No matter how far scientific and technological progress goes, disasters have happened, are happening and will probably continue to happen for a long time. Some of them could have been avoided, but most of the worst events in the world were inevitable because they happened at the behest of Mother Nature.
The worst plane crash
Collision of two Boeing 747s
Humanity does not know of a more terrible plane crash than the one that occurred on March 27, 1977 on the island of Tenerife, which belongs to the Canary group. On this day, at Los Rodeo airport, two Boeing 747s collided, one of which belonged to KLM, the other to Pan American. This terrible tragedy claimed 583 lives. The reasons that led to this disaster are a fatal and paradoxical combination of circumstances.
Los Rodeos airport was seriously overloaded on this ill-fated Sunday. The dispatcher spoke with a strong Spanish accent, and the radio communications suffered from serious interference. Because of this, the Boeing commander, KLM, misinterpreted the command to abort the flight, which became the fatal cause of the collision of two maneuvering aircraft.
Only a few passengers managed to escape through the holes created in the Pan American plane. The wings and tail of another Boeing fell off, which led to a fall one hundred and fifty meters from the accident site, after which it was dragged for another three hundred meters. Both flying cars caught fire.
There were 248 passengers on board the Boeing KLM, none of whom survived. The Pan American plane became the site of the death of 335 people, including the entire crew, as well as the famous model and actress Eve Meyer.
The worst man-made disaster
On July 6, 1988, the worst disaster known to the history of oil production occurred in the North Sea. It happened on the Piper Alpha oil platform, which was built in 1976. The number of victims was 167 people, the company suffered a loss of about three and a half billion dollars.
The most offensive thing is that the number of victims could have been much lower if not for ordinary human stupidity. There was a large gas leak, followed by an explosion. But instead of stopping the oil supply immediately after the accident began, the maintenance personnel waited for management's command.
The countdown went on for minutes, and soon the entire platform of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation was engulfed in fire, even the living quarters caught fire. Those who could have survived the blast were burned alive. Only those who managed to jump into the water survived.
Worst water accident ever
When the topic of tragedies on the water is raised, one involuntarily recalls the film “Titanic”. Moreover, such a catastrophe really happened. But this shipwreck is not the worst in the history of mankind.
Wilhelm Gustloff
The sinking of the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff is rightfully considered the biggest disaster that occurred on the water. The tragedy occurred on January 30, 1945. Its culprit was a submarine of the Soviet Union, which hit a ship that could accommodate almost 9,000 passengers.
This, at that time, a perfect product of shipbuilding, was made in 1938. It seemed unsinkable and housed 9 decks, restaurants, a winter garden, climate control, gyms, theaters, dance floors, swimming pools, a church and even Hitler’s rooms.
Its length was more than two hundred meters, it could sail half the planet without refueling. The ingenious creation could not sink without outside intervention. And it happened in the person of the crew of the submarine S-13, commanded by A. I. Marinesko. Three torpedoes were fired at the legendary ship. In a matter of minutes he found himself in the abyss of the Baltic Sea. All crew members were killed, including about 8,000 representatives of the German military elite who were evacuated from Danzig.
Wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff (video)
The greatest environmental tragedy
Shrunken Aral Sea
Among all environmental disasters, the leading place is occupied by the drying out of the Aral Sea. At its best, it was the fourth largest lake in the world.
The disaster occurred due to the unreasonable use of water used to water gardens and fields. The drying out was due to the ill-considered political ambitions and actions of the leaders of those times.
Gradually, the coastline moved far into the sea, which led to the extinction of most species of flora and fauna. In addition, droughts began to become more frequent, the climate changed significantly, shipping became impossible, and more than sixty people were left without work.
Where did the Aral Sea disappear: strange symbols on the dry bottom (VIDEO)
Nuclear disaster
What could be worse than a nuclear disaster? The lifeless kilometers of the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl region are the embodiment of these fears. The accident occurred in 1986, when one of the power units of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded early on an April morning.
Chernobyl 1986
This tragedy claimed the lives of several hundred tow truck workers, and thousands died over the next ten years. And only God knows how many people were forced to leave their homes...
The children of these people are still born with developmental anomalies. The atmosphere, land and water around the nuclear power plant are contaminated with radioactive substances.
Radiation levels in this region are still thousands of times higher than normal. No one knows how long it will take for people to settle in these places. The scale of this disaster is still not fully known.
Chernobyl accident 1986: Chernobyl, Pripyat - liquidation (VIDEO)
Disaster over the Black Sea: Tu-154 of the Russian Ministry of Defense crashed
Crash of Tu-154 of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
Not long ago there was a crash of a Tu-154 aircraft of the Russian Ministry of Defense en route to Syria. It claimed the lives of 64 talented artists of the Alexandrov ensemble, nine famous leading TV channels, the head of a charitable organization - the famous Doctor Lisa, eight military personnel, two civil servants, and all crew members. A total of 92 people died in this terrible plane crash.
On this tragic morning in December 2016, the plane refueled in Adler, but unexpectedly crashed just after takeoff. The investigation took a long time, because it was necessary to know what the cause of the Tu-154 crash was.
The commission that investigated the causes of the accident named overloading of the plane, fatigue of the crew and low professional level of training and organization of the flight among the circumstances leading to the disaster.
Results of the investigation into the Tu-154 crash of the Russian Ministry of Defense (VIDEO)
Submarine "Kursk"
Submarine "Kursk"
The sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, in which 118 people on board were killed, occurred in 2000 in the Barents Sea. This is the second largest accident in the history of the Russian submarine fleet after the disaster on the B-37.
On August 12, as planned, preparations for training attacks began. The last written confirmed actions on the boat were recorded at 11.15.
