Category: Uncategorized

Unsolved Mysteries

Some interesting reading for a rainy day.

  • Ambrose Bierce – A famous Civil War-era writer decides to leave his cushy life to go to Mexico, only to disappear forever.
  • Agent 335 – One of the first U.S. spies was a woman, but who?
  • The Axeman of New Orleans – This guy won’t stop coming after people with an axe until everybody plays jazz music.
  • The Baychimo – When winter strikes, a ship sheds its crew–and then decides to take off without them.
  • The Black Dahlia Murder (NEW!) – Who murdered and maimed this woman, and is she the only victim? [suggested by several people]
  • Blair Adams (NEW!) – What is this Canadian man running from and did it find him?
  • Cahokia – A gigantic ancient civilization along the Mississippi is abandoned, but why? [suggested by
    luminescent-wanderings]
  • The Canneto di Caronia Fires – Mysterious fires keep popping up in this small Sicilian town.
  • Çatalhöyük – A 9,500-year-old city in Turkey had everything going for it, and yet it was abandoned.
  • The Chicago Tylenol Murders – Someone laces Tylenol with poison and descends an entire city into chaos.
  • The Dancing Plague – People are stricken with the need to dance, some to their deaths.
  • D. B. Cooper – An unknown man hijacked a plane, extorted hundreds of thousands, and then parachuted to freedom.
  • The Dyatlov Pass Incident (tw: photo of a dead body) – Several experienced mountain hikers go into a mountain range in Russia and die of unknown causes. [see also]
  • Ebola in Rome – Did an outbreak of ebola strike ancient Athens long before it ever tormented Africa?
  • Elisa Lam – A woman, seemingly pursued by an unseen foe, disappears, only to be found inside her hotel’s water tower two weeks later.
  • Erdstall – There are thousands of still-standing, ancient tunnels beneath central Europe, but no one knows what they’re for. [see also]
  • Genghis Khan’s Tomb – One of the greatest and most successful rulers of all time, but no one can find his final resting place.
  • The Hinterkaifeck Murders – Unexplained noises, missing house keys, and an entire family found dead in rural Germany.
  • The Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum Theft – Some hacks in police uniforms steal a bunch of priceless art, including a Rembrandt.
  • The Isdal Woman – What happened to this woman in Norway, who was she, and why were so many steps taken to conceal her identity? [suggested by
    whalesguts]
  • Japan’s Ghost Ship Problem – Ships from North Korea keep showing up on Japan’s shores… filled with mutilated corpses.
  • The Jian Seng – A giant ship is found floating with no crew and no one knows where it came from.
  • Jimmy Hoffa – A teamster with mob ties disappears, theories abound.
  • Joseph Newton Chandler III  – Is this dead identity thief the Zodiac Killer? And if so, what is his real name?
  • The Joyita – Crew members abandon a real unsinkable ship, but why?
  • The Lighthouse Mystery – Several Scottish lighthouse keepers disappear abruptly.
  • The Lost Colony (on Roanoke Island) – A bunch of white people decide to try and colonize an island and it doesn’t go well.
  • The Lost Dutchman Mine – In unforgiving territory lies a lost treasure just waiting to be found–if you don’t die first.
  • The Lost Nazi Plunder – The nazis stole hoards of important items, including art and cultural artifacts. Where are they now? [see also]
  • The Mary Celeste – A sailing ship in working order is found, still at sea, without a crew.
  • Monsieur Chouchani – Who was this mysterious Jewish teacher and mentor of Elie Weisel who dressed like a vagabond?
  • The Oakville Blobs – Gelatinous blobs of an unknown substance rain from the sky.
  • The Paris Catacombs – A seemingly infinite series of tunnels filled with bones, artwork, and missing explorers. [see also]
  • The Phaistos Disc – A mysterious disc, thousands of years old and covered in strange symbols, is found in Crete.
  • Rongorongo – An undecifered set of glyphs from Easter Island, possibly a completely independent language.
  • The Tamam Shud Case (tw: photo of a dead body) – A body shows up on a beach in Australia, and how it got there is wrapped in mystery and lies.
  • Tarrare – A man who couldn’t stop eating, anything and everything.
  • UVB-76 – A strange radio station in Russia broadcasts a constant buzz, broken only by strange readings of names and numbers.
  • The Voynich Manuscript – An unbreakable code in an ancient manuscript full of strange drawings–what’s not to like?
  • The Woman in the Tree (aka Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?) – A body turns up stuffed into a tree trunk, becomes a local rallying cry.
  • The Wow! Signal – A strong radio signal from space still has researchers stunned and baffled.
  • The Zodiac Killer (NEW!) – Who is the cryptic killer behind a rash of murders? (Other than Ted Cruz.) [suggested by several people]

(These
are the most reliable unsolved stories I could find. There are many
others that require more sources to be believed or already have very
plausible answers.)

