Month: January 2016

The Great Pyramid of Giza (aka Khufu) stands nearly 500 feet high and is a source of pride (and tourist revenue) for Egypt. Thus the Great Pyramid, along with the other two nearby pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex, are closely protected by the government. This makes the story of thrill-seeker Andrej Cieselski, an 18-year-old teenager from Munich, Germany, all-the-more intriguing. This month Cieselski illegally climbed to the top of the 4,5000-year-old Great Pyramid – and has the pictures to back up his claim. Cieselski is no stranger to climbing stunts called “roofing” where he climbs and dangles off of tall monuments, buildings, and other dangerously high structures while filming the climb using a Go-Pro video camera. Cieselski's Great Pyramid climb took place in early January 2016

Dr. Ruggero Santilli, a notable expert in physics and mathematics, gets no respect. According to many scientists, he’s a crank. Santilli however, says there is an “effective conspiracy to suppress, or refuse to investigate, novel theories which may conflict with established scientific theories. Such will surely be the case with Santilli’s newest discovery – a concave-lens telescope that reveals an invisible part of the universe many of us would just as soon stay tucked behind the curtain. Santilli's telescope detects Invisible Terrestrial Entities (ITEs) Unlike normal telescopes which use convex lenses, Santilli’s telescope was developed with a concave lens. According to Santilli (with pictures to back it up) his invention lets us see “entities in our terrestrial environment that are invisible to our eyes and conventional Galileo telescopes”

Argentina expects a locust plague of nightmarish proportions to hit the country within ten days.  Calling it the country’s worse plague of locusts in more than half a century, officials say they are running out of time as they scramble in an attempt to contain the expected onslaught.  The agriculture agency’s chief of vegetative protection told reporters: “It’s the worst explosion in the last 60 years. It’s impossible to eradicate; the plague has already established itself. We’re just acting to make sure it’s the smallest it can be.” Last year farmers reported locust clouds that were more than four miles long and two miles high.  This year’s outbreak is expected to be far worse as pockets of locusts have already spread across northern Argentina covering an area

Lots going on the skies this week. First we had the robot walking on clouds and then the bizarre light pillars that projected a map of the city in the night sky. Now this week we have two separate sky illusion events that both occurred on the same day but in two different locations - and both had religious connotations. Mechaele Loraff posted a beautiful yellow, glowing cross in the sky above Buchanan, Michigan on January 13 (see this article for an explanation of sun pillars and their cause). The same day, Amy Langley snapped a photo of a winged angel in the skies above the island of Kauai, Hawaii. In Langley’s case however, she believes the illusion is the result of camera lens flare and not a sun

It turns out that Nessie, also known as the Loch Ness Monster, may be so difficult to find because we were looking in the wrong place. 43-year-old Keith Stewart operates a sightseeing cruise on Loch Ness. He was not a firm believer in the Loch Ness Monster’s existence – until his boat’s sonar targeted a large, uniquely-shaped object at the bottom of a newly-discovered trench in the Loch. “I wasn't really a believer of the monster beforehand. But two weeks ago, I got a sonar image of what looked like a long object with a hump lying on the bottom. It wasn't there when I scanned the loch bed later. It intrigued me and then I found this dark shape about half way between the Clansman Hotel

They call them "sun pillars", vertical shafts of light extending upwards from the setting Sun into the sky. A type of halo effect, they form when sunlight reflects off the surface of falling ice crystals and thus, are more common in cold, snowy northern latitudes than other parts of the world. Occasionally the optical phenomenon can also be produced from other sources of light, including street lights. Such was the case in Finland last week when light pillars rose into the air projecting a perfect map of the city's streets into the dark, night sky. On January 12, 2016, residents of Kauttua, Finland were treated to an unusual pattern of beautiful, bright, glowing lines in the sky. Many took pictures and posted them on the Internet. It wasn’t

There was an interesting MUFON report this week, with photos (video of the same object appeared on YouTube shortly after the report was submitted to MUFON). The sighting took place on January 14, 2016 near El Cajon, California. The witness was filming a fighter jet’s contrails in the sky and at first, did not notice the high-speed object he inadvertently caught on video. According to the witness: "I was outside at 11.30 AM on January 14 when I noticed a jet heading straight up and began to videotape it.  Later in the day when playing the video back, my girlfriend and I noticed a fast moving object near the jet that was not visible to the naked eye when recording.” Still shots from the video show thick jet contrails with

This week, a man from Bulgaria photographed what he says were “fighter jets chasing a UFO over Nova Zagora”, a city in southeastern Bulgaria. According to the witness, there were numerous people working in the field who watched the military jets flying at “very low altitudes” in the area above the villages of Gac, Zagortci, and Han Asparuhovo” while chasing a metallic, disc-shaped object. Witnesses who watched the dogfight, which involved two military jets, say the object performed “spectacular maneuvers” for about five minutes over the area as the jets circled around and above it. Analysis of the photos is currently underway (admittedly, the photo of the object slightly below the powerline is particularly suspect to me). Check out more pictures in the pictorial gallery below.