A few hours before the tragedy, the crew commander was informed about the cotton, which he did not pay attention to. Then the boat shook violently, which was attributed to the activation of the radar station antenna. After that, the boat captain no longer contacted us. At 23.00 the situation on the submarine was declared as an emergency, which was reported to the leadership of the fleet and the country. The next morning, as a result of search operations, the Kursk was found at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 108 m.
The official version of the cause of the tragedy is the explosion of a training torpedo, which occurred as a result of a fuel leak.
Submarine Kursk: what really happened? (VIDEO)
Wreck of the ship "Admiral Nakhimov"
The wreck of the passenger ship "Admiral Nakhimov" occurred in August 1981 near Novorossiysk. There were 1,234 people on board the ship, 423 of whom lost their lives on that fateful day. It is known that Vladimir Vinokur and Lev Leshchenko were late for this flight.
At 23:12, the ship collided with the dry cargo ship "Petr Vasev", as a result of which the electric generator was flooded and the power went out on the "Nakhimov". The ship became uncontrollable and continued to move forward by inertia. As a result of the collision, a hole of up to eighty square meters was formed in the starboard side. Panic began among the passengers; many climbed onto the left side and thus descended into the water.
Almost a thousand people ended up in the water, and they were also dirty with fuel oil and paint. Eight minutes after the collision, the ship sank.
Steamer Admiral Nakhimov: shipwreck - Russian Titanic (VIDEO)
Oil platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico
The worst environmental disasters in the world in 2010 were joined by another one that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, eighty kilometers from Louisiana. This is one of the most dangerous man-made accidents for the environment. It happened on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform.
As a result of pipe rupture, about five million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
A spot measuring 75,000 square meters formed in the bay. km, which amounted to five percent of its total area. The disaster took the lives of 11 people and injured 17.
Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (VIDEO)
Concordia crash
On January 14, 2012, the list of the worst incidents in the world was added to one more. Near Italian Tuscany, the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran into a rock outcropping, leaving a hole seventy meters in size. At this time, most of the passengers were in the restaurant.
The right side of the liner began to submerge in the water, then it was thrown onto a sandbank 1 km from the crash site. There were more than 4,000 people on the ship who were evacuated throughout the night, but not everyone was saved: 32 people were still killed and a hundred were injured.
Costa Concordia – the crash through the eyes of eyewitnesses (VIDEO)
Eruption of Krakatoa in 1883
Natural disasters show how insignificant and helpless we are in the face of natural phenomena. But all the worst disasters in the world are nothing compared to the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, which occurred in 1883.
On May 20, a large smoke column could be seen above the Krakatoa volcano. At that moment, even at a distance of 160 kilometers from him, the windows of houses began to tremble. All the nearby islands were covered with a thick layer of dust and pumice.
Eruptions continued until August 27. The final explosion culminated in sound waves that circled the entire planet several times. At that moment, the compasses on the ships sailing in the Sunda Strait stopped showing correctly.
These explosions led to the submersion of the entire northern part of the island. The seabed rose as a result of the eruptions. Much ash from the volcano remained in the atmosphere for another two to three years.
The tsunami, which was thirty meters high, washed away about three hundred settlements and killed 36,000 people.
The most powerful eruption of Krakatoa Volcano (VIDEO)
Earthquake in Spitak in 1988
On December 7, 1988, the list of “Best Disasters in the World” was replenished with another one that occurred in the Armenian Spitak. On this tragic day, tremors literally “wiped” this city from the face of the earth in just half a minute, destroying Leninakan, Stepanavan and Kirovakan beyond recognition. In total, twenty-one cities and three hundred and fifty villages were affected.
In Spitak itself, the earthquake had a force of ten, Leninakan was struck by a force of nine, and Kirovakan was struck by a force of eight, and almost the rest of Armenia was hit by a force of six. Seismologists estimate that this earthquake released the energy equivalent to the force of ten exploding atomic bombs. The wave that this tragedy caused was recorded by scientific laboratories almost all over the world.
This natural disaster deprived 25,000 people of their lives, 140,000 of their health, and 514,000 of their homes. Forty percent of the republic's industry was out of order, schools, hospitals, theaters, museums, cultural centers, roads and railways were destroyed.
Military personnel, doctors, and public figures throughout the country and abroad, both near and far, were called to help. Humanitarian aid was actively collected around the world. Tents, field kitchens and first aid stations were set up throughout the area affected by the tragedy.
The saddest and most instructive thing about this situation is that the scale and casualties of this terrible disaster could have been many times smaller if the seismic activity of the region had been taken into account and all buildings had been built taking these features into account. The lack of preparedness of the rescue services also contributed.
Tragic days: earthquake in Spitak (VIDEO)
Tsunami 2004 Indian Ocean - Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka
In December 2004, a devastating tsunami of terrible force caused by an underwater earthquake hit the coasts of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and other countries. Huge waves devastated the area and killed 200,000 people. The most annoying thing is that most of the dead are children, since in this region there is a high proportion of children to the population, moreover, children are physically weaker and less able to resist water than an adult.
Aceh province in Indonesia suffered the greatest losses. Almost all buildings there were destroyed, 168,000 people died.
Geographically, this earthquake was simply huge. Up to 1200 kilometers of rock have moved. The shift occurred in two phases with an interval of two to three minutes.
The number of victims was so high because there was no common warning system along the entire Indian Ocean coast.
There is nothing worse than disasters and tragedies that deprive people of life, shelter, health, destroy industry and everything that a person has worked on for many years. But it often turns out that the number of casualties and destruction in such situations could have been much less if everyone had been conscientious about their professional responsibilities; in some cases, it was necessary to provide in advance an evacuation plan and a warning system for local residents. Let's hope that in the future humanity will find a way to avoid such terrible tragedies or reduce the damage from them.
