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4 Gigantic Prehistoric Versions of Modern Animals

Some animals are frightening enough all on their own without needing to make them super sized. Many modern day animals have relatives from prehistoric times that were essentially giant versions of what we have today. Thankfully all the animals on this list are extinct, probably.

1. Snakes

Snakes have been terrifying humans since the dawn of man. The reason for this is because these creatures have been a symbol of evil ever since they helped ruin that whole paradise thing way back in the day. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the largest snake ever recorded at 25 feet and 300 pounds. The snake was raised in captivity at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio and was affectionately called Fluffy, because that is the only logical name to call a killing machine that squeezes you to death and then swallows you whole.

The Prehistoric Version – Titanoboa

Roughly 58 million years ago a 42 foot long, 2,500 pound snake slithered around the wilderness presumably scaring everything to death in its path.

28 Titanoboa fossils were discovered in 2009 and shattered the previous prehistoric giant snake record by 11 feet. Before you ask, the snake lived 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs so it did not get the opportunity to fight a T-Rex.

2. Sharks

The largest shark in the ocean is the 40 foot long whale shark. Despite sounding like the name of an animal created by the SyFy Channel for their next creature feature, it is a slow moving animal that spends all of its time filter feeding. The most terrifying shark in the ocean is the Great White Shark. It can grow up to 20 feet and that is being generous.

The Prehistoric Version – Megalodon

Megalodon was a prehistoric shark that roamed the ocean about 1.5 million years ago and was basically a 65 foot long great white shark.

What we know about Megalodon come from fossilized teeth and pieces of backbone. However, it has been hypothesized that the megalodon may still exist in the deepest parts of the ocean so maybe we will get the chance to study one in its habitat.

3. Crocodiles

Crocodiles do not need a gigantic version to be one of the most horrifying animals on the planet. One famous croc, named Gustave by the locals who live along the Nile River, is estimated to be 18-20 feet long. Oh, did I mention he is also a serial killer?

The point being, crocodiles are large and nightmare inducing living dinosaurs that humans fear with good reason.

The Prehistoric Version - Sarcosuchus

Sarcosuchus, also called SuperCroc, because Demon River Beast from the Nether World was too wordy of a nickname, is a 40 foot long distant relative of the modern day crocodile that fed on dinosaurs. Up until the late 90s we had no way of knowing just how big this animal was until a half intact skeleton was found including nearly the whole back bone. This helped shed light on just how massive this monster was.

4. Sloth

Admittedly, the sloth does not fit in with the rest of the animals on this list. The previous entries have been animals that have been killing machines for millions of years. The sloth is…well it is a sloth. It is three or four feet tall, which makes it about as physically imposing as a toddler. However, it is pretty stealthy, which makes me think it may be up to something.

The Prehistoric Version - Megatherium

This prehistoric version of the modern sloth was the size of an elephant and is considered one of the largest land mammals to ever exist. It was 20 feet tall and had claws so large that it had to walk using the sides of its feet. While it was a herbivore, this is still an animal you would not want to take on in a fist fight.

[MIKA27]

They Might Be Zombies: Strange “Nodding Disease” Zombifies Children in Uganda

World Health Organization officials are baffled as to the specific cause of a strange and terrifying new medical condition, known to exist since 2009, which has begun to afflict children in parts of Uganda. While some of the symptoms involve children falling asleep and passing out under bizarre circumstances (such as sudden weather changes or exposure to exotic foods), many of the conditions that accompany the onset of “nodding disease” are far more troubling, in that they remind us of popular depictions of zombies on the silver screen.

Some reports out of Uganda have described mothers having to tie their children down when they leave their homes, for fear that their children will wander away mindlessly, occasionally becoming lost in thickets and underbrush. In other incidents, the afflicted youngsters have shown the curious propensity for starting fires, contributing to a baffling set of circumstances for which, to date, there is no known cause or solution.

Nodding disease has already been compared to a number of similar conditions, including a variety of “river sickness” known to exist in the region for a number of years that can cause the onset of blindness. However, perhaps the most peculiar aspect associated with the nodding disease is that in nearly all cases, the children affected are between the ages of five and fifteen.

Among the various conditions that appear with the onset of nodding disease are also stunted growth, as well as seizures reminiscent of epilepsy; with regard to the latter, some epilepsy medications have garnered results in treating the condition, although the effects tend to be mostly offsetting, rather than capable of a full recovery.

The zombie-like effects were made most apparent in a March 2012 article by the British Daily Mail, which described the plight of one mother and her family as follows:

(Grace) Lagat now has to tie up her children when she leaves the house to stop them from disappearing.

She told the TV station:’When I am going to the garden, I tie them with cloth.

‘If I don’t tie them I come back and find that they have disappeared.’

Almost immediately, the conditions described here begin to remind us of films such as Danny Boyles’ 28 Days Later and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later, both of which feature a strange virus known as “rage” that causes those affected to literally become bloodthirsty zombies. Of particular concern is the mention of such children mindlessly starting fires in their homes, as with such behavior the more obvious dangers associated with this alleged Ugandan “zombie” disease become frighteningly apparent.

As to what the actual cause may be, one can only guess. However, there are a few things that are indeed interesting to note about the apparent affects of this mystery illness. For one, the disease has been reported in children as young as three years of age, with reported cases declining after age fifteen (reports of nineteen-year-old victims do exist, however).

If the 3 to 5 year age group is indeed a reasonable “gateway” demographic as far as this illness is concerned, we might consider what kinds of environmental circumstances would be most prevalent in conjunction with children around this time in their lives.

Rather obviously, the weaker natural immunities of the children at this age may come into play, but it is also curious to note that this youngest age group also represents those who have only recently begun walking. Could the fact that the disease mostly strikes young children learning to walk–or even older ones who are more susceptible to contagions by virtue of their age–be a factor worthy of consideration here?

The strange and frightening effects of the so-called Ugandan “nodding sickness” remain puzzling to experts… what kind of agent could possibly be the cause behind this strange and damaging condition?

[MIKA27]

3 Ways the World Might Still End

The Apocalypse is nigh! Okay, so not really. We’re now well into 2013, and I’m sure that most of you have realized by now: The world did not end in 2012. And while we all celebrate our continued existence – and put the whole Mayan Calender incident behind us – what world-ending theories are left?

The Expansion of the Sun

A giant, burning, mass of hydrogen and helium, the Sun is the source of energy (both direct and indirect) for most life on the Planet. Yet scientists have determined that our Solar center might one day expand so far as to engulf the Earth.

It’s theorized that – in roughly 5 billion years – our yellow sun would have finally exhausted the hydrogen fuel at its core, and that at this point, it will begin to expand. Although the sun will expand to where the Earth’s orbit will pass directly through the molten ball, the Sun’s transformation into a Red Giant (as a result of the expansion) means that it will only be about half the temperature it is today. Will our greatest source of energy spell our slow-burning doom?

Nuclear Holocaust

Although at times the idea of large scale nuclear fallout seems more like the illegitimate love-child of the Cold War and a Tom Clancy novel, and less like a prophecy for Armageddon, pushing the Big Red Button could still very well mean the end of the world as we know it. It’s a scary thought, but as political tensions continue to grow, the looming threat of the mushroom cloud persists.

Judgement Day (No, not the machines)

Okay: maybe this one has a few flaws. For generations, the ever-present “fear of God” has been felt among certain secular organisations (I’m not naming names). And although not based on ANY form of science (or even pseudo-science, for that matter), the Last Judgement theory still has its fans.

The belief that eventually the Earth will be destroyed in a blaze of hell-fire and damnation is an old one, and the desire for the pious to be ‘saved’ from the doom is equally so. However, it’s the similarities between the latter and ‘ascension’ which is truly interesting.

Something to think about, New Agers.

[MIKA27]

Weather and Warfare

Midway through 1996, the United States Air Force announced the publication of what was termed the USAF 2025 report. Prepared by the 2025 Support Office at the Air University, Air Education and Training Command, and developed by the Air University Press, Educational Services Directorate, College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, the report was, to quote the military, “a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.”

