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https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/malaysia-airlines-flight-17

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News about Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

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https://www.cbsnews.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/

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Popular

Fauci on COVID surge, Trump's recovery

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, tells "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell that Americans need to "double down" on mask-wearing and social distancing to help control a surge in new coronavirus cases. He also spoke about President Trump's recovery from COVID-19, progress towards a vaccine, and how the pandemic will affect this year's holiday gatherings. Watch the full interview.

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Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 - News, Pictures, & Videos

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Popular Fauci on COVID surge, Trump's recovery Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, tells "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell that Americans need to "double down" on mask-wearing and social distancing to help control a surge in new coronavirus cases.

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<p>The 5,000-year-old <a href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/stonehenge">Stonehenge</a> monument in Wiltshire, England, shown here bathed in pastel twilight, has been examined by scientists for centuries. And though our understanding of the structure has increased greatly, particularly in recent years, questions persist about who built Stonehenge and why.</p>

Stonehenge in southern England ranks among the world's most iconic archaeological sites and one of its greatest enigmas. The megalithic circle on Salisbury Plain inspires awe and fascination-but also intense debate some 4,600 years after it was built by ancient Britons who left no written record.

The monument's mysterious past has spawned countless tales and theories. According to folklore, Stonehenge was created by Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend, who magically transported the massive stones from Ireland, where giants had assembled them. Another legend says invading Danes put the stones up, and another theory says they were the ruins of a Roman temple. Modern-day interpretations are no less colorful: some argue that Stonehenge is a spacecraft landing area for aliens,

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Scientists Try to Crack Stonehenge's Prehistoric Puzzles

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The 5,000-year-old Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire, England, shown here bathed in pastel twilight, has been examined by scientists for centuries. And though our understanding of the structure has increased greatly, particularly in recent years, questions persist about who built Stonehenge and why.

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The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been officially declared an "accident" and the search for survivors has been called off, authorities said Thursday.

A statement released by Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation said that all 239 people aboard the Boeing 777 were now presumed dead.

"It is therefore, with the heaviest heart and deepest sorrow that, on behalf of the government of Malaysia, we officially declare Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 an accident," said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation. "All 239 of the passengers and crew on board MH370 are presumed to have lost their lives."

The underwater search for wreckage in the Southern Indian Ocean will continue.

Rahman acknowledged that the announcement would "be very difficult for the families and loved ones," but said it would enable victims' relatives to begin the process of claiming compensation.

Malaysia Airlines commercial director Hugh Dunleavy said in November that next of kin would be compensated "once we've had an official loss recorded."

Most of the passengers aboard the flight were Chinese and Beijing's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called on Malaysian officials to "earnestly fulfill their compensation responsibilities."

Malaysia's announcement comes more than 10 months after MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. The U.S. has been among 25 countries to send aircraft, ships and personnel to attempt to recover the jet, which investigators believe crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Rahman described what he said was "a frustrating time for all who have tried their best in the search for MH370." He said the authorities have "never wavered in our commitment to continue our efforts to find" the airliner. "Its passengers and its crew will always be remembered and honored," he added.

"The governments of Malaysia, China and Australia have spared no expense and resources in the search for MH370," Rahman said. "This has been done with the paramount aim to find the aircraft and to seek answers. It has been done in hope of bringing some solace to the families of the passengers and crew on board MH370."

The statement highlighted that international aviation law "states that the definition of the term 'accident' includes 'the aircraft is missing.' It also states that 'an aircraft is considered to be missing when the official search has been terminated and the wreckage has not been located.'" It added that "search" is defined as "an operation to locate persons in distress" before formally declaring the disappearance an accident.

Although no trace of the aircraft has been recovered, radar and satellite data suggested the jet ran out of fuel over the Southern Indian Ocean and that the aircraft was "on the sea floor," according to Rahman. "This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is also an area with adverse sea conditions," he said. "After 327 days and based on all available data ... survivability in the defined area is highly unlikely."

The initial search involving 65 aircraft and 95 ships from 13 countries uncovered no trace of MH370. Investigators are now using underwater drones to build a map of the sea floor. So far they have mapped an area of more than 80,000 square miles - roughly the size of Kansas.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Malaysia Airlines MH370 Declared an 'Accident,' Search for Survivors Ends

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The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been officially declared an "accident" and the search for survivors has been called off, authorities said Thursday. A statement released by Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation said that all 239 people aboard the Boeing 777 were now presumed dead.

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https://pll.harvard.edu/course/pyramids-giza-ancient-egyptian-art-and-archaeology

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Pyramids of Giza: Ancient Egyptian Art and Archaeology | Harvard University

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Explore the archaeology, history, art, and hieroglyphs surrounding the famous Egyptian Pyramids at Giza. Learn about Old Kingdom pharaohs and elites, tombs, temples, the Sphinx, and how new technology is unlocking their secrets.

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https://www.journeytoegypt.com/en/discover-egypt/egyptian-pyramids-giza

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The first step in building a pyramid was to choose a suitable site. This had to be on the west side of the Nile because the west was where the sun set and where the dead were thought to enter the underworld. The pyramids also needed to be situated on the high ground, away from the danger of flooding at the time of the Nile's inundation.

However, it could not be too far away from the bank because the river would be used to transport blocks of fine quality limestone for the outer casing from Tura, on the other side of the Nile. The site chosen would be at a point on the desert plateau that would prove a firm rock base capable of supporting the great weigh of the pyramid without any risk of cracking. It would also need to be within easy reach of the capital, so that the king could go to inspect the building work whenever he wished.

Egypt Pyramids Facts

The Ancient City of Memphis:

Some of the oldest structures in Cairo date back to almost two centuries BC during the Greco-Roman period; however, the Giza Pyramids are considered as the most famous and the oldest structures among all other pyramids in Egypt. Despite being close to Cairo city, the gap in the date between building the pyramids and the city itself proves that they have distinct histories.

Before Cairo city ever existed, the pyramids at Giza were part of an older city legacy and civilization. The ancient city of Memphis was the source of authority of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC) of Ancient Egypt, and it was the hometown of Egyptians who built the pyramids.

One of the interesting Egypt pyramids facts is that, during that period, Memphis was the most powerful and well known city not only in Egypt, but also in the whole world. What made it really famous was that, during that time, almost 100 pyramids were built near Cairo alone.

Cairo's location, being near to Memphis city, proves how important was Memphis throughout the ancient Egyptian history. Moreover, both Cairo and Memphis were and still located at the top part of the Nile Delta.

Giza Necropolis:

The Giza Pyramids are attached to the name of Egypt itself. The huge sizes of the pyramids, especially the Giza ones, are and will always be an awe factor for millions of tourists who visit Egypt all year long. The amazement factor comes from the question that everyone who visits Egypt asks, how the three kings, Khafre, Khufu, and Menkaure, managed to build such huge structures?

Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops Pyramid):

Egypt pyramids facts are plenty and one amazing fact is that Khufu pyramid is considered as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and is known as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Khafre, the son of Khufu, and king Menkaure, also known for their impressive pyramids in Giza, but none of the two pyramids are as huge as the great pyramid of King Khufu. The Great Pyramid was constructed during 2560 BC and it is 481 feet tall, and now it reached 455 feet because of the removal of its remarkable capstone.

Today's Archeologists consider the ancient Egyptian structures like the pyramids as great indicators of Egypt's economic and political stability during the Old and Middle Kingdoms of ancient history. It consumed so many resources to build a pyramid, and also a lot of effort to get the right and qualified labor force for the construction process. The huge size and quality of structure of the construction of pyramids at different periods during that time of Ancient Egyptian history shows that there were more advanced building resources available during the 4th dynasty than at any other time.

Khafre Pyramid (Pyramid of Chefren):

Khafre pyramid is considered as the second largest pyramid in Giza. It was built for king Khafre, the third pharaoh who belongs to the 4th Dynasty during the Period of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom (2540 BC). The king was also known by the name Chephren, which was a Greek name. He was the son of King Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid of Giza and was the grandson of King Sneferu.

The pyramids built by king Khafre and his family are considered as the greatest in Egypt's history and human history, during the 'golden age' of the Old Kingdom.

The statue of the Great Sphinx is also one of the most famous structures of the ancient Egyptian history. It was built for the purpose of protecting the burial site of the kings in Giza.

The Great Sphinx statue is located next to the Valley Temple which is near the pyramid of Khafre. During excavation, a large statue of the king was found next to the Great Sphinx statue.

Pyramid of Menkaure (Mykerinus Pyramid):

Pyramid of Menkaure is the third pyramid and the smallest one among the great pyramids of Giza. It belongs to King Menkaure (Mycerinus in Greek). Archaeologists believe that it has been finished at the end of the 26th century BC. King Menkaure, just like the other kings who own pyramids at Giza, ruled Egypt during the 4th Dynasty at the time of the Old Kingdom Period of Ancient Egyptian history.

Some archeological evidence suggests that Menkaure is the successor of King Khafre, the owner of the second pyramid and the statue of the Great Sphinx, but some historical accounts denied that fact.

The pyramid of Menkaure used to be originally 215 feet high, but now the height of the pyramid is 204 feet high due to the removal of the pyramid's outer casing and capstone. Just like the other pyramids in Giza, the lower section of the pyramid of Menkaure was encased in pink granite and the top parts of it in white Tura limestone.

The Great Sphinx of Giza:

With a body of a lion and a head of a human, statues like the great Sphinx appeared for the first time ever in Egypt as a kind of representation of a two sided story behind each structure of a statue during the beginning of the dynastic period. The first representation of a king in the form of the statue of the great sphinx was in the Middle of the 4th dynasty.

King Djetef Ra was the first king to have a Sphinx statue, as he was the successor of King Cheops, and that was considered as the first royal representation of its kind in the form of a Sphinx. The statue was discovered nearby the pyramid at Abu-Rawash in Giza and it is now displayed in Louvre Museum.

So, what is the meaning of the "Sphinx"?

The word " Sphinx" is originally a Greek word of the Ancient Egyptian name "Ssp Ankh" which means the living image or representation of something. The Sphinx statue mainly represents the king and his living image and it also represents the combination between the mental power and the Physical power. The mental power of the king is represented in the human head of the statue, while the physical power is represented in the body of a lion. Egyptology scientists believe that if the sphinx was a representation of an ancient Egyptian God, so it is said that they managed to tame the wild nature of the lion with the human intelligence and turning it into a divine peaceful character.

Dahshur Pyramids:

The village of Dahshur is located about 40 kilometers southwest of Cairo and famous for its impressive ancient structures. Excavation missions at Dahshur site have revealed the remains of total of seven pyramids till now, in addition to extensive tomb complexes that were built for queens and nobles from Memphis city up until the 13th Dynasty during the time of the Middle Kingdom.

Built during the era of King Sneferu (2613-2589 BC), the founder of the 4th Dynasty, both the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid at Dahshur are great evidences of the impressive structural development found in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza and other ancient Egyptian pyramids.

The Red Pyramid at Dahshur:

The Red Pyramid is another fancy example of a great construction project during the 4th Dynasty as it was built for the pharaoh Sneferu. Another example is the Bent Pyramid which is located at the same site, nearby the Necropolis at Dahshur city, Sneferu decided to correct the flaws that were made during the construction of the bent pyramid and the one at Meidum that went down during its construction.

The Red Pyramid got finished at the beginning of the 26th century BC, it was considered as the first successful attempt to build a complete pyramid, which made it the most inspirational type of construction for the later 4th Dynasty pyramids of Giza.

The Bent Pyramid at Dahshur:

The Bent Pyramid at Dahshur site was built during the end of the 27th century BC by King Sneferu, the father of King Khufu, the owner of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Bent Pyramid was the first to be built by King Sneferu, it got that name as it was unfinished and it had to get reconstructed, but the King decided to leave it like that.

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The first step in building a pyramid was to choose a suitable site. This had to be on the west side of the Nile because the west was where the sun set and where the dead were thought to enter the underworld.

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The disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight, carrying 239 passengers and crew, is one of the world's biggest aviation mysteries.