Tsunami in Indonesia 2004 (VIDEO)
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No matter who is in power, the media is always on hand. Last Sunday, the helpfulness of the media, fed from the federal budget, hit another bottom. In dozens of cities across the country, including Moscow, thousands of people took to rallies against corruption - not a word on the news.
Now we have the Internet, from which you can’t hide anything, but in Soviet times it was like this: if the newspapers didn’t write, the people were neither in hearing nor in spirit. Therefore, it often happened that people learned about federal events many years later.
Mass crush at Luzhniki
Towards the end of the football match between Moscow Spartak and Dutch Haarlem in the UEFA Cup, which took place at the Central Lenin Stadium on October 20, 1982, the worst tragedy in the history of Soviet sports broke out. The Spartak team learned about this the next day from the coach, and everyone else only learned about it seven years later.
“Spartak” won 1:0, and a few minutes before the end of the game, chilled fans rushed to the exit. According to eyewitnesses, law enforcement officers opened only one of the four gates on stand C, where almost all the spectators were seated. At some point, a girl fell on the stairs, someone stopped to help her, and people were pressing behind her - a stampede began.
As luck would have it, at this time Sergei Shvetsov scored the second goal. Many moved back to the stands, and the situation took a completely terrible turn. As a result, 66 fans died in the stampede, most of them teenagers.
A monument to those killed on the territory of Luzhniki, erected to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
The newspapers wrote about the match itself, but did not say a word about the tragedy. Only "Evening Moscow" on the last page reported in two lines about an "accident" as a result of which "people suffered." The media reported about the stampede already under Gorbachev. Relatives of the victims are convinced that there were many more victims than 66.
Escalator collapse in the Moscow metro
On February 17 of the same year, at the Aviamotornaya station, during rush hour, due to improper maintenance, the handrail of one of the escalators fell off, and the stairs, accelerating under the weight of passengers, rushed down. Neither the service brake nor the emergency brake operated properly.
Escalator at Aviamotornaya today. The tragedy happened on the escalator on the far right.
Many panicked and rushed up the steps, colliding with those who were trying to stay on their feet. People began to fall, and a blockage formed below. Someone tried to climb onto the adjacent escalator, but the plastic covering could not stand it and broke. Several people fell under the balustrade. The driving mechanisms were turned off manually only after two minutes.
Eight people died in the stampede and 30 were seriously injured. The very same “Evening Moscow” published a short message the next day. It looked like this:
Due to the fact that the tragedy was not covered in the media, it was overgrown with fictitious details and turned into a bloody meat grinder, although in reality it was not one.
Disaster at Baikonur
In October 1960, a ballistic R-16 exploded at the Baikonur Cosmodrome during preparation for a test launch. This happened due to the fact that a frankly unfinished rocket was launched onto the site. The Soviet leadership pushed the developers in connection with the aggravation of the Cold War, plus, according to tradition, it was necessary to boast about the advanced pace of work for the anniversary of the October Revolution.
The R-16 is placed on the launcher.
The explosion was terrifying. According to various estimates, from 70 to 120 people were burned alive, including the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, who was sitting in a bunker a few meters from the base of the rocket.
Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin.
Movie cameras captured a terrible picture: waves of flame were spreading in circles from the rocket, people were jumping out of the fire and running in all directions, burning like torches. Some ran to the barbed wire fence and hung lifelessly on it.
The moment of explosion.
Data about the tragedy were immediately classified. And in order to somehow explain the death of the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, they invented some kind of plane crash in which Nedelin allegedly died. He was buried with honors at the Kremlin wall, the rest of the victims were buried secretly in the cemeteries of different cities and in a mass grave in Baikonur. This case became public knowledge only after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ramming a residential building in Novosibirsk
In the early morning of September 26, 1976, 23-year-old civil aviation pilot Vladimir Serkov hijacked an An-2 plane from a local airfield, circled over the city at low altitude and suddenly sent it straight to a five-story residential building. As it turned out, the psychopath was aiming at the apartment on the third floor where his wife’s parents lived and where she left him, taking her two-year-old son. Fortunately, there was no one in the apartment.
The Kukuruznik crashed into a house at a speed of more than 150 kilometers per hour, punched a hole between the third and fourth floors in the stairwell area, and its front part with its propeller and motor flew into one of the apartments. Serkov died, but no one else was injured from the strike. A woman and three children died due to the fire.
Khrushchev was quickly restored, and the incident itself was classified. It was not officially reported anywhere; instead, ominous rumors spread around the city - either these were terrorists unprecedented in the USSR, or a terrible political action. In the end, this story would have turned into a tale, and the eyewitnesses would have been considered crazy, if not for the KGB archives declassified at the beginning of the 2000s.
Death of cosmonaut Bondarenko
24-year-old Valentin Bondarenko was one of the candidates for the first space flight in human history. In the detachment of Soviet cosmonauts who were preparing to fly on the Vostok spacecraft, he was the youngest and, based on the results of training, was fourth on the list.
But three weeks before the historic start, Bondarenko died tragically during a test in a pressure chamber. This happened on the 10th day of 15, which he had to spend completely alone in a tightly closed chamber with low pressure and high oxygen levels.
Photos of other test participants.
After one of the medical tests, Bondarenko wiped the places where the biosensors were attached to his body with an alcohol swab and accidentally dropped it. The cotton wool fell on the hot spiral tile and burst into flames. The flame instantly spread throughout the oxygen-saturated room.
German Titov, Gagarin's understudy, during training in the soundproofing chamber.
