Some Conspiracy theories are just fun to discuss. They may not all be true, but then again who knows. We hope you enjoy and share these with your friends if you enjoy our work. Which of these conspiracies do you believe?
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Bigfoot.
Legends of large, ape-like beasts can be found all over the world. Since the 1950s, the United States’ version of this has been “Bigfoot.” And since 1976, the FBI has had a file on him.
That year, Director Peter Byrne of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in The Dalles, Oregon, sent the FBI “about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin.” Byrne wrote that his organization couldn’t identify what kind of animal it came from, and was hoping the FBI might analyze it. He also wanted to know if the FBI had analyzed suspected Bigfoot hair before; and if so, what the bureau’s conclusion was.
At the time, “Byrne was one of the more prominent Bigfoot researchers,” says Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. “In 2019, a lot of people think of Bigfoot as being sort of silly and a joke, or whatever else. But in the 1970s, Bigfoot was really, really popular. That was when The Six Million Dollar Man had a cameo by Bigfoot.”
This was also after Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin released their famous video footage in 1967 supposedly showing Bigfoot in Northern California. It’s worth noting that the original “evidence” that launched the Bigfoot craze—a trail of oversized footprints discovered in the same region in 1958—was revealed to be a prank by logger Ray L. Wallace in 2002. Many people believe the “Bigfoot” creature in the Patterson-Gimlin film was a costumed prankster as well. Byrne has always believed the footage is real.
Jay Cochran, Jr., assistant director of the FBI’s scientific and technical services division, wrote back to Byrne that he couldn’t find any evidence of the FBI analyzing suspected Bigfoot hair, and that the FBI usually only examined physical evidence related to criminal investigations. Still, it sometimes made exceptions “in the interest of research and scientific inquiry,” and Cochran said he’d make such an exception for Byrne.
Unsurprisingly, Cochran found that the hair didn’t belong to Bigfoot. In early 1977, he sent the hair back to Byrne along with his scientific conclusion: “the hairs are of deer family origin.” Four decades later, the bureau declassified its “Bigfoot file” about this analysis.
To be clear, this is not evidence that the FBI endorsed the existence of Bigfoot, any more than the U.S. military’s decades-long investigation of unexplained aerial phenomena, popularly known as UFOs, is an endorsement of the existence of aliens.
“All it means is the FBI did a favor to a Bigfoot researcher,” Radford says. “There’s nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for de facto government endorsement of the reality of Bigfoot.”
Even so, Bigfoot believers may be tempted to spin it that way. “They love the idea that there’s a smoking gun in the FBI files—‘See, look, Bigfoot must be real, otherwise the FBI wouldn’t have taken it seriously,’” he continues. “Well, the FBI didn’t send out a team of investigators to look for Bigfoot, they agreed to run an analysis of 15 hairs.”
To add more layers to what is already an unusual case, 93-year-old Byrne doesn’t seem to remember receiving the FBI’s response that the “Bigfoot hair” was actually deer hair.
Because Byrne had been out of the country for several months, Cochran sent the letter to the executive vice president of the Academy of Applied Science, which was associated with Byrne’s Bigfoot organization. The executive wrote that he would give Byrne copies of the correspondence when he returned. Yet when the FBI released its Bigfoot file—which was exclusively about Byrne’s inquiry—on June 5, 2019, Byrne reacted as though he were hearing that it was deer hair for the first time.
“Obviously I can’t speak for Peter Byrne,” Radford says. But “if you’re going to make a big enough deal about this unknown specimen to give it to the FBI, then you’re not going to want to publicize the fact that it turned out to be deer.”
UFO’s
In 2020, Congress ordered the Pentagon to produce a report on UFOs. The nine-page report doesn’t say what the 144 sightings from 2004 to 2021 are, but does say that the government wants to collect better data.
On June 25, 2021, the Pentagon released a much-anticipated report on UFOs to Congress. The military has rebranded unidentified flying objects as unidentified aerial phenomena –UAPs – in part to avoid the stigma that has been attached to claims of aliens visiting the Earth since the Roswell incident in 1947. The report presents no convincing evidence that alien spacecraft have been spotted, but some of the data defy easy interpretation.
I’m a professor of astronomy who has written extensively on the search for life in the universe. I also teach a free online class on astrobiology. I do not believe that the new Pentagon report or any other sightings of UFOs in the past are proof of aliens visiting Earth. But the report is important because it opens the door for a serious look at UFOs. Specifically, it encourages the U.S. government to collect better data on UFOs, and I think the release of the report increases the chances that scientists will try to interpret that data. Historically, UFOs have felt off limits to mainstream science, but perhaps no more.
