What do you think about this?
In 1898, a Swedish farmer named Olof Ohman was clearing trees on his land in Solem Township, Minnesota, when he pulled up a slab of stone tangled in the roots of an aspen. The roots had grown around it. Carved into its face was a message written in runes, the old Norse alphabet, and when it was finally translated it told a chilling story.
Eight Goths and twenty two Norwegians, on a journey of exploration west from Vinland. They made camp by two skerries. They went fishing for a day. When they came home, ten of their men were found red with blood, and dead. At the bottom of the stone, a year. 1362. That date would place Scandinavian explorers in the middle of North America a full one hundred and thirty years before Columbus ever set sail.
Most scholars have called it a hoax since the first examination in 1910. Yet the believers point to things that are hard to wave away. The way the tree roots had grown around a stone a farmer supposedly carved himself. The weathering in the grooves. The obscure medieval runes that a Minnesota homesteader would have had no way of knowing.
What if the textbooks have the timeline of who reached this continent, and when, completely wrong?
Real or forgery, what do you think that stone really is?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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