Due to the large pressure difference, the door could only be opened after half an hour. With burns on 80% of his body, Valentin was taken to the hospital, where doctors fought for his life for eight hours. According to them, Gagarin was at his friend’s bedside all the time until he died.
The state kept everything related to space in the strictest confidence. Bondarenko’s death was not just hidden - he was erased from group photographs of the first detachment. The press acknowledged the death of the astronaut only in 1986. Until then, on Bondarenko’s grave in Kharkov it was written: “In blessed memory from fellow pilots.” And only then was a postscript added: “...-cosmonauts of the USSR.”
The wreckage recently found on Reunion Island is all that remains of the Malaysian Boeing. On the night of March 8, 2014, the plane simply disappeared.
Even today, almost a year and a half after the tragedy, it is not clear what happened to it: why the plane first abruptly changed course and then disappeared from radar screens.
There are many oddities in this story, and the main one is why five people did not board the flight at the last moment.
There is a lot of strange things in another plane crash that happened in the spring of this year, when a plane flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed into the mountains. After the tragedy, it turned out that the pilot deliberately sent the plane into the mountainside to commit suicide.
As a result of this suicide, 150 people died. But there could have been even more victims, because the entire football team of the Dalkurd club was going to fly on this flight. At the last moment, the athletes changed their tickets.
Another plane crash happened on New Year's Day over the Java Sea.
The plane was operating a regular passenger flight on the route Surabaya - Singapore, but did not reach its destination, killing 162 people. As it turned out later, a family of 10 people also miraculously missed the tragic flight and were saved.
Surprisingly, in any accident or catastrophe there are miraculously saved people who, by a lucky chance, suddenly refused to fly, travel, or were simply late.
Judging by the stories of these lucky ones, some of them changed plans consciously, as if anticipating something bad, and others simply because of a chain of coincidences.
So many such stories have accumulated recently that even scientists have become interested in the question of why people in critical situations are able to sense the future. Psychologists from the USA decided to study the statistics of disasters and found out an amazing pattern: any doomed flight was only 60 percent full, and not 80 percent, as usual.
This can only mean one thing: some passengers, for various reasons, simply refused to fly, as if anticipating something.
"Energy information space. We are all particles involved in this process. This energy information space includes both living and nonliving things, and all of nature as a whole. Is it possible to connect to it? Of course. There are people who, having hypersensitivity, are psychics , can connect to this field, penetrate and draw information from there,” says the famous psychiatrist Mikhail Vinogradov.
Some people have another amazing ability: to sense approaching natural disasters, of which more than a dozen have happened in the last year alone.
Just recently, the capital of Georgia was covered by flooding. Entire city blocks were flooded. Roads and bridges were hit by the elements. The zoo suffered the most, from which dozens of animals escaped. During the flood days, Tbilisi looked more like some exotic city located in the jungle.
Sochi experienced a serious flood in June this year. Then, in a matter of hours, a month's worth of precipitation fell in the city. The flow of water literally carried away residential buildings and cars.
Destroyed houses, roads, uprooted centuries-old trees - such scenes could be seen in the USA, only a month earlier than in Sochi. This flood has already been called the most destructive in American history.
In April of this year, a devastating earthquake occurred in Nepal. The magnitude of the shocks reached 8 points. Not only local residents died, but also hundreds of tourists.
All these cataclysms that have befallen our planet have one thing in common. Many people seemed to have a presentiment of them. How does this happen? There is no exact answer to this question. However, many scientists are confident that there is something like a unified information system in the Universe. And each of us is connected to it. A person just needs to tune in to the right wavelength to understand what, where and when should happen.
Our distant ancestors also came under the influence of natural disasters and destructive cataclysms. As history shows, some representatives of ancient civilizations learned to predict impending disasters. This allowed them to evacuate to a safe place in advance and escape from the elements.
There are ancient ruins in northern Guatemala.
Many centuries ago, a real pearl of the Mayan tribe was built on this site - the mysterious and majestic city of Tikal with giant temples and pyramids that still tower above the dense jungle.
Excavations of this ancient city have been going on for a couple of centuries, but archaeologists still cannot answer the main question - where did all its inhabitants go? The fact is that when the first colonialists reached Tikal, it turned out that the city was abandoned.
Moreover, all buildings - dwellings, temples, administrative buildings and palaces - were in perfect condition. It seemed that all the residents of this city simply up and left, taking with them only the most necessary things. At the same time, according to archaeologists, the population in this city reached almost 200,000.
What made the ancient Mayans leave the city of Tikal? Scientists have suggested that the Indians had an incredibly sensitive sense of nature at the level of instincts.
Another mysterious disappearance of an entire people occurred on Easter Island. This tiny piece of land in the Pacific Ocean has haunted scientists for hundreds of years. On a tiny piece of land there are preserved giant stone statues that are almost 2 thousand years old. Archaeologists cannot explain who built them, and most importantly, why.
“I am sure that they performed certain functions, because there were stone caps on their heads, they had very peculiar eyes. Nobody knows why - there are a lot of hypotheses. I just agree with the hypothesis that these were functional stones, moreover , I believe all megaliths were functional and Stonehenge, etc.
These monuments on Easter Island fulfilled their function - they carried certain information. These are some kind of emitters, and this radiation can be assessed,” I’m sure Candidate of Technical Sciences Sergey Sukhinov.
Many who come to Easter Island are left with a strange feeling. It’s as if life here froze in an instant.
Everything was left in place: both stone axes and unfinished statues. It was as if people stopped work only for a minute, but were never able to return to it.
There are a lot of such suddenly abandoned places as the city of Tikal or Easter Island on our planet. But archaeologists do not have an exact answer to the question of why people left them. Some researchers put forward cautious assumptions that ancient peoples simply knew how to calculate the dates of impending cataclysms.