But a British aeronautical engineer, who has spent more than a year working on the disaster, thinks he has calculated where MH370 crashed.

Richard Godfrey believes the Boeing 777 crashed into the Indian Ocean 2,000km west of Perth, Western Australia.

The aircraft vanished from radar during a flight in March 2014.

Mr Godfrey told the BBC he hoped "we'll be able to give closure to the next of kin and answers to the flying public and the aviation industry on exactly what happened with MH370 and how we prevent that in the future".

He combined different data sets that were previously kept in separate domains, to align to this new location in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Mr Godfrey said it was a "complicated exercise", but previously there was simply a lack of lateral thinking, across multiple disciplines, to bring this together.

"No one had the idea before to combine Inmarsat satellite data, with Boeing performance data, with Oceanographic floating debris drift data, with WSPR net data," he said.

Mr Godfrey said work with a team has been progressing for a year now, and "we've done quite a lot of testing of this new idea and we've came to the confidence to apply it to MH370".

The exact point determined by data calculations is around 33 degrees south and 95 degrees east in the Indian Ocean.

There have been two extensive searches of the Indian Ocean for MH370, which have yielded inconclusive results.

The searches have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and whilst there is demand from family members to find their loved ones, the costs associated are enormous.

'Tangible evidence'

Grace Nathan lost her mother, Anne, in the crash.

"It's really just been an ongoing nightmare. There is never an end. We just seem to be going in circles and hitting a brick wall after another.

"We've been hoping for the longest time for something new - a new breakthrough, something new that would warrant the search starting again and at least there being a more precise location for the search being conducted at and to increase the odds of finding the plane" she told the BBC.

Ms Nathan, a criminal defence lawyer who lives in Kuala Lumpur, wants the new data to be tested by aviation experts who can understand the science and physics behind the location and to test the theory is credible.

She said: "We welcome all new findings, especially if it's based on tangible evidence. In this case it is based on tangible evidence. It's things that can be calculated. It's not based on just Google images or loose things that can't be backed up."

Previous searches for MH370 have been difficult because of the size of the search area.

Mr Godfrey said: "An area as large as a 120,000 sq km has been searched and that's not looking for a needle in a haystack - that's looking for something microscopic in a haystack. It's very difficult to do."

4,000 metres deep

The engineer's new proposal is a circle radius of 40 nautical miles, far smaller than previous searches.

"The wreckage could be behind a cliff or in a canyon on the ocean floor," he said. "And you need maybe three or four passes before you start to pick things up." The wreckage could lie as far as 4,000 metres deep, he added.

More than thirty pieces of aircraft debris have been washed up on the beaches of the African coast and islands in the Indian Ocean.

In 2009, Mr Godfrey was due to be a passenger on Air France 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, but work plans meant he had to remain in Brazil.

That flight never reached its destination and was lost in the Atlantic. From this point, he became interested in flights lost at sea and locating them.

Mr Godfrey is a founding member of the MH370 Independent Group, and an engineer with a background in building automatic landing systems and autopilot systems for aircraft.

He said: "I've done a lot of work on information systems and handling lots of data and that's important on this analysis. There is huge amount of data to get through and filter out the needle in the haystack."

David Gleave is the chief investigator at Aviation Safety Consultants. He has worked on aeroplane crashes and disappearances for decades.

Mr Gleave expects there to be a new search, saying: "The funding of the new search will be the issue. Given that we now have additional accurate data that as to where the crash site might be, that appears to be entirely credible and consistent with other theories".

The timing and launch of another search will depend on the availability of specially designed equipment and also the sea state.

Consistent evidence

He said: "Realistically we want to be in the Southern Ocean in the southern summer - which is about now. So quite when the search will be, it may start again in 12 months, because you can't get the assets together and on site in a short period of time.

"But I think either the Chinese will take responsibility and look for their victims. Or private companies might search, sponsored by insurance companies."

There were 122 Chinese nationals on board MH370, which departed from Kuala Lumpur but never reached its destination, Beijing.

The vanishing has led to a huge number of theories as to what happened. One of the theories is that it was a 'pilot hijacking', where the pilot took control, and deactivated radar technology before turning around above the Gulf of Thailand and heading west.

Mr Gleave said: "If you are choosing to hide the aeroplane in the Southern Indian Ocean, just make sure it was further to the west of the standard flight path, far away from beyond the range of Australia's search and rescue teams aircraft. So, this pinpointed location is consistent with that theory."

The Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) involvement in the underwater search for MH370 concluded in October 2017.

It told the BBC: "The ATSB is not involved in any contemporary efforts to establish the location of the aircraft.

"Any decision to resume the search for the aircraft would be a matter for the Malaysian government, as the state of registry of the aircraft."

The Malaysian government and Chinese government have been approached for a response.

Grace Nathan said: "It's in the interests of global aviation safety that this plane is found so we can prevent something like this happening in the future.

"It goes beyond our need for our closure."

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MH370: Could missing Malaysian Airlines plane finally be found?

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The disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight, carrying 239 passengers and crew, is one of the world's biggest aviation mysteries. But a British aeronautical engineer, who has spent more than a year working on the disaster, thinks he has calculated where MH370 crashed.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/giza-pyramids

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All three of Giza's famed pyramids and their elaborate burial complexes were built during a frenetic period of construction, from roughly 2550 to 2490 B.C. The pyramids were built by Pharaohs Menkaure (front), Khafre (middle), and Khufu (back),

Photograph by Cordon Press

How the ancient wonder was built is one of Egypt's biggest mysteries. But archaeologists do have insight into who built them-and what they hold inside.

The Giza Pyramids, built to endure an eternity, have done just that. The monumental tombs are relics of Egypt's Old Kingdom era and were constructed some 4,500 years ago.

Egypt's pharaohs expected to become gods in the afterlife. To prepare for the next world they erected temples to the gods and massive pyramid tombs for themselves-filled with all the things each ruler would need to guide and sustain himself in the next world.

Each of the three massive pyramids is but one part of a larger complex, including a palace, temples, solar boat pits, and other features. Here's what to know about who built them, how they were built-and the treasures we've discovered inside.

Who built the Pyramids of Giza?

Pharaoh Khufu was the first Egyptian king to build a pyramid in Giza, a project he began in circa 2550 B.C. His Great Pyramid is the largest in Giza and originally towered some 481 feet (147 meters) above the plateau-it's a bit shorter now with its smooth casing stones long gone. Its estimated 2.3 million stone blocks each weigh an average of 2.5 to 15 tons.

Khufu's son, Khafre, built the second pyramid at Giza, circa 2520 B.C. His necropolis, or burial ground, stands out on the landscape because it also includes the Sphinx, a mysterious limestone monument with the body of a lion and the head of a pharaoh. The Sphinx, which before the 1800s spent thousands of years buried in the sand with only its head visible, may stand sentinel for the pharaoh's tomb complex, although there's no definitive proof that he built it.

(Who did build the Spinx? 4,500 years later, we took a fresh look.)

The third of the Giza Pyramids is considerably smaller than the first two-less than half their height at about 218 feet. Built by Khafre's son Menkaure circa 2490 B.C. the pyramid's elaborate complex includes two separate temples connected by a long causeway, and three individual queens' pyramids. Menkaure's chambers include niche decorations unique to Giza and a vaulted ceiling in his burial chamber itself. The pharaoh's elaborate sarcophagus was lost at sea near Gibraltar in 1838.

How were the pyramids built?

The ancient engineering feats at Giza were so impressive that even today scientists and engineers can't be sure exactly how the pyramids were built. Yet they have learned much about the people who built them and the political power necessary to make it happen.

The builders were skilled Egyptian workers who lived in a nearby temporary city sprawling over some 17 acres. The remains of bakeries and piles of animal bones show that they were very well fed for their labor. Archaeological digs on the fascinating site have revealed a highly organized community, rich with resources, that must have been backed by strong central authority.

(Who was the first Pharaoh?)

Archaeological sites across Egypt and records written on ancient papyri show that boatmen used the Nile and a network of artificial waterways to bring materials to the Giza Plateau, including granite from Aswan quarries, copper cutting tools from the Sinai Peninsula, and timber from Lebanon. To sustain the workers, they also delivered cattle from farms near the Nile Delta.

It's likely that communities across Egypt contributed workers, as well as food and other essentials, for what became in some ways a national project to display the wealth and control of the ancient pharaohs.

Scientists and engineers are still debating exactly how the pyramids were constructed. It's generally believed that the Egyptians moved massive stone blocks to the heights along large ramps, greased by water or wet clay, using a system of sledges, ropes, rollers, and levers. Some suggest exterior ramps either zig-zagged or spiraled around each pyramid, while a more controversial theory suggests internal ramps were used.

These secrets of the pyramids' construction may lie below the surface. Perhaps as future imaging technology reveals the arrangements of blocks inside, they will provide a blueprint for how Egyptian builders created these timeless monuments.

The pharaoh's relatives, such as Nefertiabet, Khufu's daughter-depicted on this relief found in her tomb in Giza-were buried beside the sovereign's pyramid.

Photograph by Werner Forman, GTRES

If the pyramids helped to build ancient Egypt, they also preserved it. Giza allows us to explore a long-vanished world.

"Many people think of the site as just a cemetery in the modern sense, but it's a lot more than that," says Harvard University Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian. "In these decorated tombs you have wonderful scenes of every aspect of life in ancient Egypt-so it's not just about how Egyptians died but how they lived."

(How cosmic rays helped find a tunnel in Egypt's Great Pyramid.)

Tomb art includes depictions of ancient farmers working their fields and tending livestock, fishing and bird hunting, practicing carpentry, wearing costumes, and performing religious rituals and burial practices.

Inscriptions and texts also allow research into Egyptian grammar and language. "Almost any subject you want to study about Pharaonic civilization is available on the tomb walls at Giza," Der Manuelian says.

Many of these unique resources are freely accessible to all at The Giza Project, an enormous collection of photographs, plans, drawings, manuscripts, object records, and expedition diaries from the world's leading institutions, gathered together in an incredible online repository for Giza-related material.

This collection preserves paintings and inscriptions that have since faded away, captures artifacts that have been lost or destroyed, and unlocks tombs not accessible to the public.

And while nothing could ever replicate the experience of a personal visit to Giza, the reconstructions of GIZA 3D may be the closest you can get. Virtual visitors from anywhere in the world can wander the wonders of the plateau and take guided tours of pyramids, temples, and even tombs.

What are we still discovering about the pyramids?

The pyramids of Giza still hold plenty of secrets. And while scientists continue to make new discoveries, many of them also raise new questions.

The ScanPyramids project, an international team under the authority of Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities, has been using modern technology to delve inside the pyramids since 2015 without setting foot inside. Advances in high-energy particle physics have allowed them to use cosmic rays to uncover various empty spaces that had been hidden for 4,500 years-including one void that rivals the size of the pyramid's Grand Gallery and another passage, dubbed the North Face Corridor, to the Pyramid of Khufu.

It's unclear if anything is inside these spaces, but most experts believe they have no ritual significance. Instead, they were likely used during construction, a carefully engineered system to distribute the weight and stress of these iconic structures that have definitely stood the test of time.

Editor's note: This story was originally published on January 21, 2017. It has been updated.

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What are the Pyramids of Giza-and who built them?

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How the ancient wonder was built is one of Egypt's biggest mysteries. But archaeologists do have insight into who built them-and what they hold inside.

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On a sunny day nearly 80 years ago, five Navy planes took off from their base in Florida on a routine training mission, known as Flight 19. Neither the planes nor the crew were ever seen again.

Thus was a legend born. The Bermuda Triangle is an area roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. No one keeps statistics, but in the last century, numerous ships and planes have simply vanished without a trace within the imaginary triangle.

Unusual features of the area had been noted in the past. Christopher Columbus wrote in his log about bizarre compass bearings in the area. But the region didn't get its name until August 1964, when Vincent Gaddis coined the term Bermuda Triangle in a cover story for Argosy magazine about the disappearance of Flight 19. The article stimulated a virtual cottage industry in myth-making.

Many exotic theories have been propounded to explain what happened to the missing travelers.