Chinese state officials say that thirty-five restaurants across China, including a popular chain of hot pot restaurants in Beijing, have been found using opium as seasoning in their food. The China Food and Drug Administration won’t say how or why the opium was placed in the restaurant food but it is believed (based on past cases) that the chefs are trying to “hook” customers on their food and keep them coming back for more. Opium of course, is a narcotic that is highly addictive, and can be easily added to food by sprinkling it with opium poppy seeds. According to Medical Daily: "The administration released a statement this week saying that dozens of restaurants were under investigation for seasoning noodles, hotpot, grilled fish, and fried chicken with

In October 2009, a generous Columbus, Ohio woman arrived at a Burlington Coat Factory store in a stretch Hummer limousine and announced to everyone inside that she had won the lottery and to celebrate, would pay for everyone’s purchases. People packed the register lines as cashiers began ringing up purchases as fast as they could. Police say at least 500 people filled the aisles of the store and another 1,000 were outside trying to get in. When it was found that the woman had made the whole story up, angry and disappointed customers took things into their own hands. The store manager described how the woman told patrons she had won $1.5 million. “She walked to a cash register and loudly announced she had won the lottery and

Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated – Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. Even more survived attempted assassinations including Andrew Jackson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Any presidential assassination attempt is highly unusual but the attempt to assassinate President Theodore Roosevelt stands head and shoulders above any other. Roosevelt was shot in the chest just before making a speech, but with blood seeping through his shirt and a bullet lodged in his chest, he took the stage anyway and made his speech. The Theodore Roosevelt assassination attempt Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley who himself was assassinated on September

Two autopsies were performed on global superstar Michael Jackson, who was found dead on the floor of his rented Los Angeles mansion on June 25, 2009. One autopsy was performed on the 50-year-old singer by the Los Angeles coroner and a private one was requested by his family. Results of the official autopsy leaked to the press and proved what most already suspected – the King of Pop was a tortured man. Results of Michael Jackson's autopsy report According to the leaked reports, the autopsy shows that Jackson’s body had wasted away to a mere 112 pounds. His stomach was completely empty – except for a collection of partially digested pills. Old needle wounds, believed to be from painkiller shots, covered his hips, thighs and shoulders. When he

It may surprise you to find that there were actually six civilian casualties in the 48 states during World War II. The incident occurred in 1945 when a Japanese balloon bomb floated into the United States where it killed six people in rural eastern Oregon. They are the only World War II U.S. combat casualties in the contiguous 48 states.  Up until their deaths, U.S. officials kept news of the deadly weaponized balloons from the public in order to avoid panic. The death of Elyse and five children in Oregon On May 5, 1945, as the United States and Japan were locked in the final stages of World War II, Reverend Archie Mitchell and his wife were driving five young teenage students to a Saturday afternoon picnic.

Doctors dubbed 7-year-old Olivia Farnsworth of Huddersfield, England, the “bionic girl” because a rare chromosome condition (chromosome 6 deletion) renders her incapable of feeling pain, hunger, or exhaustion. Her mother, 32-year-old Niki Trepak, explained to reporters: “Doctors have called her the bionic girl; she's made of steel - and she's got no sense of danger.” Geneticists say they have never come across the disorder before and believe Olivia is the only person in the world with these unusual characteristics. Hit and drug by a car, she never even cried Lest you think Olivia has an admirable condition, recognize that her rare disorder also renders her impervious to fear or the normal human rules of self-preservation. For instance, little Oliva was run over by a car – and drug hundreds of feet underneath it –

30-year-old Nick O’Donoghue, a software support team manager from Ireland, was flying aboard an EasyJet airplane from Austria to Cork at 30,000 feet when he noticed a bizarre humanoid-like figure outside his window. He grabbed his camera and snapped the amazing photo above which shows a strange shadowy figure, resembling a giant robot, walking across the clouds.  Nick explained how he spotted the unusual sight: “I was flying back from a work ski trip in Austria, I was on the window seat with two work colleges beside me. They were talking like crazy and I was gazing out the window, as you do. I could see this figure in the distance in front of us and then as we flew closer this shape appeared. I asked the ladies