Nature can be so serious. Most of the time, an intense survival game plays out. Yet, it is the more indirect side of the natural world—the quirks—that keep scientists on their toes. From the biggest organisms on the planet that nobody ever sees to the Sun setting off explosives, nature seems to have a strange sense of humor.

There are plenty of other cases. But as intriguing as they may be, this weirdness can get destructive. Sometimes, it not only tears apart human constructions but also the scientific community.

10 Haiting Hall

In 2017, an expedition from Hong Kong found a gigantic sinkhole. Located in the forest of Guangxi, it was named the Hong Kong Haiting Hall. A second expedition in 2018 scanned the inner dimensions and revealed a world-class wonder.

Haiting Hall is far from being a hole in the ground. After researchers lowered themselves into the pit, they found an epic cave complex hidden beneath the ground. The sheer size made the site very rare. In volume, it measured 6.7 million cubic meters (236 million ft³).

While 3-D mapping the interior, the team found halls, collapsed structures, craters, stone pillars, and water-polished rocks called cave pearls. The equipment also revealed that the sinkhole itself was 100 meters (328 ft) wide, around 118 meters (387 ft) deep, and almost 200 meters (656 ft) long.^[1]

The 3-D scanning was not just for measuring the standard stuff. It could also help with the reconstruction of the signs suggesting that the sinkhole had suffered a collapse. This could throw light on its formation. Similar sinkholes are usually the result of collapse brought on by the erosion of underground rivers.

9 Antarctica’s Hot Spot

Antarctica has its fair share of mysteries. One of them is rather ironic—the icy continent has a hot spot.

In 2018, a radar survey found the anomaly in East Antarctica. This region is the last place where any kind of heat should appear. East Antarctica is a craton, or a massive piece of Earth’s crust. Magma is shallow in some regions of Antarctica, but not with this craton. The solid interior, as well as its thickness, should prevent warmth within the planet from seeping back to the surface.

Yet the ice sheet closest to the crust is melting, another sign of something hot down there. Analysis showed that global warming cannot be blamed in this case. The bizarre spot is insulated away from the atmosphere and is also quite old.

The truth remains elusive, but hydrothermal energy could be responsible. If there is a fault in the crust filled with water shuttling up and down between the hot lower depths to the ice sheet, it could cause melting.^[2]

8 Woodleigh’s True Size

Woodleigh Crater is an ancient impact site near Shark Bay in Australia. The crater’s size remains a hotly debated issue. Since the crater is buried, an accurate assessment is difficult, although past research placed the diameter at around 60–120 kilometers (37–75 mi).

In 2018, two researchers had no desire to join the controversy. When they examined a core sample from Woodleigh, it was to see how the common mineral zircon behaved during the high pressures of an impact. They were amazed to find reidite instead.

To be fair, reidite is zircon. However, it is an exceptionally rare transformation of zircon. Created during the high-pressure moment when space rocks slam into Earth’s surface, reidite has only been found six times. The discovery could swing the Woodleigh debate.^[3]

To amass the kind of pressure needed to create reidite, only certain size craters can produce this priceless mineral. They must be over 100 kilometers (62 mi) in diameter, which would make Woodleigh the biggest meteorite hit in Australia. Some suggest the crater could dwarf the one in Mexico (thought to be the rock that killed the dinosaurs), which measured 180 kilometers (112 mi) across.

7 The Tree Fight

There is a battle going on in the scientific community. An undeniable amount of evidence suggests that trees are not just wood soaking up sunshine. Studies have identified behaviors that include pain reaction, chemical warning signals to other trees, and the nourishment of saplings and other adults through a subterranean fungal network. They also recognize “family,” or genetically related trees.

This is a far cry from how scientists used to view a forest. The fact that trees are organized, almost like an insect colony, is not really the issue. Both sides agree that these plants show remarkable abilities. However, one question turns things ugly. Are trees doing it on purpose?

Those who support sentient trees believe that these entities operate with intelligence, although it is misunderstood by humans. This is appalling to critics, who feel that chemical reactions to stimuli such as damage, predators, and nutritional needs dictate how trees respond.^[4]

Whether trees have free will or automatically react to their environment, they still behave in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand.

6 Earth Consumes Its Oceans

Earth has several tectonic plates. Often, when one is forced to slide underneath the other, this causes earthquakes. The process also pulls a huge amount of seawater down into the deeper layers of the planet.

