Unsolved Mysteries The Purpose Of Stonehenge Loch Ness Monster Ufos Unidentified Flying Object

Why Stonehenge was constructed remains unknown. Most scholars agree that it must have been a sacred and special place of religious rituals or ceremonies. Many have speculated that Stonehenge was built by Sun worshipers. The axis of Stonehenge, which divides the sarsen horseshoe and aligns with the monument s entrance, is oriented broadly toward the direction of the midsummer sunrise. In nearby Ireland the celebrated megalithic monument Newgrange, built approximately at the same time as Stonehenge, was oriented toward the midwinter sunrise. In the early 1960s American astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins theorized that Stonehenge was an astronomical observatory and calendar of surprising complexity. Hawkins suggested that ancient peoples used the monument to anticipate a wide range of astronomical phenomena, including the summer and winter solstices and eclipses of both the Sun and the Moon. The astronomical interpretation of Stonehenge remains popular today, despite many uncertainties. Some scholars are doubtful that the peoples who constructed Stonehenge and other sites of the era possessed the mathematical sophistication necessary to predict many of the events that Hawkins theorized. They note that Stonehenge s architects may have been aware of the subtle movements of the Sun, Moon, and other heavenly bodies without having an analytically advanced understanding of astronomy. The true purpose of Stonehenge is an enduring mystery. Modern observers can only speculate about what it meant to its builders and what compelling impulse drove them to invest so much labor and care in creating it. Sightings of large underwater animals in Loch Ness, a 24-mile-long lake in Scotland, have often been reported but never confirmed. As early as 565 ad, Saint Columba, a Christian missionary, is said to have seen a monster in the lake. Modern interest was evoked in 1933 when a British couple reported viewing a creature with a long neck and body, and in the next several decades various expeditions attempted to find such a creature.

A major expedition was initiated this June, under the joint sponsorship of the Academy of Applied Sciences in Boston and the New York Times. The head of the investigatory team, Robert Rines, president of the AAS, led several earlier expeditions. In 1972, using underwater photography, sonar equipment, and other electronic devices, he obtained photographs that spurred scientific interest. One of the pictures, which were made clearer by the use of a computer, showed a diamond-shaped object thought by Rines and Sir Peter Scott, the British naturalist and artist, to be the 4-6 foot long flipper of an animal about 45-60 ft. in length. The size was consistent with indications obtained from sonar apparatus, and the monster was provisionally named Nessiteras rhombopteryx, which means Ness mammal with a diamond-shaped fin.

The photographs were made public late in 1975, to allow the monster to be placed on the British list of protected ...