Kayaker Finds 110-Year-Old Ghost Ship in the Ohio River

These kayakers came across an abandoned 110-year-old ghost ship in a tributary just off the Ohio River. The photos are cool, but what’s more incredible is the history of this ship, and the things it has seen before it’s current resting place! Scroll down to see for yourself…

One day, this kayaker and some friends came across what looked like an old ship-wreck in a tributary of the Ohio River…





Getting closer, they decided to get out and have a look around…



The ship turned out to be 110 years old, but still structurally sound enough to explore…



Plant life was growing up through the base of the ship…



There was some kind of engine machinery still on board…

MORE Fake News: Navy confirms MEDIA LIED about President Trump and the USS John McCain

The WSJ also reported Wednesday that a tarp was put in place to cover the ship’s name.

Then a few media outlets, “journalists” and your all round anti-Trumper circulated the image of the USS John McCain with a tarp covering the name of the ship.

Is the claim true?

Of course not, this is the mainstream media we are talking about.

The picture was from Friday.

A spokesperson for the Pacific Fleet even confirmed the image is from Friday and the tarp was taken down on Saturday.

“We didn’t do anything to obstruct the name of the ship. The Wall Street Journal piece refers to a photo of a tarp covering the ship, that photo was taken Friday, May 24, the tarp was removed the following day,” another US Navy official said.

“All ships remained in normal configuration during the President’s visit” CDR Nate Christensen said.

Another claim is that the White House Military Office emailed lower-level US Navy officials about keeping the ship out of view. A claim reported by CNN of course.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that a barge had been moved so as to obscure the name of the ship. Also not true, one official said: “the barge had been there regularly. At one angle, you might not have seen the ship’s name, but the name was visible at all times.”

The ship was not moved nor was anything done to obscure John McCain’s name. This was also confirmed by Cmdr. Clay Doss, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet.

The US Navy’s chief of information, Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, also tweeted Wednesday night that the name had been visible.

“The name of USS John S. McCain was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day,” Brown said in a tweet. “The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage.”

President Trump tweeted Wednesday night that he was “not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain.”

Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning before...

REBIRTH OF THE VIKING WARSHIP THAT MAY HAVE HELPED CONQUER THE SEAS

When the sleek, beautiful silhouette of Roskilde 6 appeared on the horizon, 1,000 years ago, it was very bad news. The ship was part of a fleet carrying an army of hungry, thirsty warriors, muscles toned by rowing and sailing across the North Sea; a war machine like nothing else in 11th-century Europe, its arrival meant
disaster was imminent.

Now the ship’s timbers are slowly drying out in giant steel tanks at the Danish national museum’s conservation centre at Brede outside Copenhagen, and will soon again head across the North Sea – to be a star attraction at an exhibition in the British Museum.

The largest Viking warship ever found, it was discovered by chance in 1996 at Roskilde. It is estimated that building it would have taken up to 30,000 hours of skilled work, plus the labour of felling trees and hauling materials. At just over 36 metres, it was four metres longer than Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose built 500 years later, and six metres longer than the Viking ship spectacularly recreated as Sea Stallion, which sailed from Scandinavia around Scotland to Dublin in 2007.

“This ship was a troop carrier,” said Gareth Williams of the British Museum. It was built some time after 1025 when the oak trees were felled, and held 100 warriors taking turns on 39 pairs of oars if there was not enough wind to fill the square woollen sail. They would have been packed in tightly, sleeping as they could between the seats, with little room for supplies except a minimal amount of fresh water – or ale or mead, which would not have gone stale as fast – and dried salt mutton.

It would have been an uncomfortable journey, but short: they did not need to carry much as their ship could move startlingly fast – Sea Stallion managed an average speed of 5.5 knots, and a top speed of 20 knots. Once they landed, the warriors could forage with ruthless efficiency, as many a coastal community or wealthy monastery discovered.

The ship would probably not have come alone. “There are records in the annals of fleets of hundreds of ships,” Williams said. “So you could be talking about an army of up to 10,000 men suddenly landing on your coast, highly trained, fit, capable of moving very fast on water or land.” Such luxury ships were fabulously expensive to build and a devastating display of power, Williams said.

Modern Day Viking Girls

The dates suggest Roskilde 6 may have been built for King Canute, who according to legend set his throne in the path of the incoming tide, to prove to his courtiers that even a monarch could not control the force of nature. At the time the Vikings were consolidating their power from temporary raiders to permanent invaders.

With all the original timbers fitted into a steel frame that will recreate its full length and form, the ship will be the centrepiece of Viking, an exhibition opening at the Danish national museum in June, before being transported to London to launch the British Museum’s new exhibition space in 2014. It will travel in two containers, by freighter and lorry.

ACCIDENT

The vessel was found by accident when an extension was being built to the Roskilde ship museum in Denmark, itself built to hold an earlier find of Viking ships that had been deliberately sunk to narrow the fjord and protect the approach to the town, the old royal capital of Denmark.

In 1996 archaeologists watching the construction work discovered huge timbers turned up in the new foundations, some already chopped in half by the piling. It proved to be a treasure trove

GHOST ship crewed only by CANNIBAL rats feared to be heading for Scottish coast

THE hulk of cruise ship Lyubov Orlova has been adrift in the North Atlantic since 2012 with nothing on board but hungry vermin.

A GHOST ship crewed only by CANNIBAL rats is feared to be heading for Britain.

The hulk of cruise ship Lyubov Orlova has been adrift in the North Atlantic for the past year after being cut loose off the coast of Canada.

But now coastguards are reportedly worried the recent storms may have driven her thousands of miles towards our own coastline.

The 300ft vessel, built 40 years ago in the Soviet Union, has nothing aboard but packs of disease-ridden rodents who are forced to prey on one another to survive.

Her current position is unknown despite several high-level searches.

Last year satellites picked up an unidentified blip off Scotland large enough to be the ship — but search planes found nothing.

As well as the authorities, salvage hunters — after the 4,250-ton vessel's £600,000 value as scrap — are scouring the seas for any trace of her.

They believe the liner is still afloat because its life-raft transmitters have not been activated.

If the ship makes landfall it is likely to be on the west coast of Ireland, Scotland or the far southern tip of England.

One searcher, Belgian Pim de Rhoodes, said: "She is floating around out there somewhere.

"There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other.