One particularly intriguing sub-section of the report had the notable title of Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025. That’s correct: the U.S. military has been deep at work trying to determine if the manipulation, and outright creation, of harsh weather conditions – such as hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and other forms of devastation that are normally ascribed to the rigors of nature – might be considered viable tools of warfare in the very near future. Such a scenario might sound like nothing more than a crazy pipedream. It most assuredly is not, however. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite.

According to the astounding words of the Air Force’s most learned- and forward-thinkers of the mid-1990s: “In 2025, US aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. Weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.”

The Air Force also noted: “The desirability to modify storms to support military objectives is the most aggressive and controversial type of weather-modification. While offensive weather-modification efforts would certainly be undertaken by U.S. forces with great caution and trepidation, it is clear that we cannot afford to allow an adversary to obtain an exclusive weather-modification capability.”

The Air Force was not the only voice of officialdom expressing interest in, and concerns about, weather-modification technologies for specific use in warfare. On April 28, 1997, the then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, delivered the keynote speech at the University of Georgia-based Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, and intriguingly warned the audience that there were powerful, shadowy forces out there who were “engaging in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of Electro-Magnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real.”

The big questions are: To what extent are such technologies not just theoretical? Have they already been successfully and clandestinely developed? And if so, are hostile nations targeting us for attack not via missiles and dirty-bombs, but via means and methods that allow for overwhelming plausible deniability, such as earthquakes, floods and tornadoes?

Before you write off such a controversial sci-fi-style scenario, remember those two significant words of former Defense Secretary Cohen, who said of such amazing and ominous technology: “It’s real.”

[MIKA27]

Village of the Dead: The Anjikuni Mystery

Legends of mysterious mass disappearances have cropped up all across the globe. Without a doubt, the most famous incident in North American history is the unknown fate of the citizens of Roanoke Colony, who were last seen alive in 1587, but an even more inexplicable case concerns the whereabouts of the over 30 men, women and children who allegedly vanished without a trace from an Inuit fishing village in the first half of the 20th Century.

The trout and pike filled estuary known as Anjikuni Lake (also spelled Angikuni) is located along the Kazan River in the remote Kivalliq Region of Nunavut, Canada. The out-of-the-way area is rich with legends of malicious wood spirits and beasts like the Wendigo, but as fascinating as these oft told tales are, there is none more intriguing than the terrifying and controversial mystery surrounding the collective vanishing of the villagers who once lived on the stony coast of Anjikuni’s frigid waters.

Our tale begins on an arctic evening back in November of 1930. A Canadian fur trapper by the name of Joe Labelle was seeking respite from the bitter cold and a warm place to bunk down for the night when he tromped into an Inuit village that was nestled on the rocky shores of Canada’s Lake Anjikuni.

Labelle had visited the area before and knew it to be a bustling fishing village full of tents, rough hewn huts and friendly locals, but when he shouted a greeting the only sound that returned to him was that of his own echo and his snowshoes crunching through the icy frost.

Labelle tensed. He had the instincts of a seasoned outdoorsman and he could sense that something was seriously amiss.

Labelle could see the ramshackle structures that were silhouetted under the full moon, but he saw no bustling people nor barking sled dogs nor any other signs of life.

Even within the huts, the expected sounds of laughter and conversation were replaced by a deathly silence. Labelle also noted with a chill that not a single chimney had smoke coming out of it. That was when he spied a fire crackling in the distance.

Labelle, trying his best to remain calm, picked up his pace and headed toward the glowing embers of the dying fire in the distance, eager to find some trace of humanity. When the trapper arrived at the flames he was greeted not by a friendly face, but a charred stew that had bafflingly been left to blacken above the embers.

The veteran tracker — having spent so much of his life skulking around shadowy and inaccessible forests — was likely not easily spooked, but it’s difficult to imagine that he was not bathed in a cold sweat as he walked past the derelict, wave battered kayaks into the heart of the ghost village, wondering what had happened to its inhabitants.

Labelle methodically pulled back the caribou skin flaps and checked all of the shacks hoping to find telltale signs of a mass exodus, but, much to his chagrin, he discovered that all of the huts were stocked with the kinds of foodstuff and weapons that would never have been abandoned by their owners. In one shelter he found a pot of stewed caribou that had grown moldy and a child’s half-mended sealskin coat that lay discarded on a bunk with a bone needle still embedded in it as if someone had deserted their effort in mid-stitch.

He even inspected the fish storehouse and noticed that its supplies had not been depleted. Nowhere were there any signs of a struggle or pandemonium and Labelle knew all too well that deserting a perfectly habitable community without rifles, food or parkas would be utterly unthinkable, no matter what the circumstances might have been to force the tribe to spontaneously migrate.

Labelle then scanned the borders of the village in the hopes of ascertaining what direction the Inuits travelled in. Even though the villagers’ exit seemed to have been relatively recent, and hasty enough to leave food on the flames, he could find no trace of their flight no matter how hard he searched.

Cold and fatigued as he was, Labelle was simply too terrified to linger in this enigmatically vacant village. Although it meant he had to forgo the comforts of food, warmth and shelter, the trapper considered the risk of remaining to be too great and decided to make haste through the sub-zero temperatures to a telegraph office located many miles away, lest the same nefarious — and, in Labelle‘s estimation, unmistakably supernatural — force that claimed the villagers descend upon him.

MOUNTIES RIDE OUT!

The exhausted and frostbit Labelle finally staggered into the telegraph office and within minutes an emergency message was fired off to the closest Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) barracks. By the time the Mounties arrived, several hours later, Labelle had calmed himself enough to relate his disturbing tale.

According to 1984’s “The World’s Greatest UFO Mysteries” by Roger Boar and Nigel Blundell, on their way to Anjikuni Lake the Mounties stopped for a bit of rest at a shanty that was shared by trapper Armand Laurent and his two sons. The officers explained to their hosts that they were headed to Anjikuni to deal with: “a kind of problem.”

The Mounties inquired as to whether or not the Laurents had seen anything unusual during the past few days, and the trapper was forced to concede that he and his sons has spied a bizarre gleaming object soaring across the sky just a few days before. Laurent claimed that the enormous, illuminated flying “thing” seemed to changed shape before their very eyes, transforming from a cylinder into a bullet-like object. He further divulged that this unusual object was flying in the direction of the village at Anjikuni.

DEAD DOGS, GRAVE ROBBERS AND MYSTERY LIGHTS:

The Mounties left the Laurent home soon after and they continued on their treacherous journey.

Once they arrived at the scene, the Mounties were not only able to confirm Labelle’s testimony regarding the state of this now desolate village, but — according to some sources — they made an additional, even more arcane, discovery on the outskirts of the community.

Various accounts verify that the officers conducting the search were alarmed when they stumbled across a plethora of open graves in the village burial ground. In fact — if some of the more outrageous statements are to be believed — every single tomb had been opened and, even more puzzlingly, emptied.

There are also less dramatic, though no less baffling, reports that state that it was just a single tomb that was violated. Either way, it is a sever taboo for an Inuit grave to be desecrated, so why were these bodies or body moved?

To add an extra pinch of “weird” to the proceedings, witnesses claimed that the earth around the grave was frozen: “as hard as rock.” These reports also suggest that the marker stones had been stacked in two, neat piles on either side of the graves, confirming that this was not the work of animals.

Needless to say the Mounties at the scene were perturbed by these discoveries and a substantial search party was organized posthaste. During the search no additional clues as to the villagers’ whereabouts were turned up, but another grisly discovery was purportedly made.

According to reports, no less than 7 sled dog carcasses were discovered about 300-feet away from the edge of the village.

According to Canadian pathologists, these unfortunate canines all apparently died of starvation, whereupon they were covered by snow drifts, which buried them nearly 12-feet deep.

How these animals managed to starve when they were surrounded by huts full of food is yet another unexplained piece of this enigmatic puzzle. There is a single account which claims that the ill-fated animals were tied to “scrubby trees,” which would explain their inability to scavenge for food, but this does not resolve the issue of why they succumbed so quickly. Logic seems to dictate that they certainly would not have had time to starve to death between the moment of this collective vanishing and the arrival of Labelle, who reportedly found food still burning over dying embers.

This begs the question: did the villagers allow their own dogs to go hungry intentionally before they slipped into the ether? These invaluable dogs whose very existence was essential to the villagers’ own survival — if so, then why? If not, then what happened?