Recently, scientists listened to seismic sounds at the Marianas trench where the Pacific plate is dipping under the Philippine plate. They wanted to use the rumblings to calculate just how much water got swallowed this way. Sensors tracked the velocity of earthquake echoes and especially listened for those slowing down as they passed through waterlogged material.

The result was shocking. Every million years, diving plates drag three billion teragrams of water into the Earth’s interior. A teragram equals a billion kilograms. This is three times more than previously thought.

The surprise did not end there. Earth’s deep water cycle should expel an equal amount, but not enough is being spouted by volcanoes or any other means. This inequality plus the fact that the oceans are not losing water volume means that science is missing something about how the planet shuttles water through its deepest plumbing.^[5]

5 Creeping Mud Blob

The Niland Geyser was born in 1953. The mud pool appeared in California’s Imperial County and bubbled placidly for decades. This changed 11 years ago when Niland’s mud began to creep over dry soil.

At first, the pace was so slow that nobody cared. However, in 2018, the flow picked up and became unstoppable. This was a huge problem since the mud’s direction threatened a state highway, train tracks, fiber optic telecommunications lines, and a petroleum pipeline.^[6]

All attempts to stop the mud failed, including an ambitious steel wall that was 22.9 meters (75 ft) deep and 36.6 meters (120 ft) long. The blob merely slipped underneath the barrier and sludged forth. A new railway line was built to circumnavigate the remorseless mud, but the flow could eventually close down state route 111 and force engineers to build a bridge instead.

The geyser, which had been declared an emergency, not only poses a threat to things in its path but also leaves behind a damaged trail. Similar to a bog, a large amount of moisture softens everything up to 12 meters (40 ft) down, ruining the land for future construction.

4 Frankenstein Worms

In 2018, Russian scientists extracted 300 soil samples from the Arctic. The frozen cores were recovered at different locations and represented various geological eras. Back in the laboratory, several 42,000-year-old samples contained worms.

Called nematodes, they had been frozen solid inside the permafrost for all that time. The tiny creatures were moved to a petri dish and left to thaw at 20 degrees Celsius (68 °F). It took the worms a few weeks, but they came back to life.

The dish was filled with a nutrient medium. Appearing unaware that they had stopped living for thousands of years, the nematodes started feeding. This amazing feat set the record for successful cryogenic suspension in animals.^[7]

Naturally, this piqued the interest of researchers trying to freeze humans for posterity. The fact that Pleistocene-era nematodes can survive having their entire bodies frozen, especially without side effects, is remarkable. Something protects them from the ravages of ice and oxidation. This mysterious mechanism can prove invaluable to several medical fields, including astrobiology and cryomedicine.

3 Brazil’s Termite Mounds

A few decades ago, a strange thing emerged from Brazil’s forest. As people cleared land for farming in the northeast, termite hills began to appear. Their sheer size was noteworthy. But in 2018, a study revealed the true magnificence of what the creatures had accomplished.

Thus far, about 200 million have been found and they are enormous. Visible from space, each contains around 50 cubic meters (1,800 ft³) of soil. Most measure 2.5 meters (8 ft) high with a diameter of 9 meters (30 ft).

Together, the hills cover an area as big as Great Britain and have an excavated volume of 10 cubic kilometers (2.4 mi³). This equals about 4,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. Speaking of which, the hills roughly dated back to the time when the Egyptians built the pyramids.

For 4,000 thousand years, termites have constructed the mounds as tunnels—not nests—to reach food on the forest floor. Incredibly, the termites have never gone. They still occupy what researchers are calling the “greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by a single insect species.”^[8]

2 Earth’s Biggest Organisms

The blue whale may be the biggest animal in history, but it is dwarfed by a mushroom. At first glance, the sweetly named honey mushroom resembles a field of small shrooms. However, since it was found 25 years ago in Michigan, scientists suspected that the real “creature” lurked underground. Those caps belong to a single 1,500-year-old fungus spread across 91 acres.^[9]

In 2018, new samples were taken and genetic tests confirmed the whole thing was indeed a single organism. The DNA also revealed a twist. The rate at which the mushroom evolved was slower than previously thought. This made everything bigger.

Calculations determined the fungus was 2,500 years old, covered four times its original territory, and weighed around 440 tons (the same as three blue whales). The Michigan mushroom was the first of its species to reveal how large they could grow, but another honey mushroom in Oregon now holds the record. That 8,000-year-old specimen hugs an area of 7.8 square kilometers (3 mi²).

