Mysteries & the bizarre

The Antikythera Mechanism: How Does the 2,000-Year-Old Astronomical Computer Work?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - A corroded bronze lump recovered from a shipwreck near the island of Antikythera in 1901 has changed our perspective on ancient Greek engineering. Inside are dozens of meshing gears, scales, and ins ..

15/08/2026
4,652

Roswell 1947: a crashed flying disc, or a top-secret Project Mogul balloon?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - An army press release on 8 July 1947 said the Roswell unit had recovered a "flying disc", then quickly changed the story to a weather balloon. That reversal created the most famous UFO case in the w ..

15/08/2026
5,081

Rendlesham Forest: "Britain's Roswell" and the lights among the pines

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Over three nights at the end of December 1980, American servicemen at RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters reported strange lights in Rendlesham Forest. The memo written by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, ..

14/08/2026
4,726

The Nazca Lines: who created them and what were they used for?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - On the arid land between Nazca and Palpa in Peru, ancient people created hundreds of giant animal figures, plants, lines, and trapezoids. They were not first "discovered" from an airplane: local res ..

14/08/2026
4,684

Stonehenge: How did Stone Age people transport and erect the stones?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Stonehenge was not built in a single go. The ritual landscape on Salisbury Plain developed over many stages from approximately 3000 to 1600 BC, with circular ditches, burial pits, bluestones, and la ..

13/08/2026
4,796

The Phoenix Lights, 1997: a huge V formation, or two events merged into one?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - On the evening of 13 March 1997, thousands of people in Arizona described a formation of lights travelling from the north down towards Phoenix; later, a nearly stationary row of lights appeared sout ..

13/08/2026
4,856

The Belgian UFO wave 1989-1990: black triangles, radar and an F-16 pursuit

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - From late 1989, Belgian police officers and civilians reported clusters of three slow-moving lights, sometimes perceived as one dark triangle. On the night of 30-31 March 1990 the Belgian Air Force ..

12/08/2026
5,104

How Did Moai Statues "Walk" on Rapa Nui?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Rapa Nui people say that the moai "walked" from the quarry to the stone platforms. This claim was once dismissed as legend, but modern experiments show that a statue with the right shape can be ..

12/08/2026
4,793

Roman Dodecahedron: Over 100 Artifacts but Not a Single Line of Instruction

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - More than a hundred dodecahedron-shaped bronze alloy objects have been found in the northwestern part of the Roman Empire. Each pentagonal face has a hole, and the vertices bear rounded knobs, but t ..

11/08/2026
4,773

USS Nimitz and the 2004 "Tic Tac": a strange object at sea, or the limits of sensors?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In November 2004, the USS Nimitz carrier group tracked radar contacts off the coast of California. The pilot David Fravor and his colleagues reported a white, pill-shaped object operating over an ar ..

11/08/2026
4,870

The Hessdalen lights: a natural UFO laboratory in a Norwegian valley

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Hessdalen valley has recorded white, yellow and red balls of light, sometimes hovering and sometimes moving for minutes at a time. A peak in the early 1980s led to a measurement campaign in 1984 ..

10/08/2026
4,825

The "Baghdad battery": ancient electricity, or a modern interpretation?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - A small ceramic jar, a copper cylinder and an iron rod from Khujut Rabu near Baghdad are often called an "ancient battery". Build a replica, pour in an acidic electrolyte, and the assembly can indee ..

10/08/2026
4,934

The Diquís stone spheres: the technique is known, the purpose is not

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In the Diquís delta of southern Costa Rica, pre-Columbian communities made hundreds of stone spheres, from small ones to examples more than two metres across. They are often described as "perfectly ..

09/08/2026
5,040

The Marfa Lights: Texas desert orbs and the test by spectroscopy

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - From the viewing area east of Marfa, people see points of light that change colour, split and merge, or glide across Mitchell Flat. Many of the everyday lights have been shown to be headlights on Hi ..

09/08/2026
4,878

The Min Min lights: the glow that follows travellers across the Australian outback

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - People crossing the outback describe a white, yellow or green orb that quietly follows a vehicle, retreats when chased and disappears without a trace. Min Min stories carry their own meanings in man ..

08/08/2026
4,695

The Longyou caves: who carved these enormous underground halls?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In 1992, pumping out a pond in Longyou county, Zhejiang province, revealed a large man-made rock chamber. Neighbouring ponds concealed further halls, each with supporting pillars, staircases, slopin ..

08/08/2026
4,855

The Plain of Jars in Laos: what were more than 2,100 stone jars for?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - On the Xieng Khouang plateau in Laos, thousands of large stone jars sit in clusters among the grassy hills. UNESCO records more than 2,100 tubular jars belonging to an Iron Age megalithic landscape. ..

07/08/2026
4,863

Ball lightning: the glowing sphere through a window, and a plasma problem with no agreed answer

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Ball lightning is described as a glowing sphere from a few centimetres to tens of centimetres across, lasting far longer than a lightning stroke, drifting sideways and then fading or exploding. Thou ..

07/08/2026
4,885

St Elmo's fire: the blue flame on the mast that sailors both feared and welcomed

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In an electrical storm, the top of a mast, an aircraft wing or any sharp object can emit a blue-violet glow accompanied by a hissing sound. Old sailors saw it as a sign of protection from Saint Eras ..

06/08/2026
5,004

The Carnac stones: why did Neolithic people raise thousands of menhirs?

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Around Carnac in Brittany, north-western France, thousands of standing stones form rows running through areas such as Ménec, Kermario and Kerlescan. They were erected in the Neolithic, mostly during ..

06/08/2026
5,001