What do you think about this?
Kept in a cathedral in Turin, Italy, is a strip of linen about fourteen feet long that millions believe once wrapped the body of Jesus. The Shroud of Turin bears the faint, full length image of a man, front and back, marked with wounds that match a crucifixion. What makes it extraordinary is the image itself. It behaves like a photographic negative, its details becoming clearer and more lifelike when reversed, a quality no one noticed until the shroud was first photographed in 1898.
For centuries it has been argued over. In 1988, three separate laboratories radiocarbon dated small samples of the cloth and concluded it came from between roughly 1260 and 1390, the Middle Ages, seeming to settle the matter as a medieval creation.
But the debate never died. Critics of the test argue the sample was cut from a corner that had been repaired and rewoven after fire damage, throwing off the result. Researchers still cannot fully explain how the image was formed, since it is not painted, scorched, or dyed in any ordinary way, and lies only on the very topmost fibers of the cloth.
Is it possible that a piece of cloth could carry a genuine mystery science has not cracked, whatever one believes about whose image it holds?
A masterful medieval artwork, or a genuine relic whose making we still cannot explain? What do you think the Shroud of Turin 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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