"If I get aboard I'll have to lace everywhere with poison."

Named after a Russian actress, the Lyubov Orlova carried up to 110 passengers to destinations across the globe, including the polar regions.

However, in 2010 she was impounded in Newfoundland, Canada in a row over debts and deserted by her unpaid crew.

After two years tied up in port, the decision was taken to tow her to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean where she would be scrapped.

But in heavy seas, the tow-line to a tug broke, prompting the Canadian government to send out another ship to drag her far out to sea and release her.

"There have been huge storms in recent months but it takes a lot to sink a vessel as big as that," said Irish coastguard chief Chris Reynolds.

"We must stay vigilant."

And it has been in the news before:
http://www.derrydaily.net/2013/10/23/could-missing-rat-infested-ghost-ship-be-off-the-derry-coast/

More About SHIPS

How a 6th-grade history project exonerated the captain who was blamed for one of the Navy's worst WWII disasters

• At the end of World War II, the USS Indianapolis sailed into one of the Navy's worst disasters of the war, losing more than two-thirds of its crew after being sunk in the Pacific.
• The cruiser's captain, Charles B. McVay III, was blamed for the loss for decades, until a grade-school project set the record straight for good.

In 1945, the USS Indianapolis completed its top secret mission of delivering atomic bomb components to Tinian Island in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The heavy cruiser was sunk on its way to join a task force near Okinawa.

Of the ship's 1195 crew members, only 316 survived the sinking and the subsequent time adrift at sea in the middle of nowhere. Among the survivors was the captain of the Indianapolis, Charles B. McVay III.

McVay would be charged with negligence in the loss of the ship. Even though he was restored to active duty after his court-martial and retired a rear admiral, the guilt of the loss haunted him for the rest of his life. He committed suicide with his Navy revolver on his own front lawn with a toy sailor in his hand.

McVay did everything he could in the wake of the torpedoing of the Indianapolis. He sounded the alarm, giving the order to abandon ship and was one of the last men off. Many of the survivors of the sinking publicly stated he was not to blame for its loss. But this wasn't enough for the family members of the ship's crew, who hounded McVay year after year, blaming him for the loss of their sons.

Survivors from the USS Indianapolis en route to a hospital on Peleilu. U.S. Navy

The Navy was partly to blame. They didn't warn Indianapolis that the submarine I-58 was operating along the area of the ship's course to Okinawa. They also didn't warn the ship to zigzag in its pattern to evade enemy submarines. When the Indianapolis radioed a distress signal, it was picked up by three Navy stations, who ignored the call because one was drunk, the other had a commander who didn't want to be disturbed, and the last thought it was a trap.

Three and a half days later, the survivors were rescued from the open water, suffering from salt water poisoning, exposure, hypothermia, and the largest case of shark attacks ever recorded. It was truly a horrifying scene. The horror is what led to McVay's court martial, one of very few commanders to face such a trial concerning the loss of a ship.

Even though the Japanese commander of I-58, the man who actually destroyed the Indianapolis, told the US Navy that standard Navy evasion techniques would not have worked — Indianapolis was doomed from the get-go. Even that didn't satisfy McVay's critics.

It wasn't until sixth-grader Hunter Scott began a history project in school about the sinking of the Indianapolis.

He poured through official Navy documents until he found the evidence he needed to conclusively prove that McVay wasn't responsible for the loss of his ship. His project caught the attention of then-Congressman Joe Scarborough and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who helped pass a Congressional resolution exonerating McVay. It was signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

Hunter Scott, the onetime sixth-grader and eternal friend to the crew of the Indianapolis, is now a naval aviator. He attended the University of North Carolina on a Navy ROTC scholarship and joined active duty in...

The Navy May Have the Perfect Weapon to Kill Russian and Chinese Submarines

America’s so-called Sea Hunter has taken a major step forward.

On January 30, the U.S Navy accepted the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) from DARPA, the Pentagon’s premier technology-innovation agency. The Sea Hunter, as the first ship of the ACTUV program is called, is an unmanned ship primarily designed to track quiet diesel-electric submarines for months with little or no human help. DARPA has described the objective of the program as developing an “advance unmanned maritime system autonomy to enable independently deploying systems capable of missions spanning thousands of kilometers of range and months of endurance under a sparse remote supervisory control model.”

This included demonstrating the ship’s ability to follow all international maritime laws, and “the capability of the ACTUV system to use its unique characteristics to employ non-conventional sensor technologies that achieve robust continuous track of the quietest submarine targets over their entire operating envelope.” DARPA also noted that while the immediate goal was to improve antisubmarine warfare (ASW) tracking capabilities, “the core platform and autonomy technologies are broadly extendable to underpin a wide range of missions and configurations for future unmanned naval vessels.”

The resulting prototype is a 140-ton ship that is 132 feet long, making it the largest unmanned ship ever built. The ship can reportedly also reach speeds of twenty-seven knots. Further work on ACTUV, including building new ships, will be handled by the the Office of Naval Research (ONR), which became a partner on the program in 2014. DARPA itself began work on the program around 2010. Joint testing began in 2016.

“ONR will continue developing the revolutionary prototype vehicle—the first of what could ultimately become an entirely new class of ocean-going vessel able to traverse thousands of kilometers over open seas for months at a time, without a single crew member aboard—as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV),” DARPA said in a statement announcing the transfer.

Although, as the name suggests, the ACTUV system’s main mission is expected to be ASW. DARPA and ONR also tested the ship on other missions by using different modular payloads. One particular interesting prospect is using the Sea Hunter and future ships to conduct mine-clearing missions, which wouldn’t require putting sailors’ lives at risk. According to DARPA, the prototype vessel completed tests using a mine countermeasures (MCM) payload in August 2017.

One DARPA official who worked on the ACTUV program noted that the ship represents something of a shift in philosophy for the U.S. Navy. “ACTUV represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate,” Fred Kennedy, the director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said. “The U.S. military has talked about the strategic importance of replacing ‘king’ and ‘queen’ pieces on the maritime chessboard with lots of ‘pawns,’ and ACTUV is a first step toward doing exactly that.”

Although begun before the Third Offset Strategy was unveiled, the ACTUV program certainly fits in with that effort. Former deputy secretary of defense Robert Work, who is often credited as the architect of the Third Offset, repeatedly stated that exploiting advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy would be central to the strategy’s success. He also stressed the potential for machine and...