“There are a lot of achievements of the ancients that modern archaeologists could not recognize, because they showed too high a level of ancient man. And they still don’t want to agree with this. If we agree with this, then the whole history and the whole concept of the universe in general will be completely different,” says Professor Valery Chudinov.
According to some scientists, ancient civilizations possessed knowledge that modern humanity learned about only a couple of centuries ago with the development of science and technology.
As proof of this hypothesis, experts cite a sensational find discovered on the island of Malta. Once upon a time, the inhabitants of this island also mysteriously disappeared. According to one version, which was considered unconvincing for a long time, they learned about the impending disaster and managed to evacuate. This version, which archaeologists were skeptical about, received new evidence in 1902.
Then, quite by accident, during excavation work, a gigantic underground structure with mysterious labyrinths and galleries going down many levels was discovered.
Later this find would be called Khal Saflieni or Hypogeum. The unique underground structure was built almost 6 thousand years ago.
Studying it, scientists tried to understand why ancient people spent so much effort and time on construction. There was no answer to this question until researchers suggested an almost incredible thing: multi-level tunnels and labyrinths - something like an ancient seismic station.
This version does not seem so fantastic if you look at what the climate was like in Malta several thousand years ago. This is now Malta - a real paradise for tourists. But before, the island was shaken by earthquakes and tsunamis constantly hit it. In order to find out about impending disasters in time, an entire warning system may have been invented.
The underground labyrinths in Malta, carved out 6,000 years ago, consist of several levels and about 40 rooms. These labyrinths go so deep down that scientists have not even had time to study them all. On the third level there are several burial chambers, into which you can only squeeze by crawling.
One of these chambers continues as an endless tunnel and is lost in the unexplored voids of the island. For the first time, they learned about the mysterious tunnel only in 1940, when several young men dared to explore the endless labyrinths on their own.
Museum workers on the island of Malta say that in the early 50s this mysterious tunnel crumbled, and by order of the government, the chamber with the entrance was tightly walled up. Therefore, it is unfortunately impossible today to explore these endless labyrinths using modern means.
However, even without additional examinations, scientists assumed that all this complex architecture served to catch in time the slightest vibrations of the soil, the sounds of approaching giant waves, and the whistle of a hurricane rushing towards the island.
Mysterious dungeons are also explored in South America. Inca civilization researcher Dr. Raul Rios Centeno tried to repeat the route of the expedition that disappeared in 1952 in the vicinity of the city of Cusco in the Andes. Then, out of the entire group studying the tunnels, only one person made it to the surface. But a few days later he died of a mysterious illness, unable to explain what happened to the rest of the expedition members.
Centeno managed to follow the same route and even penetrate the dungeons. It turned out that in the depths of the wall they stop reflecting infrared radiation. This only says one thing: there is metal around, possibly ore.
Anthropologists and biologists argue that ancient people may indeed have been more empathetic than modern man. Perhaps they were able to determine in advance the approach of tsunamis and earthquakes, calculate the moment of falling meteorites and the onset of global cataclysms.
Writer Alexander Pokrovsky wrote the story “72 Meters” in August 1999. The book tells about the tragic death of the submarine, and with it all the crew members. Exactly a year later, the events described in this book were repeated in reality down to the smallest detail. On August 12, 2000, the nuclear submarine Kursk tragically sank 175 km from Severomorsk.
At 11:40 a.m. on August 12, the submarine was supposed to carry out a training torpedo launch against a group of aircraft-carrying ships.
These were just routine exercises in the Barents Sea. The crew did not contact us anymore. According to the official version, an explosion occurred on the submarine. The cause of the explosion was an outdated training torpedo, which exploded right in the torpedo room. The nuclear submarine "Kursk" sank.
According to Alexander Pokrovsky, this tragedy literally shocked him. After all, in his story, the submarine "Gorod" went to sea for exercises, and after launching a training torpedo, it sank, colliding with an underwater mine. Even the details coincided - the class of both submarines, the time of the disaster and the depth. Both tragedies occurred in the Barents Sea, in the same square.
“I was at the dacha when the tragedy happened. I didn’t turn on the TV there, and when I returned, an acquaintance called me and said in a drunken voice that I had croaked. At first I didn’t understand what it was all about, but he told me to turn on the TV ... Only after three days I realized that they wouldn’t get anyone. Or rather, I felt it almost immediately, judging by how they launched the rescue operation,” Pokrovsky recalls.
Alexander Pokrovsky claims that he seemed to have foreseen everything that happened to the Kursk crew in advance. He clearly saw all the details of the incident, the location of every detail, and even the faces of the crew members when he wrote his novel.
“When I wrote... it was inspiration. That is, you are “led”, you write, like watching a movie, very easily and quickly,” the writer says about his feelings.
Two years after the death of the Kursk, one of the film producers accidentally read Alexander Pokrovsky’s story “72 Meters”. He was simply shocked that the book, written several years before the real tragedy, described exactly what happened to the Kursk submarine. And he immediately offered to make a film to director Vladimir Khotinenko. A year later the film was released.
Scientists believe that writers manage to predict certain events by putting a certain code into their works, which they themselves are often not even aware of. But then what becomes the key to this code? What unlocks it? Why are the terrible disasters described in novels repeated in reality? No one can explain this today.
“This is such a fate. I would have written it anyway. I would have written it, maybe not in this form, but in another. This event had already been calculated, that is, I had to write it,” says Pokrovsky.
Another striking example of foreboding is Paralympian Oscar Pistorius. According to investigators, Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp. Whether it was intentional or not, opinions differ here, but now only one thing is known for sure: the girl seemed to have a presentiment of her death.