The disappearances have been attributed to the machinations of enormous sea monsters, giant squid, or extra-terrestrials. Alien abductions, the existence of a mysterious third dimension created by unknown beings, and ocean flatulence-the ocean suddenly spewing great quantities of trapped methane-have all been suggested as culprits.

The reality, say many, is far more prosaic. They argue that a sometimes treacherous Mother Nature, human error, shoddy craftsmanship or design, and just plain bad luck can explain the many disappearances.

"The region is highly traveled and has been a busy crossroads since the early days of European exploration," said John Reilly, a historian with the U.S. Naval Historical Foundation. "To say quite a few ships and airplanes have gone down there is like saying there are an awful lot of car accidents on the New Jersey Turnpike-surprise, surprise."

Lieutenant A. L. Russell, in the U.S. Coast Guard's official response to Bermuda Triangle inquiries, writes: "It has been our experience that the combined forces of nature and the unpredictability of mankind outdo science-fiction stories many times each year."

Disappearance of Flight 19

The legend of the Bermuda Triangle will be forever tied to the fateful flight that took place on December 5, 1945.

Flight 19 originated at the U. S. Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Five TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers carrying 14 men took off at roughly 2:10 p.m. that day on a routine navigational training mission.

Led by instructor Lieutenant Charles Taylor, the assignment was to fly a three-legged triangular route with a few bombing practice runs over Hen and Chickens Shoals.

Taylor, in an age before GPS became commonplace for navigation, got hopelessly lost shortly after the bombing run. Pilots flying over water in 1945 had to rely on compasses and knowing how long they'd been flying in a particular direction, and at what speed.

Both of the compasses on Taylor's plane were apparently malfunctioning. Transcripts of in-flight communications suggest he wasn't wearing a watch. There are no landmarks in the middle of the ocean.

The planes flew in one direction then another as balmy daylight turned to stormy seas in the darkness.

Taylor is heard formulating a plan; as soon as the first plane's fuel level dipped below 10 gallons, all five planes were to ditch at sea.

The Avenger was known as an extremely rugged plane. Pilots sometimes called them "Iron Birds" or Grumman ironworks, said Mark Evans, a historian at the Naval Aviation History branch of the Naval Historical Center.

"They were built like tanks," he said. "Time and again they'd come back from battle all shot up and still functioning. Pilots loved them."

They were also very heavy, weighing more than 10,000 pounds (4,535 kilograms) empty. When ditched, the Avenger would go down hard and fast. The possibility of anyone surviving a landing in high seas was slim, the chance of surviving the night in the cold waters was nil, the likelihood of the wreckage making a quick descent to the bottom was high.

A massive land and sea search was mounted, but neither bodies nor wreckage were ever found.

Adding to the tragedy, one of the rescue planes also disappeared along with its 13-man crew. Their plane, a PBM Mariner, was nicknamed the "flying gas tank"; the slightest spark or a lit match could cause an explosion. A ship in the area reported seeing a huge fireball and crossing through an oil slick at the exact time and place where the plane would have been. The Navy halted production of that plane in 1949.

In the Navy's final report, the disappearance of Flight 19 was blamed on pilot error. Taylor's family protested and, after several reviews, the verdict was changed to "causes or reasons unknown."

Graveyard of the Atlantic

The Bermuda Triangle region has some unusual features. It's one of only two places on Earth-the other being an area nicknamed the Devil's Sea off the east coast of Japan, which has a similar mysterious reputation-where true north and magnetic north line up, which could make compass readings dicey [sidebar].

It is also home to some of the deepest underwater trenches in the world; wreckage could settle in a watery grave miles below the surface of the ocean. Most of the sea floor in the Bermuda Triangle is about 19,000 feet (5,791 meters) down; near its southern tip, the Puerto Rico Trench dips at one point to 27,500 (8,229 meters) feet below sea level.

Treacherous shoals and reefs can be found along the continental shelf. Strong currents over the reefs constantly breed new navigational hazards, according to the Coast Guard.

Then there's the weather.

"The biggest issues in that area normally are hurricanes, but it's not particularly a spawning area for storms," said Dave Feit, chief of the marine forecast branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Prediction Center.

However, Feit pointed out, the Gulf Stream travels along the western edge of the triangle and could be a factor. The Gulf Stream is like a 40- to 50-mile-wide (64- to 80-kilometer-wide) river within the ocean that circulates in the North Atlantic Ocean. The warm water and two- to four-knot currents can create weather patterns that remain channeled within it.

"If you have the right atmospheric conditions, you could get quite unexpectedly high waves," said Feit. "If wave heights are eight feet outside of the Gulf Stream, they could be two or even three times higher within it. Sailors can sometimes identify the Gulf Stream by the clouds and thunderstorms over it."

The Coast Guard also notes that unpredictable Caribbean-Atlantic storms can yield waterspouts that often spell disaster for pilots and mariners.

Still, given a choice between the horrifying idea of a giant squid's tentacles wrestling an innocent ship to the sea floor, or an alien abduction, versus human error, shoddy engineering, and a temperamental Mother Nature-who, even today, could resist the legend of the Bermuda Triangle?

Editor's note: This story was originally published on December 15, 2003. It has been updated.

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The intrigue behind the Bermuda Triangle

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Numerous ships and planes have vanished without a trace within the imaginary Bermuda Triangle bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Yet 58 years after five Navy planes disappeared there on a routine training mission, no one knows exactly what caused that and other disappearances.

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https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-egypt/the-egyptian-pyramids

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Built during a time when Egypt was one of the richest and most powerful civilizations in the world, the pyramids-especially the Great Pyramids of Giza-are some of the most magnificent man-made structures in history. Their massive scale reflects the unique role that the pharaoh, or king, played in ancient Egyptian society. Though pyramids were built from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the close of the Ptolemaic period in the fourth century A.D., the peak of pyramid building began with the late third dynasty and continued until roughly the sixth (c. 2325 B.C.). More than 4,000 years later, the Egyptian pyramids still retain much of their majesty, providing a glimpse into the country's rich and glorious past.

The Pharaoh in Egyptian Society

During the third and fourth dynasties of the Old Kingdom, Egypt enjoyed tremendous economic prosperity and stability. Kings held a unique position in Egyptian society. Somewhere in between human and divine, they were believed to have been chosen by the gods themselves to serve as their mediators on earth. Because of this, it was in everyone's interest to keep the king's majesty intact even after his death, when he was believed to become Osiris, god of the dead. The new pharaoh, in turn, became Horus, the falcon-god who served as protector of the sun god, Ra.

Did you know? The pyramid's smooth, angled sides symbolized the rays of the sun and were designed to help the king's soul ascend to heaven and join the gods, particularly the sun god Ra.

Ancient Egyptians believed that when the king died, part of his spirit (known as "ka") remained with his body. To properly care for his spirit, the corpse was mummified, and everything the king would need in the afterlife was buried with him, including gold vessels, food, furniture and other offerings. The pyramids became the focus of a cult of the dead king that was supposed to continue well after his death. Their riches would provide not only for him, but also for the relatives, officials and priests who were buried near him.

The Early Pyramids

From the beginning of the Dynastic Era (2950 B.C.), royal tombs were carved into rock and covered with flat-roofed rectangular structures known as "mastabas," which were precursors to the pyramids. The oldest known pyramid in Egypt was built around 2630 B.C. at Saqqara, for the third dynasty's King Djoser. Known as the Step Pyramid, it began as a traditional mastaba but grew into something much more ambitious. As the story goes, the pyramid's architect was Imhotep, a priest and healer who some 1,400 years later would be deified as the patron saint of scribes and physicians. Over the course of Djoser's nearly 20-year reign, pyramid builders assembled six stepped layers of stone (as opposed to mud-brick, like most earlier tombs) that eventually reached a height of 204 feet (62 meters); it was the tallest building of its time. The Step Pyramid was surrounded by a complex of courtyards, temples and shrines where Djoser could enjoy his afterlife.

After Djoser, the stepped pyramid became the norm for royal burials, although none of those planned by his dynastic successors were completed (probably due to their relatively short reigns). The earliest tomb constructed as a "true" (smooth-sided, not stepped) pyramid was the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, one of three burial structures built for the first king of the fourth dynasty, Sneferu (2613-2589 B.C.) It was named for the color of the limestone blocks used to construct the pyramid's core.

The Great Pyramids of Giza

No pyramids are more celebrated than the Great Pyramids of Giza, located on a plateau on the west bank of the Nile River, on the outskirts of modern-day Cairo. The oldest and largest of the three pyramids at Giza, known as the Great Pyramid, is the only surviving structure out of the famed Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was built for Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops, in Greek), Sneferu's successor and the second of the eight kings of the fourth dynasty. Though Khufu reigned for 23 years (2589-2566 B.C.), relatively little is known of his reign beyond the grandeur of his pyramid. The sides of the pyramid's base average 755.75 feet (230 meters), and its original height was 481.4 feet (147 meters), making it the largest pyramid in the world. Three small pyramids built for Khufu's queens are lined up next to the Great Pyramid, and a tomb was found nearby containing the empty sarcophagus of his mother, Queen Hetepheres. Like other pyramids, Khufu's is surrounded by rows of mastabas, where relatives or officials of the king were buried to accompany and support him in the afterlife.

The middle pyramid at Giza was built for Khufu's son Pharaoh Khafre (2558-2532 B.C). The Pyramid of Khafre is the second tallest pyramid at Giza and contains Pharaoh Khafre's tomb. A unique feature built inside Khafre's pyramid complex was the Great Sphinx, a guardian statue carved in limestone with the head of a man and the body of a lion. It was the largest statue in the ancient world, measuring 240 feet long and 66 feet high. In the 18th dynasty (c. 1500 B.C.) the Great Sphinx would come to be worshiped itself, as the image of a local form of the god Horus. The southernmost pyramid at Giza was built for Khafre's son Menkaure (2532-2503 B.C.). It is the shortest of the three pyramids (218 feet) and is a precursor of the smaller pyramids that would be constructed during the fifth and sixth dynasties.

Who Built The Pyramids?

Though some popular versions of history held that the pyramids were built by slaves or foreigners forced into labor, skeletons excavated from the area show that the workers were probably native Egyptian agricultural laborers who worked on the pyramids during the time of year when the Nile River flooded much of the land nearby. Approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone (averaging about 2.5 tons each) had to be cut, transported and assembled to build Khufu's Great Pyramid. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that it took 20 years to build and required the labor of 100,000 men, but later archaeological evidence suggests that the workforce might actually have been around 20,000.

The End of the Pyramid Era

Pyramids continued to be built throughout the fifth and sixth dynasties, but the general quality and scale of their construction declined over this period, along with the power and wealth of the kings themselves. In the later Old Kingdom pyramids, beginning with that of King Unas (2375-2345 B.C), pyramid builders began to inscribe written accounts of events in the king's reign on the walls of the burial chamber and the rest of the pyramid's interior. Known as pyramid texts, these are the earliest significant religious compositions known from ancient Egypt.

The last of the great pyramid builders was Pepy II (2278-2184 B.C.), the second king of the sixth dynasty, who came to power as a young boy and ruled for 94 years. By the time of his rule, Old Kingdom prosperity was dwindling, and the pharaoh had lost some of his quasi-divine status as the power of non-royal administrative officials grew. Pepy II's pyramid, built at Saqqara and completed some 30 years into his reign, was much shorter (172 feet) than others of the Old Kingdom. With Pepy's death, the kingdom and strong central government virtually collapsed, and Egypt entered a turbulent phase known as the First Intermediate Period. Later kings, of the 12th dynasty, would return to pyramid building during the so-called Middle Kingdom phase, but it was never on the same scale as the Great Pyramids.

The Pyramids Today

Tomb robbers and other vandals in both ancient and modern times removed most of the bodies and funeral goods from Egypt's pyramids and plundered their exteriors as well. Stripped of most of their smooth white limestone coverings, the Great Pyramids no longer reach their original heights; Khufu's, for example, measures only 451 feet high. Nonetheless, millions of people continue to visit the pyramids each year, drawn by their towering grandeur and the enduring allure of Egypt's rich and glorious past.