What’s in the UFO report? The No. 1 thing the report focuses on is the lack of high-quality data. Here are the highlights from the slender nine-page report, covering a total of 144 UAP sightings from U.S. government sources between 2004 and 2021:
-“Limited data and inconsistent reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP.” -Some observations “could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception.” -“UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security.” -Of the 144 sightings, the task force was “able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained.” -“Some UAP many be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or non-governmental entity.”
UFOs are taboo among scientists UFO means unidentified flying object. Nothing more, nothing less. You’d think scientists would enjoy the challenge of solving this puzzle. Instead, UFOs have been taboo for academic scientists to investigate, and so unexplained reports have not received the scrutiny they deserve.
One reason is that most scientists think there is less to most reports than meets the eye, and the few who have dug deeply have mostly debunked the phenomenon. Over half of sightings can be attributed to meteors, fireballs and the planet Venus.
Another reason for the scientific hesitance is that UFOs have been co-opted by popular culture. They are part of a landscape of conspiracy theories that includes accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. Scientists worry about their professional reputations, and the association of UFOs with these supernatural stories causes most researchers to avoid the topic.
But some scientists have looked. In 1968, Edward U. Condon at the University of Colorado published the first major academic study of UFO sightings. The Condon Report put a damper on further research when it found that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge.”
However, a review in 1998 by a panel led by Peter Sturrock, a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that deserves scientific study. Sturrock also surveyed professional astronomers and found that nearly half thought UFOs were worthy of scientific study, with higher interest among younger and more well-informed astronomers.
If astronomers are intrigued by UFOs – and believe some cases deserve study with academic rigor – what’s holding them back? A history of mistrust between ufologists and scientists hasn’t helped. And while UFO research has employed some of the tools of the scientific method, it has not had the core of skeptical, evidence-based reasoning that demarcates science from pseudoscience.
A search of 90,000 recent and current grants awarded by the National Science Foundation finds none addressing UFOs or related phenomena. I’ve served on review panels for 35 years, and can imagine the reaction if such a proposal came up for peer review: raised eyebrows and a quick vote not to fund.
A decadeslong search for aliens While the scientific community has almost entirely avoided engaging with UFOs, a much more mainstream search for intelligent aliens and their technology has been going on for decades.
The search is motivated by the fact that astronomers have, to date, discovered over 4,400 planets orbiting other stars. Called exoplanets, some are close to the Earth’s mass and at just the right distance from their stars to potentially have water on their surfaces – meaning they might be habitable.
Astronomers estimate that there are 300 million habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and each one is a potential opportunity for life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge. Indeed, most astronomers think it very unlikely that humans are the only or the first advanced civilization.
This confidence has fueled an active search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI. It has been unsuccessful so far. As a result, researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?” to “Where are the aliens?” The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called the Fermi paradox. First articulated by the physicist Enrico Fermi, it’s a paradox because advanced civilizations should be spread throughout the galaxy, yet we see no sign of their existence.
The SETI activity has not been immune from scientists’ criticism. It was starved of federal funding for decades and recently has gotten most of its support from private sources. However, in 2020, NASA resumed funding for SETI, and the new NASA administrator wants researchers to pursue the topic of UFOs.
In this context, the Pentagon report is welcome. The report draws few concrete conclusions about UFOs and avoids any reference to aliens or extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, it notes the importance of destigmatizing UFOs so that more pilots report what they see. It also sets a goal of moving from anecdotal observations to standardized and scientific data collection. Time will tell if this is enough to draw scientists into the effort, but the transparency to publish the report at all reverses a long history of secrecy surrounding U.S. government reports on UFOs.
I don’t see any convincing evidence of alien spacecraft, but as a curious scientist, I hope the subset of UFO sightings that are truly unexplained gets closer study. Scientists are unlikely to weigh in if their skepticism generates attacks from “true believers” or they get ostracized by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the truth is still out there.
Machine Elves
Machine elves (also known as fractal elves or self-transforming elf machines) is a term coined by the late ethnobotanist, writer and philosopher Terence McKenna to describe the apparent entities that are often reported by individuals using tryptamine-based psychedelic drugs, especially DMT.
References to such encounters can be found in many cultures ranging from shamanic traditions of Native Americans to indigenous Australians and African tribes, as well as among Western users of these substances.
At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum-like mandala, and find: There’s a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side, saying “How wonderful that you’re here! You come so rarely! We’re so delighted to see you!” They’re like jewelled self-dribbling basketballs and there are many of them and they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing, which is they jump into your body and then they jump back out again and the whole thing is going on in a high-speed mode where you’re being presented with thousands of details per second and you can’t get ahold on [them …] and these things are saying “Don’t give in to astonishment”, which is exactly what you want to do. You want to go nuts with how crazy this is, and they say “Don’t do that. Pay attention to what we’re doing”.