A young girl published a picture on her social network page just a few days before her death: a screaming woman whose mouth is covered by someone’s hand, the caption to the photo reads: “I woke up at home today in comfort and safety, but not everyone is as lucky as me. I'm talking about victims of violence."
Could she have known that literally 4 days later she would become this same victim?
History knows many cases when famous and ordinary people, a few days or months before death, sharply changed their mood and increasingly began to think about it, talk about themselves in the past tense and seem to say goodbye to loved ones.
“The Earth is, of course, a living organism, the Earth sends a variety of signals not only to us, but in general it emits these signals, there are people who can receive them,” Mikhail Vinogradov repeats his hypothesis.
After many experiments, scientists came to the conclusion that before death, the cells of a living organism give off a sudden release of radioactive rays. This stream of waves, being powerful enough, is capable of capturing information about the life and death of a dying person.
This hypothesis is also supported by the ability of animals to sense the onset of trouble. If people's feelings are dulled by a comfortable life, then animals have not lost this gift.
For example, during World War II, when death could fall from the sky at any moment, cats often saved their owners. In London there lived a cat named Sally, who developed a complex warning system in the face of danger.
Feeling that the attack was close, Sally ran to the counter in the hall where the gas mask hung, and began to persistently pound it with her front paws, after which she returned to her owner and began to scratch her. Surprisingly, the cat never made a mistake.
In 2004, the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia killed about 300,000 people. But at the same time, the number of dead animals was completely insignificant.
The reaction of living beings to an approaching natural disaster has been known for a long time. The first documentary evidence of this phenomenon dates back to 2000 BC. On the island of Crete, before a major earthquake, weasels fled from human settlements.
In China, the appearance of snakes has long been a harbinger of disaster. They seem to appear out of nowhere, and this always means that an earthquake is about to begin. This is exactly what happened in November 1920. On that day, the force of the tremors was 8.6 on the Richter scale, in a few minutes 10 ancient cities were destroyed, almost 200 thousand people died - the numbers are huge, but it’s scary to imagine what would have happened if people didn’t believe the snakes that day and didn’t try to protect themselves somehow...
The same thing happened again 55 years later - in the winter of 1975 in China, on the eve of a disaster, snakes crawled onto the surface of the earth again, which looked quite strange in the winter. And then an unprecedented decision was made to evacuate the city of Hainan.
Seismic stations did not register any activity in the bowels of the earth, but just a few days later the city was literally wiped off the face of the earth by an 8-magnitude earthquake. In the history of seismology, it became the only one that managed to predict and save the lives of almost half a million people.
After the 2004 tsunami, a lighthouse keeper in South India described how an entire herd of antelope fled in panic from the coast to the nearby hills before the disaster. In Thailand, elephants screamed and, breaking their chains, rushed to the hills. Flamingos were leaving the lowlands.
Later it turned out that almost all wild animals that could somehow move left the dangerous territory and escaped the tsunami. For example, out of 2,000 animals in an Indian reserve, only one wild boar died. And in the Yala Nature Reserve in Sri Lanka, which was hit by a tsunami, out of hundreds of elephants and dozens of leopards, not a single animal died.
In Japan, after much experimentation, they found that fish, namely catfish, can detect the slightest changes in the electromagnetic field of the earth several weeks before the event. Therefore, this fish on the Japanese islands is considered almost sacred. In August 1923, many Japanese, thanks to them, guessed that an earthquake would soon occur. However, what happened later exceeded all expectations.
The day before the earthquake, a terrible hurricane arose, turning into a violent tornado. A wind squall hit the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama. Fires started. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people were affected, and half a million residents were left homeless.
But how will our little brothers know about the approaching catastrophes?
Biologists suggest that animals are particularly sensitive to the millimeter wave range, as well as to the magnetic field.
Experts believe that they detect ultra- and infrasounds. That is why animals sense natural disasters in advance: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and even magnetic storms.
Scientists have even suggested that a special organ, the so-called “third eye,” is responsible for this function. This is the concept that many peoples use to designate an organ that is capable of sensing something that other senses do not notice.
In Ancient India, the “third eye” was called the eye of Shiva, which was responsible for intuition.
It was believed that for those who possessed it, there were no obstacles. Perhaps there is only a bit of mysticism in this belief, and everything else is explained scientifically.
“The intellect has suppressed sensitivity. But, according to researchers, in the womb, in the child, all channels of perception are open, everything. When a child is born, he has 5 sense organs left - this is what provides him with vital functions today. Nature is not wasteful - five senses. But somewhere in the depths of the brain everything remains - this is then called intuition, or the sixth sense,” says psychiatrist Mikhail Vinogradov.
Do we still have the unique abilities of the third eye? For the first time, researchers from the USA - Marga, Gamasaki and Gioli - tried to answer this question from a scientific point of view. In 1959, they presented a report on the results of their work at the XXI International Congress of Physiologists in Argentina. Scientists studied the electrophysical response of the pineal gland to light and electrical stimulation. The verdict of the experiment is this: the pineal gland is one of the organs of telepathic communication in humans.
According to scientists, it takes the brain about one-tenth of a second to perceive what the eyes see. To compensate for this time gap, vision has developed the ability to predict what will happen in a tenth of an instant. It turns out that the gift of foresight exists not only among psychics. Each of us sees the future - and constantly.
According to the new theory, the human visual system has improved in the process of evolution. Vision sends an image to our brain that should appear in 0.1 seconds. Thus, a person gets the opportunity to interact with the world around him, this unique Network online.