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Egyptian Pyramids - Facts, Use & Construction

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Built during a time when Egypt was one of the richest and most powerful civilizations in the world, the pyramids-especially the Great Pyramids of Giza-are some of the most magnificent man-made structures in history.

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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/db-cooper-amateur-investigator-fbi-lawsuit-b2296587.html

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Amateur investigator plans to sue FBI over DB Cooper hijacking mystery

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Eric Ulis says examining tie may give ‘us the ability to take DB Cooper’s DNA and sort of reverse engineer this and identify his family, nephews, nieces’

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The Evolution of Ancient Egypt's Pyramids | Lost Treasures of Egypt

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https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/cold-cases/d-b-cooper/

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Dan "D.B." Cooper became legend on the eve of Thanksgiving in 1971. Since that night, police have failed to find him dead or alive after he jumped from an airplane mid-flight.

Around 4:00 p.m. on November 24th, a man calling himself Dan Cooper entered Portland International Airport and purchased a one-way ticket to Seattle-Tacoma Airport for $20. He was assigned an aisle seat, 18C, for a 4:35 p.m. flight. The plane carried 36 passengers that day, not including: the pilot, Captain William Scott, the first officer Bob Rataczak, the flight engineer H.E. Anderson, and two flight attendants, Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner.

An accent-less, middle-aged, white male in a dark suit and tie, Cooper drew little attention boarding the flight. After takeoff, Cooper handed Schaffner a note. At the time, men traveling alone commonly slipped phone numbers or hotel room numbers to flight attendants, so Schaffner placed the note in her pocket and ignored it. The next time she passed, Cooper motioned for her to come closer. He told her that she better read the note and warned that he had a bomb, nodding towards his suitcase. Schaffner then went to the galley to read the note. She showed it to the other flight attendant and together they hurried to the cockpit to show the pilot. After he read the note, the pilot immediately contacted air traffic control. They in turn contacted the Seattle police, who informed the FBI. The FBI placed an urgent call to the airline's president, Donald Nyrop, who said they should comply with Cooper's demands. Doubtless, Nyrop wanted to avoid any negative publicity that such a disaster would bring.

Cooper instructed the flight attendant to return the note, wary of potentially incriminating evidence. Because of this, the exact wording of his note is unknown. Schaffner recalled that the handwritten ink note demanded $200,000 in cash and two sets of parachutes. Cooper wanted these items delivered on arrival at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and claimed that if they didn't comply with these demands, he would blow up the plane. Everyone who read the note agreed that it contained the phrase "no funny business".

Cooper moved next to the window so that when Schaffner returned, she sat in his aisle seat. He opened his suitcase wide enough for her to get a glimpse of wires and two cylinders, potentially dynamite sticks. He then directed her to return to the cockpit and to tell the pilot to stay in the air until the money and parachutes were ready. After receiving the message, the pilot announced over the intercom that the jet would circle before landing due to a mechanical problem. Most of the passengers were unaware of the hijacking.

Cooper was very precise about his demands for money. He wanted the $200,000 in $20 bills, which would weigh around 21 pounds. If smaller bills were used, it would add extra weight and could be dangerous for his skydive. Larger bills would weigh less, but they would be more difficult to pass. He even specified that he wanted bills with serial numbers that were random, not sequential. The FBI agents gave him bills with random serial numbers but made sure that all of them began with the code letter L.

Acquiring the parachutes was a lot harder than collecting the $200,000. Tacoma's McChord Air Force Base offered to provide the parachutes but Cooper rejected this offer. He wanted civilian parachutes with user-operated ripcords, not military-issued ones. Seattle cops eventually contacted the owner of a skydiving school. His school was closed but they persuaded him to sell them four parachutes.

Cooper's hijacking note did not directly explain his plan to skydive from the plane but his demands led officials to that assumption. Since he had asked for an extra parachute, they assumed he planned to take a passenger or crew member with him as an airborne hostage. They thought about using dummy parachutes for the exchange with Cooper but they couldn't risk the life of a civilian.

At 5:24 p.m., the ground team had the cash and the parachutes so they radioed Captain Scott and told him they were ready for his arrival. Cooper ordered that they taxi to a remote, well-lit area after they landed. He had the cabin lights dimmed and ordered that no vehicle should approach the plane. He also ordered that the person who was bringing the cash and parachutes come unaccompanied.

A Northwest airline employee drove a company vehicle near the plane. Cooper ordered flight attendant Tina Mucklow to lower the stairs. The employee carried two parachutes at a time to the stairs and handed them over to Mucklow. Then the employee brought the cash over in a large bank bag. Once the demands were met, Cooper released the 36 passengers and flight attendant Florence Schaffner. He did not release the other flight attendant Tina Mucklow or the three men in the cockpit.

An FAA official contacted the captain and asked Cooper for permission to come aboard the jet. The official apparently wanted to warn him of the dangers and consequences of air piracy. Cooper denied his request. Cooper had Mucklow read over the instruction card for operation of the aft stairs. When he questioned her about them, she said she didn't think they could be lowered during flight. He said she was wrong.

Cooper had chosen this flight not only for location, but because of the type of jet that was used. He knew a lot about the Boeing 727-100. Cooper ordered the pilot to remain below an altitude of 10,000 feet and to keep the airspeed below 150 knots. An experienced skydiver would easily be able to dive at 150 knots. The jet was lightweight and would have no problem flying at such a slow speed through the dense air at 10,000 feet.

Cooper told the crew that he wanted to go to Mexico City. The pilot explained that at the altitude and airspeed he wanted to travel, the jet wouldn't be able to travel more than 1,000 miles even with 52,000 gallons of fuel. With this in mind, they agreed to make a mid-stop to refuel in Reno, Nevada. Before leaving Seattle, Cooper ordered the jet be refueled. He knew that the Boeing 727-100 could take in 4,000 gallons of fuel a minute. After 15 minutes, when they weren't done refueling, Cooper demanded an explanation. The fuel crew completed the job shortly afterwards. Captain Scott and Cooper negotiated a low-altitude route called Vector 23. This route allowed the jet to fly safely west of the mountains even at the low altitude that Cooper demanded.

Cooper also directed the captain to depressurize the cabin. He knew that a person can breathe normally at 10,000 feet, and that, if the cabin had equalized pressure inside and out, there wouldn't be a violent gust of wind when the aft stairs lowered. After all of the flight details were figured out, the plane took off at 7:46 p.m.

After takeoff, Cooper ordered the flight attendant and the rest of the crew to stay in the cockpit. There was no peephole in the cockpit door or remote cameras installed at the time, so the crew had no idea what Cooper was doing. At 8 p.m., a red light gave warning that a door was open. Scott asked Cooper over the intercom if there was anything they could do for him. He replied with an angry "No!" That was the last word anyone ever heard from Dan Cooper.

At 8:24 p.m., the jet genuflected as the nose dipped first followed by a correcting dip in the tail end. Scott made sure to note the spot where the dip took place, 25 miles north of Portland, near the Lewis River. The crew assumed that the aft stairs had been lowered and that Cooper had jumped. However, they didn't make confirmation of their assumption because they didn't want to disobey his orders to stay in the cockpit.

At 10:15 p.m., the jet landed in Reno, Nevada. Scott spoke over the intercom and after receiving no response, he opened the cockpit door. The cabin was empty. Cooper, along with the money and all of his belongings, was gone. The only item left was the second parachute.

No one ever heard from Cooper again. All subsequent investigations failed to prove whether or not he survived his fateful jump. During the hijacking, the police attempted to follow the plane and wait for someone to jump. While they originally used F-106 fighter jets, these planes, built to go at high speeds up to 1,500 MPH, proved to be useless at lower speeds. The police then co-opted the Air National Guard Lockheed T-33, but before they were able to catch up to the hijacked plane, Cooper had already jumped.

The inclement weather that night prevented the police from searching the grounds until the next day. That Thanksgiving, and for several weeks afterward, the police performed an extensive search that failed to turn up any trace of the hijacker or the parachute. The police began searching criminal records for the name Dan Cooper, just in case the hijacker used his real name, but had no luck. One of their early results, however, would prove to have a lasting impact on the case: a police record for an Oregon man named D.B. Cooper was discovered and considered a possible suspect. Although he was quickly cleared by the police, an eager and careless member of the press accidentally confused that man's name for the alias given by the hijacker. This simple mistake was then repeated by another reporter quoting that information, and so on and so on until the entire media was using the catchy moniker. And so, the original "Dan" Cooper became known as "D.B." for the rest of the investigation.

Charges for air piracy were filed in 1976 and still stand today. On February 10, 1980, an 8-year-old boy found bundles of $20 bills with serial numbers matching the ones from the Cooper stash in the Columbia River. Some people believe this evidence helps support the theory that Cooper didn't survive. The discovery of these bundles led to new searches around that area. However, an eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980, likely destroyed any remaining clues about the Cooper case.

Over the years, many have confessed to being Dan Cooper. The FBI has quietly examined some of these cases, but has yet to turn up anything useful. They check the fingerprints of those who confess against the unknown prints collected from the hijacked plane. So far, none of them have been a match.

In August 2011, Marla Cooper made claims that Dan Cooper was her uncle L.D. Cooper. Marla claimed that she overheard a conversation saying their money problems were over and that they had hijacked a plane. Somewhat contradictory, however, she also explained that no money was ever recovered, since her uncle lost it while he was jumping. Although many people have identified Dan Cooper as one of their long-lost relatives, Marla Cooper's claims seem to come closest to the truth: one of the flight attendants on that flight even identified L.D. Cooper as looking similar to the hijacker. This theory, however, is still not one the authorities deem likely.

In July of 2016, the FBI officially announced they would no longer be allocating active resources to continuing the D.B. Cooper investigation. This did not mean that they had solved the case of Cooper's identity though. The leading theory by the investigators is that Cooper did not, in fact, survive his jump. Although his extensive knowledge of the plane's systems initially led police to believe he was a professional skydiver, they have since concluded that a jump in such weather conditions, over a ruthless patch of Washington wilderness in the middle of winter, while wearing business casual attire was a risk no expert would be stupid enough to take. The fact that the bag of matching ransom money was found left in the stream further supports the theory that he did not survive. And so, despite 45 years' worth of tips and theories, the real name of America's most famous hijacker remains a mystery.

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Dan "D.B." Cooper became legend on the eve of Thanksgiving in 1971. Since that night, police have failed to find him dead or alive after he jumped from an airplane mid-flight. Around 4:00 p.m. on November 24th, a man calling...

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Ancient Aliens: Was Stonehenge Built by GIANTS?! (Season 19)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKu_3kp_EIY

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The Skyjacker That Got Away: D.B. Cooper (Full Episode) | Undercover History

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The History of Stonehenge for Kids: Stonehenge for Children - FreeSchool

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The Egyptian Pyramid | Smithsonian Institution

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The pyramids of Egypt fascinated travellers and conquerors in ancient times and continue to inspire wonder in the tourists, mathematicians, and archeologists who visit, explore, measure, and describe ... Learn more

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/D-B-Cooper

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D.B. Cooper | Hijacking, Investigation, Parachute, Money Serial Numbers, Suspects, & Facts

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D.B. Cooper (Dan Cooper), criminal who in 1971 hijacked a plane traveling from Portland to Seattle and later parachuted out of the aircraft with the ransom money. An extensive manhunt ensued, but he was never identified or caught, resulting in one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in U.S history.

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https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2023/04/bigfoot-real-or-a-figment-of-the-imagination.html

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For decades stories of a bipedal, ape-like creature have been circling the globe and the Adirondacks is no exception. Native Americans have talked about Sasquatch for hundreds of years. Often considered a West Coast phenomenon, sightings have also appeared all over the Adirondacks, from Saranac Lake in the north to a famous sightings in Whitehall. This creature has many names depending on geographical location of the sighting, but the most common names for this creature in North America are Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti and Skunk Ape. The one commonality of sightings despite the location on the globe, is the fact that the sightings occurred in remote areas with a large amount of vegetation and that are not densely populated by humans.