1 Solar Storm Detonated Bombs

In 1972, a US military plane flew over a minefield off the coast of Hon La in Vietnam. The crew noticed up to 25 bombs detonate in the water, all within 30 seconds. Another 25 to 30 mud splats suggested earlier explosions. The incident was reported, classified, and filed away.

In 2018, the document became public and revealed an extraordinary incident—a solar storm had triggered the mines. As much as people in the 1970s understood that solar activity manipulated Earth’s magnetic field, it could not be proven that the Sun messed with the mines. (The bombs were designed to destruct during magnetic shifts.)

A solid clue was the intense solar activity recorded around the time the detonations took place. This was the main reason the navy suspected a space storm.^[10]

Modern scientists agree. In particular, one coronal mass ejection was identified as the culprit. It behaved like a whip and struck at Earth with unusual speed. Researchers believe earlier flares cleared the planet’s magnetosphere, which added power to the coronal slash.

When one is immersed in nature, absorbing sounds, smells, and the views, it brings us back to our primordial roots. It can be a place for healing and rejuvenation of the spirit, with psychological and physiological benefits. It’s no wonder that it connects us to our brief, impermanent being.

Humans are creators instinctively, so we want to contribute to the landscape and make our impression on the world. Sometimes, we create beautiful things, only to let them go. We enjoy the transience of art, like building sandcastles even though we know they will be washed to the sea or designing intricate mandalas that we will destroy upon completion with a blow of breath.

Some people, however, take this inclination a step further. This list is concerned with artists, shepherds, adventurers, as well as millionaires and rebels who have participated in this desire to create something incredible, only to hide it in the middle of the wilderness for someone else to find.

10 Giants

If you find yourself wandering off the beaten path in a forest in Copenhagen, Denmark, you may encounter giants. Six massive sculptures made from recycled wood were created by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, who hid them deep in the woods for hikers to come across. Some are camouflaged amid tall trees, while others lounge on hillsides. One is even lurking beneath a bridge like a troll.

Dambo says, “As humans, we often have a way of choosing the beaten path and the main roads.” In this creative endeavor, he wanted to challenge that mindset and encourage people to explore the hidden outskirts of their town. He calls the project an “open air sculpture treasure hunt.” For those with a taste for adventure, he posted a treasure map on his website with hints so that people can follow the bread crumbs. He also engraved poems on stones near the sculptures with clues to find the next one.^[1]

9 Eyes

Nietzsche famously said, “ . . . if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Australian artist Jennifer Allnutt took this statement quite literally. She paints stunningly hyperrealistic eyes, complete with lids, lashes, and the surrounding skin. She uses stones as her medium and then places those stones back into nature in the exact spot she first found them.^[2]

Allnutt says, “I’m fascinated by those in-between, grey areas, intangibles and ambiguities and then fusing these into the physicality and language of paint.” She paints these ocular rocks to create a sense of wonder in the unsuspecting passerby, who may find that the abyss is gazing back after all. She also says that if the eyes don’t meet another’s gaze, that’s alright, too. They can simply be lost forever.

8 Living Artifacts

Who hasn’t carved their initials into a tree at some point? Trees have been a canvas for this activity since ancient times, and there’s a new field of archaeology that’s being created around this human tradition. The study of arborglyphs examines the world’s oldest tree carvings, some of which are a few hundred years old. Since the carvings were etched onto a living host, the artifacts can only exist as long as the tree does.

The most famous arborglyphs were created by Basque shepherds from the mid-1800s in the western parts of the United States on the smooth, white canvas of aspen trees. Being isolated for long lengths of time in remote forests with no one to talk to but the sheep led to the creation of elaborate tree carvings.

In the mountains of California, Oregon, and Nevada, 20,000 of these living artifacts have been recorded for study, from drawings to poetry. Without them, nobody would ever know that these shepherds existed. There’s nothing written about them in history. They were only able to communicate through time by leaving these hidden messages behind. One carving simply says, “Es trieste a vivir solo,” which translates to, “It is sad to live alone.”^[3]

7 Geocaches

Geocaching usually involves a group of people who are hunting for a cache that has been left behind by someone else. They use GPS coordinates to determine its whereabouts. This recreational activity was made popular in recent years by the relative ease of finding specific points in nature by simply using a smartphone. It’s a treasure hunt that’s not only meant for children but also adults, who hunt for geocaches all over the world.

