Lisbon, Portugal, Sinkhole

A parked bus was the unfortunate "meal" of a sinkhole that opened up in the streets of Lisbon, Portugal, in 2003.

"Anything that increases the flow of water into subsurface soil can speed up the formation of sinkholes'" ,Missouri State's Gouzie said. In many cities, utility infrastructure such as sewer lines and fiber optic cables are buried in troughs filled with loose material, which can wash away over time. In some cases, a stretch of road can essentially become a concrete bridge over mostly empty space.

"It's eventually not enough to hold the weight of the next truck over it," Gouzie said.

2. Guatemala Sinkhole

Heavy rains from tropical storm Agatha likely triggered the collapse of a huge sinkhole in Guatemala on Sunday, seen above a few days afterward.

In the strictly geologic use of the word, a sinkhole happens when water erodes solid bedrock, carving an underground cavity that can then collapse. Many parts of the United States are at risk for that type of event.

The Guatemala sinkhole fits into a broader use of the term, which refers to any sudden slump of the ground's surface. Instead of solid bedrock, much of Guatemala City rests atop a layer of loose, gravelly volcanic pumice that is hundreds of feet thick. And at least one geologist says leaking pipes—not nature—created the recent sinkhole.

Overall, the risk for repeat sinkholes in Guatemala City is high—but highly unpredictable.

3. Winter Park, Florida, Sinkhole

he sinkhole in Winter Park, Florida (map), opened up in 1981 underneath the city's public swimming pool, Missouri State's Gouzie said.

"I've never seen a final report as to whether the pool was leaking," he said, adding that water can flow into the underlying soil through tiny cracks in the bottom of a pool. Even watering plants at the pool's perimeter could have sent enough runoff through Florida's sandy soil to erode the solid limestone underneath.

Gouzie said the U.S. Geological Survey has mapped the types of bedrock that exist across the country. But studies of the underground cracks and fissures—and the way water travels through them—are still needed to predict where sinkholes could occur.

4. Mulberry, Florida, Sinkhole

This 185-foot-deep (56-meter-deep) sinkhole appeared in 1994 in Mulberry, Florida (map), in a pile of waste material dumped by mining company IMC-Agrico. The company was mining rock to extract phosphate, a main ingredient in fertilizers and a chemical used to produce phosphoric acid, added to enhance the taste of soda and various food items.

After phosphate was extracted from the rocks, the gypsum-based waste product was dumped as a slurry. As layer after layer of the stuff dried, it formed cracks, like those that appear in dried mud. Water later made its way through the cracks and carried away subsurface material, setting the stage for a sinkhole.

5. Blue Hole, Belize

Sinkholes can happen anywhere water can erode a vertical channel that connects to a horizontal drain, a situation that allows a column of solid material to wash away, Missouri State's Gouzie explained.

If the sinkhole is near the sea—or in the sea, as with the famous Blue Hole in Lighthouse Reef off the coast of Belize—seawater can quickly seep in after a collapse, forming a deep pool.

6. Picher, Oklahoma, Sinkhole

Years of mining for zinc and lead has left Picher, Oklahoma, near the border with Kansas, literally full of holes—including this sinkhole seen in 2008. Some mines were dug too close to the surface, and the roofs were unable to support the weight of earth on top, leading to collapses.

"It has happened in Missouri and in western Pennsylvania from coal mining," Missouri State's Gouzie said. "We've gotten better with buidlng mines so the roofs can support the weight over top of them."

7. Iceland Sinkhole

Adventure kayaker Mick Coyne lowers himself down the wall of a sinkhole toward the headwaters of the Jokulsa, Iceland's second longest river. Though the river is fed by melt from a glacier, this 150-foot (45-meter), inverted funnel-shaped hole was blasted into being by rising steam from geothermal vents below.

8. Ik-Kil Cenote, Mexico

Swimmers float in the saphirre waters of the Ik-Kil cenote, near the Maya site of Chichén Itzá in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Cenote means "natural well" in Spanish. Sinkholes occurring at sea level will fill up as high as the water table, creating the famous clear blue pools, used by the Maya royalty for both relaxation and ritual sacrifices.

9. Neversink Pit, Alabama

Neversink Pit, a wet limestone sinkhole in Alabama seen above in 1998, is about 50 feet (15 meters) deep and houses a rare species of fern. The sinkhole was bought in the 1990s by a group of cavers to preserve it for future generations.

