Strange and Amazing Discoveries

The Baltic Sea Anomaly is a 60-metre (200 ft) diameter circular rock-like formation on the floor of the Baltic Sea, discovered in June 2011. The rock likely formed in connection with glacial and postglacial processes. Glaciers often have rocks embedded in them. At the end of the Ice Age, when glaciers across Northern Europe melted, the rocks inside them dropped to the Earth's surface, leaving rocky deposits. These are sometimes called glacial erratics or balancing rocks.

Kepler-78b is a planet that should not exist. This scorching lava world circles its star every eight and a half hours at a space of less than one million miles – among the tightest known orbits. Based on present theories of planet formation, it could not have formed so close to its star, nor could it have proceeded there.

The ancient burial site “El Cementerio,” near the Mexican village of Onavas was disturbed in 1999. Villagers unearthed 25 skulls, 13 of which did not look entirely human. Experts theorize that the deformity of the skulls were intentionally produced through the ritual of head flattening, otherwise called cranial deformation, in which the skull is compressed between two wooden boards from childhood.

Otzi the Iceman. In 1991, a group of hikers were trekking in the mountains of Austria when they came across an awful sight: a frozen body was buried in the ice at their feet. That body belonged to a 5,300 year old man. By studying the body, scientists have been able to discover some specific facts. When he was alive, he had parasites in his intestines, was lactose intolerant, and had been sick three times in the past six months. His death seems to have been caused by an arrow wound to his back.

In 2012 Australian scientists unveiled the biggest-ever graveyard of an ancient rhino-sized mega-wombat called diprotodon. Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever to roam the earth, weighing up to 2.8 tonnes, lived between two million and 50,000 years ago and died out around the time indigenous tribes first appeared.

Pachacamac is an archaeological site 40 km southeast of Lima, Peru in the Valley of the Lurín River. Most of the common buildings and temples were built c. 800-1450 CE, shortly before the arrival and conquest by the Inca Empire. The adult dead in the newfound tomb were found in the fetal position and were surrounded by a ring of baby skeletons.

Road crew workers working on a road from Weymouth, Dorset to the lsle of Portland came across a mass grave of fifty-four skeletons and fifty-one heads of Scandinavian men who were executed sometime between A.D. 910 and 1030. Archaeologists determined it was likely the grave of the Jomsvikings, who terrorized the coast of England around 1000. An execution of the Jomsvikings captured in the Battle of Horundarfjord occurred in A.D. 986.

A super massive dinosaur has earned the name “Dreadnoughtus schrani” (Dreadnoughtus means “fears nothing”). The titan was 26m (85ft) long and weighed 65 tons, as much as 12 African Elephants.

Coke is said to have been created under the influence of cocaine in the summer of 1886. The pharmacist who created the ubiquitous soda, John Pemberton, expounded on the Coca leaf’s status as a panacea for everything from depression to morphine addiction. Containing both coca leaf extracts and kola nuts, Pemberton’s bookkeeper offered the name “Coca-Cola”, and thus the red and white icon was born.

The Trachte brothers discovered a famous Norman Rockwell painting hidden behind a false wall in their deceased father's Vermont, home. The painting, entitled "Breaking Home Ties," netted $15.4 million at Sotheby's Auction House. The unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary has long been in the family of US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Martin Kober. The painting had hung in the Kober home but was knocked off the wall by a stray tennis ball 27 years ago, so it was wrapped up and put behind the couch. Evidence points to the painting having been done by Michelangelo for his friend Vittoria Colonna around 1545. The painting later belonged to a German baroness who left it to a lady-in-waiting, who was the sister-in-law of Mr Kober's great-grandfather. It arrived in America in 1883.

Now in a bank vault, the painting is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions

The Lycurgus Cup is a 4th-century Roman glass cage cup made of a dichroic glass, which shows a different colour depending on whether or not light is passing through it; red when lit from behind and green when lit from in front. It is the only complete Roman glass object made from this type of glass. The dichroic effect is achieved by making the glass with tiny proportions of nanoparticles of gold and silver "dispersed" in colloidal form throughout the glass material. The exact process used remains unclear. The early history of the cup is unknown. Lionel de Rothschild owned it by 1862. In 1958 Victor, Lord Rothschild sold it to the British Museum.

Five-year-old Emelia Fawbert was helping her dad at an excavation when she found a vertebra bigger than her head. Although the excavation turned up a couple of other bones, Emelia’s was by far the best. It once belonged to a giant rhinoceros that roamed the Gloucestershire area of England about 50,000 years ago.

Sacsayhuaman is a citadel on the northern outskirts of the city of Cusco, Peru, the historic capital of the Inca Empire. The stones used in the construction are among the largest used in any building in prehispanic America. They display a precision of fitting that is unmatched in the Americas. The stones are so closely spaced that a single piece of paper will not fit between many of them.