A cache is a small, waterproof container that has at least a pen and a notebook for hunters to exchange musings of their journey and sign their code name into the log as proof that they found it. Then, they re-hide it for the next person. Some of these caches have toys, gems, trinkets, or other small objects to exchange. It’s the usual “take one, leave one” scenario.^[4]

Some of the caches can be extremely challenging to find. There’s an underwater cache that’s only accessible by scuba diving to the site, for example. Another cache is a fake bird’s nest, complete with eggs and even a phony bird guarding over them.

6 Twisting Branches

Spencer Byles is an artist who sculpts branches and twigs to create a mystical experience of twisting, curving limbs that appear to be the result of magic. In the south of France, Byles sculpted the woods surrounding the Loup River. After a year of living in the remote wilderness, he left behind these strange, temporary structures from the natural materials he came across.^[5]

Byles says, “The force of life and growth and the slow disintegration of all living things has always fascinated me.” These fairy-tale creations are woven into the natural fabric of the landscape and are almost impossible to find, but Byles doesn’t do it to attract attention. He doesn’t share the location of the ephemeral sculptures because he prefers that people stumble upon them by chance.

5 Fairy Homes

The lore of fairies, enchanting thumb-sized creatures with wings that live deep in the woods, continues to allure children and the young at heart. Some communities keep the flame of imagination lit by creating fairy houses for people to find on their nature hikes. In Roswell, Georgia, for example, they exist along a public nature trail to the delighted squeals of children visiting the Chattahoochee Nature Center. They can be hidden in stumps or bushes. Fifteen of these whimsical fairy houses are carefully camouflaged into the natural surroundings, as they are made of twigs, pine cones, moss, rocks, and feathers, so it takes a keen eye to discover them.^[6]

In upstate New York, 20 fairy houses have mysteriously appeared on a rarely used nature trail. These charming cottages are ornate, with painted doors that opened up to reveal tiny steps and ladders inside. Now, they attract visitors who want to connect to their inner child. Fairy homes are also popping up on the islands of Maine and across the nation in San Francisco Bay.

4 Treasure Chest

A sheriff in Montana had to issue an official warning that the hunt for the infamous, secret treasure chest could be deadly. In 2010, an eccentric millionaire named Forrest Fenn said that he’d hidden a chest filled to the brim with gold and jewels somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The 19-kilogram (42 lb) chest holds antique coins, relics like an ancient Chinese jade carving, and a jar of Alaskan gold dust. Fenn left clues in the form of poetry and has dropped other hints throughout the years.

Ever since, treasure hunters have been scouring the hills in search of it, and two have died in the pursuit. Others have come close to death and wound up seriously injured. The problem is that treasure hunters don’t want to reveal their location to anyone at the risk of someone finding the chest before them, so nobody knows where they are when something goes wrong. This was not Fenn’s intention when he set the treasure hunt into motion. He had been diagnosed with cancer, and he wanted to leave behind a legacy that inspired people to explore the outdoors and pursue the thrill of the treasure hunt.^[7]

3 Time Capsule

On Spitsbergen, an island in the Svalbard archipelago, researchers created a time capsule that contains the history of civilization and preserves the science and technology of modern humans in 2017. They buried the 60-centimeter (24 in) stainless steel tube 5 meters (16 ft) deep in a fjord, where it won’t resurface for at least 500,000 years.

Within the tube, scientists have included DNA samples from humans, rats, salmon, and even potatoes to explain the biology of our time. There’s a bee frozen in resin and about 300 tardigrades, which are the microscopic “water bears” that can survive exposure to radiation and other extreme conditions. To inform the future discoverers of Earth’s geology, they included a chunk of a meteorite that’s 4.5 billion years old, sand from Namibia that has diamond particles, and lava from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. The technology they placed in the capsule includes electronic devices like a basic mobile phone but also more complex machinery like a radiation detector. They also threw in a photograph (etched into porcelain to extend its existence) of Earth taken from space.

The permafrost specialist who created this time capsule is Marek Lewandowski. He says, “I wanted to create a memorial for the ages.”^[8] So, he filled the container with objects for a distant, unimaginably different civilization to hopefully find and decode many years from now.

2 Graffiti

Graffiti can be found in the most unlikely of places. Not only are spray cans light and easy to carry, but humans have an insatiable propensity for leaving their mark. In Riverside, California, for example, there’s a local secret spot where people go to do just that.