What they’re doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence. They offer things to you, saying “Look at this! Look at this!” and as your attention goes towards these objects you realise that what you’re being shown is impossible. It’s not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture, it’s impossible to make these things. The nearest analogy would be the Fabergé eggs, but these things are like the toys that are scattered around the nursery inside a U.F.O., celestial toys, and the toys themselves appear to be somehow alive and can sing other objects into existence, so what’s happening is this proliferation of elf gifts, which are moving around singing, and they are saying “Do what we are doing” and they are very insistent, and they say “Do it! Do it! Do it!” and you feel like a bubble inside your body beginning to move up toward your mouth, and when it comes out it isn’t sound, it’s vision. You discover that you can pump “stuff” out of your mouth by singing, and they’re urging you to do this. They say “That’s it! That’s it! Keep doing it!”. We’re now at minute 4.5 [of the trip] and you speak in a kind of glossolalia. There is a spontaneous outpouring of syntax unaccompanied by what is normally called “meaning”. After a minute or so of this the whole thing begins to collapse in on itself and they begin to physically move away from you. Usually their final shot is that they wave goodbye and say “Deja vu! Deja vu!”. This concept may be related to a tendency for the brain to imagine living entities during certain altered states. The best example of this is the extremely common feeling of a living presence during sleep paralysis (which has been theorized as the origin of the succubus, as well as a common theme in many alien abduction stories). However, Terence McKenna and Dr. Rick Strassman have both asserted the sense of reality of the experience is distinct from ordinary hallucinatory experiences, leading both researchers to speculate that perhaps the physics of many worlds is involved. Jacques Vallee has proposed that the entities met may be of an interdimensional nature in his interdimensional hypothesis.
James Kent has put forth a different explanation for machine elves. Kent postulates that the DMT landscape is simply disrupting or “editing” our processing of visual information and causing a chaotic interpretation of it inspired by hyperactive phosphene activity. The brain may fill in the blanks and since we all have an affinity for anthropomorphic things, a humanoid entity may appear out of all this chaos. Our “imaginal workplace” will take the center stage in brain activity, allowing internal data to be interpreted as external stimuli.
When reflecting upon his experiences Aldous Huxley suggested that there was something, which he called Mind at Large, which was filtered by the ordinary functioning of the human brain to produce ordinary experience.
The Kennedy Assassination
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, when he was struck by two bullets. He died at 46 years old. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination of the president, and, two days later, Oswald was killed on live television.
The Warren Commission was then created to investigate the incident and concluded that Oswald acted alone. However, some believe there is more to the story. There are theories that the CIA hired Oswald because of the president’s reactions to Communism and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Others believe the Mafia, Cuba, or the Soviet Union were involved in the assassination.
When videos of the incident were released, people claimed Oswald’s location made it impossible for him to have killed the president. Most recently, however, a scientist at IMSG concluded that Oswald did assassinate JFK.
Loch Ness Monster
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.
The Denver International Airport Is Well Known For A Number Of Conspiracy Theories.
The Denver International Airport is twice the size of Manhattan, New York, and almost every corner of the massive transportation hub is filled with conspiracy theories. For starters, the airport was $2 billion over budget, leading some to believe it has an underground structure that is either used as bunkers or as the headquarters of the supposed world-controlling group the Illuminati.
Others believe the building was built by neo-Nazis because markers and plaques around the airport say it is funded by “The New World Airport Commission,” but no information can be found about the organization anywhere. Some even say the runways are laid out like a swastika if viewed from above.
The art around the airport is also some people’s cause for concern. Most notably, there is a 32-foot sculpture of a horse that fell on its sculptor and killed him. Murals around the airport are also troubling to some, including images of a Nazi officer in a gas mask, children near a burning building, and the devil jumping out of a suitcase.
Some People Believe Mount Rushmore Is Hiding Secrets
Most people know Mount Rushmore as one of the most recognizable landmarks in the US as the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt are carved into it.
But not many people know there is a hidden chamber behind Lincoln’s head. The sculptor Gutzon Borglum created an 18-foot door behind the landmark that leads to an open room that is 74 feet long and 35 feet high. Borglum intended to place America’s prized possessions in this room. It was supposed to be called the Hall of Records.
While the room does contain important historical documents like the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, it is now sealed off from the public, leading many to create theories. Some believe the government is hiding something incredibly secretive there, like proof of extraterrestrial beings. Others believe there are hidden treasures in the room, an idea explored in Nicholas Cage’s “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.”
The Georgia Guidstones
In 1980, a monument was built in Elberton, Georgia, and is known as the Georgia Guidestones. There are 10 guidelines on the monument written in eight languages, which seem to be a set of rules for humans. For instance, one inscription reads, “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature,” while another reads, “Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.”