Know a good one that isn’t listed? Let me know!

So maybe this time, love doesn’t kick down the door—
doesn’t rattle the windows or plant weeds in the flower garden.
Maybe you can’t smell the smoke because,
for once,
nothing is burning.
Maybe this love is all the things
those loves wanted to be when they grew up.
Maybe you spent all that time running
so that you’d know how to hang up your coat
when you were ready.

Ashe Vernon

Snoezelen, or controlled
multisensory environment (MSE), is a therapy for people with autism and
other developmental disabilities, dementia or brain injury. It consists
of placing the person in a soothing and stimulating environment, called
the “Snoezelen room”. These rooms are specially designed to deliver
stimuli to various senses, using lighting effects, color, sounds, music,
scents, etc. The combination of different materials on a wall may be
explored using tactile senses, and the floor may be adjusted to
stimulate the sense of balance. The person is usually accompanied by an
aide or therapist.

Originally developed in the Netherlands in the 1970s, Snoezelen rooms
have been established in institutions all over the world and are
especially common in Germany, where more than 1,200 exist.
(Source)

New species of plant buries its own seeds

A botanist has discovered a new species of plant in eastern Brazil
whose branches bend down upon bearing fruit and deposit seeds on the
ground, often burying them in a covering of soft soil or moss. This
trick is an example of geocarpy, a rare adaptation to survival in harsh
or short-lived environments with small favorable patches. The adaptation
ensures seedlings germinate near their parents, helping them stay
within the choice spots or microclimates in which they thrive. One
well-known practitioner of geocarpy is the peanut, which also buries its
fruit in the soil. […]

The team dubbed it Spigelia genuflexa, named after the act of genuflection, or kneeling to the ground.

Why scientists are rooting for mushrooms

Mushrooms are the organisms that keep on giving.
They grow and feed the soil by breaking down organic matter. For centuries,
they’ve also been a staple in our diet.

Recently, people have started taking a closer look at mushrooms,
and more specifically, mycelium — the hidden root of mushrooms — as an
engineering material to produce goods like surfboards, packaging materials, furniture and even architecture.

image

As far as natural materials go, there’s
never been anything as versatile and cost-effective as fungi, says Sonia
Travaglini, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, who
is collaborating with artist and mycologist Philip Ross to unlock the
seemingly infinite potential of fungi.

Mycelium can grow into any shape or size (the largest in the world blankets an entire forest in
Oregon). They can be engineered to be as hard and strong as wood or brick,
as soft and squishy as foam, or even smooth and flexible, like fabric.

Unlike other natural materials, mushrooms
can rely on their recycling properties to break down organic matter so you
can grow a lot of it very quickly and cheaply just by feeding it biodegradable
waste. In as little as two weeks, you can cultivate a hunk of mushroom that’s
brick-sized.

That mycelium actually takes in waste and carbon dioxide as it
grows (one species of fungi even eats
plastic trash) instead of expelling byproducts makes it far superior to other
forms of production.

Plus, when you’re done with mushroom,
you can compost it or break up the material to grow more mycelium from it.

“And, unlike forming synthetic
materials, which have to be made while very hot or under pressure, all of which
takes a lot of energy to create those conditions, mycology materials grow from
mushrooms which grow in our normal habitat, so it’s much less energy-intensive,”
said Travaglini.

In the lab,
Travaglini and other researchers crush, compress, stretch, pull and bend mycelium
to test the amount of force the material can tolerate.

image
image

They found that mycelium is
incredibly strong and can withstand a lot of compression and tension.

Most materials are only strong from
one direction. But mycology materials are tough from all directions and can
absorb a lot force without breaking. So it can withstand as much weight as a
brick, but won’t shatter when you drop it or when it experiences a hard impact,
said Travaglini.

As one of the newer organisms
receiving an application in biomimetics, a field of science that looks to
imitate nature’s instinctive designs to find sustainable solutions and
innovation, we might be getting merely a glimpse of what fungi is capable of.

“Mycology is still a whole new
field of research, we’re still finding more questions and still really don’t
know where it’s going to go, which makes it really exciting,” said Travaglini.

Image sources: Vice UK/Mazda & Pearson Prentice Hall

It’s difficult to draw a line between good and bad. One person’s poison is another one’s nectar. A warm woolen blanket is very good in the winter, but you don’t even touch it in the summer. It depends upon how you approach a situation. Truly speaking, there is neither good nor bad in the world outside. Everything is neutral. Take cobra poison, for example. The moment we hear the name ‘poison’ we are frightened. We say, ‘It’s terrible, it’s bad.’ But there are certain medicines made out of that poison. Poison is not poison, but becomes nectar if you know how to administer it. But if you don’t know how to manage it, even nectar will become poison. There’s nothing good or bad outside. It all depends upon our approach.

Sri Swami Satchidananda