The sightings all describe Bigfoot as very tall - 6-15', covered in hair and bearing an apelike facial appearance and a nasty stench, hence the name skunk ape. They are said to knock on trees as a warning and even throw small stones at humans who venture too close. The accounts of vocalization vary from a roar like sound to varying pitched groans. Witnesses observed these so-called humanoids crossing roads at night, striding furtively through forest and mountain terrain, or digging for and eating ground squirrels in rock piles. Some people have not actually seen bigfoot in person but claim to have casts of giant sized footprints and small tuffs of hair they believe was left by this animal. Many people are leery to share their sightings of this creature out of fear of looking crazy or being questioned about their judgment and constant badgering of that they may have misidentified the sighting and actually saw a known creature such as a black bear.

As a Nature lover and resident of the Adirondacks for nearly 5 decades, I have not seen a creature that fits the description of those claiming to have spotted this wild man of sorts. There are however, residents here in the mountains that do claim to have seen this creature and festivals were born in celebration of the elusive Bigfoot. One such festival occurs in the town of Whitehall, where visitors are afforded the opportunity to share their sightings with others who have had similar experiences.

Native Americans are no stranger to Bigfoot. On the Tule River Indian Reservation, a set of giant pictographs tells a 2,000-year-old story - the creation tale of the Yokut people and the gatekeeper of their spiritual world, a figure known as Hairy Man. They believe when you see a Bigfoot, it's not a good sign. It means he's coming to take somebody who's going to pass over to the other side. There's even a Hairy Man song that women sing during a funeral, to make sure he does take that soul over."

The Yokut are not the only tribe who speak of the Hairy Man. There are stories of Bigfoot-like creatures in the oral tradition of dozens of North American tribes under an array of names - Sasquatch and Skookum among them - each giving different qualities to the creature. For the Yurok and Karuk, Bigfoot is just another member of the forest.

The Me-Wuk of the Yosemite area, Bigfoot is a boogeyman snatching children from their tribe and eating them. There's even a place in the Stanislaus National Forest, Pinnacle Point Cave, where the tribe believes the Bigfoot consumed its victims.

The indigenous peoples of coastal British Columbia, share a similar legend of a cannibal named Dzunukwa, the wild woman of the woods, who was often depicted on totem poles whistling which is mentioned often in Bigfoot accounts. Tribal members warn, 'If you hear whistling at night, don't go outside, because it is a Bigfoot trying to lure you out."

Rachel Plummer was a white woman captured by a Comanche raiding party in Texas in 1836. Two years later, she was free and published an account of her time as a Comanche prisoner across the Southwest. Included was a detailed rundown of the animals of the prairie as shown to her by the Comanche, including prairie dogs, mountain sheep, elk, wolves, bears, and finally this: "Man-Tiger. The Indians say they have found several of them in the mountains. They describe them as being of the feature and make of a man. They are said to walk erect, and are 8 or 9 feet high."

Whether one believes in the legend of Bigfoot or not, one must admit that if Bigfoot exists, the Adirondacks are an ideal location for the species. The Adirondacks is home to diverse wildlife and a large area of dense wilderness where animals can evade humans. With 18,000 new species of plants and animals being discovered every year surely, it's possible that an animal species we are not familiar with exists and has no will to have humans interfere with their lives.

Seth Breedlove, a well-known filmmaker, set out on a journey in the Adirondacks in search of evidence that the creature called Bigfoot, is in fact a living animal. His series, On the Trail of Bigfoot, contains his findings.

One of my favorite fictional movies about Bigfoot is called, " Harry and the Hendersons " it is a heartfelt movie about a family who accidently hits a bigfoot with their car and their comical interactions when they bring it home. The artwork for this article was created from Harry in this movie. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth the time to check it out!

If anyone has a story about a bigfoot sighting, I would love to hear it!

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Bigfoot: Real or a Figment of the Imagination? -

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For decades stories of a bipedal, ape-like creature have been circling the globe and the Adirondacks is no exception. Native Americans have talked about Sasquatch for hundreds of years. Often considered a West Coast phenomenon, sightings have also appeared all over the Adirondacks, from Saranac Lake in the north to a famous sightings in Whitehall.

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Malaysia Airlines crash: Video shows the moment MH17 crashed

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/1499483

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JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

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**July 12, 2016 Update: The FBI has redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case to focus on other investigative priorities. Details

On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon.

He used cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington.

Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history.

Cooper was a quiet man who appeared to be in his mid-40s, wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt.

He ordered a drink-bourbon and soda-while the flight was waiting to take off.

A short time after 3:00 p.m., he handed the stewardess a note indicating that he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit with him.

The stunned stewardess did as she was told. Opening a cheap attaché case, Cooper showed her a glimpse of a mass of wires and red colored sticks and demanded that she write down what he told her.

Soon, she was walking a new note to the captain of the plane that demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills.

When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker exchanged the flight's 36 passengers for the money and parachutes. Cooper kept several crew members, and the plane took off again, ordered to set a course for Mexico City.

Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: He jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money. The pilots landed safely, but Cooper had disappeared into the night and his ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day.

The FBI learned of the crime in-flight and immediately opened an extensive investigation that lasted many years. Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest Hijacking, we interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, we'd considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.

One person from our list, Richard Floyd McCoy, is still a favorite suspect among many. We tracked down and arrested McCoy for a similar airplane hijacking and escape by parachute less than five months after Cooper's flight. But McCoy was later ruled out because he didn't match the nearly identical physical descriptions of Cooper provided by two flight attendants and for other reasons.

Perhaps Cooper didn't survive his jump from the plane. After all, the parachute he used couldn't be steered, his clothing and footwear were unsuitable for a rough landing, and he had jumped into a wooded area at night-a dangerous proposition for a seasoned pro, which evidence suggests Cooper was not. This theory was given an added boost in 1980 when a young boy found a rotting package full of twenty-dollar bills ($5,800 in all) that matched the ransom money serial numbers.

Where did "D.B." come from? It was apparently a myth created by the press. We did question a man with the initials "D.B." but he wasn't the hijacker.

The daring hijack and disappearance remain an intriguing mystery-for law enforcement and amateur sleuths alike.

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D.B. Cooper Hijacking | Federal Bureau of Investigation

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July 12, 2016 Update: The FBI has redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case to focus on other investigative priorities. Details On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon.

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https://mil.wa.gov/the-legend-of-bigfoot

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The legends of Bigfoot go back beyond recorded history and cover the world. In North America - and particularly the Northwest - you can hear tales of seven-foot-tall hairy men stalking the woods, occasionally scaring campers, lumberjacks, hikers and the like.

Bigfoot is known by many titles with many different cultures although the name Bigfoot is generally attributed to the mountainous Western region of North America. The common name Sasquatch comes from the Salish Sasquits, while the Algonquin of the north-central region of the continent refer to a Witiko or Wendigo. Other nations tell of a large creature much like a man but imbued with special powers and characteristics. The Ojibway of the Northern Plains believed the Rugaru appeared in times of danger and other nations agreed that the hairy apparition was a messenger of warning, telling man to change his ways.

This is a wooden statue on display at the Western Air Defense Sector.
North American settlers started reporting sightings during the late 1800s and into the 1900s with the occasional finding of footprints, sporadic encounters and even a few grainy photos and videos adding to the mystery. Those who claim to have seen Bigfoot have described everything from a large, upright ape to an actual hairy human, sometimes standing over eight feet tall and described as powerfully built. The debate and research continue. Entire organizations exist to study and document Bigfoot and prove its existence and groups regularly search the Northwest woods, looking for that ultimate proof.

In one very real sense, however, Bigfoot does exist. The Western Air Defense Sector, Washington Air National Guard adopted the mascot of Bigfoot and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week monitoring the skies of nearly 73 percent of the United States and Canada. Just like the Bigfoot of legend, the sector is rarely seen and rarely heard, but rest assured it continues to observe and - if necessary - serve as a messenger of warning.

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The Legend of Bigfoot | Washington State Military Department, Citizens Serving Citizens with Pride & Tradition

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The legends of Bigfoot go back beyond recorded history and cover the world. In North America - and particularly the Northwest - you can hear tales of seven-foot-tall hairy men stalking the woods, occasionally scaring campers, lumberjacks, hikers and the like.

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-so-many-people-still-believe-in-bigfoot-180970045/

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Sixty years ago this fall, Bigfoot first stepped into the public consciousness. "Giant footprints puzzle residents," a headline in the Humboldt Times announced. The small Northern California newspaper reported that a road construction crew had discovered humanlike footprints that were a massive 16 inches long. The paper was the first to give the mysterious animal that made the prints its memorable moniker-"Bigfoot"-and the creature has been stomping through the American imagination ever since.

Today, the legendary beast seems to be everywhere: You will find Bigfoot looking awfully cute this year in two children's films: The Son of Bigfoot and Smallfoot. Animal Planet recently aired the finale of its popular series "Finding Bigfoot," which lasted 11 seasons despite never making good on the promise of its title. And the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization lists at least one report from every state, except Hawaii, over the past two decades. The most recent sighting, in June 2018, was by a woman in Florida who reported a creature that looked like "a large pile of soggy grass." Other evidence in the database includes supposed Bigfoot scat, nests and noises. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it may not make a sound-but it seems someone will report that a Bigfoot knocked it over.

"Interest in the existence of the creature is at an all-time high," the paleontologist Darren Naish has observed, even though "there's nothing even close to compelling as goes the evidence."

Of course, Bigfoot is not the first fabled hominid to roam North America. Sasquatches long populated the mythologies of American Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest, but those 1958 footprints transformed the myth into a media sensation. The tracks were planted near Bluff Creek in Northern California by a man named Ray Wallace-but his prank was not revealed until his death in 2002, when his children said it had all been "just a joke."

By that point, more important evidence had entered the Bigfoot file. In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed a few seconds of a hairy creature walking on two legs by the same Bluff Creek-the most famous and contested piece of Bigfoot "evidence" to this day. That the Patterson-Gimlin film was created in the same place that Wallace had staged his hoax is just one reason to doubt its authenticity. Skeptics say the animal was a man in costume, while believers argue that the creature's movements and body proportions cannot possibly have been human. The debate has been raging for half a century, which raises a question of its own. "How is it that the evidence has not gotten any better despite the exponential increase in the quantity and quality of cameras?" asks Benjamin Radford, a research fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Still the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence either. Wild animals don't exactly mug for photos, and the planet's ever-shrinking forests still regularly unpack surprises, such as the saola, an untamed cousin of the cow that was discovered by scientists in Vietnam in 1992. But the saola did not have legions of amateurs hunting it with cameras. With or without hard evidence, many people clearly want to believe in Bigfoot. Which suggests we are dealing more with human imagination than human evolution.

Naish has written that Bigfoot is the modern American "manifestation of a human-wide cultural concept, not a zoological reality." It has much in common with the Australian yowie and the Himalayan yeti: an upright posture, shaggy hair and, of course, large feet. As so-called wild men, they hold a crude mirror up to our own species: What might Homo sapiens be like if civilization had not removed it from nature?

Fact or Folklore
Can you tell the real animals from the fake ones? Hover over each animal to reveal if it is fact or folklore. (Illustration by Iris Gottlieb) Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb
***********

Some people see these cryptohominids as symbols of pure freedom, living by instinct and foiling every effort to pin them down. To search for Bigfoot in the forest is to taste that freedom. On the trail, you become extra-attuned to nature: the smell of scat, the sounds of breaking branches, the curious impressions in the dirt. As long as there are wild places in America, Bigfoot remains a possibility that, to its most ardent proponents, cannot be disproved.

The hunt for Bigfoot emulates an earlier mode of discovery, when new knowledge was not the product of advanced degrees and expensive machinery but rather curiosity, bravery, patience and survival. In the 19th century, the American landscape revealed its majesties to ordinary settlers pushing westward into territory unmapped by Europeans. To track Bigfoot today is to channel that frontier spirit (as well as to appropriate Native American traditions).