The monument was paid for by a man who gave an alias, so no one knows who built it or why. Some think the inscriptions are telling the future and giving us a guideline for how to rebuild after an apocalypse. Others believe Satanists or the New World Order (a secret, world-controlling group) built the sculpture to promote their agenda.
Chemtrails
Some people in believe the state is subject to government experimentation. They believe the government is dropping chemicals from airplanes at various times throughout the year. As evidence, they point to “chemtrails,” or streaks in the sky that are supposedly left over chemicals. One man on YouTube recorded video of lengthy streaks in the sky in Idaho as evidence, while another pointed to the fact that he could no longer see the mountainous landscape because of chemicals in the air.
In 2015, 2,000 geese “fell from the sky” and were found dead in Idaho. While some believed it was because of the chemtrails, environmentalists said it was most likely because of an infectious disease known as avian cholera.
Jimmy Hoffa’s Death
Jimmy Hoffa made a name for himself as a compassionate and driven labor leader who devoted his life to advocating for worker’s rights. He started his career in Detroit, working his way up through the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a powerful union at the time. Eventually, he became the president of the union. Secretly, however, he was making deals with the local mob and was caught. When he was released from jail, he disappeared from a restaurant in Detroit.
Many believed he was the victim of a Mafia hit, but a body was never found. Others are convinced the Teamsters murdered him so that he wouldn’t become president again. It took seven years before Hoffa was officially declared dead, which sparked even more theories about where his body was. Some believe his body is buried beneath Giants Stadium, in New Jersey, while others believe he is buried under a swimming pool in Hampton, Illinois.
Weather Control HAARP
On May 22, 2011, at 5:41 p.m., Joplin, Missouri, was hit with a devastating tornado with winds reaching 200 mph. The tornado leveled the town and killed 161 people. However, the out-of-this-world strength of the tornado led some to create conspiracy theories.
The most popular theory is that the tornado was created by the US military at a facility up in Alaska known as the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). The facility studies the earth’s upper atmosphere but many believe it can create hurricanes and tornadoes, like the one in Joplin. Experts say this theory is false, according to ABC News.
Masons Run the World
Freemasons and the Illuminati are the same.
Who controls the world? You may have heard of “the Illuminati”, which is associated with conspiracy theorists.
Secret societies are real and very dangerous; they want you to believe they don’t exist and will do anything to protect their secrets.
Freemasons have been around for generations and will have you believe they are about love and helping humanity, but the the opposite is true.
Read this post until the end; it has a lot of info.
What is Freemasonry?
Freemasonry is a secret society and the most heavily-guarded secret in the history of the world. You may know freemasonry by another name; illuminati. Freemasons and the illuminati is the secret society that rules the world (also referred to as THE DEEP STATE.)
Since 1717 when the first masonic lodge was organized to overthrow christianity, satanism has crept into news, media, entertainment, music and more. Freemasonry symbolism is used in movies, music, news, politics and Hollywood.
If you thought talent and connections were needed to succeed in Hollywood, music or politics, you’re wrong. Those who are “rich and famous” are only there because they are allowed to be. Most famous people are nothing more than puppets of the upper level masons.
Just like selling your soul to the devil, if you obey, keep their secrets and participate in satanic rituals, you can go far.
Masonic Emblems – Emblem in center with “G” is the most recognized on masonic lodges and hidden in plain site in most movies George Washington, most U.S. Presidents, Walt Disney, Drake, Madonna, Jon Bon Jovi, Johnny Depp, Rod Stewart, Cardi B, Taylor Swift, John Travolta, just to name a few out of thousands, are all freemasons.
You need to belong to the secret society of freemasons and literally sell your soul to get to levels of stardom, but, when you belong to them, YOU BELONG TO THEM.
X factor winner, Altiyan Childs, reveals the world’s largest secret religion in the video included in this post below. The video by Altiyan Childs is a little over 5 hours long and incredibly informative. Watch the entire video, in parts at a time if you have to, to learn about freemasons and the illuminati.
Centralia, Pennsylvania, Is Famous For Its Fires That Are Burning Underground Indefinitely, Making The Town A Ghost Town. But Some Think The Fire Was Government Made.
In 1962, the town of Centralia lit a landfill on fire to get rid of its trash, but the fire spread throughout the coal mines that laid under the town. Eventually, the fires made the town unsafe, forcing people to move away. The fire still burns today.
Some believe there’s more to the story. There are people who think the government started the fire to force people out of the town so it could collect billions of dollars worth of coal. According to local Pennsylvania news site PennLive, however, whatever coal might still be down there is worth far less.