Yet another Corona outbreak on a ‘fully vaccinated’ cruise ship

Finding safety among the "fully vaccinated" is a pipe dream: Corona outbreaks on cruise ships provide a good example of how measures such as vaccinations, a QR exclusion system or 2G rules make no sense. Incessant testing and boosters will not prevent Corona outbreaks in fully vaccinated groups.

It has been clearly demonstrated that even in fully boosted isolated groups, Corona outbreaks still occur. Therefore three jabs combined with negative tests provide no security for those who have been fearful of contracting Covid-19. Their ideal “zero Covid” bubble with no “unclean” unvaccinated people around offers them zero protection.

And while they are now trying to claim otherwise, every single major government health official and pharmaceutical executive had previously categorically declared that Covid shots would stop the virus.

On November 30, there was a Covid-19 outbreak on board the Artania even though the passengers and crew had been 100 percent vaccinated. The ship can accommodate up to 1260 passengers and 537 crew. Three fully vaccinated people on the German cruise liner died from the virus.

On December 5, CBS reported on the the Norwegian cruise ship Breakaway. There were 3 200 people on board and the vaccination rate was 100 percent. The shipowner Norwegian Cruise Line required all passengers and crew to be vaccinated. At least ten people tested positive.

At least one crew member tested positive with the Omicron variant, according to Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL). The infected crew member was from South Africa and had undergone the ten-day quarantine required of employees who join the ship.

Most cruise lines offer so-called “safe bubble” excursions, where passengers do not come into contact with port residents when they go ashore, and NCL relies on all passengers being 100 percent vaccinated.

On the world’s largest cruise ship Symphony of the Seas, dozens of people have tested positive for the Corona virus during a trip. However, all 6 091 passengers and crew had tested negative before the journey commenced and 95 percent on board had been fully vaccinated. Royal Caribbean, the owner of the ship, told CNN that during the tour in the Caribbean, the virus inexplicably made its appearance.

In an effort to stick to the increasingly ridiculous vaccine narrative, the outbreak was blamed “cruise guests who use fake vaccination cards” and “breakthrough infections” while admitting that “no vaccinations are 100 percent effective in...

DISNEY CRUISE SHIP Employee Caught On Camera Molesting 11-Yr-Old Girl In Elevator…Disney Security Guard Investigating Sexual Assault Told “Keep your mouth shut!”…Disney Quietly Flew Accused Molester To India

Video footage from the cruise ship shows Braganza leading a young girl into an elevator

While Disney makes headlines for its support of LGBTQ+ kids and condemns Florida lawmakers for their recently-passed anti-grooming bill, it’s important to remind the public of Disney’s history of covering up pedophilia within their company. It seems to be on-trend that they want to perpetuate the sexual grooming of children.

Back in 2014, a Disney Cruise Line steward, 36-year-old Ahmed Sofyan, was charged with two counts of molestation and one count of false imprisonment after holding a 13-year-old girl in an unoccupied cabin and molesting her. When this story was released, an ex-Disney Cruise officer spoke out, reporting a similar instance of child molestation that Disney authorities ordered her not to report just two years prior.

Dawn Taplin, the first female security officer at Disney and second in the entire cruise line industry, was on the cruise ship where this occurred. In 2014, she revealed Disney’s previous molestation cover-up.

In 2012, a Disney cruise ship employee was caught on camera molesting an 11-year-old girl in an elevator. Disney authorities allegedly did not allow security to report the incident.

Taplin interviewed the young victim after she and her grandmother reported the crime to Guest Services. The security officer, who had 17-years of experience as a police officer, found the surveillance footage extremely troubling.

The molestation occurred while the cruise ship was still docked at Port Canaveral in Florida while passengers were still boarding. Taplin recalls that they “weren’t going anywhere for another two hours or so.” Since they were still on U.S. land, Taplin notified the ship’s second-in-command and offered to call her FBI contact. However, she did not get the response she anticipated.

“I was ordered not to make any phone calls, do anything at all. Nothing. Period,” recalled Taplin. She said that she was told, “Just keep your mouth shut.”

“If a crime is committed while you’re hooked up anywhere here, it is an American, it is a United States, it is a Florida crime,” said...

USS Monitor 1862. Deck, after battle with CSS Virginia..

More Awesome Photos HERE



The USS Monitor was an iron-hulled steamship. Built during the American Civil War, it was the first ironclad warship commissioned by the United States Navy.[a] Monitor is most famous for her central role in the Battle of Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862, where, under the command of John Worden, she fought the casemate ironclad CSS Virginia (the former steam frigate USS Merrimack) to a standoff. The unique design of the ship, distinguished by its revolving turret, was quickly duplicated and established the Monitor type of warship.

Designed by the Swedish-born engineer and inventor John Ericsson, and hurriedly built in Brooklyn in only 101 days, the Monitor presented a new concept in ship design and employed a variety of new inventions and innovations in ship building that caught the attention of the world. The impetus to build the Monitor was prompted by the news that the Confederates were building an ironclad warship, named Virginia, that could engage the Union ships that were blockading Hampton Roads and the James River leading to Richmond, and ultimately advance on Washington, D. C. and other cities virtually unchallenged. Before Monitor could reach the Roads, the Confederate ironclad had destroyed the sail frigates USS Cumberland and USS Congress and had run the steam frigate USS Minnesota aground. That night the Monitor arrived and the following morning, just before Virginia was about to finish off the Minnesota, the new Union ironclad confronted the Confederate ship, preventing her from wreaking further destruction on the wooden Union ships. A four-hour battle ensued, both ships pounding the other with close-range cannon fire, although neither ship could destroy or seriously damage the other. This was the first-ever battle fought between two armored warships and marked a turning point in naval warfare.

After the Confederates were forced to destroy Virginia in early May, Monitor sailed up the James River to support the Army during the Peninsula Campaign. The ship participated in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff later that month and remained in the area giving support to General McClellan's forces on land until she was ordered to join the blockaders off North Carolina in December. On her way there she foundered while under tow during a storm off Cape Hatteras on the last day of the year. Monitor's wreck was discovered in 1973 and has been partially salvaged. Her guns, gun turret, engine and other relics are on display at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia. -via wikipedia

Democrats Try To Hide Worsening Congestion At California Ports

The container pile-up has moved elsewhere and increased. Ships wait longer to berth. The ship queue has moved farther offshore.