Some researchers believe that potentially any “subscriber” of such a network is capable of subconsciously requesting information about the future and receiving an answer. Normally, most of us do not have access to such information. People do not hear the prompting of their inner voice. But the number of “tips” grows as an extreme situation approaches.
An ancient Egyptian manuscript says: “Humanity will perish from ignorance of its own nature and inability to use it.” Ancient people were well versed in the nature of things; they knew that the highest knowledge is knowledge of oneself.
Falling planes, oil spills, radioactive contamination and much more are now an integral element of our existence. The background of the life of modern earthlings. The threat of planetary, environmental, resource and nuclear disasters hanging over the world, and possible climate change, forces us to look for new answers to the challenges of nature.
According to scientists, 99 percent of future disasters are known in advance. This graph of the Universe is written many millions of years into the future. You just need to learn to hear it.
Incredible facts
Beautiful, successful and famous. They shine in Hollywood and smile at us from the covers of glossy magazines.
For many, the fate of celebrities is a fabulous path and a cloudless life that is envied.
It is difficult to imagine that sometimes behind these ideal lives ordinary people with their weaknesses and troubles are hidden.
But some of them survived real tragedies And that shock and make you shudder.
Celebrity tragedies
1. Charlize Theron
Who would have thought that the childhood of this Hollywood beauty of South African origin was one complete nightmare. The future celebrity was born and raised in the vicinity of a small farm in the Transvaal province, South Africa.
Charlize's father abused alcohol, from which both Charlize's mother and the girl herself regularly suffered. Frequent scandals, poverty and destitution were the eternal companions of the Theron family.
During another quarrel in front of 15-year-old Charlize, her mother shot her with a gun. killed own husband.
The girl's mother was acquitted because the murder was committed in self-defense. The celebrity herself does not like to talk about this topic. Later in her interviews, Charlize claimed that her father died in a car accident.
And only many years later was she able to find the strength to voice the bitter truth.
2. Jack Nicholson
At the age of 37, the famous actor learned that the woman he considered an older sister was, in fact, his own mother.
When 16-year-old June, Nicholson's mother, was just 16 years old, she gave birth to a boy. To avoid shame, the girl's parents raised him as their son.
June built a career in Hollywood, and her status single mothers could have ruined all her plans. Therefore, Jack’s relatives became his parents for many years Grandfather and grandmother.
In June 1963, the boy's natural mother died of cancer. And only 10 years later, thanks to reporters from one popular publication, the story of Jack Nicholson was made public.
The actor himself admitted that he was shocked when he learned the truth about his origin. But on the other hand, according to the celebrity, he felt relieved.
Tragedies of famous people
3. Rihanna
Who would be pleased to know that the father whom you considered a good man did not lead a completely pious lifestyle?
The girl’s father had many vices, including alcohol and cocaine addiction, as well as marijuana abuse. And the weakness of a man also led to the weaker sex to a number of consequences:
at the age of 15, the famous singer of Barbadian origin learned about father's illegitimate children.
In total, Rihanna has 3 brothers and 2 sisters. She learned about three of them already as an adult.
4. Woody Harrelson
Charles Harrison (Charles Voyde Harrelson), American hitman, accounts for the famous Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson my own father.
Little Woody was only 7 years old when his father first went to jail for murder.
After serving 5 years out of the required 15, Charles is released, where he is involved in dirty deeds related to the distribution of drugs. Having embarked on a slippery criminal path, he soon commits a second murder.
This time fortune was not so favorable.
Charles was sentenced for the murder of District Judge John Wood. to two life sentences.
For a long time, the famous actor did not keep in touch with his father. Only years later did the son begin to visit his father in prison.
He also tried to file a retrial to challenge the verdict and have the charges against his father dropped. However, his attempt was unsuccessful.
In 2007, Charles Harrison was found dead in his cell. No signs of violent death were found.
5. Oprah Winfrey
Famous TV presenter Oprah Winfrey wasn't always like this carefree and cheerful. She learned to laugh and joke already in adulthood.
The fact is that the girl spent her hungry childhood in the small town of Kosciuszko in the American state of Mississippi.
During the first years of her life, the girl was raised by her grandmother. Winfrey was so poor that she had to wear clothes made from potato sacks. For this reason, she was often ridiculed by other children.
In search of a better life, Oprah's mother moved to the north of the country to the ghetto area of the city. Milwaukee. Winfrey was to spend most of her childhood there with her half-siblings.
6. Liv Tyler
Liv's mother Bebe Buell was young Playboy model. In addition, Bebe had several affairs with famous musicians, including Rod Stewart(Rod Stewart) Steven Tyler(Steven Tyler) and Todd Rundgren(Todd Rundgren).
For a long time it was believed that Todd was Liv's father: after all, when she was born, Todd lived with her mother.
Little Liv's childhood was influenced by Bebe's crazy lifestyle. Friends of the parents were often in the house, usually rockers and musicians. Her grandparents also took part in raising the future actress.
This continued until the girl was 9 years old. Liv met her real father, Steven Tyler.
The musician immediately realized that Liv was his own daughter- too obvious similarity in external data instantly betrayed kinship.
7. Tobey Maguire
For the share of the famous Spider-Man Tobey Maguire there were many trials.
Toby's parents were very young when their son was born. My mother was barely 18 years old, and my father was a couple of years older.
When the boy was only 2 years old, they separated, and Toby lived with his mother on a meager salary and social benefits. Periodically, the boy stayed with his father, who worked in a low-paid job.
Then a series of tragedies struck the family. Misfortune happened one after another. First, Toby's aunt died of cancer, leaving 2 small children whom Toby's father had to raise.
Money was sorely lacking, and the young man decided to commit a crime. Unarmed and without a mask, Toby's father broke into the bank across the street from his home. He was convicted of attempted robbery.