Utah’s Skinwalker Ranch
In the 1990s, the Sherman family came forward and spoke to media outlets about years of strange occurrences at their ranch in Ballard, Utah. Terry Sherman told the press that his family had witnessed UFOs and strange lights. He also said his cows kept completely disappearing and then turning up mutilated. More bizarrely, Sherman said circular doorways would appear out of thin air. There were also reports of crop circles in the pasture. The farm quickly became famous across the US, eventually becoming known as the Skinwalker Ranch.
Over the years, more conspiracies arose about the Skinwalker Ranch, including a werewolf sighting. More strangely, reports of bizarre sightings date back long before the Sherman family. A newspaper from the ’70s reported multiple witnesses in the area seeing a UFO surrounded by green light.
Montauk Beast
In the summer of 2008, locals in the New York hamlet of Montauk were shaken by the discovery of a bloated and bloodless creature they couldn’t identify. It was dubbed the “Montauk Monster” — then it mysteriously vanished.
The Montauk Monster Washes Ashore
On July 12, 2008, Jenna Hewitt and her friends Rachel Goldberg and Courtney Fruin hit the beach at Ditch Plains. The hot summer Saturday made for ideal conditions to stroll, but as the group of East Hampton natives continued, they came across a heart-stopping sight.
It looked like a sunbaked dog carcass with strange bindings around its legs. But it didn’t seem like the right size to be a dog, and instead of a snout, the creature seemed to have a beak. Hewitt took a photo of the dead animal— which then spread like wildfire across the internet.
The East Hampton Independent was the first media outlet to cover the bizarre find. Their story, published on July 23 with a cheeky headline, “The Hound of Bonacville” — which is a play on the nearby area of “Bonackers” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles — made some local waves.
But things truly gained steam when Gawker published its “Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk” blog post on July 29.
The 87-word post was full of snark and heavily suggested that the Montauk Monster was a marketing stunt, but the bizarre photo made an impact and the story hit the national stage, appearing in outlets like Fox News and The Huffington Post.
Conspiracy theorists around the globe perked up and Coleman, who had a finger on the pulse of weird animal discoveries, was among those who wanted to know more.
But by the time Coleman arrived in New York to inspect the creature, its carcass was nowhere to be found. It appeared that somebody had purposefully removed it — sending suspicious onlookers into a tailspin.
Coleman was unable to see the creature with her own eyes. According to one local, the creature had decomposed beyond recognition, “Now it’s just skull and bones,” before a “guy” who Hewitt refused to identify took the carcass into the woods near his house.
Hewitt has since declined any further interviews.
Meanwhile, the three young women who’d found the monster allegedly seemed to vanish from the media, as well. Coleman was left with few clues to work with.
Although the locals who claimed to have seen its decomposed carcass before it vanished, said it was no bigger than a cat, and any conclusions of its origin and identity would now have to be theoretical.
As such, some experts have come to view the whole situation as a farce. According to William Wise, director of Stony Brook University’s Living Marine Resource Institute, the creature was likely either a coyote or a dog that had “been in the sea for a while.”
He added that the creature was likely not a rodent, sheep, or raccoon. Others posited the creature was a turtle without a shell, but Wise disagreed. Turtles don’t have teeth, where the Montauk Monster certainly did.
On the other hand, rumors have spread that the beast was an escaped mutant from Plum Island’s nearby Animal Disease Center. Local cable reporter Nick Leighton said he spoke with the three women before they shielded themselves from the media and said their talk on July 31 included coy chatter about the Plum Island narrative, and that Goldberg showed him an alternate photo of the creature from an entirely new angle.
Nick Leighton visited the Plum Island facility two years after the Montauk Monster scandal. He reported that security was so tight that it seemed unlikely anything could escape.
Leighton added that he had to get government approval in order to bring a TV crew along with him and that the crew wasn’t allowed to take anything from the facility, including an opened bottle of water.
Then, Leighton hit on what could be the solution to this bizarre mystery.
Roswell UFO Crash
On July 4, 1947, Mac Brazel went out to his sheep pasture in Roswell, New Mexico, and found some unusual objects including metallic sticks, foil reflectors, and paper scraps. Since he had no idea what the objects were, he called the local sheriff who then called the Roswell Army Air Force. The pieces were swiftly taken away in armored trucks.
A few days later, the Roswell Daily Record published an article titled “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region,” sparking conspiracy theories that would last decades. Many believed that the pieces found in the field were from an alien ship, even though officials said they were from a broken weather balloon.
Years later, it was discovered that the objects were part of a secret military project called Project Mogul, which aimed to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union.
Silver Price Manipulation
Silver market participants can be downright passionate when it comes to the topic of silver price manipulation. What are the key events and theories?