As if this tale weren’t strange enough, the officers at the scene supposedly reported odd, bluish lights pulsating on the horizon above the village. The men watched until the illumination disappeared, all of them concurring that this unusual light show did not resemble the aurora borealis.

After two weeks of investigation, the Mounties — based on some berries they found in one of the cooking pots –came to the somewhat dubious conclusion that the villagers had been gone for at least two months. This presents yet another question; if the Inuits really had abandoned their homes eight weeks before, then who was responsible for making the fire that Labelle saw when he first arrived at the village?

STOP THE PRESSES!

Fact and folklore have a notorious habit of interbreeding when bizarre events such as the one that transpired at Lake Anjikuni occur, nevertheless the first official account of the missing village is alleged to have been printed on November, 28th, 1930, when special correspondent, Emmett E. Kelleher, published a report of the events in the Canadian newspaper “Le Pas, Manitoba.”

As there were no available images of the Anjikuni settlement, this article — as was standard procedure at the time — was accompanied by a stock photo of a deserted Cree tent encampment taken in 1909, this has led some to discount the whole event.

While most say that Le Pas, Manitoba was the first to the punch, there are others who insist that the initial report was actually published a day earlier by the “Danville Bee.” Regardless of who got the scoop first, it’s the opinion of most researchers that the account that caught the public’s interest the most was printed in the November 29th, 1930 edition of the “Halifax Herald” below the undeniably sensationalistic headline: “Tribe Lost in Barrens of North — Village of Dead Found by Wandering Trapper, Joe Labelle.”

Labelle did not mince words when he described his harrowing discovery to reporters:

“I felt immediately that something was wrong… In view of half cooked dishes, I knew they had been disturbed during the preparation of dinner. In every cabin, I found a rifle leaning beside the door and no Eskimo goes nowhere without his gun… I understood that something terrible had happened.”

Of course, it wasn’t long before the Newspaper Enterprise Association wire service was feeding this astonishing story to its papers, and readers all over North America were given a first hand account of what would, arguably, be the greatest unsolved mystery ever investigated by the RCMP.

FRANK EDWARDS VS THE ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE:

After a brief media blitz, this bizarre event was filed away under a heap of unsolved cases until 1959, when journalist and author, Frank Edwards, dug up the tale and included it in his tome “Stranger than Science.” While Edwards did not shy away from the unusual, he was not prone to over sensationalism and there are no accounts of this reporter ever outright fabricating a tale, yet that is just what the RCMP accused him of on the webpage that they’ve dedicated to this mysterious case.

According to RCMP, Edwards manufactured the whole affair for his book and that no such event ever occurred. As printed on the RCMP website:

“The story about the disappearance in the 1930′s of an Inuit village near Lake Angikuni is not true. An American author by the name of Frank Edwards is purported to have started this story in his book Stranger than Science. It has become a popular piece of journalism, repeatedly published and referred to in books and magazines. There is no evidence however to support such a story. A village with such a large population would not have existed in such a remote area of the Northwest Territories (62 degrees north and 100 degrees west, about 100 km west of Eskimo Point). Furthermore, the Mounted Police who patrolled the area recorded no untoward events of any kind and neither did local trappers or missionaries.”

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a distinct possibility that the case of the missing Anjikuni Inuits is little more than an infectious fable. There can be little doubt that the alleged missing persons count offered in many reports — including “The World’s Greatest UFO Mysteries” by Boar and Blundell, which put the figure at a ludicrously whopping 2,000 — have been massively exaggerated, but it seems as if the RCMP’s stance is a little dismissive, not to mention simply incorrect.

To begin with, as mentioned above, the first known accounts of this event were not published after Edwards’ 1959 book, but in the same year that this unexplained event was said to have occurred. This means that there is no way he could have concocted this legend. Also there are records of at least two separate investigations into the subject by members of the RCMP.

SERGEANT NELSON CRACKS THE CASE… ALMOST:

The first investigation — following the Mounties who responded to Labelle’s initial report — was launched on January 17, 1931, just months after the event in question. The man in charge of the case was an inquisitive RCMP officer named Sergeant J. Nelson, who was stationed with the Le Pas detachment.

Nelson became intrigued by the unusual reports hailing from the region and decided to make what he qualified as: “diligent enquiries from different sources,” but it is unclear as to whether or not his investigation was sanctioned by the RCMP. Nelson would go on to declare that he could: “find no foundations for this story.”

According to information gleaned by Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman for their book “The Canadian UFO Report: The Best Cases Revealed,” Nelson’s assumptions were based on a single conversation he had with the unnamed owner of the Windy Lakes trading post who told him that he had not heard about the deserted village from any of the trappers that came through his store.

The gossipy store owner even went so far as to say that he had heard that Labelle originally hailed from the south of the Northwestern Territory and had likely never been with 100-miles of Lake Angikuni. According to Nelson:

“Joe Labelle, the trapper who is alleged to have related the story to Emmett E. Kelleher, the correspondent, is considered to be a newcomer to this country… and doubts are expressed as to whether he has ever been in the territories.”

Nelson further attempted to shore up the veracity his version of events by casting aspersions upon the journalistic integrity of Kelleher, stating that he had a “habit of writing colorful stories of the North and very little credence can be given to his articles.” That being noted, he did admit to not having interviewed the reporter, but claimed that he intended to do as soon as the opportunity allowed.

Again it is uncertain if he ever actually spoke to Labelle or if he even bothered to travel to Angikuni Lake to investigate the site for himself. One must assume that the state of the village had not changed much in the less than 2 months since Labelle stumbled out of there in a panic. Despite the fact that Nelson seemed only to be reporting hearsay, he would terminate his inquiry by stating that:

“The case for the vanished village rests upon the story of an inexperienced trapper told to an imaginative and not too conscientious newsman.”

It goes without saying that skeptics hail this as the final word regarding this event, but (with all due respect to Officer Nelson) one has to wonder how in depth his investigation actually went. It seems as if he was a skeptic right out the gate and never had any intention of actually digging for the truth. It also bears mentioning that just because he never spoke to anyone who could confirm the event with their own eyes does not constitute proof of non-existence.

None of this, of course, proves or disproves the cases’ veracity, but one need maintain a skeptical eye towards both those who support unconventional theories as well as those who strive to debunk them out of hand. Sadly, it seems that any Tom, **** or Harry who claims hoax is given instant credibility in the media while those who are courageous enough to look at the evidence in an unbiased light are dismissed as gullible or worse.

In the November, 1976 edition of Fate Magazine; this mystery was dusted off in an article titled: “Vanished Village Revisited” by Dwight Whalens. The article confirmed that there were records showing that the RCMP had investigated the case again in 1931.

These Mounties did admit to discovering an uninhabited settlement, but they deemed it to be either a seasonal or permanent abandonment of the site with no mysterious overtones and (perhaps conveniently) declared the case closed. While it’s known that many Inuit tribes were still semi-nomadic in the 1930s, they would never have deserted their homes — be it temporarily or permanently — in the dead of winter without their prized rifles and essential provisions.

When one considers all of the ramifications of this case it is difficult to blame law enforcement officials for wanting the whole Anjikuni debacle to disappear. The RCMP’s inaccurate disclaimer is an obvious attempt to distance their organization from an enigmatic cold case that does not necessarily reflect highly on the RCMP and, more significantly, is over 70-years old.

Even if there are members of the RCMP interested in this case, the trail has long since gone cold and it is doubtful that they could convinced any of their superiors to dedicate either the time or the limited resources they have to such a futile effort.

Okay, so if we grant that at least 30 folks went missing on that fateful day then the big question is…

WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?

Now all we are left with is the colossal conundrum of whom or what was actually responsible for the shocking disappearance of these individuals back in 1930. This has always been the biggest point of contention between those who believe that the Anjikuni tribe mysteriously vanished.

It’s difficult to imagine what sort of force could compel a seasoned tribe of Inuits to leave the safety of their homes without taking the tools, food, weapons and dogs necessary for their survival in the harsh climate of the tundra. The fact that there were no signs of a struggle and no indications of violence only compounds this already inexplicable mystery.