Bigfoot also embodies other less romantic but no less enduring American traits, like gullibility and a hunger for attention. "There are so many fake videos," says Loren Coleman, the founder of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. The problem has grown worse with social media, where viral hoaxes, like drone footage of a supposed Bigfoot in a clearing in Idaho, can rack up millions of views. Coleman, for his part, believes there is evidence for Bigfoot's existence, but he and his like-minded peers find it difficult to focus attention on this material amid the growing number of obvious shams. "Technology has ruined the old cryptozoology," Coleman says.

His complaint echoes concerns in more mainstream American life, where technologies that promised to build consensus have, in fact, made the truth more difficult than ever to discern. On the internet, Bigfoot has found a habitat much more hospitable than North American forests. It turns out that Bigfoot does not need to exist in order to live forever.

The Iceman Cameth
The amazing story of the infamous frozen "missing link" from Minnesota-and the dogged scientist hot on its trail.

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Why Do So Many People Still Want to Believe in Bigfoot?

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The appeal of the mythical, wild man holds strong

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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-65558327

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Loch Ness Monster hunter: I thought this job would be easier

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Steve Feltham has spent 32 years trying to solve the mystery of Loch Ness Monster sightings.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIV_C6kr6zU

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COMPELLING EVIDENCE of Loch Ness Monster | The UnXplained (Season 4)

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Stonehenge is perhaps the world's most famous prehistoric monument. It was built in several stages: the first monument was an early henge monument, built about 5,000 years ago, and the unique stone circle was erected in the late Neolithic period about 2500 BC. In the early Bronze Age many burial mounds were built nearby.

Today, together with Avebury, Stonehenge forms the heart of a World Heritage Site, with a unique concentration of prehistoric monuments.

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A history of Stonehenge, explaining how the prehistoric monument developed from an early henge into its final form, as well as its later history.

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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lochness/legend.html

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by Stephen Lyons
Fantastic Creatures | Editor's Picks | Previous Sites | Join Us/E-mail | TV/Web Schedule
About NOVA | Teachers | Site Map | Shop | Jobs | Search | To print
PBS Online | NOVA Online | WGBH

© | Updated November 2000 Birth of a Legend
Eyewitness Accounts | Experimenting with Sonar
Resources | Transcript | Site Map | Loch Ness Home

Carvings of this unidentified animal, made by the ancient inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands some 1,500 years ago, are the earliest evidence that Loch Ness harbors a strange aquatic creature.

Birth of a Legend

"Many a man has been hanged on less evidence than there is for the Loch Ness Monster."
-G.K. Chesterton
When the Romans first came to northern Scotland in the first century A.D., they found the Highlands occupied by fierce, tattoo-covered tribes they called the Picts, or painted people. From the carved, standing stones still found in the region around Loch Ness, it is clear the Picts were fascinated by animals, and careful to render them with great fidelity. All the animals depicted on the Pictish stones are lifelike and easily recognizable-all but one. The exception is a strange beast with an elongated beak or muzzle, a head locket or spout, and flippers instead of feet. Described by some scholars as a swimming elephant, the Pictish beast is the earliest known evidence for an idea that has held sway in the Scottish Highlands for at least 1,500 years-that Loch Ness is home to a mysterious aquatic animal.

In Scottish folklore, large animals have been associated with many bodies of water, from small streams to the largest lakes, often labeled Loch-na-Beistie on old maps. These water-horses, or water-kelpies, are said to have magical powers and malevolent intentions. According to one version of the legend, the water-horse lures small children into the water by offering them rides on its back. Once the children are aboard, their hands become stuck to the beast and they are dragged to a watery death, their livers washing ashore the following day.

The earliest written reference linking such creatures to Loch Ness is in the biography of Saint Columba, the man credited with introducing Christianity to Scotland. In A.D. 565, according to this account, Columba was on his way to visit a Pictish king when he stopped along the shore of Loch Ness. Seeing a large beast about to attack a man who was swimming in the lake, Columba raised his hand, invoking the name of God and commanding the monster to "go back with all speed." The beast complied, and the swimmer was saved.

When Nicholas Witchell, a future BBC correspondent, researched the history of the legend for his 1974 book The Loch Ness Story, he found about a dozen pre-20th-century references to large animals in Loch Ness, gradually shifting in character from these clearly mythical accounts to something more like eyewitness descriptions.

The Loch Ness Monster has been headline news all over the world for more than 60 years.

But the modern legend of Loch Ness dates from 1933, when a new road was completed along the shore, offering the first clear views of the loch from the northern side. One April afternoon, a local couple was driving home along this road when they spotted "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface." Their account was written up by a correspondent for the Inverness Courier, whose editor used the word "monster" to describe the animal. The Loch Ness Monster has been a media phenomenon ever since.

Public interest built gradually during the spring of 1933, then picked up sharply after a couple reported seeing one of the creatures on land, lumbering across the shore road. By October, several London newspapers had sent correspondents to Scotland, and radio programs were being interrupted to bring listeners the latest news from the loch. A British circus offered a reward of £20,000 for the capture of the beast. Hundreds of boy scouts and outdoorsmen arrived, some venturing out in small boats, others setting up deck chairs and waiting expectantly for the monster to appear.

Big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell

The excitement over the monster reached a fever pitch in December, when the London Daily Mail hired an actor, film director, and big-game hunter named Marmaduke Wetherell to track down the beast. After only a few days at the loch, Wetherell reported finding the fresh footprints of a large, four-toed animal. He estimated it to be 20 feet long. With great fanfare, Wetherell made plaster casts of the footprints and, just before Christmas, sent them off to the Natural History Museum in London for analysis. While the world waited for the museum zoologists to return from holiday, legions of monster hunters descended on Loch Ness, filling the local hotels. Inverness was floodlit for the occasion, and traffic jammed the shoreline roads in both directions.

The bubble burst in early January, when museum zoologists announced that the footprints were those of a hippopotamus. They had been made with a stuffed hippo foot-the base of an umbrella stand or ashtray. It wasn't clear whether Wetherell was the perpetrator of the hoax or its gullible victim. Either way, the incident tainted the image of the Loch Ness Monster and discouraged serious investigation of the phenomenon. For the next three decades, most scientists scornfully dismissed reports of strange animals in the loch. Those sightings that weren't outright hoaxes, they said, were the result of optical illusions caused by boat wakes, wind slicks, floating logs, otters, ducks, or swimming deer.

Saw Something, They Did Nevertheless, eyewitnesses continued to come forward with accounts of their sightings-more than 4,000 of them, according to Witchell's estimate. Most of the witnesses described a large creature with one or more humps protruding above the surface like the hull of an upturned boat. Others reported seeing a long neck or flippers. What was most remarkable, however, was that many of the eyewitnesses were sober, level-headed people: lawyers and priests, scientists and school teachers, policemen and fishermen-even a Nobel Prize winner.

Continue

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NOVA Online | The Beast of Loch Ness | Birth of a Legend

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by Stephen Lyons Fantastic Creatures | Editor's Picks | Previous Sites | Join Us/E-mail | TV/Web Schedule About NOVA | Teachers | Site Map | Shop | Jobs | Search | To print PBS Online | NOVA Online | WGBH © | Updated November 2000 Birth of a Legend Eyewitness Accounts | Experimenting with Sonar Resources | Transcript | Site Map | Loch Ness Home Carvings of this unidentified animal, made by the ancient inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands some 1,500 years ago, are the earliest evidence that Loch Ness harbors a strange aquatic creature.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands - An international team of investigators said Wednesday it found "strong indications" that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of heavy anti-aircraft weapons to Ukrainian separatists who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 with a Russian missile.

However, members of the Joint Investigation Team said they had insufficient evidence to prosecute Putin or any other suspects and they suspended their 8½-year inquiry into the shooting down that killed all 298 people on board the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Russia has always denied any involvement in the downing of the flight over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and refused to cooperate with the international investigation.

Dutch prosecutors said that "there are strong indications that the Russian president decided on supplying" a Buk missile system - the weapon that downed MH17 - to Ukrainian separatists.

"Although we speak of strong indications, the high bar of complete and conclusive evidence is not reached," Dutch prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer said, adding that without Russian cooperation, "the investigation has now reached its limit. All leads have been exhausted."

She also said that, as head of state, Putin would have immunity from prosecution in the Netherlands. The team played a recording of an intercepted phone call in which they said Putin could be heard discussing the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"Are we disappointed? No, because we think we came further than we had ever thought in 2014. Would we have liked to come further? Of course, yes," said Andy Kraag of the Dutch police.

The team informed relatives of those killed in the downing of MH17 of their findings before making them public.

"There was disappointment because ... they wanted to know why MH17 was shot down," Kraag said. "We're really clear on what has happened, but the answer to the question why MH17 was shot down still remains in Russia."

Van Boetzelaer said that while the investigation is being suspended, phone lines will remain open for possible witnesses who may still want to provide evidence. If that happens, the inquiry could be reactivated.

Russian officials say that a decision to provide rebels with military support over the summer of 2014 was in Putin's hands.

A decision to supply arms was even postponed for a week "because there is only one who makes a decision (...), the person who is currently at a summit in France," the investigative team said, citing a phone conversation that was referring to Putin.

Prosecutors said that at the time Putin was at a commemoration of D-Day in France.

The announcement by the investigative team comes nearly three months after a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian rebel for their roles in shooting down the plane. One Russian was acquitted by the court.

None of the suspects appeared for the trial and it was unclear if the three who were found guilty of multiple murders will ever serve their sentences.

The convictions and the court's finding that the surface-to-air Buk missile came from a Russian military base were seen as a clear indication that Moscow had a role in the tragedy. Russia has always denied involvement. The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the court in November of bowing to pressure from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and the news media.

But the November convictions held that Moscow was in overall control in 2014 over the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, the separatist area of eastern Ukraine where the missile was launched. The Buk missile system came from the Russian military's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based in the city of Kursk.

The Joint Investigation Team is made up of experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine. Most of the victims were Dutch. It had continued to investigate the crew of the missile system that brought down the plane and those who ordered its deployment in Ukraine.

As well as the criminal trial that was held in the Netherlands, the Dutch and Ukrainian governments are suing Russia at the European Court of Human Rights over its alleged role in the downing of MH17.

The findings revealed Wednesday will likely strengthen the case at the human rights court and could also be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court who are investigating possible war crimes in Ukraine dating back to the start of the separatist conflict.

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Malaysian Airlines shootdown probe finds 'strong indications' Putin approved missiles

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands - An international team of investigators said Wednesday it found "strong indications" that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of heavy anti-aircraft weapons to Ukrainian separatists who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 with a Russian missile.

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https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/loch-ness-monster-sighted

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The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news on May 2, 1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier relates an account of a local couple who claim to have seen "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface." The story of the "monster" (a moniker chosen by the Courier editor) becomes a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound sterling reward for capture of the beast.

After the April 1933 sighting was reported in the newspaper on May 2, interest steadily grew, especially after another couple claimed to have seen the animal on land.

Amateur investigators have for decades kept an almost constant vigil, and in the 1960s several British universities launched sonar expeditions to the lake. Nothing conclusive was found, but in each expedition the sonar operators detected some type of large, moving underwater objects. In 1975, another expedition combined sonar and underwater photography in Loch Ness. A photo resulted that, after enhancement, appeared to show what vaguely resembled the giant flipper of an aquatic animal.

Further sonar expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in more inconclusive readings. Revelations in 1994 that the famous 1934 photo was a complete hoax has only slightly dampened the enthusiasm of tourists and investigators for the legendary beast of Loch Ness.

HISTORY Vault: Ancient Mysteries

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news in the Inverness Courier newspaper.

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https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/amelia-earhart

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Amelia Earhart didn't flinch. The 21-year-old was attending an air show in Canada in 1918 when a stunt plane dived right toward her. But instead of running out of the way, she faced the plane down.

That wasn't Earhart's only brave moment. Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897, she volunteered during World War I starting in 1917, treating wounded Canadian soldiers returning from the European battlefields. Nearby were pilot practice fields, where she discovered her passion for flying. After taking her first flight in 1920, she started working odd jobs to pay for flying lessons. Then, in 1923, she earned an international pilot's license, becoming one of only 16 women in the world to have one.

