Dark Mysteries

The Bermuda Triangle is perhaps the most famous mysterious place in the world. This area of about 500,000 square miles sits in the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Miami, Florida. More than 20 planes and 50 ships are said to have mysteriously vanished into thin air or crashed without explanation. Though vessels manage to pass through the area with ease every day and there are no more disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean, the unexplained accidents have still captured the public imagination.

 Faces in the Floor! In 1971, some mysterious marks appeared on the floor of a house in Belmez, Spain. They looked just like faces. Over the next few years, the faces would disappear and then come back. Weird! Were they the faces of long-dead people who had lived in the house – or fakes? #Mystery

 When a genuine Norse coin dating to the early 11th century was found among Native American ruins in Maine in 1957, it seemed to offer an intriguing piece of evidence that Vikings did indeed travel further south than Newfoundland long before the time of Christopher Columbus. And it could be so – but experts have their doubts. The fact that the ‘Maine Penny‘ was the only Norse artifact found at the site seems to indicate that it came to the site through native trade channels from Viking sources in Labrador and Newfoundland.

 

 Hooker's lips, scientifically known as Psychotria elata, is a tropical plant native to rainforests in Costa Rica, Ecuador and other Central and South American countries. The most eye-catching part of the plant is its beautiful pair of red bracts that look like "luscious lips," from where the plant acquires its common name. Its gorgeous and distinctive shape helps the plant attract pollinators such as hummingbirds and butterflies. The flower of the plant is not as notable as its bracts, which is white and fragrant and usually emerges from the center of the "red hot" bracts between December and March. People in Central America gift the plant to their family and friends to show their love, especially on Valentine's day. Its bark and leaves are also used by locals to treat several diseases including skin irritation. 

Millions of circular patches dot the desert landscape in the African country of Namibia. These eerie ovals of soil surrounded by rings of grass are known as “fairy circles” because their defined shape and pattern look as if they've been created by small spritely creatures. They can range in size from about 12 feet to about 114 feet. While scientists have many theories, including creepy crawlies like sand termites, recent research seems to indicate that the pattern is created via plants competing for scarce water.

 The Knights of the Golden Circle, or KGC for short, were a secret society of wealthy Southern loyalists formed just before the Civil War, devoted not just to defending their values (i.e. owning all the slaves they wanted) but conquering parts of Mexico, Central America, and Cuba to create a Confederate empire. Their members had an abundance of gold and weapons, and purportedly some infamous members, including Jesse James (whose robberies may have contributed to the KGC secret stash) and John Wilkes Boot In fact, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln may have been a KGC plot from the beginning, at least according to word-of-mouth legends. The KGC disappeared just a few decades after the war ended, or so it appeared, leaving behind one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the world. There's still speculation that they just went deeper into hiding, and continue their plots to overthrow the US federal government.

 The venom of the boomslang is primarily a hemotoxin; it disables the coagulation process and the victim may die as a result of internal and external bleeding. The venom has been observed to cause hemorrhaging into tissues such as muscle and the brain.Sizeabout 1to1.6m A boomslang is a slender snake with large eyes on a large blunt head that is distinct from the neck. The snake can grow to up to 2 meters long, but is on average about 1 to 1.6 m in length. The large eyes of the snake are characteristic of the species.Snake habitat Boomslangs are native to sub-Saharan Africa. They live in karoo shrubs, savannahs, lowland forests, in the Eastern and Central African Plateaus and in grasslands.Predators The Boomslang is also known to prey upon small birds, bird eggs, small mammals, and various insects. As a relatively small snake, the Boomslang faces numerous predators throughout Africa including large birds and other snakes. 

 They appear to be flawlessly round, ranging in size from just a few centimeters to over 6.6 feet in diameter, and are found all over the Diquis Delta and Isla de Cano in Costa Rica. Weighing up to 16 tons, it’s hard to imagine how humans could have moved these gigantic sculptures hewn from hard granodiorite – considering that the nearest quarry for that material is over 50 miles away from where the sculptures were found. Over three hundred of them are scattered across Costa Rica, but we’ll never know why – the people who made them back in 1,000 C.E. are long gone and had no written records.

 There’s very little that we actually know for sure about the Phaistos Disc. It’s made of clay – check. It dates back to the second millenium B.C.E. – maybe. But its origin, meaning and purpose remain shrouded in mystery. Discovered in Crete, the disc is features i241 impressions of 45 distinct symbols, some of which are easily identifiable as people, tools, plants and animals. But because nothing else like it from the same time period has ever been found, archaelogists haven’t been able to provide a meaningful analysis of its content.

 Alien toilet found in China”. This is just one of many absurd headlines seen on the internet concerning the undoubtedly bizarre Baigong Pipes, rusty red iron pipes that lead into a pyramid a top Mount Baigong from a nearby salt water lake. What’s so strange about the pipes? Well, for one thing, they’re in an area that is completely inhospitable to man – no civilization is ever known to have lived there. They’re uniform in size and seem to have been created in an intentional pattern. No clear explanation exists for the presence of these pipes, and scientists don’t seem to agree on whether they could be natural occurrences.

 This is easily one of the more controversial ancient inventions on this list. Even more so, the ancient device was stolen in 2003 and has yet to be found. As its name implies, the Baghdad Battery, also known as the Parthian Battery, is a 2,000-year-old ancient artifact that could be an ancient version of a battery. The ancient invention was discovered in 1983 by a German archaeologist in Khujut Rabu, an area right outside of Baghdad. Inside the clay jar, you will find a copper cylinder and iron rod. If you were to pour a weak acid into the clay jar, something like vinegar or even grape juice, the combination would cause the "battery" to generate about 1 volt of electricity. However, why would an ancient civilization need a battery?  At the moment, that is unclear. In fact, to this day, archeologists have only found one battery. Even more so, there is no written record describing the exact function of the jar. 

 Over this bay off the Caribbean Sea in orthwestern Venezuela, lightning storms take over the skies almost every night of the year. This weather phenomenon is known as Catatumbo Lightning, named for the river that flows into the lake. Lake Maracaibo has the highest concentration of lightning on Earth thanks to a combination of heat, humidity, air currents and the mountainous landscape. At night, lightning strikes Lake Maracaibo about 28 times a minute for up to nine hours.