What do you think about this?
On the evening of May 6, 1937, the great German airship Hindenburg approached its mooring mast at Lakehurst, New Jersey, at the end of a routine crossing from Europe. It was the largest aircraft ever to fly, longer than three football fields, held aloft by millions of cubic feet of hydrogen. Newsreel cameras rolled and reporters waited on the ground.
In a matter of seconds it became one of the most famous disasters of the century. A flame appeared near the tail, and the entire ship was consumed by fire in about half a minute, crashing to the field as a radio announcer broke down describing it. Thirty six people died. What still gets argued, nearly ninety years later, is why.
The official finding blamed static electricity igniting leaking hydrogen. But other theories have never gone away. Some point to the flammable coating on the outer skin. Others have long whispered sabotage, a bomb planted by someone who wanted to strike at Nazi Germany, whose swastikas were painted on the tail fins.
Makes you wonder whether the death of the airship age was a freak spark in the wrong place, or a deliberate act hidden inside an accident the whole world watched on film.
A stray static charge, a doomed design, or sabotage that was quietly buried? What do you think brought down the Hindenburg?
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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