Aviation in the 1920s was still new-after all, the Wright brothers ' first flight had just happened in 1903-and most pilots were men. Earhart wanted to change that and in 1931 became the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of female pilots. The next year, no one would ever think of pilots as "just men" again.

In 1932, Earhart took off from Newfoundland, Canada. Fifteen hours later, she landed in a cow pasture in Northern Ireland and became the first woman to fly by herself across the Atlantic Ocean. And she didn't stop there. In 1935, she became the first person to fly solo across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans after she flew from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California. In fact, between 1930 and 1935, Earhart set at least five women's speed and distance flying records.

But Earhart wanted to do something even bigger. On June 1, 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Miami, Florida, in an attempt to fly 29,000 miles around the world. By June 29, they had made it to New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea), an island north of Australia in the Indian Ocean. They had only 7,000 miles to go. But something happened as they crossed the Pacific Ocean. They set out on July 2, 1937, at 12:30 a.m., heading toward tiny Howland Island. They were never seen again.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent 66 aircraft and nine ships to look for them, but the fliers had vanished. The official search ended on July 18, 1937, but to this day people are still trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the woman who changed aviation history.

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How this pilot changed how high people thought women could fly

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The life and disappearance of Amelia Earhart

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Amelia Earhart | Timeline

Courtesy of Seaver Center for Western History Research

July 24, 1897: A 20th Century Childhood
Amelia Mary Earhart is born in Atchison, Kansas, to parents Amy Otis and Edwin Stanton Earhart. Her sister, Muriel, is born two years later.

Amelia lives primarily with her maternal grandparents in Atchison during the school year and spends summers with her parents in Kansas City. Despite her grandmother?s disapproval, Amelia spends her free time roaming the outdoors - riding imaginary horses, climbing trees, sledding, and hunting.

1908
Amelia rejoins her parents in Des Moines, Iowa. She sees an airplane for the first time at the Iowa State Fair and later recalls being unimpressed - "It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and looked not at all interesting." It was not until a decade later, at a stunt-flying exhibition, that Amelia's passion for flight is awakened.

1910-1915
These are turbulent, difficult years for Amelia and her family. Amelia's grandmother, who raised her, dies in 1911. Her father struggles with alcoholism, losing his job and checking into a sanatorium for a month to rehabilitate himself. The family moves to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1913. When Edwin is again unable to recover and find a job, Amy leaves him and moves with Amelia and Muriel to Chicago.

June 1916: Amelia's Education
Amelia graduates from Hyde Park High School in Chicago. She excels in science, only enrolling at Hyde Park after determining that it had the best science program in the area. However, she has trouble making friends - her yearbook caption reads, "A.E. - the girl in brown who walks alone."

Fall 1916-1918
Amelia attends the Ogontz School, an exclusive finishing school outside of Philadelphia. She again excels in her studies and becomes Vice President of her class. She does not graduate, however, choosing instead to volunteer at Toronto's Spadina Military Hospital as a nurse for wounded World War I soldiers.

While in Toronto, she attends a flying exposition with a friend. A stunt pilot dives at Amelia and her friend - "I am sure he said to himself, "watch me make them scamper,"" Amelia later recalled - but Amelia stands her ground. She points to this incident as a personal awakening - "I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by."

Fall 1919-1920
Amelia enters the pre-med program at Columbia University but after a year decides to leave to join her parents, who have reunited in Los Angeles.

December 28, 1920: Hooked on Flying
Amelia attends an air show on Long Beach with her father. With pilot Frank Hawk, she takes her first ride in an airplane. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly," she later recalled.

January 3, 1921
Amelia has her first flying lesson with pilot Neta Snook. She works a variety of jobs - truck driver, photographer, stenographer - to save money for these lessons, and six months later is able to purchase her first airplane, a yellow Kinner Airster biplane she names the Canary .

December 15, 1921
Amelia passes her flying license tests given by the National Aeronautic Association. She flies in the Pacific Coast Ladies' Derby in Pasadena two days later.

October 22, 1922
Amelia sets an unofficial altitude record for female pilots after flying the Canary to 14,000 feet.

May 16, 1923
Amelia is issued an international pilot's license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI ), becoming the 16th woman ever to achieve this.

1924: Hiatus from Aviation
Amelia's parents divorce, and Amelia drives with her mother from California to Massachusetts where they move in with sister Muriel. Amelia goes to New York briefly to reenroll at Columbia, but she soon moves back to Boston where she works first as a teacher and then as a social worker at Denison House, teaching English to Syrian and Chinese immigrants.

1927
Amelia joins the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautic Association, and is occasionally featured in newspapers as an advocate for aviation and female pilots.

Amelia Earhart, c. 1928, Courtesy: Library of Congress

June 17-18, 1928: Overnight Stardom
Amelia Earhart, pilot Wilmer Stultz, and co-pilot and mechanic Louis Gordon depart from Newfoundland in the Friendship , a tri-motor seaplane. They arrive in Wales over 20 hours later and are greeted by cheering crowds.

Amelia does not think she deserves any acclaim for being the first woman passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight - "Stultz did all the flying - had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes." She adds, "Maybe someday I'll try it alone."

Summer 1928
Amelia's book about the Friendship flight, 20 Hrs. 40 Min. , is published. Amelia teams up with publicist George Putnam to write it, and he quickly promotes her to celebrity status. Amelia goes on a national book tour, endorses products like Lucky Strike cigarettes and Modernaire Earhart Luggage, and becomes known as "Lady Lindy" because of her resemblance to Charles Lindbergh. She also becomes Aviation Editor for Cosmopolitan magazine.

August 1929: Taking the Initiative
Amelia buys another airplane, a single engine Lockheed Vega. In the Vega, she participates in the Women's Air Derby race from Santa Monica to Cleveland, coming in third place.

November 2, 1929
Amelia helps found The Ninety-Nines, Inc., the first organization for women aviators. She will become its first president in 1931 and holds that position for two years, during which time she also uses her celebrity status to promote the growth of American commercial airlines.

July 5, 1930
Amelia sets the women's world flying speed record of 181.18 miles per hour. Between 1930 and 1935, Amelia will set seven women's speed and distance records.

February 7, 1931
Amelia Earhart marries George Palmer Putnam. Wary of the institution of marriage, Amelia refused George's proposals six times before she agrees. She will emphasize that her marriage is a "partnership" with "dual control."

1932
Amelia writes her second book, The Fun of It .

Amelia with New York City mayor James Walker, 1932. Courtesy: Library of Congress

May 20-21, 1932: The Record Setter
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She departs from Newfoundland and lands in a pasture in Northern Ireland.

This act earns her the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover, becoming the first woman to ever receive this prestigious award. The site of her landing in Ireland now has a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.

August 24-25, 1932
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the North American continent and back.

1933
Amelia visits the White House. From this visit she develops a friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Amelia flies across North America for the second time, breaking her own record with a faster flight time.

1934
Amelia receives the Harmon Trophy for America's Outstanding Airwoman for the third year in a row.

January 11, 1935
Amelia is the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. This year she will also fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City (April 19-20) and later from Mexico City to New York (May 8). In between flights she works as a career counselor to women at Purdue University.

July 1936: The Round-the-World Flight
Purdue University finances a new plane for Amelia, a Lockhead Electra 10E which she calls the "Flying Laboratory," though the plane was purchase less for scientific research and more for Amelia's new dream: a "prize - one flight which I most wanted to attempt - a circumnavigation of the globe as near its waistline as could be."

Amelia and her husband George Putnam plan for her world flight, raising money and consulting with advisers, mechanics, and navigators.

March 17, 1937
Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, along with Captain Harry Manning and stunt pilot Paul Mantz, fly the first leg of the trip from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii in 15 hours and 47 minutes.

When they try to continue from Honolulu three days later, the plane ground-loops during take-off and they have to call off the flight.

June 1, 1937
Amelia departs on a second attempt, this time departing from Miami, Florida with the plan of traveling from west to east. Fred Noonan is her only crew member on this second flight. They complete nearly 22,000 miles of the flight, stopping in South America, Africa, India, and Lae, New Guinea.

July 2, 1937
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan depart from Lae. Their destination is Howland Island, a tiny island in the Pacific only 13,200 feet long and 2,650 feet wide. Amelia and Noonan cannot find the island, however, and they lose radio contact with the Coast Guard cutter Itasca , who can hear that they are lost but cannot return communication.

They disappear over the Pacific Ocean. President Roosevelt issues a massive search for Amelia and Noonan, and George Putnam finances his own search until October 1937, but their efforts are unsuccessful.

January 5, 1939
Amelia Earhart is declared legally dead in a court in Los Angeles.

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Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937 | American Experience | PBS

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Learn about Earhart's life from her childhood spent roaming the outdoors, to her first flying lessons, to her disappearence over the Pacific in 1937.

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According to a scientist, a new study showed that the Loch Ness monster might have existed. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The mythical Loch Ness monster may, in fact, be real.

According to a new joint study, released Wednesday by the University of Bath and University of Portsmouth in the UK and Université Hassan II in Morocco, fossils of plesiosaurs were found in the Morocco portion of the Sahara Desert, reported Newsweek.

The study - published in Cretaceous Research - suggests that 100 million years ago, the desert was once a body of freshwater where hundreds of carnivores lived together.

Several fossils including teeth from adult plesiosaurs that measured 9 feet in length and baby plesiosaurs - measuring 5 feet long - were found at the dig site.

"It's scrappy stuff, but isolated bones actually tell us a lot about ancient ecosystems and animals in them," said Dr. Nick Longrich, one of the co-authors of the study.

"They're so much more common than skeletons - they give you more information to work with," he explained. "The bones and teeth were found scattered and in different localities, not as a skeleton. So each bone and each tooth is a different animal."

The Loch Ness monster - dubbed "Nessie" - is a mythical creature that is said to have resided in Scotland's Highlands and has become the subject of numerous tales and hoaxes.

Teeth from grown and baby plesiosaurs at a dig site in the Sahara Desert near Morocco.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Inspiration for the monster is said to have come after the discovery of plesiosaur fossils in 1823 - for a creature that, until recently, was suspected to dwell only in bodies of saltwater.

"It's a bit controversial, but who's to say that because we paleontologists have always called them 'marine reptiles,' they had to live in the sea? Lots of marine lineages invaded freshwater," says Dr. Longrich.

Scientists also have not ruled out that Nessie-like creatures weren't permanent freshwater residents, either.

The most well-known photo of Nessie was taken in 1934 and was later proven to be a hoax.

Keystone/Getty Images

Other plesiosaur fossils have been found all over the world including in England, Africa, Australia, North America and China.

Unfortunately for all the Nessie-enthusiast, scientific records indicate the long-necked beast died out completely around 66 million years ago.

"What amazes me is that the ancient Moroccan river contained so many carnivores all living alongside each other," said co-author Dave Martill.

"This was no place to go for a swim."

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The Loch Ness monster may be real, scientists now say

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The mythical Loch Ness monster may, in fact, be real. According to a new joint study, released Wednesday by the University of Bath and University of Portsmouth in the UK and Université Hassan II in Morocco, fossils of plesiosaurs were found in the Morocco portion of the Sahara Desert, reported Newsweek.

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https://www.ameliaearhart.com/

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Amelia Earhart - The Official Licensing Website of Amelia Earhart

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Welcome to the official Amelia Earhart website. Learn more about Amelia Earhart and contact us today for licensing opportunities.

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It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it Sasquatch. Others know it as Bigfoot.

Thousands of people claim to have seen the hairy hominoid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast. No bones have ever been found. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints.

Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there's enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary primate actually exists.

"Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I'm convinced there's a creature out there that is yet to be identified," said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello.

Thousands of Sightings

Sasquatch stories go back centuries. Tales of mythical giant apes lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. The Himalaya has its Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti. In Australia, Bigfoot is known as the Yowie Man.

Bigfoot advocates hypothesize that the primate is the offspring of an ape from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. They believe there are at least 2,000 ape men walking upright in North America's woods today.

An adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human's. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries and fruits.

Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate.

"It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place."