If the Inuits of Anjikuni were murdered or taken by force then surely there would have been some indication of the mêlée left behind. This combined with the fact that experienced trackers could find no indication of the path they took in leaving their village has left researchers stumped for decades.

So if we can’t find a logical explanation, then we’re forced to start looking outside the proverbial box. Along these lines comes the first — and in many ways the most popular — theory, and that is that the villagers were the victims of…

ALIEN ABDUCTION:

In the latter half of the 20th Century, numerous ufologists speculated that the residents of this remote Canadian village might well have been the unsuspecting victims of one of the largest mass alien abductions in history. This hypothesis is based in no small part on the Laurents’ observation of the cylindrical, bullet-shaped object hurtling toward Anjikuni, as well as the bizarre blue lights seen by the Mounties in the night sky above the village.

While the evidence supporting this theory is circumstantial at best, the thought is intriguing… as well as utterly horrifying. One must admit that just contemplating the notion of extraterrestrials swooping down and absconding away with the entire population of a village is the stuff from which nightmares are forged.

On one hand this would explain how every living soul in the village managed to evaporate without a trace — apparently while engaged in daily chores — without so much as a footprint to show for it. On the other hand, we might be giving our celestial comrades a bad rap by pinning this on them with only one strange object and some vague lights as proof.

Okay, so if we rule out aliens then we have to deal with an even more disturbing hypothesis which puts forth the idea that the Angikuni fell prey to a…

DEMON ATTACK:

Labelle himself told reporters that he believed that the Angikuni people were now missing due to a run-in with: “the Eskimos evil spirit Tornrark.”

The demonic entity that Labelle referred to appears to be a misspelling of “Torngarsuk” — also known as: “Torngasak, Tornatik, Torngasoak, Tungrangayak and Tor-nar-suk” — who, according to Inuit legend, is a powerful sky deity who is the leader of a legion of malevolent spirits. It’s worth noting that Labelle, a supposed stranger to the region, was apparently familiar enough with its indigenous people and their customs to mention one of their most maleficent entities by name.

Said to be invisible to all but Inuit shamans — who were known to recite incantations and make animal sacrifices in order to keep this so-called “great devil” at bay — this malicious being was said to occasionally appear in animal form, such as that of a bear.

Could it be that the Angikuni natives came to believe that one or more of their precious sled dogs were actually incarnations of this beast? Is this why they were left to starve? The premise is thin, but cannot entirely be discounted.

Barring demons, there is the possibility that we might be dealing with another supernatural creature such as…

VAMPIRES:

I’ll admit that this is not one of my own personal theories, and, frankly, not my favorite. In fact, this wild speculation likely stems from one too many readings of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s wonderfully creepy “30 Days of Night.” (One of my favourite Vampire movies )

Still, when exposed to the kind of prolonged darkness that occurs when living in the land of the Midnight Sun, who knows what kind of insidious beasts one may fall prey to? Nevertheless, the distinct lack of blood or any other signs of struggle at the scene of the “crime” would seem to counter indicate this suggestion.

So if we’re not dealing with aliens, forest demons or modern vampires ravaging the village with their unholy rage, then we must consider the possibility that they simply slipped into…

ANOTHER DIMENSION:

Historical records are chock full of stories of people who just mysteriously disappeared.

Take the strange case of Orion Williamson — a farmer from Selma, Alabama — who was said to have vanished into thin air in front of his wife, son and two neighbors while strolling across his property in July of 1854. The entire community turned out to search for the farmer to no avail, but Williamson’s son swore he heard the ghostly cries of his father emanating from the field for weeks following his bizarre evaporation.

Then there’s the astonishing case of a shoemaker from Warwickshire, England, by the name of James Burne Worson. Worson’s penchant for bragging about his long distance running abilities had finally worn down the patience of his drinking buddies — Hamerson Burns and Barham Wise — who challenged their mate to run the 40-mile distance from Leamington to Coventry. Worson accepted the bet and within the hour the trio were on their way with Worson jogging and Burns and Wise following close behind in horse-drawn cart.

The incredibly fit Worson seemed to be enjoying himself, running at a solid pace and joking with his buddies, until he tripped just 20-feet ahead of his friends. Burns and Wise watched in abject horror as their friend fell forward with “an awful cry of terror,” then vanished before their very eyes. As in the Williamson case, the search for their missing cohort proved fruitless.

I could go on and on with cases like the one above, but you get the point. Suffice it to say there is a genuine precedent for unexplained disappearances… one that even eyewitnesses are at a loss to explain.

CONCLUSION:

It should be clear to anyone who reads my articles that I’m a fan of campfire stories. I love the chills and thrills and the mysteries that surround these ostensibly “true” legends, but I also have an incredulous side and I realize that a lot of the information in this case is difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate.

It seems clear that a lot of the specifics surrounding these events have become twisted and exaggerated with each retelling over the past 7 decades, resulting in a strange jambalaya of fact and fiction.

Nevertheless, as skeptical as I am about unconfirmed reports, I am just as skeptical about those who purport to debunk those same reports based on contrary evidence that is just as “sketchy” and scant as that upon which said legends are based. Still, if we trim down the mind-bogglingly huge number of 2,000 missing persons to just the original 30 souls that were said to have vanished, and scale back the scores of desecrated graves to just one missing corpse, what remains is still one of the most intriguing mysteries of modern times.

Whatever their fates may have been, the fact remains that sometime during November of 1930, approximately 30 men, woman and children — who just a day before were working and playing, surrounded by loved ones and the comforts of home — apparently abandoned their abodes and vanished from the face of the Earth.

Despite the vociferous protestations of debunkers worldwide this mystery is alive and well, and the while we may never find out whether or not these poor souls were murdered, transported to another world or simply slipped into the ether of a different dimension, we can collectively hope that wherever they are they wound up in a better place than here.

[Fuzz]

Lucas is a great visionary but he writes the worst scripts ever IMO. I agree Keith Jar Jar Binks is the worst of all his creations as were the Ewoks. If you were to remove Jar Jar and the Ewoks, the movies could have been less 'Corny'.

Agreed. Plenty of errors in the SW universe. I mean, why the hell would you go to the effort of dressing your troops in useless armor? One shot, and your expensive trooper is dead?! And let's not get into how an army that has the destructive power to wipe out entire star systems, build starships 19km long and battlestations the size of a small moon... and yet get beaten by midget furballs weilding sticks, rocks, and the occasional large log...

[MIKA27]

LG’s 100-Inch Laser TV Is Bonkers To Look At

You’ve heard of plasma TV, LCD TV, LED and even OLED TV, but now we’re throwing a new term to mix into the salad bowl: laser TV. LG has one in Australia now, and it’s freaking enormous and just as impressive.

The product’s full name is the LG Laser DLP Display. Essentially, it uses technology called ultra-short throw which grabs the image and projects it onto the screen within 55cm, rather than from a projector at the back of a room.

The image is projected through 10 spherical lenses before passing it through an aspherical concave mirror to be thrown onto the display screen itself. It’s a 100-inch full-HD 1080p image, chucked from a projector which sits at the base of the black, anti-contrast, anti-glare screen.

First of all, holy crap: it’s a giant 100-inch screen with a throw distance of 55cm. Take a second to realise how impressive that is.

Previously, if you wanted a giant projector on your giant screen, it was an effort to get the projector mounted the correct distance away from your silver screen, and then the obnoxious job of cable-concealment would begin. When you’re done it might look good, but the job of expanding your system becomes considerably more difficult when working with that particular set-up. The LG Laser Display eliminates these issues by putting the rather fetching looking projector right in front of your display while still cleverly concealing the cables and keeping them in reach if you need them.

The lamp is also considerably impressive: with other projectors, you’d need to replace it every couple of years. LG promises that the lamp in the DLP Laser Display will go for 25,000 hours. That’s five hours per day for 13 years. Not bad at all.

The screen that the projector throws the image onto is actually made from anti-glare material, which means that you won’t need to dim the lights entirely to have a high-contrast viewing experience. The screen is also black rather than silver to help dissipate light reflection when viewing. The screen also has a tiny bezel that disappears into the background when the images play.

The Laser Display is also compatible with DLNA and Intel WiDi so you can throw your content at it easily without having to fumble around.