From the Hunt brothers to social media’s “silver squeeze,” silver price manipulation is a longstanding and much-discussed feature of the silver market.
Silver price manipulation dates back to 1979 to 1980, when oil baron brothers William and Nelson Hunt reportedly bought upwards of 35 million ounces of silver worth at least US$1 billion.
The Hunt brothers were buying both physical silver and silver futures, and were taking physical delivery on futures contracts instead of settling for cash. Their actions ultimately sent the white metal’s price soaring to nearly US$50, which is still its highest price to date.
However, their scheme ultimately ended in disaster: On March 27, 1980, they missed a margin call, and the silver price plunged to US$11 per ounce in an event forever known as “Silver Thursday.”
Were the Hunt brothers manipulating the market, or were they facing off against it themselves? The question remains, and it’s getting new life today — following historic trades that targeted hedge funds shorting GameStop (NYSE:GME), retail traders emboldened by Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum and the hashtag #SilverSqueeze piled into physical silver and silver exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with the hope of putting pressure on big banks with silver short positions.
WallStreetBets members have since disputed who was actually snapping up silver, but wherever the activity came from, it pushed silver above US$30 to its highest level in eight years. The 11 percent price gain was the metal’s biggest one day percentage gain since 2008, as per the Financial Times.
More cautious silver market analysts view these recent price-moving activities as impractical or even downright dangerous. However, longtime silver bugs who have for years pointed to alleged silver manipulation on the part of big banks and governments have embraced the situation.
These dichotomous sentiments are a part of an ongoing saga in the silver market. Here the Investing News Network (INN) takes a deep dive into silver manipulation, from the past to the present.
Silver manipulation theory For at least four decades now, gold and silver analysts and investor market participants have debated the validity of allegations concerning precious metals price manipulation through COMEX futures contracts by a cartel that supposedly includes a group of large banks, most notably JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), as well as the US Treasury and US Federal Reserve.
By maintaining an overly large short position in the silver futures market, so the theory goes, these banks have at times been able to suppress the price of the white metal in the face of bullish fundamentals. The belief is that the silver price will not rise significantly until these players allow it to do so.
Area 51
The famous Area 51 in the Nevada desert is a military installation at the Nellis Military Operations Area. But the base quickly became known as the most secretive military site in the world because it does not exist on any map or government website, leading many to craft conspiracy theories.
Some believe Area 51 is researching and experimenting on aliens and their spacecraft. More specifically, people think they are studying a crash that happened near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Others theorize that the moon landing was staged at Area 51.
The government has said the facility is used to test experimental aircraft for the military.
Atlantis
If the writing of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato had not contained so much truth about the human condition, his name would have been forgotten centuries ago.
But one of his most famous stories—the cataclysmic destruction of the ancient civilization of Atlantis—is almost certainly false. So why is this story still repeated more than 2,300 years after Plato’s death?
“It’s a story that captures the imagination,” says James Romm, a professor of classics at Bard College in Annandale, New York. “It’s a great myth. It has a lot of elements that people love to fantasize about.”
Plato told the story of Atlantis around 360 B.C. The founders of Atlantis, he said, were half god and half human. They created a utopian civilization and became a great naval power. Their home was made up of concentric islands separated by wide moats and linked by a canal that penetrated to the center. The lush islands contained gold, silver, and other precious metals and supported an abundance of rare, exotic wildlife. There was a great capital city on the central island.
There are many theories about where Atlantis was—in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Spain, even under what is now Antarctica. “Pick a spot on the map, and someone has said that Atlantis was there,” says Charles Orser, curator of history at the New York State Museum in Albany. “Every place you can imagine.”
Plato said Atlantis existed about 9,000 years before his own time, and that its story had been passed down by poets, priests, and others. But Plato’s writings about Atlantis are the only known records of its existence.
Possibly Based on Real Events? Few, if any, scientists think Atlantis actually existed. Ocean explorer Robert Ballard, the National Geographic explorer-in-residence who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, notes that “no Nobel laureates” have said that what Plato wrote about Atlantis is true.
Still, Ballard says, the legend of Atlantis is a “logical” one since cataclysmic floods and volcanic explosions have happened throughout history, including one event that had some similarities to the story of the destruction of Atlantis. About 3,600 years ago, a massive volcanic eruption devastated the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece. At the time, a highly advanced society of Minoans lived on Santorini. The Minoan civilization disappeared suddenly at about the same time as the volcanic eruption.
But Ballard doesn’t think Santorini was Atlantis, because the time of the eruption on that island doesn’t coincide with when Plato said Atlantis was destroyed.