Moneymaker, who lives in Dana Point in southern California, is a lawyer who runs his own marketing agency. In his spare time, he leads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Sasquatch.

Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast.

Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Bigfoot is a controversial short film shot by Roger Patterson in 1967, which appears to document a female Bigfoot striding along a riverbank in northern California.

"It certainly wasn't human."

Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature.

Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.

Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real.

"The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin."

Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot's existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State.

Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human," he said. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal."

A few academics believe Meldrum could be right.

Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist.

The Skeptics

But the vast majority of scientists still believe Bigfoot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. They wonder why no Bigfoot has ever been captured, dead or alive.

"The bottom line is, they don't have a body," said Michael Dennett, who writes for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and who has followed the Bigfoot debate for 20 years.

Bigfoot buffs note that it's rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. While that's true, grizzlies have not escaped photographic documentation.

Hair samples that have been recovered from alleged Bigfoot encounters have turned out to come from elk, bears or cows.

Many of the sightings and footprints, meanwhile, have proved to be hoaxes.

After Bigfoot tracker Ray Wallace died in a California nursing home last year, his children finally announced that their prank-loving dad had created the modern myth of Bigfoot when he used a pair of carved wooden feet to create a track of giant footprints in a northern California logging camp in 1958.

Dennett says he's not surprised by the flood of Bigfoot sightings.

"It's the same kind of eyewitness reports we see for the Loch Ness Sea Monster, UFOs, ghosts, you name it," he said. "The monster thing is a universal product of the human mind. We hear such stories from around the world."

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We've all heard the stories of the large, hairy ape-man that lives elusively among the woods, but is he fact or fiction? Experts weigh in.

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She never reached her fortieth birthday, but in her brief life, Amelia Earhart became a record-breaking female aviator whose international fame improved public acceptance of aviation and paved the way for other women in commercial flight.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas to Amy Otis Earhart and Edwin Stanton Earhart, followed in 1899 by her sister Muriel. The family moved from Kansas to Iowa to Minnesota to Illinois, where Earhart graduated from high school. During World War I, she left college to work at a Canadian military hospital, where she met aviators and became intrigued with flying.

After the war, Earhart completed a semester at Columbia University, then the University of Southern California. With her first plane ride in 1920, she realized her true passion and began flying lessons with female aviator Neta Snook. On her twenty-fifth birthday, Earhart purchased a Kinner Airster biplane. She flew it, in 1922, when she set the women's altitude record of 14,000 feet. With faltering family finances, she soon sold the plane. When her parents divorced in 1924, Earhart moved with her mother and sister to Massachusetts and became a settlement worker at Dennison House in Boston, while also flying in air shows.

Earhart's life changed dramatically in 1928, when publisher George Putnam -seeking to expand on public enthusiasm for Charles Lindbergh's transcontinental flight a year earlier -tapped Earhart to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane. She succeeded, albeit, as a passenger. But when the flight from Newfoundland landed in Wales on June 17, 1928, Earhart became a media sensation and symbol of what women could achieve. Putnam remained her promoter, publishing her two books: 20 Hrs. 40 Mins. (1928) and The Fun of It (1932). Earhart married Putnam in 1931, though she retained her maiden name and considered the marriage an equal partnership.

Earhart's popularity brought opportunities from a short-lived fashion business to a stint as aviation editor at Cosmopolitan (then a family magazine). It also brought financing for subsequent record-breaking flights in speed and distance. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic -as a pilot. Her awards included the American Distinguished Flying Cross and the Cross of the French Legion of Honor. In 1929, Earhart helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization of female aviators.

In 1935, Purdue University hired Earhart as aviation advisor and career counselor for women and purchased the Lockheed plane she dubbed her "flying laboratory." On June 1, 1937, she left Miami with navigator Fred Noonan, seeking to become the first woman to fly around the world. With 7,000 miles remaining, the plane lost radio contact near the Howland was never found, despite an extensive search that continued for decades.

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She never reached her fortieth birthday, but in her brief life, Amelia Earhart became a record-breaking female aviator whose international fame improved public acceptance of aviation and paved the way for other women in commercial flight. Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas to Amy Otis Earhart and Edwin Stanton Earhart, followed in 1899 by her sister Muriel.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/31/us/area-51-fast-facts/index.html

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international relations and national security

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Read CNN's Fast Facts to learn about Area 51 located at Groom Lake in southern Nevada.

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https://time.com/5627694/area-51-history/

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Area 51 Is the Internet's Latest Fascination. Here's Everything to Know About the Mysterious Site

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As the internet jokingly threatens to storm Area 51, here's everything to know about the remote desert's site mysterious history.

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https://www.space.com/area-51-what-is-it

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Area 51: What is it and what goes on there?

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Area 51 is synonymous with tales of UFOs, government cover-ups and potentially testing alien technology.

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Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is a large ape-like creature some people believe inhabits North America but there's no hard evidence it actually exists.

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Lost in the Bermuda Triangle: The Unexplained Disappearances (S4) | History's Greatest Mysteries

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/area-51-aliens-ufos-real-history

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Each year, Area 51's mythology draws tourists from around the world. People come to the air base near Rachel, Nevada, in hopes to catch a glimpse of otherworldly spacecrafts.

The legend of Area 51 has been discredited for years-but some of its history is based on true events. Here's what you need to know about Area 51.

Where is Area 51?

About 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas, somewhere between mile markers 29 and 30 along Nevada's "Extraterrestrial Highway" (State Highway 375), lies an unmarked dirt road. Although no buildings are visible from the asphalt, the track leads to Groom Lake or Homey Airport-as it's called on civilian aviation maps.

For those in the know, this road leads to a military base with many unofficial names: Paradise Ranch; Watertown; Dreamland Resort; Red Square; The Box; and The Ranch; Nevada Test and Training Range; Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center (Det. 3, AFFTC); and Area 51.

Before World War II, the area near Groom Lake was used for silver and lead mining. Once the war began, the military took over the remote area and began conducting research: mainly nuclear and weapons testing.

Why build a secret base in the desert?

When the CIA started developing spy reconnaissance planes during the Cold War, then-CIA Director Richard Bissell, Jr. realized a private base was needed to build and test prototypes.

In 1955, he and Lockheed aircraft designer Kelly Johnson selected the secluded airfield at Groom Lake to be their headquarters. The Atomic Energy Commission added the base to the existing map of the Nevada Test Site and labeled the site Area 51.

Within eight months, engineers developed the U-2 plane, which could soar at an altitude of 70,000 feet-much higher than any other aircraft at the time. This allowed pilots to fly well above Soviet radar, missiles, and enemy aircraft. (Read how Area 51 engineers used cardboard to mislead Soviet spy satellites.)

After a U-2 was shot down by a Soviet anti-air missile in 1960, the CIA began developing the next generation of spy plane at Area 51: the titanium-bodied A-12. Nearly undetectable to radar, the A-12 could fly across the continental United States in 70 minutes at 2,200 miles an hour. The plane also was equipped with cameras that could, from an altitude of 90,000 feet, photograph objects just one-foot long on the ground.

Aliens and UFOs become part of Area 51 lore

Area 51 became forever associated with aliens in 1989 after a man claiming to have worked there, Robert Lazar, gave an interview with a Las Vegas news station. Lazar claimed that Area 51 housed and studied alien spacecraft and that his job was to recreate the technology for military use.

However, Lazar's credentials were soon discredited: according to school records Lazar never went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or California Institute of Technology, as he claimed. At the time though, engineers at Area 51 were studying and recreating advanced aircraft-just aircraft acquired from other countries, not from outer space.

Nevertheless, with all of the high-tech flights out of Area 51-including more than 2,850 takeoffs by the A-12-reports of unidentifiable flying objects skyrocketed in the area.

"The aircraft's titanium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO," sources told journalist Annie Jacobsen for her 2011 book on Area 51.

Is the truth out there?

The government formally acknowledged the existence of Area 51 for the first time in 2013 when the CIA declassified documents about the development of the U-2 and A-12. Previously, locals knew something odd was happening in the desert but details were scarce and hard to verify.

Area 51 is still an active base-but the purpose it has served since the 1970s is a top-secret mystery. It will be a few more decades, at least, until current work is declassified and available to the public.

The site continues to be a pillar of U.S. alien mythology. A 2019 interview with Lazar on a popular podcast inspired a "Storm Area 51" event, in which about 6,000 people showed up in the desert to look for evidence of aliens. (It ultimately morphed into a festival celebrating all things alien.)

Even today, Area 51 draws believers and skeptics who frequent the small but thriving trail of alien-themed museums, restaurants, motels, parades, and festivals-all in hopes of discovering that the truth really is out there.

Photographer Jennifer Emerling has spent time photographing UFO culture in the American West. See more photos from the project on her website Welcome, Earthlings and her Instagram.

Editor's note: This story was originally published on September 20, 2019. It has been updated.

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Secluded in the Nevada desert, the military base has long been associated with alien and UFO sightings. Here's the real history behind the conspiracy theories.

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US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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The Bermuda Triangle is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean in which ships, planes, and people are alleged to have mysteriously vanished

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Loch Ness monster, large marine creature believed by some people to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland. However, much of the alleged evidence supporting its existence has been discredited, and it is widely thought that the monster is a myth.

Reports of a monster inhabiting Loch Ness date back to ancient times. Notably, local stone carvings by the Pict depict a mysterious beast with flippers. The first written account appears in a 7th-century biography of St. Columba. According to that work, in 565 ad the monster bit a swimmer and was prepared to attack another man when Columba intervened, ordering the beast to "go back." It obeyed, and over the centuries only occasional sightings were reported. Many of these alleged encounters seemed inspired by Scottish folklore, which abounds with mythical water creatures.

In 1933 the Loch Ness monster's legend began to grow. At the time, a road adjacent to Loch Ness was finished, offering an unobstructed view of the lake. In April a couple saw an enormous animal-which they compared to a "dragon or prehistoric monster"-and after it crossed their car's path, it disappeared into the water. The incident was reported in a Scottish newspaper, and numerous sightings followed. In December 1933 the commissioned Marmaduke Wetherell, a big-game hunter, to locate the sea serpent. Along the lake's shores, he found large footprints that he believed belonged to "a very powerful soft-footed animal about 20 feet [6 metres] long." However, upon closer inspection, zoologists at the Natural History Museum determined that the tracks were identical and made with an umbrella stand or ashtray that had a hippopotamus leg as a base; Wetherell's role in the hoax was unclear.

The news only seemed to spur efforts to prove the monster's existence. In 1934 English physician Robert Kenneth Wilson photographed the alleged creature. The iconic image-known as the "surgeon's photograph"-appeared to show the monster's small head and neck. The Daily Mail printed the photograph, sparking an international sensation. Many speculated that the creature was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that went extinct some 65.5 million years ago.

The Loch Ness area attracted numerous monster hunters. Over the years, several sonar explorations (notably in 1987 and 2003) were undertaken to locate the creature, but none were successful. In addition, numerous photographs allegedly showed the beast, but most were discredited as fakes or as depicting other animals or objects. Notably, in 1994 it was revealed that Wilson's photograph was a hoax spearheaded by a revenge-seeking Wetherell; the "monster" was actually a plastic-and-wooden head attached to a toy submarine. In 2018 researchers conducted a DNA survey of Loch Ness to determine what organisms live in the waters. No signs of a plesiosaur or other such large animal were found, though the results indicated the presence of numerous eels. This finding left open the possibility that the monster is an oversized eel. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the Loch Ness monster remained popular-and profitable. In the early 21st century it was thought that it contributed nearly $80 million annually to Scotland's economy.

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Loch Ness monster | History, Sightings, & Facts

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Loch Ness monster, large marine creature believed by some people to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland. However, much of the alleged evidence supporting its existence has been discredited, and it is widely thought that the monster is a myth. Learn more about the Loch Ness monster.

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Area 51 | Description, History, Map, & Facts

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Area 51, secret U.S. Air Force military installation located at Groom Lake in southern Nevada. It is administered by Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. The installation has been the focus of numerous conspiracies involving extraterrestrial life, though its only confirmed use is as a flight testing facility.