Joe Biden, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and other Democrats are hiding, not fixing, congestion at California’s ports. This is another example of Democrats placing their image ahead of the public’s well-being. Meanwhile, the problem is worsening.

At recent press conferences, Biden administration and California officials bragged about a 37 percent drop in the number of containers stacked more than eight days on land at Los Angeles and Long Beach; a 20 percent reduction in the number of container ships spending more than nine days at the docks; and a more than 40 percent drop in the number of ships waiting within 40 miles of both ports.


Thus, they proclaim, “Our solutions are working.” Each boast is a half-truth. The whole truth is: The container pile-up has moved elsewhere and increased. Ships wait longer to berth. The ship queue has moved farther offshore.

The pileup has moved offshore and to temporary storage sites on land. Private companies set up temporary sites in recent weeks. Containers shuttled there are omitted from the ports’ official count of landed containers waiting to be hauled across the United States.

Even more containers wait offshore. They sit on a Los Angeles and Long Beach ship queue that increased 30 percent between late October and early December. Late October was when authorities announced they would fine companies for containers lingering too long on land. A queued vessel is defined as waiting to tie up to a dock.

Thirty percent more waiting vessels equates to about 150,000 more 20-foot containers floating offshore. That 150,000 is several times the contemporaneous decrease in containers stacked on land.


Pouring salt into the wound, the 150,000 additional floating containers wait longer, as do all other floating containers. Wait times more than doubled between mid-October and early December, from about 11 days towards 24 days.

Harms caused by longer wait times overwhelm benefits from the “20 percent reduction in the number of container ships spending more than nine days at the docks.” By way of illustration, 3,000-plus ship days are now spent waiting to enter Los Angeles and Long Beach. Three thousand days is at least 150 times the ship days saved by the 20 percent reduction in the number of ships at berth more than nine days.

Ship days are estimated by multiplying the number of waiting (or berthed) ships by wait (or excess berth) time. Yes, much Kentucky windage underlies this metric, but the associated point will survive refinements.

The number of ships waiting within 40 miles of Los Angeles and Long Beach declined because most now wait more than 40 miles away. As of early December, 34 were within 40 miles while 62 were farther away. Far offshore ships have waited between...

6 Mysterious Disappearances in U.S. History

The advent of cutting-edge forensic technology and DNA analysis techniques has shed new light on many of the world’s most famous—and infamous—disappearances. Still, some of the most puzzling cases remain unsolved—and some of them intersect with prominent figures and significant events in American history. From Jimmy Hoffa to the settlers of the doomed Lost Colony, these chillingly inexplicable disappearances continue to befuddle scholars and pique the public’s curiosity.

1. Jimmy Hoffa

Corbis

On July 30, 1975, James Riddle Hoffa, one of the most influential American labor leaders of the 20th century, disappeared in Detroit, Michigan, never to be heard from again. Born in 1913 to a poor coal miner in Indiana, the charismatic Hoffa proved a natural leader from a very young age. While working for a Detroit grocery chain he organized a labor strike that got him noticed by the powerful Teamsters union. Hoffa rose through the organization’s ranks over the next few decades and in 1957 took over its presidency. A savvy political playmaker and tireless advocate for the downtrodden, he became wildly popular within the Teamsters and beyond.

And yet, for all the battles he fought and won on behalf of American workers, Hoffa also had a dark side. During Hoffa’s tenure, Teamster leaders partnered with the Mafia in racketeering, extortion and embezzlement. Hoffa himself had relationships with high-ranking mobsters and was the target of several government investigations throughout the 1960s. Convicted first of obstruction of justice and later of attempted bribery, Hoffa began a 13-year prison sentence in March 1957. President Richard Nixon commuted the sentence in 1971, and Hoffa quickly began making a comeback within the Teamster leadership and penning his autobiography. These plans screeched to a halt, however, on July 30, 1975, when Hoffa was last seen in the parking lot of a Detroit restaurant, not far from where he got his start as a labor organizer. Though many have speculated that he was the victim of a Mafia hit, conclusive evidence was never found, and Hoffa’s fate remains shrouded in mystery to this day. He was declared legally dead in 1982.

2. Amelia Earhart

Getty Images

Amelia Earhart’s daring round-the-world-flight was cut short when her Lockheed Electra disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on June 2, 1937. Within hours, rescue workers began scouring the area for signs of the famed aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan. A living legend had vanished into thin air. In an official report, the U.S. government concluded that the two seasoned flyers, unable to locate their destination of Howland Island, ran out of fuel, crashed into the water and sank. Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939.

The question of why and where her plane went down, however, has never been put to rest. Indeed, in the seven decades since the Electra’s disappearance, a number of hypotheses have emerged. Some theorists, for instance, believe Earhart was actually a secret agent working for the U.S. government. They suggest that the plane crashed after its pilots intentionally deviated from their course to spy on Japanese-occupied islands in the Pacific, or that Earhart and Noonan landed on one of them and were taken prisoner. Yet another theory holds that Earhart returned safely to the United States, changed her name and lived a long life in obscurity. Another widely held belief is that Earhart and Noonan touched down on a remote South Pacific island called Nikumaroro and died there some time later.

3. The Mary Celeste

On a wintry November morning in 1872, Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah, their 2-year-old daughter Sophia and a crew of seven set sail from New York Harbor on the Canadian-built brigantine Mary Celeste, bound for Genoa, Italy. Their journey quickly turned into one of history’s most chilling maritime mysteries. On December 4, some 600 miles west of Portugal, the helmsman of the merchant ship Dei Gratia spotted an odd sight through his spyglasses: a vessel with slightly torn sails that seemed to be careening out of control. The Dei Gratia’s captain, David Reed Morehouse, immediately identified the ship as the Mary Celeste; in a strange twist, he and Benjamin Briggs were old friends, and had dined together shortly before their respective departures from New York.

When a crew from the Dei Gratia boarded the Mary Celeste, almost everything was present and accounted for, from the cargo in the hold to the sewing machine in the captain’s cabin. Missing, however, were the ship’s only

Badass of the Week.