Probably the most convincing aspect of the laser display is the price. It comes in at $8999 with free installation and a bundled twin-tuner recorder for watching and recording free-to-air programming. Compare that to the price of a larger plasma display which will run you easily over $10,000, and you’re onto something.

The LG Laser Display goes on sale from early July.

[MIKA27]

These Bruised Blood Cells Are Over 5000 Years Old

This may look like your last bad trip, but you’re actually looking at a sample of damaged blood cells over 5000 years old. Taken from Ötzi, the iceman met his demise on the Schnalstal glacier in the Alps, the dark areas on the cells in this microscope image show bruising that happened during his death.

Scientists have long been confident that Ötzi died of serious injuries obtained in hand-to-hand combat — but these new images from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, suggest he received a blow to the forehead. In turn, that caused his brain to knock against the back of his skull, bruising blood cells in the process.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: China’s First Aircraft Carrier Is Finally Ship-Shape

During the Korean War, China’s greatest military resource was its vastly overwhelming personnel numbers. However, over the past three decades, the People’s Liberation Army has undergone a sea change in military strategy, evolving from a massive army with outdated Soviet weapons to a modernized fighting force, replete with aircraft, submarines and warships — but no aircraft carriers.

That is, until the Liaoning was commissioned.

The Liaoning is a 49,000-tonne displacement Admiral Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier, formerly the Riga (and also Varyag) of the Soviet Navy, that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) purchased from the Ukraine in 1998 for a paltry $US25 million and has been refurbishing for the past decade.

The ship was purchased under the auspices of being converted into a floating casino off the coast of Macau by a Chinese holding company,the Chong Lot Travel Agency, and was towed to the Dalian shipyard for retrofitting. However after “failing” to obtain the necessary casino licence from Macau, the PLAN took control of the vessel and instead converted it in the first aircraft carrier in the nation’s naval history. Pretty convenient.

The Liaoning measures 300m long with 75m beam and 10m draft. While still sailing under the Ukrainian flag, the carrier was powered by a set of 200,000hp steam turbines, but is now powered by a pair of 50,000hp turbines, nine 2011hp turbo-generators, and six 2011 hp diesel generators. The carrier has a top speed of roughly 32 knots and an estimated range of 3850 nautical miles. The Liaoning carries enough supplies to keep its crew of 1960 comfortably at sea for up to 45 days.

Despite widespread anticipation that the carrier would become a PLAN flagship, the vessel is far from fully operational. In fact, the Liaoning will likely never be attached to an operational group and instead be used as a testbed for “scientific research, experiment and training” as well as for developing the future indigenously-built aircraft carriers. “All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers,” said Qi Jianguo, assistant to the chief of the PLA’s general staff. “They are symbols of a great power.”

As of now, the Liaoning is reportedly outfitted with three Aegis CIWS systems, a trio of HQ-10 Cell Missile systems, and a pair of ASW 12-tube rocket launchers, as well as Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) and Sea Eagle radar systems. However the vessel still lacks the most important component for readiness — a competent complement of crew. The People’s Daily estimates that fully training the necessary crew and developing the necessary logistical and support capabilities will take another four to five years.

Until then, the Liaoning will continue to operate out of its homeport of Qingdao in Shandong Province performing scientific and training exercises, and generally enjoying its new high seas status symbol.

[MIKA27]

Exploring The Amazing Abandoned Sea Forts Of World War II

During World War II, the United Kingdom was facing some serious attacks from the sky, and to help minimise the damage done by the Luftwaffe, British engineer Guy Maunsell developed a clever strategy: take to the sea. Though now defunct, these incredible concrete monsters are still standing out at sea, impressive as ever.

One of the forts still remaining — Red Sands Army Fort — sits rusting off the coast of England’s Herne Bay. Built on land before being floated out to sea in 1943, the septet of towers were once connected by walkways and boasted an arsenal of anti-aircraft cannons for taking down airborne enemies. Its twin, the Red Sand Army Fort, is also still standing in the Thames estuary.

Ultimately, all the sea forts were decommissioned by the late 1950s, and several were destroyed after collisions with civilian ships, but the Shivering Sands (above), Red Sands, and Fort Roughs (below) remain to this day.

Both went on to have adventures after their decomission and abandonment; Shivering Sands was briefly home to pirate radio operators in the mid-1960s, and Fort Roughs is currently home to the Principality of Sealand, the self-proclaimed and globally-unrecognized “world’s smallest nation”.

While their useful lives were short, these forts are incredible relics of WWII architectural history, and it’s awesome just to know they exist. I can only imagine what they’re like in real life.

[Fuzz]

Hitler and the Ark

The secrets of the ancient past may be only a locked vault away, such as depicted in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hey Fuzz....

What a load of bubkes. Everyone knows that the Nazi Sonnenrad Society were heavily into the occult, but what people don't realise is that after the fall of Berlin in 1945, the occult wars continued until the death of Hitler in the late 50's....

[Fuzz]

Monster Machines: China’s First Aircraft Carrier Is Finally Ship-Shape

The RAN's aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (originally a British Majestic class carrier, the HMS Majestic) ended up in China for "scrapping" back in 1985. This was delayed for many years as the PLAN studied it's design, with it finally being broken up around the late 90's. Apparently, the Chinese were surprised with the amount of system and tech left onboard.

Note: If you have a piece of neat kit that you are decommissioning, don't sell it to the Chinese if you don't want it reverse-engineered.

[MIKA27]

This Man Had The Equivalent Of A Teleportation Device In 1901

I try not to seek out the “best” of anything. The idea of best is so subjective, it becomes useless. Try picking a “best” car, for example. I’ll save you the hassle: you can’t. But there is one exception. It’s for the overall concept of personal transportation, and the person who did it best was Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Alberto Santos-Dumont was one of the pioneers of early aviation, developing the world’s first practical steerable powered dirigible blimps and later moving to heaver-than-air craft, making the first fixed-wing aircraft flight in Europe. These contributions are well-documented, but I want to focus more specifically on his unique personal transportation solutions, which I think represent the absolute best situation of any person in history, and possibly of any person in the foreseeable future.

I normally write about cars, and for most of us that represents the core of our personal transportation solution. For some of us, that solution also includes subways or rail travel for intra-city travel, and if we have to go long distances, we’ll take flights on large commercial airliners.

Santos Dumont had a very different approach. He lived in Paris, and in addition to the petrol and electric automobiles he owned, he got around town in a small, powered, steerable dirigible of his own design. He did this mostly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, long before there were any inklings of ideas about air-traffic control laws, so Santos Dumont had free run to float over the city at rooftop level, stopping in at cafés or even his own apartment, tooling around the Paris airspace like he owned the place. Which he basically did, in any way that matters.

Just think about it for a second: say you live in one of the greatest cities in the world, but like all great cities, it’s dense, crowded, and a pain to get around in. What would be the ideal way to get around? Through the air! You wouldn’t need outright speed, but you would want something that could hover indefinitely, stop and manoeuvre with the agility of a car, and make you look like King Badass’s Boss’s cool Dad when you got in and out of it. A personal blimp fits all these criteria perfectly.

Some background on Alberto Santos Dumont is probably worth talking about now, if only so you can make the inevitable Bruce Wayne/Batman associations in your head. Santos Dumont was the son of a very wealthy Brazilian coffee grower. It was in his father’s extensive and highly innovative coffee fields that young albert first encountered steam driven machinery and even a locomotive, which fascinated him.

In 1891, he travelled to Paris with his family, where he had one goal. As he said in his book My Airships:

“I am going to Paris to see the new things — steerable balloons and automobiles!”

And boy did he see those new things. He became an avid automobile enthusiast, and that enthusiasm eventually led to the idea to use a small automotive-type gasoline engine to power a balloon. As he told a reporter for Century magazine in 1901,

“I got my first idea of putting an automobile motor under a cigar-shaped balloon filled with hydrogen gas while returning from the Paris-Amsterdam automobile race in 1897,”

This initial idea led to a series of increasingly advanced dirigibles, which he simply named Santos-Dumont No.1 through No.10.

Among the innovations he came up with while developing his airships were lightweight stiffening frames and structures, directional rudders, light and efficient gas engines (some adapted from cars of the era), and a system of shifting weights that allowed him to adjust the pitch of the airship to ascend or descend without having to release the precious and dangerous hydrogen or deal with dropping or adding ballast.