Romm believes Plato created the story of Atlantis to convey some of his philosophical theories. “He was dealing with a number of issues, themes that run throughout his work,” he says. “His ideas about divine versus human nature, ideal societies, the gradual corruption of human society—these ideas are all found in many of his works. Atlantis was a different vehicle to get at some of his favorite themes.”
The legend of Atlantis is a story about a moral, spiritual people who lived in a highly advanced, utopian civilization. But they became greedy, petty, and “morally bankrupt,” and the gods “became angry because the people had lost their way and turned to immoral pursuits,” Orser says.
As punishment, he says, the gods sent “one terrible night of fire and earthquakes” that caused Atlantis to sink into the sea.
Dragons
There are many theories about the origins of dragons, such as dinosaurs and Chinese legends. The main one being that dragons were mislabelled for dinosaur fossils, this dating back to the 4th century. The reason behind this being that there is not that much difference between the skeleton of a dragon and some dinosaurs, for example a fossilised stegosaurus could have been mistaken due to its size and armoured plates and scales.
Many legends and folktales have been written about dragons, this being that they are magical creatures to which early naturalists once treated as part of the natural world. Biologists in Europe also once wrote accounts of the behaviour and habitat of dragons along with other reptiles such as lizards and snakes.
China also have a large association with dragons in which has said to have been within the culture for at least 6 thousand years, so much so that emperors in accent China were identified as the sons of dragons and at that time ordinary citizens were not allowed to have items or pictures of dragons. The references of the dragon occurs prominently in early philosophical texts as well as in the images of shamanistic worship. There are many myths and tales about the creature for example being identified as one of the four primary benevolent spiritual animals which symbolised all things male. As well as being a zodiac symbol the dragon also has many other qualities such as being able to transform into other species such as human or birds, also being able to control the weather. Dragons in China are very symbolic creatures for example they are seen as lucky, propitious, powerful, and noble and not seen as monsters as they are portrayed in Western stories.
Pyramids All Over The World
There are more than 100 pyramids in Egypt, but this was the first, built during the reign of Pharoah Djoser (2630 B.C. to 2611 B.C) as a grand mausoleum for himself. Previous pharaohs’ tombs were flat-topped mounds made mostly of mud, but Djoser’s chief architect, Imhotep, came up with a more durable and attractive idea: A “step pyramid” design, involving six successively smaller layers of carved limestone rising some 200 feet high. Imhotep, also a reputed healer, was later worshipped as a god of medicine in Greco-Roman culture.
Say “the pyramids,” and most people picture this famous trio towering dramatically above the desert sand not far outside modern Cairo. The northernmost of the three, built circa 2551 B.C. for Pharoah Khufu, is known simply as the Great Pyramid—and with more than 2 million stone blocks forming a geometric pyramid 450 feet high (originally 481 feet), it certainly is. Although it is no longer the world’s largest manmade structure, as it was for over three millennia, it is the largest of all the ancient pyramids. The ancient Greeks deemed it one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and it is the only one of those seven that has survived to the present day.
Giza, Egypt: Pyramid of Khafre
The middle pyramid of the famous Giza trio was built circa 2520 B.C. for Pharoah Khafre. At 471 feet, Khafre’s tomb wasn’t quite as tall as the Great Pyramid of his father, Pharoah Khufu—but he cleverly made it appear taller by choosing a nearby spot with higher elevation. The elaborate temple complex east of the pyramid includes a monolithic limestone statue with the body of a seated lion, the face of a human (although the nose has fallen off), and the headdress of a pharoah. This mysterious figure is known as The Sphinx.
Chavin de Huantar, Peru: Chavin Temple Complex
This massive complex was erected over the span of a few centuries by the pre-Columbian Chavin people, who dwelled in the highlands of what is now Peru from about 900 to 200 B.C. The monuments include both an “old temple” and “new temple,” made of rectangular stone blocks and shaped like flat-topped pyramids. It incorporates elaborate carvings, passageways and water channels that may have been used for religious rituals. Though now largely in ruins, the size of the complex impressed a 16th-century Spanish explorer so much that he believed it was built by a race of ancient giants.
Teotihuacan, Mexico: The Pyramid of the Sun
Not much is known about the people who inhabited the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan in the first few centuries A.D., but they clearly had architectural skills. Their well-planned city covered more than seven square miles and included several pyramids, the most impressive of which is the Pyramid of the Sun. The sides of its square base are about 730 feet wide, and its five stepped layers once rose to a height of over 200 feet. It is situated beside the city’s central road, the Avenue of the Dead, which runs south from the Pyramid of the Moon to a large temple complex.