Fridtjof Nansen If you can look at this picture and tell me that this isn't one of the sweetest photos of a dude with a 'stache that you've ever seen, then you obviously need to learn a little something about facial hair and being awesome.  This picture alone makes the guy badass, even if you didn't know the story behind it.  You will be pleased to learn, no doubt, that the man behind this vicious strip of solidified testosterone is sufficiently badass to pull off a soup strainer that epically righteous.  It can be no other way. Fridtjof Nansen was a tough-as-nails Norwegian psychopath with an impossible-to-spell first name and an unstoppable desire to constantly freeze his balls off and risk his life in the name of science and kickassery.  Born in 1861 in a town near Oslo, as a teenager this super-brilliant, ultra-hardcore crazy person constantly went outside into the frostbite-inducing snow-covered wilderness Bear Grylls-style to test himself against the most volatile bullshit Mother Nature could furiously dump on him.  Spending days and weeks at a time alone in the wild with just his faithful dog, a sharp knife, and his badass 'stache to keep him company, this guy quickly forged himself into a high-endurance asskicker.  This dude was so ridiculously tough that that he could get out and cross-country ski fifty miles a day, every day, for pretty much as many days as he wanted.  For those of us who have no idea what skiing two marathons back-to-back actually means, the 50km cross-country ski race (30 miles for those of you who continue to resist the global tyranny of the metric system) is the longest ski race the Olympics has ever offered.  In the 1948 games, 20 world-class athletes busted ass and finished the race in times ranging from 4 to 5 hours, with seven more guys dropping out and not even being able to crawl their half-dead asses over the finish line.  They haven't offered the race since, presumably because that bullshit constitutes something akin to "cruel and unusual punishment." For this guy it was half a day's ski in the woods. In 1882, the 21 year-old Nansen went on a naval expedition to Greenland and instantly fell in love with the harsh, unyielding hellhole he discovered there.  Greenland, contrary to what it's name might imply, is actually a freezing-ass wasteland of ice and pain and misery, but that's apparently the sort of thing that appeals to guys who enjoy spending their time fist-fighting wild animals in the uncharted mountainous regions of Norway.  Nansen, who loved learning about zoology, ecology, and oceanography, used his time on the ship wisely – while lesser men were below decks doing wussy crap like huddling for warmth or losing their fingers to frostbite, Nansen was getting up-close-and-personal with polar bears, making observations and writing a damn book about how balls-out he was. Returning to Norway so pumped up he wanted to barf, Nansen got his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Oslo. When he wasn't working on a dissertation exploring the central nervous system of lower invertebrates, developing the groundwork for the field of science that would become neuron theory, or working at a research station with Armauer Hansen (the man who discovered the leprosy bacteria), Nansen took a study break to ski 300 miles over a usually-impenetrable mountain range so that he could participate in a ski jumping competition that was taking place on the other side of the country.  I wasn't able to find the results of the competition, but knowing what we know about this guy it's probably safe to assume that he flew off the ramp, did a double backflip and landed on top of a volcano in Iceland. One day Nansen got bored of being a super-genius ski-jumping wilderness expert, so he got a couple friends together and decided to be the first person to cross Greenland on skis.  To this point, nobody had ever attempted an exploration of the interior of Greenland, and the closest anybody had come to reaching the North Pole was writing a letter to Santa Claus, but Nansen didn't give a crap about any of that shit.  Nothing would stand in the way of him kicking one of Saint Nick's reindeer in the antlers.  He landed a ship on the East coast of Greenland, unpacked his skis, and got ready to freeze his junk off. Figuring that retreat or surrender would be an indelible sign of weakness, Nansen took the head-searingly insane step of burning his boats after he landed, thereby removing the one possible avenue of escape from this uncharted wasteland nobody had ever successfully ventured across without dying.   Victory or death, as they say.  Nansen and five other men then spent the next two months cross-country skiing across the continent, battling through dangerous ice, exhaustion, elevations over 9,000 feet, and temperatures as low as fifty below.  Incredibly, they made their way all the way from east to west, landing in the warmer sunny climes of Siberia before heading home to a victory parade, an artillery salute, and the status of a national hero.  Fridtjof turned his experience into two best-selling books, both of which he also illustrated, because of course this guy was strong, smart, and also artistic. And women loved him, obviously. For his next trick, Fridtjof Nansen decided he was going to become the first person to reach the North Pole.  He developed a pretty ingenious tactic for doing so – he built the famous, ultra-hard wooden ship Fram, lodged it into the ice pack off the coast of Siberia in 1893, and let it drift in the ice while the tides of ocean carried him across the pole.  This was a tactic that would be used by great explorers from Scott to Shackleton to traverse both Arctic and Antarctic climes, and this guy pioneered that shit. Ah, good times. Nansen and his crew drifted for 18 months, somehow surviving in the freezing-ass cold temperatures, but unfortunately the tides of the Arctic Sea decided not to cooperate with Nansen's plan, no matter how good it was or how intensely he tried to stare it down.  Realizing that he was drifting too far from the pole and wouldn't cross it, Nansen obviously did the badass thing – he and one other guy jumped out of the drifting boat, jumped on a dog sled, and rushed 140 miles across open ice to get there. Nansen didn't reach the pole – he was forced to turn back just a couple hundred miles away – but he had achieved the highest latitude ever reached at this point in history, which was definitely something to be proud of.  Not convinced that he could find his still-drifting ship as it made its way through the polar ice, Nansen and his homedog instead headed south across Greenland.  They spent a winter living in the inhospitable climate of the extreme North, building a hut out of stone and eating walrus blubber and polar bears he personally clubbed to death with his boner, and finally reached Norway by kayak the next summer.  In addition to being awesome and also kicking ass, the six volumes of research material he published on his trip got him a post as a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Oslo and plenty of prestige in the legitimate scientific community.  His ship, Fram, would go on to carry Roald Amundsen to the South Pole.  To this day, it's still the wooden ship that has achieved the furthest North and furthest South latitudes, and this dude built it back in 1890 using ingenious mathematics-oriented ship-building techniques he devised himself. When World War I broke out in 1914, Nansen had to halt his balls-out research/almost dying, which sucked.  He was so pissed about it that he went out and won the Nobel Peace Prize so that he could get back to doing dangerous things.  Seriously.  He was Norway's representative in the League of Nations, the High Commissioner for Refugees, and he closely worked with governments and the Red Cross to provide humanitarian aid to people affected by the war.  He negotiated a relaxation of the Allied blockade of Europe, allowing much-needed food to get through to starving people, and negotiated the repatriation and ethical treatment of displaced persons and refugees, developing techniques still used by the UN today.  His most badass accomplishment to this end was the development of the "Nansen Passport", a document that allowed refugees to travel to countries that could help them.  My guess is that he just put his picture on there and people were so awe-struck by the glorious stache that they did whatever he wanted. "LET THIS PERSON INTO YOUR COUNTRY!!!" After the war, Nansen continued being awesome to the world.  He negotiated post-war prisoner-of-war exchanges and releases, and helped Turks, Greeks, and Armenians escape persecution from various sources after a bunch of terrible shit went on in their respective territories.  When the Russian people were starving to death after a decade of war and revolution, Nansen rallied international support and got food and medical supplies for them.  The Soviets distrusted the Western powers, and refused to deal with anyone except Nansen.  He's credited with saving the lives of something like ten million people with his food policy in Russia. Not bad for a guy who was head-butting polar bears and building shelters in the wilderness of Greenland a few years earlier. The adventurer, explorer, scientist, and humanitarian badass Fridtjof Nansen died in 1930 – just a couple years before he would have found a way to single-handedly end World War II with his facial hair.