Oh, and he also independently inspired the idea of a wristwatch, just in case you were on the fence about how fundamentally amazing this guy was. As Wikipedia tells us:

Santos-Dumont complained to his friend

Louis Cartier

about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch to time his performance during flight. Santos-Dumont then asked Cartier to come up with an alternative that would allow him to keep both hands on the controls. Cartier went to work on the problem and the result was a watch with a leather band and a small buckle, to be worn on the wrist.

Santos Dumont’s No.6 airship was used to win the Deutch Prize, which was to be awarded to the first steerable, powered airship to be able to make the 6.8 mile round trip between the Eiffel Tower and the Parc de Saint Cloud in Paris in 30 minutes or less.

Santos Dumont rounded the Eiffel Tower in only nine minutes and all was looking great when he had engine trouble, causing the engine to stall.

He couldn’t restart the engine from his control basket, so he had to shimmy across the flimsy, skeletal airframe to the engine, without any safety harnesses or anything, with only the raw badassium secreting from his pores to protect him. He eventually got the engine restarted, and managed to finish the course with only 30 seconds to spare.

After a bit of timing controversy, Santos Dumont’s attempt was declared successful, and he was awarded a substantial prize of 125,000 francs. Here’s what he did with the money:

The money of the prize, amounting in all to 125,000 francs, I did not desire to keep. I, therefore, divided it into unequal parts. The greater sum, of 75,000 francs, I handed over to the Prefect of Police of Paris to be used for the deserving poor. The balance I distributed among my employees, who had been so long with me and to whose devotion I was glad to pay this tribute.

Are you f**king kidding me? He wins a daredevil’s prize by the skin of his teeth, after a death-defying mid-race aerial repair, in an airship he designed himself, and he divides his prize money between the poor folks of the city and his own crew and mechanics?

The man’s made of weaponised class-actium.

Still, as incredible as his experimental and racing airships were, the one I’m most interested in is his No.9 airship, the one that afforded him the status of Best Personal Transportation in History. Santos=Dumont describes his reasons for building the very small airship in his book, and along the way provides a compelling argument for electric city-cars as well:

Once I was enamoured of high-power petroleum automobiles: they can go at express-train speed to any part of Europe, finding fuel in any village. “I can go to Moscow or Lisbon!” I said to myself. But when I discovered that I did not want to go to Moscow or to Lisbon the small and handy electric runabout in which I do my errands about Paris and the Bois proved more satisfactory.

Speaking from the standpoint of my pleasure and convenience as a Parisian my air-ship experience has been similar. When the balloon and motor of my 60 horse-power “No. 7″ were completed I said to myself: “I can race any air-ship that is likely to be built!” But when I found that, in spite of the forfeits I paid into the Aéro Club’s treasury, there was no one ready to race with me I determined to build a small air-ship runabout for my pleasure and convenience only. In it I would pass the time while waiting for the future to bring forth competitions worthy of my race craft.

So I built my “No. 9,” the smallest of possible dirigibles, yet very practical indeed.

So that’s basically what airship No.9 was: a little urban runabout. It only had a 3 HP motor and a stubby, egg-shaped gas bag, but it could make 15 or so MPH and it could hover and fly, and that’s pretty much all it needed to do to be the absolute best way to get about any city, ever.

No traffic, no parking hassles, you make your entrance to the fashionable cafés by descending from the sky — it’s sort of like Alberto managed to turn his life into the gleaming one described by the Jules Verne books he read as a kid while the rest of the world was stuck in horse **** and coal smoke.

Just read this sentence from My Airships:

So I reached my corner, to which I pointed my stem, and descended very gently. Two servants caught, steadied, and held the air-ship, while I mounted to my apartment for a cup of coffee. From my round bay window at the corner I looked down upon the air-ship. Were I to receive the municipal permission it would not be difficult to build an ornamental landing-stage out from that window.

Yes, he’s just casually talking about taking a jaunt to his upper-story apartment in his airship to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee while considering building an airship landing-stage on his balcony. Sorry, an ornamentallanding-stage.

Really, when you’re the only person in a major city who’s able to get around town in a personal airship, you’ve got it all figured out, period. Until someone develops a personal transporter that lets them beam from location to location in an instant, nobody’s going to beat Santos Dumont’s situation in Paris from around 1899-1905. And honestly, even if teleportation does become possible, I really doubt it’ll be developed by one person who’ll just use it at will as their own personal way of getting around. I don’t really think Santos Dumont’s situation can be beat.

Alberto’s little No.9 also became the first powered aircraft to be piloted by a woman, a Cuban-American named Aida de Acosta. Aida took three flying lessons from Santos=Dumont, and flew solo in 1903, about six months before the Wright brother’s first flight.

Santos Dumont seemed to have had some sort of crush on the woman as well, keeping a picture of her on his desk throughout his life, even though the two never saw one another again.

Despite being arguably the coolest guy in human history (he even had a signature hat), Santos Dumont’s life ended on a sad note.

Depressed by what seems to have been multiple sclerosis and despondent over the use of aircraft in warfare, Santos Dumont hung himself in 1932.

While his life had a tragic end, I much prefer to think of him in his prime, a dapper man in a Panama hat descending a rope ladder from a blimp to a tavern, where he enjoys a beer and a croque monsieur before ascending back into the sky.

[MIKA27]

Hong Kong’s Old Airport Reborn As Hong Kong’s New Cruise Ship Terminal

The Kai Tak Airport, better known as Hong Kong International, dutifully served the island city for nearly three quarters of a century before shutting down in 1998. But rather than let that prime civic real estate fallow, the Hong Kong government has transformed it into a dazzling new cruise ship port.

After a billion-dollar (US) renovation and conversion, the new Kai Tak cruise terminal opened to passengers yesterday. In total, the 19 acre facility can simultaneously accommodate a pair of 50,000 ton ships — such as Royal Caribbean’s Oasis-class vessels — as well as their 5,400 passengers and 1,200 crew members.

Construction on the terminal began in earnest in 2009 — a 1.1 mile road was built from the former runways, and other infrastructure elements were either adapted or installed for the new facility. London-based Foster and Partners designed the terminal itself and built the 230 foot wide interior into a flexible multi-function space equally adept at hosting events and expositions as it is thousands of adventure-seeking tourists. What’s more, the terminal is designed with sustainability in mind — that includes sustainable power generation and rainwater recycling technology.

City officials estimate the added capabilities of the Kai Tak berth will funnel as much as $US2.2 billion a year into public coffers by 2020, and provide nearly 11,000 local jobs.

[MIKA27]

Google Wants To Use Balloons To Cover The World In Wi-Fi

If you go deep inside the desert or climb a mountain or find yourself in the South Pole or a remote farm or any place that can be considered “the middle of nowhere”, guess what? You have no internet. Well, Wired is reporting that Google wants to change all that by sending high-altitude balloons into the stratosphere to give the world Wi-Fi.

Because of course Google would dream something as impossible and radical as cloaking the world in balloons 18.2km above sea level so that the entire world can get on the internet. It’s something straight out of Science Club meetings, something rooted in conversations between smart people who only ask each other “But why not?”, something even Google itself admits is crazy by calling it Project Loon.

What is Project Loon exactly? Only a plan to get hundreds and thousands of high-pressure balloons to circle the Earth and given internet to billions of people on Earth. It’s part of Google’s famed Google X Lab which is bringing the world Google Glass and self-driving cars. Wired reports:

It is an audacious proposal, and today in Christchurch, Google is holding a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister to formally unveil it. Google will also stage Project Loon’s biggest trial yet: 50 testers in Christchurch within the 12-mile [19.3km] range of the balloons will see if they can get connected from the sky.

How the heck will Google control the balloons? Variable buoyancy, apparently. It means steering by tweaking altitude to find desirable wind currents. That sounds like guessing to me but whatever.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Have Found The Ancient Secret Of Indestructible Concrete

For the most part, we humans are better at things than we were thousands of years ago. But there are some things the ancients had down pat. Roman concrete, for instance, is just way better than anything we can whip up today. Finally, after some 2000 years, modern-day scientists have figured it out. And it’s a secret worth knowing.