Karst is the geologic term for landscapes formed mainly by the dissolving of limestone or dolomite bedrock. In the United States, karst underlies parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Alabama, Texas, and most of Florida. Such areas are marked by sinking streams, subterranean drainage, large springs, caves—and, of course, sinkholes.

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Unravelling mystery of the mighty Saraswati -

Kalayat. Kapila Muni ashram. A sudden gush of water near four separate temple sites baffled geologists

It was once eulogised as the mother of seven rivers flowing in the northern region, fierce and roaring in all its full grandeur. But the majesty of the erstwhile Saraswati river is long lost. The mighty river does not flow anymore, but the quest for its lost remains in Haryana has intrigued geologists like never before. And this unflinching pursuit could well be the answer to mitigate water scarcity in starved regions, besides offering a bounty of rich placer mining.

Sometime ago, a sudden gush of water from below the surface near four separate temple sites in Haryana left geologists burning midnight oil in pursuit of the lost remains of the erstwhile mighty Saraswati river. The exploration that eventually followed only reinforced their theory of the existence of numerous paleo-channels (dried river tracks beneath the earth) of the erstwhile river, deep aquifers further below and buried remains of the river. The water still continues to spill out. Geologists say the river may not flow today, but its buried channels still exist in Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Talking to Deccan Herald, Dr A R Chaudhary, professor of the Geology Department, Kurukshetra University in Haryana, who has pioneered this research and is in charge of a full-fledged Saraswati River Research Laboratory at the university, said that a mighty river of the magnitude of Saraswati must have had a perennial source.

He said: “Satellite imageries suggest the presence of several paleo-channels indicating a major river flow that once existed. Laboratory analysis of sediments collected from the water that came out of these two sites suggest a dense mineral content of higher Himalayan hills, which only reinforced our theory.”

Dr Chaudhary, who has been working on Himalayas and the Saraswati for about two decades, said the research is significant as it attempts to address the critical issue of water scarcity, something which could be a major problem area in the future. “The existence of deeper aquifers, and more significantly the phenomena of these getting re-charged could eventually lead to huge untapped fresh water reserves. The paleo-channels are also getting re-charged,” he said.

Here’s what the way forward is. Oil exploration major, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) is gearing up to dig deep within the surface in search of fresh water trapped in these deep aquifers. The process is likely to be outsourced to the Hyderabad-based National Geo-Physical Research Institute and Dr Chaudhary, for which talks are underway, sources said. ONGC has undertaken this project as part of its corporate social responsibility to address issues of water scarcity in the region.

A memorandum of understanding with stakeholders, including the governments of Haryana and Gujarat, have been signed by ONGC to initiate digging and scientific exploration.

Haryana has attained a special status in the endeavour to unravel the mystery
associated with this river of the Indian subcontinent. In Haryana, nearly 103 early Harappan (2500-2200 BC) archaeological sites related to the Saraswati river civilisation have been identified. These sites are spread across various districts of Haryana. The battle of Mahabharata was fought on the fields of Kurukshetra, which were dotted by hermitage sites of numerous renowned ascetics along the course of the Saraswati. So what went wrong in geological time, some 9,000 years ago. Dr Chaudhary maintained that the disappearance of the mighty Saraswati was because of the rise in the Himalayan mountain chain, among other reasons.

He said the major diversions in the course of the gigantic Satluj river, which in fact was a major contributor of the erstwhile Saraswati along with the Yamuna, could possibly have let the Saraswati to lose its flow. “The deeper aquifers related to the paleo-channels of the Saraswati, through which flowed billions of million cubic metres of fresh water for a considerable period of geologic time, hold the key for mitigation of water scarcity in the
region,” he said.

Historically, the venerated Hindu texts, are replete with references of a major
river which drained the northern part of the country. The Saraswati, Dr Chaudhary said, is supposed to have originated in the glaciated region of the Himalayas and
during its passage to the Arabian Sea, the river roared as it carried peaks of newly
upheaved mountains as flowers in its flow. The river, as per the vedas, is supposed to have bestowed upon the people huge material and spiritual benefits. Along the path of the Saraswati flourished numerous agrarian civilisations.

Investigations carried out by a team of geologists reveals that the Saraswati glacier branch of the Saraswati flowed through Yamunanagar and Kurukshetra districts in Haryana before it joined the Ghaggar river at Rasula in the Patiala district of Punjab.