Trump Stands between America and Tyranny

The movie Titanic had one really good scene. The ship had already swiped the iceberg. The behemoth continued sailing along and appeared to be doing just fine. But one person on the ship, Thomas Andrews, knew that it was doomed. Andrews was a naval architect who was in charge of the plans to build the ship.

After he tells the captain and some other key people on the ship that it is going to sink, they react in disbelief. One declares that the ship can't possibly sink.

Andrews responds, "She's made of iron, sir! I assure you she can. And she will. It is a mathematical certainty."

It's one of cinema's great scenes as men wrestle with approaching doom, made all the stronger by Victor Garber's superb performance. It's also the perfect metaphor for our current moment in history.

People pay too little attention to math because numbers lie far less effectively than words. There comes a point when a nation has raced over the cliff, but it may take years before that reality becomes obvious to everyone.

This movie scene was on my mind heading into election night in 2016. All indications were that Hillary Clinton was going to be elected. Based upon the math, America as a nation appeared doomed. Clinton was eyeing the White House like a ravenous wolf and relishing the opportunity to cast misery across America.

But Wisconsin and then Michigan and finally Pennsylvania vomited on her pantsuit. On election night, I had no idea what we had just elected, but the fact that it wasn't Clinton was more than enough for one night.

Three years later, President Trump has shattered conservative expectations and may go down in history as one of the greatest U.S. presidents. It brings to mind another historical surprise. Winston Churchill was elevated to leadership during England's darkest days against all odds. He was under withering attack by both the opposing party and his own in those early months, and his survival as leader was very much in doubt.

Trump was also elevated under extraordinary circumstances that many would regard as a historical anomaly. As a New York real estate mogul and non-politician, he was declared unelectable by prominent and respected Republican pundits. The media initially pushed his candidacy with glee, assuming he would be the easiest Republican for their paramour to knock off in the...

10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (9/8/18)

Seven days have passed, and it is time, yet again, to look at some of the stranger stories that made headlines this week.

We have a multifarious collection of news items today. There’s pole dancing in China, a ghost ship in Myanmar, and a giant penis on an English hillside. We make an amazing discovery about sharks and explore some trouble aboard the ISS. We also take a look at two peculiar heists—one which just occurred and one that was solved after 13 years.

10 Astronaut Plugs Hole With Finger

Photo credit: International Space Station/Twitter

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station faced potential peril last week when they discovered that a leak somewhere on the station was causing the air pressure to drop. Fortunately, the hole was small enough that one of the astronauts simply plugged it with his finger.The leak was first detected by NASA ground crews while everyone aboard the ISS was sleeping. The next morning, the first order of business was finding the breach. They located the 2-millimeter-wide hole in the orbital section of Soyuz spacecraft MS-09.[1] It was probably caused by a micrometeorite hitting the ISS with enough force to punch through the wall.German astronaut Alexander Gerst stopped the air pressure from dropping by plugging the leak with his finger. Obviously, this was only a temporary measure while a more permanent solution was devised, not that the lasting resolution was significantly more high-tech. In the end, astronauts used epoxy and high-strength tape to seal the hole. So far, it is working, but they are still looking into something more reliable for the foreseeable future.

9  LSD On Trial

The first ever LSD microdosing trials started this week to see what benefits, if any, this method of consumption has.

As its name suggests, microdosing involves taking very small doses of the drug, as little as one-fifteenth of a tab. It is said that this technique eliminates all hallucinogenic effects but helps with focus and depression. It has become a popular aid in the digital world of Silicon Valley. However, the method has never been tested scientifically, so all reports of benefits and side effects are anecdotal. On September 3, though, a placebo-controlled trial started at Imperial College London, sponsored by the Beckley Foundation, an organization founded to advance research into mind-altering substances.[2]

There’s just one problem—taking LSD is still illegal, no matter the dose. Therefore, researchers had to adopt a less conventional approach by inviting people who already microdose to join a “self-blinded study.” In other words, participants will be providing their own drugs which they will be inserting into some gel capsules while leaving others empty to serve as the control. Then they will take doses regularly without knowing if they are consuming LSD or a placebo.

Afterward, the test subjects will participate in online questionnaires and cognitive games to see what effects the drug has. The research team will know which capsules have LSD inside through QR codes and will tally the results after four weeks of testing.

8  The Ghost Ship Of Yangon

Photo credit: Yangon Police/Facebook
A curious sight occurred in the city of Yangon in Myanmar last week when a giant “ghost ship” was found drifting near its shore. The mystery was put to rest on Saturday when the vessel was identified as the Sam Ratulangi PB 1600, an Indonesian freighter headed for Bangladesh.

There were no crew members or goods aboard the ship. Myanmar navy officials believed it had been towed after finding two cables at the head. An investigation eventually found an Indonesian tugboat called Independence about 80 kilometers (50 mi) away.

What started off as an intriguing, even spooky mystery had a mundane explanation. The tugboat had been towing the freighter since August 13. They were headed for a ship-breaking factory in Bangladesh, but bad weather caused a cable to break.[3] They then decided to simply abandon it.