Concrete, while often not exactly pretty, is a super important tool of city-building today. We’ve been using Portland cement (an ingredient in concrete) as a binder for nearly 200 years as a building block of modern architecture, but it just can’t hold a candle to that old Roman stuff. There are concrete harbours in Italy that are still doing pretty damn well after thousands of years. Meanwhile, a modern-day Portland cement structure is lucky to last 50 years when exposed to salt water.

Now, after years of research in labs across the US and Europe, scientists have figured out that the most robust Roman concrete is a specific mixture of lime and volcanic rock, the details of which have been published in this month’s issues of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and American Mineralogist.

The researchers described it this way in a press release on the subject:

The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated — incorporating water molecules into its structure — and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.

And it gets even better. Portland cement is environmentally messy to produce, accounting for some seven per cent of the C02 modern industry produces. Roman concrete? Much, much greener. There’s still a lot of work to be done in adapting traditional Roman construction techniques to today’s needs. But the recipe is as good as ever. We just have to get cookin’.

[MIKA27]

How Nextdoor And NYC Will Pioneer Socially Networked Crime-Fighting

Can you imagine what it would be like to report crimes via Facebook or call for a fire truck through Twitter? It would be pretty convenient, right? None of that scary “Call 000 or 911!” business. No ambling down to the precinct for filling out paperwork. No need to leave your living room actually. It would be equivalent to a socially networked Neighbourhood Watch.

That’s exactly what Nextdoor is hoping to build. The hyper local social network for physical neighbourhoods is announcing a major partnership with New York City on Friday. It’s major enough to warrant a visit from Mayor Michael Bloomberg who will be putting another feather in his digital city cap, when he announces this latest partnership between the nation’s largest city and a tech company that can help it continue to grow.

The benefit of such a partnership seems obvious, especially in post-Sandy NYC. In an interview with Gizmodo, the company’s founder and chief executive Nirav Tolia explained that the new system would enable New York City institutions to plug directly into Nextdoor’s communications infrastructure. If you’ve never used Nextdoor, just imagine that it’s a pared down version of Facebook except all of your friends are neighbours and they’re all definitely real people thanks to Nextdoor’s rigorous verification program.

It’s not like New York doesn’t already have ways and means to reach citizens. It’s just a little old school and not that efficient. When the subways below 14th St all shut down due to weather, it’s not necessarily appropriate to force an emergency government alert to people’s smartphones. They might panic! But if you got a text from a friend nearby, you’re more likely to adjust your commute and get on with our day. The public’s ability to report fires, floods, crime and even nice things like festival announcements and greenway improvements should theoretically become easier now that Nextdoor’s will be working closely with the mayor’s digital team. “Nextdoor ends up being almost like crowdsourcing these issues,” Tolia said when explaining how the services good for “all kinds of things, some of which are about staying safer some are about our information.”

How does this work on a practical level though? Well, that’s where things get tricky. New York is a massive city that has hundreds of neighbourhoods, literally. Nextdoor refuses to discuss the number of active users it has in New York and other cities, though the company did tell us that it’s processing over a million messages a day from over 14,000 neighbourhoods across all 50 states. Do people really use this service though? Or do they join up and forget about it.

Based on conversations with Tolia, it sounds like it’s a little bit of both. About six months ago, I joined the service and found something like nine other members in my neighbourhood. This was not helpful so I stopped logging in — seriously, I’m in enough social networks anyways — and sort of forgot about Nextdoor until news of this NYC partnership drifted my way. Maybe the official government partnership can make this thing really work.

Nextdoor hopes so, and it’s making a big commitment by sending eight to 11 staffers to New York, where they’ll work with Rachel Haot, the mayor’s tech-savvy chief digital officer and founder of GroundReport, a crowdsourced global news platform. That in mind, it’s hard to imagine someone with more relevant experience running this project from the city’s point of view. That’s because Bloomberg’s the boss, said Tolia who’s obviously very excited about this huge partnership.

So there you go. New York City will be teaching Silicon Valley a thing or two. “The Bloomberg administration doesn’t operate like a government,” Tolia added, “it operates like a tech company and that’s really inspiring to us.” That’s all well and good. Positive results are really inspiring to us.

[MIKA27]

Building A Cyborg In The Roaring ’20s

In the grand scheme of history our medical devices will (hopefully) seem quite primitive to people of the future. And if we make as many advances in the future as we have since the 1920s, we’ll all be cybernetic demigods in no time.

We can do incredible things to extend life here in the early 21st century. Organ transplants are old hat, pacemakers are ubiquitous, we’re 3D printing windpipes, and mind-control over robotic limbs is showing tremendous promise in the laboratory. Today we have an incredible amount of ways to help people live longer, healthier, more productive lives — provided you can afford it. But back in the 1920s, augmenting the human body with anything more than eyeglasses and a set of false teeth was seen as wild science fiction.

The November 1924 issue of Science and Invention magazine included this illustration of a Jazz Age cyborg. The man had a battery-powered control board from which he could regulate his artificial kidney, artificial heart, and even his artificial small intestine.

The magazine described the goal of developing what they called the “artificial man” of tomorrow: “Removing the fangs of death by substituting organs of the body which have succumbed to the effects of time and the ravages of disease.” Everything from internal organs to eyes to artificial limbs were promised to be somewhere just over the horizon so that humanity might fight off the ravages of time.

While some of these advancements are still to come, let’s just be thankful that the microelectronics revolution miniaturised that bulky control board. And that they didn’t set the Six Million Dollar Man in the Coolidge administration.

[MIKA27]

Al Qaeda Will Never See This Special Forces Stealth Motorcycle Coming

Hey Al Qaeda, put this in your pipe and smoke it: America’s Special Forces may soon be chasing you down on silent, stealthy electric motorcycles that YOU WILL NEVER SEE COMING.

Actually, while “stealth motorcycle” sounds like something from a 10-year-old boy’s imagination or everyone’s favourite ’80s show Street Hawk, the electric MMX bike being developed by Zero Motorcycles actually make a lot of sense, according to this report in RT.

With a keyless ignition, blackout capabilities, no intake or exhaust, and replaceable battery packs, the MMX motorcycle can travel quickly, efficiently, and nearly soundlessly — even on rough terrain. Zero Motorcycles developed the vehicle under US military contract. The vehicle is painted a matte black, which allows the machine to appear inconspicuous and disappear in the dark.

Other exciting features on the MMX include the ability to receive a full battery charge in less than a minute and to operate while submerged a meter under water. As it’s a motorcycle, it’s more manoeuvrable around potential IEDs than other vehicles.

Zero Motorcycles, who have an entire line of electric bikes, say the MMX won’t be sold to the public, sadly. They are already undergoing testing by Special Forces operatives, who already employ motorcycles in a variety of functions in their missions.

[MIKA27]

Apple Is Already Fixing Its Awful iOS 7 App Icons

Coming as a welcome reminder that iOS 7 is still very much in beta, subject to change, and everyone needs to take a few deep breaths, Apple’s website is currently showing off a few much-needed updates to its less-than-lauded icon designs. The new set was first stumbled upon by 9to5Mac, who presumed that their sudden appearance on Apple’s site was the result of an oversight.

But since iOS 7 is still technically in its developmental stages, it’s more likely that we can take this as a sign that Apple has listened to the will of the people and is taking steps to correct their grievances. Meaning that there’s a very good chance the finalised version of iOS 7 will look substantively from what those chosen few are currently clutching in their hands.

Most notably, the weather app looks like it will actually show the current temperature without having to actually open the app, a feature that was sorely missed in iOS 7′s first incarnation. But most of the changes are much more superficial and limited to a few colour tweaks here and there — Reminders, Newsstand and Passbook being the only other ones showing some adjustments. But at least now we know that that doesn’t mean it will be staying that way.

[MIKA27]

LiveMap: F-35 Fighter Pilot Helmet For Motorcyclists

Move over, Glass, there’s another AR solution for motorcyclists. A startup out of Russia has ideated a helmet with a HUD that claims to solve all your navigation needs.

LiveMap’s helmet looks more like the lovechild of a Simpson racing lid and fighter pilot helmet, than a traditional motorcycle helmet.