Research

A buried river bed in Haryana village has revealed an estimated width of this paleo-channel to be more than 2 km. Intensive surface and sub-surface geological investigations, including detailed study of satellite imageries of Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh, have been carried out before inferences were finally drawn.

Dr Chaudhary said he has identified a number of paleo-channels along the vedic tract of the erstwhile Saraswati river. These widely spaced signatures include water coming out of Kapil Muni temple Sarovar and Chyavan Giri kund at Kalayat in the Jind district.
Subsurface geological studies in Kurukshetra and presence of buried river bed in the Pehowa district of Haryana have reinforced the research theory.

The analysis of sediments, including textural and dense mineral analysis of the sediments coming out with water, have been carried out to ascertain their major depositional environment and provenance.

The dense mineral assemblage from the above mentioned sites suggests that the sediments have been derived from very high pressure plate tectonic setting. The
river channel that deposited these sedim­ents was trans-Himalayan in character,
Dr Chaudhary said.

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Mythical Giant Turtle Found in Vietnam

Legendary Turtle In Vietnam May Prove to be True

A huge turtle weighing around 400 pounds was found swimming in the waters of Vietnam’s Hoan Kiem Lake. Biologists and scientists from the Cleveland Metropark Zoo identify this rare giant turtle as a Raftus Swinhoei as they followed local villagers’ report of a mythical creature living in the lake.

The rare turtle believed to be the last surviving giant turtle was spotted in Vietnam’s northern Thanh Hoa province. The creature is described as a soft-shelled turtle with a pretty distinctive head. According to the zoo’s curator, “This is one of those mythical species that people always talked about but no one ever saw.”

A Legendary Turtle In Vietnam’s Lake Hanoi

Vietnamese legend tells a story of a huge golden turtle that helped the country fight off Chinese invaders in the 16th century. Rumors about this giant mythical turtle was that this turtle who lives in the deep waters of Northern Vietnam lake bestowed a magical sword to Vietnamese town folks and victory was won over the war against Chinese.

However, in the zoologists and biologists point of view, the turtle is a great scientific discovery. “This is an incredibly important discovery because Swinhoei’s turtle is one of the most critically endangered species of turtle in the world,” said Vietnam-based coordinator of the U.S. zoo’s Asian Turtle Program, Doug Hendrie.

The Legend of the Turtle Lake

If the legendary “Excalibur” sword was given to King Arthur and thus victory and glory was given to his country, the Legend of the Turtle Lake is similar. A giant turtle is said to be the keeper of the sword and it is said that when danger threatens the country (Vietnam), the keeper of the sword will surface bearing the sword on top of its shell. After the victory, the giant golden turtle said to have re-surfaced and reclaimed the sword from the emperor.

The legendary lake in this legend is the Hoan Kiem Lake which in Vietnam means “Returned Sword” Lake. In great coincidence, in this lake the soft-shelled giant mythical creature was discovered.

The said to be mythical turtle is now being cared for in Hoan Kiem and Cleveland Metroparks Zoo now begins its effort to preserve and protect Asian turtles amid the reports of increased killings to these near to extinction species. In Asia, turtles are being killed for food or for its potency as a medicinal cure.

These are undated photos provided by the
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo of a captive Swinhoe's
soft-shell turtle from Thanh Hoa province in Vietnam.
Zoo researchers recently discovered one of the
rare giant turtles in the wild in northern Vietnam.

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Bermuda Triangle

Strange & Unexplained - Bermuda Triangle

[- The Bermuda Triangle -]

The genesis of the Bermuda Triangle legend is in an Associated Press dispatch of September 16, 1950, in which reporter E. V. W. Jones took note of what he characterized as mysterious disappearances of ships and planes between the Florida coast and Bermuda. Two years later, in an article in Fate magazine, George X. Sand recounted a "series of strange marine disappearances, each leaving no trace whatever, that have taken place in the past few years" in a "watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico."

M. K. Jessup picked up on some of the same stories in his 1955 book The Case for Hie UFO, which suggested that alien intelligences were responsible, a view echoed by Donald E. Keyhoe (The Flying Saucer Conspiracy [19551) and Frank Edwards (Stranger Than Science [1959]). It took Vincent H. Gaddis to coin the catch-all phrase that would enter popular culture; his article in the February 1964 issue of Argosy (the following year incorporated into his book Invisible Horizons) was titled "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle." Soon nearly every popular book on "true mysteries" included sections on the Bermuda Triangle or, as some called it, the "Devil's triangle" or the "hoodoo sea." Ivan T. Sanderson, author of Invisible Residents (1970), cited it as evidence of an intelligent, technologically advanced underwater civilization which is responsible for, among other mysterious phenomena, UFOs.