After 2 years, the man was released from prison.
Toby's mother encouraged his love of cinema. She wanted to her son chose the right path and connected his life with cinema.
She even gave her son $100 so that the boy could attend acting classes.
8. Leighton Meester
The life of the American actress and singer Leighton began as a bad dream.
When she was born, her mother Connie was serving 16 month imprisonment. Layton's father and mother, along with other family members, were convicted of smuggling marijuana from Jamaica in 1983. They all ended up behind bars.
At the age of 11, the girl moved to New York with her aunt. There she began her modeling career, which was more than successful. Leighton became famous.
And everything is fine in the actress’s personal life: she is married to fellow film actor Adam Brody.
Tragedies of the stars
9. Kelsey Grammer
It seemed that the Grammer family haunted by evil fate. Deaths lined up at the door of the Gremmer house.
When the boy was 11 years old, his beloved grandfather, who raised him, died. Then the boy's father was burned alive in a car arson attack.
His sister was brutally murdered, and two twin brothers, while scuba diving, died when diving under water.
We can often admire the achievements and actions of certain famous and outstanding people who serve as good examples for us in various areas of life.
But sometimes we don’t even realize how sad their fates are. We bring to your attention the most curious tragedies in history.
It should be noted that all of the following can safely be called an irony of fate. After all, what the heroes of this article saw as the meaning of their lives, in fact, became the cause of their tragic destinies.
The author of the book “How to Save a Marriage” shot his wife
Derek Medina
When Derek turned 31, the police arrested him for the murder of his wife. The ill-fated writer posted photographs of his tortured victim on the Internet for his subscribers to see.
His wife was 26-year-old Jennifer Alfonso. In the photo posted on Facebook, the girl was sitting on her knees in a pool of her own blood.
It is noteworthy that the killer did not try to escape, but, on the contrary, voluntarily came to the police. In his farewell letter, he wrote that for the murder he committed, he voluntarily surrendered to the authorities. He also added that he loves everyone and asks them to watch reports about him in the news.
Derek Medina explained the murder of his wife by saying that she was the first to strike him, and he, unable to tolerate such an insult, shot her.
Famous psychologist Dale Carnegie died alone
One of the most famous psychologists of our time, Dale Carnegie, suffered from depression at the end of his life, and according to one version, he committed suicide.
Dale Carnegie His books are read all over the world, and he is rightfully considered a man who understood the secrets of communication and the intricacies of human nature.
Any book by Carnegie, immediately after its release, became a bestseller, and on the basis of his works, various trainings on improving relationships between people are still being built.
At first glance, it seems that such a person has a perfect understanding of psychology and can give the most accurate advice on this or that matter.
However, as practice has shown, Dale Carnegie was never able to give answers to these questions to himself.
Benjamin Spock, an outstanding teacher and educator, was sent to a nursing home by his own children
The famous pediatrician and teacher Benjamin Spock became famous for being able to look at raising a child from a different point of view.
Benjamin Spock In his writings, he emphasized that parents need to respect the child’s personality, starting from a very young age.
His ideas about raising children influenced several generations of parents, making them more flexible and gentle towards their children, while the conventional wisdom was that raising a child should focus on instilling discipline.
According to some polls, Spock's popularity exceeded that of the head of state.
During his life, the doctor gave a lot of useful advice to families around the world. However, they did not help him himself. His own children refused to care for him in his old age, placing their father in a nursing home.
In 1998, his wife Mary appealed to people to help pay for Spock's treatment. Many people responded to this call, but his own children still chose to stay away.
The owner of SEGWAY crashed his Segway
Jimi Heselden Jimi Heselden was the successful owner of a company that produced Segways.
On September 27, 2010, when the 62-year-old millionaire once again decided to inspect the territory of his mansion, an accident occurred to him.
Losing control of his Segway, Jimi Heselden fell off a 24-meter-high cliff into the Warf River and fell to his death.
Interestingly, he was included in the list of the 400 richest people in Britain according to The Sunday Times.
Teacher Maria Montessori gave her son to foster parents
Maria Montessori Maria Montessori is known as an outstanding scientist, doctor and philosopher, whose views were particularly humane.
In 1898, her son was born.
Unfortunately, personal relationships with her lover did not work out, and Maria decided to give her own child to be raised in someone else’s family.
Years later, she maintained that her purpose in life was to serve other people's children.
This is truly an irony of fate!
Steve Irwin, extreme TV presenter, died from an electric stingray bite
The famous showman from , professionally engaged in wildlife research, Steve Irwin, tragically died from being struck by an electric stingray at the age of 44.
Steve Irwin On September 4, 2006 at 11 am, during another underwater filming, one of the fish attacked the presenter while he was above it.
The stingray raised its tail with a poisonous sting at the end and slammed it into Steve's chest. The sting hit the naturalist's heart.
The cameraman who sailed after Steve Irwin captured his death on videotape. It was later given to Steve's wife, who decided to destroy it.
Ironically, Steve Irwin was largely popular for his dangerous stunts with predatory animals and snakes, and he died while filming the film Deadly Creatures of the Ocean.
No one could have imagined that his life would end in such a tragic way.
The author of books about happiness committed suicide
Choi Yoon Hee A TV presenter from (interesting facts about North Korea), the author of popular books about happiness, committed suicide.
At the age of 63, Choi Yoon Hee hanged herself in a hotel room with her husband.
In her suicide note, she explained her step by deteriorating health associated with lung and heart disease.
An interesting fact is that in her works the writer preached happiness, harmony with nature and called to always enjoy life.
In total, she wrote about 20 books about happiness, although she was never able to become happy herself.
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