The company says it will be slightly bigger than your average helmet but its carbon fibre construction will keep it relatively light at under 1kg. That’s the hope, at least. By projecting a transparent image onto the visor, the rider doesn’t have to look down at their phone or GPS, or up into a corner like with Glass. It’s very much like the HUDs on fighter pilot helmets.

Maps will be powered by Navteq and voice commands handled by Nuance and battery life is expected to last a whole day or however long two 3000mAh batteries will go, which doesn’t seem that long. It will be certified across the board: DOT, ECE, etc.

LiveMap even has $US1 million in backing from the Russian government and is looking to raise $US150,000 on Indiegogo. But can a helmet like this possibly be developed for just a million? As it stands now, LiveMap says they have bits and pieces of everything working but not an actual working helmet prototype. And they want to sell each one for $US1500. So I’m very sceptical but hopeful that this actually becomes a real thing that I might one day purchase. Unless, of course, one of the existing manufacturers does it first.

[MIKA27]

Ice Sheets Were Terrifyingly Thick 20,000 Years Ago

Since our planet was born, it has gone through periods of extreme cold known as ice ages — but you might not realise just how of the cold stuff came with them. Spoiler: a lot.

The above neat visualisation by Randall Monroe of XKCD fame shows just how thick the ice sheets covering our planet were 20,000 years ago. Towering 3300m above the Montreal skyline, these things were huge. So huge it’s difficult to picture them, though this cartoon goes a long way in helping. Thank goodness they melted.

[MIKA27]

Human Population Growth Creeps Back Up

UNITED NATIONS -- Earth's human population is expected to coast upward to 9.6 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100, up from 7.2 billion people alive today, a United Nations agency has projected.

The U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs yesterday released revised numbers for the coming century, raising median estimates for population growth in 2050 and 2100. The agency's prior best guess had humanity at 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion in 2100.

Most of this growth will take place in less-developed, lower-income nations, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. John Wilmoth, director of the population division at DESA, explained that the revisions reflect adjustments to how high-fertility countries are behaving.

In countries like Nigeria, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Afghanistan, women are still averaging more than 5 children per family, while many high-income nations in Western Europe and elsewhere are having fewer than 2 children per woman.

Developing regions are today home to about 5.9 billion, but that number is expected to soar to 8.2 billion in 2050. Population in developed nations will stay about the same, at 1.3 billion.

Wilmoth stressed that such projections are tricky when researchers start looking past the next few decades. DESA came up with the 10.9 billion figure as a median between extreme estimates of 6.8 billion people alive in 2100 to as many as 16.6 billion.

"We really don't know what these trends will be after a period of several decades," he said during a U.N. press conference on the population survey, explaining that the estimates reflect a best guess based on the future resembling the past.

Much of the uncertainty has to do with births and whether citizens of lower-income nations will start to change their ways and have fewer children if and when the standard of living in those countries improves. Wilmoth noted that fertility rates in India and Indonesia, to cite two instances, have recently dropped, because governments there have aggressively pursued family planning policies to rein in big families.

Efforts needed to avoid two extremes

Wilmoth said low fertility could be viewed as just as difficult a challenge as high birth rates because governments have to deal with rapidly aging populations and fewer children to replace them. He cited Japan as one nation currently coping with this threat.

"The main story is to avoid the extremes of either rapid growth due to high fertility or rapid decline due to low fertility," he said.

Wilmoth also appeared to argue that humanity would adapt to either reality. He said the world population doubled from 1960 to 2000, and the pace of food production more than doubled in the same period, so he expects Earth to adjust unless the planet hits either extreme.

As for the United States, DESA considers fertility here to be on the low end, but just barely. U.S. families are averaging about 2 children per woman, which is just under the 2.1 children per woman needed to replace aging adults, Wilmoth said.

Immigration is expected to help keep the United States stocked with young people. DESA anticipates continued immigration to the United States at about the same level as today out to 2050 and 2100.

Another trend noted by the report is the emergence of more large countries. India and China will be the most populated throughout the century, with India expected to surpass China around 2028, when both will be home to about 1.45 billion. And Nigeria is expected to pass the United States by midcentury and could contest China and India as the most crowded country on the planet by 2100.

In Europe, meanwhile, fertility is below the level required to replace its population, but DESA did see an increase ahead, from 1.5 children per woman in 2010 to 1.8 by 2050 and 1.9 by 2100.

[MIKA27]

This 1950s Futuristic Food Truck Could Bake Bread In Just Nine Seconds

These days you can get just about anything from a food truck: pulled pork waffles, cheeseburger sushi, and even snail lollipops. But how about freshly baked bread, made to order in just nine seconds? That was the vision of a 1956 ad for, of all things, ball bearings.

No matter how mundane the product, modern advertisers love associating themselves with images of futuristic wonder. Today you might notice a fresh crop of robots gracing your TV screen, but in the mid-1950s the streamlined push-button machines of the near future were all the rage in print advertising. These mechanical promises of tomorrow graced the pages of serious-minded magazines like Scientific American, where General Motors’ New Departures ball bearings granted readers a little levity with some brightly illustrated tech that was supposedly just over the horizon.

This 1956 ad comes from the always amazing Modern Mechanix blog and shows off the Bake-O-Mat truck of the year 1960:

Place your order at your door. In seconds, Bake-O-Mat mixes and processes the ingredients, electronically bakes, slices, and wraps any of a wide variety of hot breads and pastries as you watch!

When? 1960? Could be! But, one thing is sure. Then, as now, New Departure ball bearings will reduce costs by simplifying machine design… increase customer satisfaction with added product dependability.

If you’re “cooking up” a new machine — or improving a present one — New Departure’s engineering service provides the right bearings for you!

Sure, this thing can bake bread, but wake me up when it figures out Korean BBQ.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Put Backpacks on Dragonflies to Track Their Brains in Flight

The brain of a dragonfly has to do some serious calculations — and fast — if it hopes to nab a mosquito or midge in midair. It has to predict the trajectory of its prey, plot a course to intersect it, then make adjustments on the fly to counteract any evasive maneuvers. Neuroscientist Anthony Leonardo created the tiny dragonfly backpack above to study how circuits of neurons do these computations.

The backpack weighs 40 milligrams, about as much as a couple grains of sand, equal to just 10 percent of the dragonfly’s weight. Electrodes inserted into the dragonfly’s body and brain record the electrical activity of neurons, and a custom-made chip amplifies the signals and transmits them wirelessly to a nearby computer.

One of the trickiest design challenges was how to power the chip without adding so much mass that the insects couldn’t get off the ground, says Leonardo, who’s based at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.

He and collaborators at Duke University and Intan Technologies came up with a clever solution based on the same technology found in the RFID key card access system used in many office buildings. There, a reader, usually a small pad next to a door, emits radio waves to create a magnetic field. When a key card gets close enough to the reader, the magnetic field induces a current that powers a chip inside the card, enabling it to transmit a code to unlock the door.

The two long antennae on the dragonfly backpack harvest radio waves and power the chip in a similar way. Eliminating the need for a battery on the backpack was the key to keeping the weight down.

Getting dragonflies to hunt inside the lab turned out to be a little tricky too, Leonardo says. In a plain white room, the insects exhaust themselves trying to escape. So the team installed turf on the floor, installed a small pond, and covered the walls with a scene that evokes a springtime meadow.

In their experiments, the researchers release fruit flies and watch the dragonflies take off from a perch and catch them. Eighteen high-speed infrared video cameras positioned around the room capture every move as a dragonfly closes in on its prey and launches its body upwards, curling its hairy legs inward to form a sort of basket trap (see video below).

As the dragonfly hunts, the backpack captures the firing of neurons Leonardo thinks play a crucial role in guiding it towards its prey. “We know a lot about their anatomy,” he said. “They gather input from visual parts of the brain and send axons down to the motor neurons that move the wings.”

The question that fascinates Leonardo is how those neurons and others transform information about the visual scene into a plan of action, and how they continuously update the plan as the dragonfly and its prey move through space. All animals do this type of transformation, from a center fielder running down a fly ball to a lion running down a gazelle. But a neuroscientist can’t exactly study those situations in the lab.

“The dragonfly is a convenient and beautiful and elegant means to an end,” Leonardo said.