The first book specifically on the subject was a self-published work by John Wallace Spencer, Limbo of the Lost (1969), which as a 1973 Bantam paperback found a huge readership. In 1970 a feature-film documentary, The Devil's Triangle, brought the subject a new, larger audience. The Bermuda Triangle fever peaked in 1974 with the publication of The Bermuda Triangle, a major bestseller (five million sales worldwide) written by Charles Berlitz with J. Manson Valentine. That year two paperbacks, Richard Winer's The Devil's Triangle and John Wallace Spencer's No Earthly Explanation, also racked up impressive sales.

The articles and books on the subject betrayed little evidence of original research. Attentive readers could not help noticing that mostly the Triangle's chroniclers rewrote each other's work. In 1975 Larry Kusche, a librarian at Arizona State University, published a devastating debunking of what he called the "manufactured mystery." In the book, titled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved, he did the archival digging the other writers had neglected. Weather records, the reports of official investigating agencies, newspaper accounts, and other documents indicated that the Triangle literature had played fast and loose with the evidence. For example, calm seas in the literature turned into raging storms in reality; mysterious disappearances became conventionally caused sinkings and crashes; the remains of ships "never heard from again" turned out to have been found long since.

In an April 4, 1975, letter to Mary Margaret Fuller, editor of Fate, a spokesman for Lloyd's of London wrote, "According to Lloyd's Records, 428 vessels have been reported missing throughout the world since 1955, and it may interest you to know that our intelligence service can find no evidence to support the claim that the 'Bermuda Triangle' has more losses than elsewhere. This finding is upheld by the United States Coastguard [sic] whose computer-based records of casualties in the Atlantic go back to 1958."

If the Triangle's proponents had been able to mount any credible defense, the Triangle might have retained some claim to being an authentic anomaly. Instead there was virtual silence. An exchange in Pursuit between Berlitz and another Triangle critic, British writer Paul Begg, inspired little confidence in would-be believers. Berlitz's response to a long list of factual errors was to note that Kusche and Begg had not actually visited the Triangle and that Kusche had once asked him "whether The New Yorker was a New York newspaper."

Occasional reappearances in supermarket tabloids notwithstanding, the once-famous Bermuda Triangle survives for the most part as a footnote in the history of fads and passing sensations. In the mid-1970s another dubious "mystery," focused on allegedly enigmatic cattle mutilations, took its place in the popular imagination.

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Noah's Ark

Strange & Unexplained - Noah's Ark

[- Great Story from the Bible -]

The Book of Genesis tells the story of Noah and his family, who escaped the Great Flood in an ark loaded with animals. At the conclusion of 40 nights, the ark came to rest "upon the mountains of Ararat." Tradition and Bible literalists place this event in 2345 B.C. (the Genesis account was written some 1,300 years later), though geologists and archaeologists, citing the paucity of scientific evidence, doubt that any such massive flood ever took place.

If the flood did not happen, Noah and his ark did not exist, and the Bible is not inerrant. In the view of most scholars, the story should be read as one of many tales from all over the world of an immense flood and its chosen survivors. These stories do not prove that a universal deluge occurred; they seem to have arisen as responses to devastating local floods which encompassed, if not the whole world, at least the world its victims occupied.

To fundamentalists such an interpretation is unacceptable, and so for a long time hopeful seekers have searched for the remains of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat. There is a Mount Ararat; actually, to be more specific, there are two of them: Great Ararat (16,900 feet high) and Little Ararat (12,900). Connecting the two is a rock saddle between 7,000 and 8,000 feet high. These mountains lie in extreme eastern Turkey, along the border of Iran and Armenia.

In fact, Ararat is an ancient name for Armenia and, later, for a small northern district of that nation. The name was not attached to the mountain until around the eleventh century. Other sources, in any case, place the final resting of the ark elsewhere. The Koran mentions Mount Judi, associated with a mountain (subsequently renamed Judi after the Koran's account) to the south of Ararat. The first-century historian Flavius Josephus put the remains in what is now called Haran, a Turkish city near the Syrian border. Other ancient chroniclers had their own favored sites, most in Turkey but others in Greece, Armenia, and Iran.