Meroe, Sudan: The Nubian Pyramids
There are hundreds of pyramidal tombs in the region of central Sudan once known as Nubia, built mostly out of reddish sandstone. About 40 of them are located in Meroe, a major city in the Kushite kingdom from about 300 B.C. to 300 A.D. The Nubian pyramids are smaller than the Egyptian pyramids, and more narrowly shaped. Although they have suffered from plunder and decay over the years—an Italian explorer smashed the tops off many of them in the 19th century, apparently seeking treasure—they remain a remarkable sight.
Puebla, Mexico: Great Pyramid of Cholula
What looks like a grassy hill in the modern Mexican state of Puebla is actually one of the world’s largest ancient monuments, a pyramidal complex covering nearly 45 acres and rising 177 feet high. Its formal name is Tlachihualtepetl, but many people simply call it the Great Pyramid of Cholula. It was built in stages by pre-Columbian people and was once used by the Aztecs as a temple to their god Quetzalcoatl. After the city’s conquest by Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, a Catholic church was erected on the top of the grass-covered pyramid.
Ur, Iraq: Ziggurat of Ur
The word ziggurat (from a Babylonian word for “tall or lofty”) is used to describe tiered temples like this one in Mesopotamia, but the design of successively receding layers could also be called a step pyramid. This ziggurat, built for the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu in the mid-21st century B.C., once had three stories of terraced brick connected by staircases and topped with a shrine to a moon god. It eroded over time and was restored by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the 6th century B.C., then again by archaeologists in the 20th century. Tallil Airbase is now located nearby.
Peten, Guatemala: Mayan Pyramids of Tikal
Tikal was an important urban and ceremonial center for the Maya from about 300 to 900 A.D., and they built many monuments here, including five pyramidal temples. The tallest—Pyramid IV, topped by the Temple of the Two-Headed Serpent—is 213 feet high. After the Maya abandoned the site, these pyramids lay largely forgotten in the rainforest for nearly 800 years. European explorers re-discovered them with great excitement in the 1850s, leading to several major archaeological expeditions and digs. The area is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Rome, Italy: Pyramid of Cestius
This steep, pointed pyramid was built circa 12 B.C. as a tomb for the Roman magistrate Gaius Cestius Epulo, as evidenced by an inscription carved into its sides. The inscription also identifies Cestius’ heirs, and states that the pyramid took 330 days to construct. It is made of concrete covered with white marble, with paintings on the interior walls. In 1887, the English poet Thomas Hardy penned these lines after seeing the pyramid, which he considered less important than the nearby graves of the poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Who, then, was Cestius, and what is he to me?… I can recall no word, Of anything he did; For me he is a man who died and was interred, To Leave a pyramid.”
Vikings In America
An ancient solar storm and some wooden remains from old Nordic village prove that Christopher Columbus was not the first non-Indigenous person in North America, scientists say. New findings show that Vikings landed on the continent 1,000 years ago, and hundreds of years before Columbus.
Researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature, were able to determine the date Vikings were present by analyzing three pieces of wood from three different trees that had been chopped by Vikings at L’Anse aux Meadows, a national historic site in Newfoundland, Canada. The site has long been revered for being the first known evidence of European presence in the Americas, according to Parks Canada, but the exact date Vikings were present was not known.
Researchers used radiocarbon dating — a way to estimate age based on the amount of carbon-14 in a living thing — on the wood to determine the Vikings’ arrival. The method allows for a rough estimate, but what really narrowed it down for researchers was a massive solar storm that occurred in 992 AD. The huge bursts of energy emitted from the sun put additional carbon in the atmosphere, thus spiking the amount of carbon in living things for that period of time.
The wooden pieces the Vikings had chopped have still-visible tree rings. One of the rings matched up with the solar storm, and had 29 growth rings that formed thereafter, meaning that the wood was chopped 29 years after the solar storm occurred in 992 A.D. — in 1021.
All of the wooden pieces had been clearly chopped with metal tools, which was evident by their “characteristically clean, low angle-in cuts,” researchers said. Tools such as this were not present in Indigenous communities in the area at that time.
In their paper, researchers said that 1021 A.D. now marks the “earliest known year by which human migration had encircled the planet,” proving that Vikings arrived in North America 471 years before Christopher Columbus, who ventured to the Bahamas in 1492.
L’Anse aux Meadows is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, that the organization says has “exceptional archaeological” items, including eight timber-framed turf structures. Those structures, UNESCO says, are built in the same style as ones found in Norse Greenland and Iceland from the same period. Other artifacts found at the site indicate the Vikings produced iron and woodworking products.
At least five or six Indigenous tribes are believed to have been in the area as far back as 6,000 years ago, according to Parks Canada. In 2019, researchers published their findings of numerous stone tools and other items from Indigenous groups at L’Anse aux Meadows, prompting them to believe that there may have been more interactions between the Vikings and Indigenous groups than what has been previously thought.