7   Going Up

Photo credit: CNET
We are getting one step closer to a space elevator this month, as Japanese scientists will test a miniature version as proof of concept.

Researchers from Shizuoka University are planning to send up an elevator stand-in box measuring 6 centimeters (2.4 in) long, 3 centimeters (1.2 in) wide, and 3 centimeters high. Unlike a regular space elevator, this one will be launched into space using a rocket. It will also be joined by two miniature satellites which will be connected together using a 10-meter-long (33 ft) steel cable.

The motorized box will travel between the two satellites on the cable, acting as a substitute for an elevator car. Its short journey will be recorded and transmitted back to Earth. The main goal here is to see how a container connected to a cable moves through space.[4] The mission is set to launch on September 11 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima.

There are many obstacles left before a real space elevator becomes a reality. However, the significant reduction in risks and costs is pushing development ever further. The university’s collaborator and adviser, Japanese construction giant Obayashi Corporation, is working on its own space elevator, which should be ready by 2050. Such a device is expected to reduce the costs of transporting cargo from $22,000 per kilogram via shuttle to just $200.

6  Whiskey In The Jar

102-Year-Old Abandoned Ship is a Floating Forest

The SS Ayrfield is one of many decommissioned ships in the Homebush Bay, just west of Sydney, but what separates it from the other stranded vessels is the incredible foliage that adorns the rusted hull. The beautiful spectacle, also referred to as The Floating Forest, adds a bit of life to the area, which happens to be a sort of ship graveyard.

Originally launched as the SS Corrimal, the massive 1,140-tonne steel beast was built in 1911 in the UK and registered in Sydney in 1912 as a steam collier which was later used to transport supplies to American troops stationed in the Pacific region during World War II. The ship went on to serve as a collier between Newcastle and Miller's terminal in Blackwattle Bay.

Eventually, in 1972, the SS Ayrfield was retired and sent to Homebush Bay which served as a ship-breaking yard. While many ships were taken apart, about four metallic bodies of vessels that are over 75 years old currently float in the bay, though none are enveloped by nature quite like the Ayrfield. The ship continues to attract visitors to its majestic presence, rich with mangrove trees.

Top image by Andy Brill

Image by Neerav Bhatt

Image by Steve Dorman

Image by Rodney Campbell

Image by Louise Evangelique

Image by Louise Evangelique

via [Bhakta's Weblog, Oddity Central]

10 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

The last hundred years have borne witness to humankind’s extraordinary technological advancements. Man has walked on the moon, ventured deeper into the oceans than ever before and even uncovered the building blocks of life, DNA. But even with our inexorable progress as a species there are still mysteries and enigmas the solutions to which elude us. Below is a selection of 10 of the most puzzling mysteries in history.












10) The SS Ourang Medan


In June 1947, a chilling SOS message was picked up: “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead." This was followed by some indecipherable Morse code, and one final grisly message... "I die." Then, silence.

It was picked up by nearby ships and listening posts, who identified the vessel as the Dutch freighter SS Ourang Medan and located it within the Strait of Malacca that separates Indonesia from Malaysia. The nearest merchant ship, The Silver Star, raced to her aid. The Silver Star was soon alongside the Dutch ship and their boarding party found a macabre sight: every member of the crew lay dead, their corpses scattered on the decks. More than this, their eyes were still open and expressions of sheer terror were etched on their features. The Silver Star’s party found the radio operator dead too, his hand still on the Morse sending key, eyes wide open and teeth bared. There were no sign of wounds or injuries on any of the bodies.

The decision was made to tow the mysterious ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began emanating from the decks below. The boarding party hurriedly returned to their ship and barely had time to cut the tow lines before the SS Ourang Medan exploded and swiftly sank.

It has been claimed that clouds of noxious natural gases could have bubbled up from fissures in the seabed and engulfed the ship; even aliens and ghosts have been cited as possible explanations for the Ourang Medan’s macabre and mysterious demise. To this day, the exact fate of her crew remains an impenetrable mystery.

9) The Aluminum Wedge of Aiud



In 1974 (or 1973 depending upon which source you believe) a curious aluminum wedge was discovered on the banks of the Mures River in Transylvania, near the city of Aiud. It was found buried deep beneath the sand alongside two mastodon bones.

Upon examination, the object – which resembled a hammer head – was found to be encased in a one millimeter thick layer of oxide which suggests that it is some 300-400 years old. A second, Swiss investigation confirmed the results of the first examination. Furthermore, as it was found with mastodon remains it could even be as much as 20,000 years old.

Aluminum is abundant in the earth’s crust but it is always combined with other minerals and the wedge predates the technology used to extract it. An aeronautical engineer suggested that the wedge is similar to the foot of landing gear used on spacecraft. The scientific community believes ‘the wedge was made on earth and its purpose is not yet identified’. Unfortunately, the Aluminum Wedge of Aiud is currently locked away in a secret location; however, some photographs of the curious, unexplained object do exist online.

8) Dulce Base

Supposedly, a top secret subterranean complex is carved into the rock below the Archuleta Mesa in Dulce, New Mexico. Claims that the base is a ‘genetics lab’ in which humans and extraterrestrials cooperatively conduct disturbing experiments have been made by various ‘leaked documents’, witness reports and even an ex-employee.

Strange humming sounds that seem to emanate from the earth near the town of Dulce have added to speculations of an underground facility, as have the presence of military helicopters that have been spotted around the area.

An author with the nom de plume of Branton claims to have interviewed former workers at the base who said: "[There] are experiments done on fish, seals, birds and mice that are vastly altered from their original forms. There are multi-armed and multi-legged humans and several cages of humanoid bat-like creatures up to seven feet tall. The aliens have taught the humans a lot about genetics, things both useful and dangerous." The U.S. government denies the base’s existence, but that doesn’t stop the speculation.

7) BEKs

Chances are you have not heard of BEKs (Black Eyed Kids) yet. Sightings of them are few and far between but via the internet they are growing in number, and the reports describe close encounters that are not only weird, but also frightening.