Sightings and Searches

In short, historical claims for an ark on Ararat are shaky indeed. Nonetheless eventually Jews and Christians who gave thought to the subject came to believe that the ark's remains were still on Ararat. The pseudonymous travel writer Sir John Mandeville contended straight-facedly that on a clear day one could actually look up and see the ark. Around 1670 a Dutchman named Jan Struys, captured and enslaved by bandits in Armenia, met a hermit-or so he would claim later--on Ararat. Struys, believed by his captors to possess magical healing powers, treated the old man, who in gratitude handed him a "piece of hard wood of a dark color" and a sparkling stone, both of which "he told me he had taken from under the Ark."

In the nineteenth century a number of wouldbe discoverers climbed the mountain without finding anything-until 1876, when James Bryce of Oxford University came upon a four-foot-long stick near the peak of Great Arafat. He declared it to be a piece of the ark. On August 10, 1883, the Chicago Tribune published this colorful, but apparently entirely fictitious, tale:

A paper at Constantinople announces the discovery of Noah's Ark. It appears that some Turkish commissioners appointed to investigate the avalanches on Mt. Ararat suddenly came on a gigantic structure of very dark wood, protruding from the glacier. They made inquiries of the local folk. These had seen it for six years, but had been afraid to approach it, because a spirit of fierce aspect had been seen looking out of the upper windows. The Turkish Commissioners, however, are bold men, not deterred by such trifles, and they determined to reach it.

Situated as it was among the fastnesses of one of the glens of Mt. Ararat, it was a work of enormous difficulty, and it was only after incredible hardships that they succeeded. The Ark was in a good state of preservation.... They recognized it at once.

There was an English-speaking man among them, who had presumably read his Bible, and he saw it was made of gopher wood, the ancient timber of the scripture, which, as everyone knows, grows only on the plains of the Euphrates. Effecting an entrance into the structure, which was painted brown, they found that the Admirality requirements for the conveyance of horses had been carried out, and the interior was divided into partitions 15 feet high.

Into only three of these could they get, the others being full of ice, and how far the Ark extended into the glacier they could not tell. If, however, on being uncovered, it turns out to be 300 cubits long [the dimensions cited in Genesis], it will go hard with disbelievers.

In 1892 Archdeacon John Joseph Nouri of the Chaldean Church reported that he had found the ark and even entered it. While there, he took the opportunity to measure it, finding-unsurprisingly-that it was 300 cubits long.

In the following decades a number of expeditions were launched. Most ended in disappointment, and a few others returned claiming sightings. A 1952 expedition led by wealthy French inclustralist Fernand Navarra produced samples of wood which, when first tested, were dated at 5,000 years. A later, more accurate test resulted in a disappointing finding: the wood was from A.D. 800 and probably from a monks' shrine built on the side of the mountain. A 1960 Life photograph of a ship-shaped depression on the mountain sent an expedition racing for an onsite look-at what turned out to be a natural formation created by a recent landslide.

In the years since then, there have been other expeditions and other claims, none especially note worthy. Most of the funding and personnel for these ventures have come from fundamentalist sources who reason that if Genesis can be shown to be accurate about Noah, its account of Creation can be trusted, too. Unfortunately the inflated pronouncements of "arkeologists," as they are called, have proven to be neither accurate nor trustworthy.

Critics have had no trouble pointing out the many flaws in arkeological thought. Scientists Charles J. Cazeau and Stuart D. Scott, Jr., remarked that "if the ark had come to rest near the summit of Ararat 5,000 years ago, it likely would have shifted by glacial movement to lower elevations long ago. To at least some extent, the ark would have broken up, the wood strewn about on the lower slopes of the mountain, easily accessible even to those who are not mountain climbers."

Charles Fort, the great anomaly collector and satirist, had this to say about Nouri's account, in words that apply to all of the arkeological quest:

I accept that anybody who is convinced that there are relics upon Mt. Ararat, has only to climb up Mt. Ararat, and he must find something that can be said to be part of Noah's Ark, petrified perhaps. If someone else should be convinced that a mistake has been made, and that the mountain is really Pike's Peak, he has only to climb Pike's Peak and prove that the most virtuous of all lands was once the Holy Land.

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