The stories almost always start with a ring of the doorbell. One, two or more children appear on a ‘victim’s’ doorstep and ask for help: they need to use the toilet, make an urgent phone call or relate another tale of distress. They ask to come in, plead in some cases, but the homeowners never let them in due to an unexplained feeling of terror that overcomes them. Perhaps it is the BEKs’ entirely black eyes that induce the overwhelming horror; perhaps it is because, as one ‘witness’ described, their faces appear as slightly blurry. The mysterious encounters don’t stop there, either: “For a period of three days straight, [the BEKs] kept showing up on my driveway. When the police came they were nowhere in sight. After that, they never showed up on my driveway, but every once in a while, I will see them in the downtown area, like they are following me. They will be behind a tree, I will drive to another section of Sacramento and I would see them again or I will see them on the side of the road as I am driving by and they will stare at me.”

One man did let the children in. They claimed to need to use the toilet and phone, but it was only when they entered into the house that he saw their peculiar eyes and felt the full force of dread. The BEKs moved towards him, saying that ‘they had come to collect him’. He fled the house in terror.

6) The Piri Reis Map

Currently located in the Library of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Piri Reis map is a puzzling enigma. It outlines the coast of western Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and even a section of the northern coast of Antarctica (thought to have been discovered 300 years after Piri Reis’s lifetime). Furthermore, the map shows the coastline without its glacial covering. Geological evidence suggests that Antarctica was last in this ice-less state in 4000 BC. Reis was a famous Turkish admiral whose passion (understandably for a seafarer) was cartography. Taking advantage of his rank and his privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople, his 1513 gazelle skin map was built upon the work of others, with some of his cartographical sources dating back as far as the time of Alexander the Great. The map also seems to detail more about the topographical features of South America than Europeans were thought to have in 1513, such as the Andes.

5) Commandment Rock

An 80 ton boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain in New Mexico bears a puzzling inscription. Carved into the stone’s flat side is what has been interpreted by some to be a version of the Ten Commandments in a form of ‘Paleo-Hebrew’.

Discovered by academia in 1933 by archaeology Professor Frank Hibben, it had been known to locals for decades, and the guide who led Hibben to it said he had known of it since the 1880s – a date which, if genuine, means the rock’s authenticity is likely, as the Paleo-Hebrew script was then unknown. This means it outdates Columbus’s discovery of America and suggests that people from Israel or Phoenicia (who used a similar language) discovered the continent centuries before it was thought possible. Skeptics draw upon punctuation and grammatical ‘errors’ as evidence of it being a fake, while others still doubt this debunking.

4) The Somerton Man

In the early hours of December 1, 1948 a dead body was found lying on Adelaide’s Somerton Beach. The man was judged to be in his early forties and in good physical condition. Curiously, all the labels were missing from his clothing, he had no identification and his dental records did not match any known person.

Even the coroner and Scotland Yard had no luck finding out the man’s identity or cause of death. The mystery deepened when a piece of paper with the printed words “Tamam Shud” on it was discovered in a secret pocket concealed within the dead man’s trousers. The scrap of paper was traced to a rare edition of a book entitled The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the back of which contained some kind of a code. Numerous unsuccessful attempts by amateurs and professional codebreakers to crack it have failed. The identity of the deceased man and even the cause of death remain unsolved to this day. The case was never closed by the South Australian Major Crime Task Force and many individuals continue to work on it.

3) Gef the Talking Mongoose

Also referred to as the Dalby Spook, Gef was said to be a creature resembling a mongoose. It was reported to live with the Irving family in their farmhouse near the hamlet of Dalby on the Isle of Man. Gef’s true identification remains shrouded in mystery. It has been interpreted as (among other things) a poltergeist, a cryptid and of course, a hoax.

In September 1931, the Irvings started hearing strange scratching noises coming from their farmhouse’s attic. Soon the scratching became more like a baby ‘gurgling’. The gurgling then evolved to ‘resemble a baby learning to talk and shortly after to mimic certain words that the ‘animal’ seemingly picked up from the Irving family’. If that wasn’t weird enough it described itself as a “an extra, extra clever mongoose,” an “earthbound spirit” and “a ghost in the form of a weasel.” It could even sing.

The case was investigated by Harry Price, but aside from a few grainy photographs of a strange animal roaming the fields outside the house, nothing substantial was ever recorded.

2) The Black Mausoleum – Tomb of ‘Bluidy’ MacKenzie

Edinburgh is a ghost hunter’s paradise. It seems that there is barely a nook or cranny of the Scottish capital that doesn’t lay claim to spooky goings-on of one kind or another, and there is one hot spot in particular that boasts inexplicable activity which is unusually well-documented.

George MacKenzie (1638–1691), Lord Advocate of Scotland, was a merciless persecutor of the Presbyterian Covenanters in life, and now it seems that he (or something else) has returned from parts unknown to take up residence in his tomb and continue his nefarious deeds.

In 1998, a vagrant broke into his tomb and fell through a rotten lower floor into a plague pit filled with skeletons. Since then, there have been over 450 reports of strange incidents, from people having lost consciousness to inexplicable fires breaking out and an unusually high number of dead animals having been found around the tomb. Visitors have had their fingers broken, hair pulled and been punched or kicked by an invisible assailant. Unexplained bruises, scratches and burns, skin gouges, nausea and numbness are all commonly reported.

The physical signs of attack often go unnoticed until people arrive home and relax or return to their hotels for the night. Witnesses have even reported activity following them home. Whatever lurks within the Black Mausoleum, it is certainly active.

1) DB Cooper

The solution to one of the greatest mysteries of all time still eludes America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. On the November 24, 1971, a man in his mid forties and giving the name Dan Cooper (he is also known as DB Cooper due to a ‘press miscommunication’) hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft and demanded $200,000 in ransom and two parachutes. His claim of having a bomb in his briefcase was verified by an air stewardess.

Cooper was given the ransom money at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. He allowed passengers and some members of the flight crew to leave before ordering the plane to be flown to Mexico.

Soon after the plane took off, Cooper then opened the rear airstairs and parachuted into the pitch black, rain-lashed night. A five month manhunt – said to the most extensive and expensive of its kind – was immediately launched. Despite $5,880 of the ransom being discovered by a boy in 1980, no other trace of the hijacker was ever found.

In 2007, the F.B.I. reopened the case, saying that it does not believe Cooper survived the jump, but expressed an interest in ascertaining his identity, saying: “Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely.”

Despite there being hundreds of leads since 1971 (including many deathbed confessions), Cooper’s identity remains a mystery and the world's only unsolved skyjacking case.

Found HERE.