It’s called Graffiti Waterfall, although it’s not a waterfall at all. It’s a giant mound of rocks tucked between hillsides, where just about every crevice is painted in bright, swirling colors. This mural has been touched by many people who dare to climb the steep and treacherous rock pile for the sake of creating something that simply says, “I was here.”^[9]

1 Nature Art

Andy Goldsworthy is the master when it comes to nature art, which entails working with natural materials that disappear over time by either ice melting, wind blowing, or rainfall. Whether it’s stacking ice between two tree trunks or laying down the petals of poppies in a bright red line down an ancient staircase in Spain, Goldsworthy surprises people by challenging their perception and creating an uncanny reality that makes you look twice. He’ll set down golden autumn leaves around the base of an old sycamore tree to make it appear as if the tree is glowing. He’ll use mud as his paint or ice as his clay. It doesn’t matter, as long as the materials are natural and overtaken by nature’s course eventually.^[10]

He never creates anything permanent, but he does photograph his work upon completion. Goldsworthy says, “It’s not about art, it’s just about life and the need to understand that a lot of things in life do not last.” His work is too bizarre and diverse to capture in words, so he’s made documentaries to capture his art and the process it takes to make it. If interested, check out the trailer above for Leaning Into the Wind to get an idea of what nature art is and the nerve it takes to create it. At times, he can put his life in danger for the pursuit of his creations, like balancing on icy rocks at night or walking through a mangrove swamp in Africa. He’ll be cut and bloodied by brambles and still go on making art that may only last for seconds and be seen by no one except him.

Every day, humans express themselves in a myriad of weird and wonderful ways. Our body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice all convey some form of meaning. From a subtly raised eyebrow to a sharp rejoinder, these signals dominate our every social interaction.

While we are intimately familiar with our own methods of communication, the rest of the animal kingdom has a few surprises up its sleeve.

Nature has conjured an amazingly diverse range of communication strategies. For example, some insects use chemical signaling to create trails. New-world monkeys wash themselves in their own urine to attract mates. And meerkats use auditory calls to warn each other about dangerous predators.

These messages are part of a fascinating evolutionary arms race. Animals on the bottom rung of the food chain may send bogus messages to confuse eavesdropping predators. Other times, a predatory animal will broadcast deceptive signals, luring its prey into a brutal death trap.

As this list reveals, having an effective communication strategy can be the difference between life and death. To quote the English poet Alfred Tennyson: “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”

10 Deaf Moths Click Their Wings

Many insect eaters feast on a nutritious diet of mosquitoes and moths. But several species of moth are starting to fight back. Curiously, the Yponomeuta moth “talks” its way out of trouble.

The deaf creature’s wings are packed with sound-producing structures called tymbals. As the critter beats its delicate wings, these translucent structures twist and turn. This buckling triggers a series of ultrasonic clicks that its nemesis, the predatory bat, detects via echolocation.

But what do these signals do?

While some moths produce ultrasound to acoustically “jam” a bat’s sonar capabilities, the Yponomeuta has its own cunning trick. They mimic the clicking noises of the more toxic tiger moths. Over time, the bats associated these clicks with poisonous moths and so learned to avoid them.^[1]

Some grass moths whisper “ultrasonic courtship songs” to serenade potential mates. As part of the species’ survival strategy, the males can only beam these sounds over a very short distance. Too much excitement and the moth could end up as bat food.

9 Tree-Cuddling, Urine-Spraying Bears

Bears have a strange way of making themselves known. These solitary creatures are often seen rubbing their backs against trees, almost as if they have an interminable itch. By the end of this display, the tree is peppered in the creature’s thick fur. The scratches, bite marks, and oozing tree sap send a clear message to other bears in the region: “This is my territory.”

Brown bears use a range of chemical signals to mark territory and assert their dominance. For example, anal gland secretions and urine are commonly sprayed across the local flora. Bears have an astonishing sense of smell, so these chemical signposts are easily detected.

Large brown bears use the trees to send messages about their status in the hierarchy. Subordinate bears then decode these messages to avoid potentially deadly confrontations with dominant bears. According to biologist and bear researcher Melanie Clapham, “rub trees” ensure that bears at every level of the hierarchy have safe access to females and feeding sites.

It is likely that some cubs use rub trees to protect themselves. Adult males have been known to kill cubs in a bid to mate with new mothers. Researchers have evidence to suggest that these cubs will try to ape the smell of a dominant bear by pressing up against scent-laden trees.^[2]

Both brown bears and polar bears have large sweat glands between their toes. As they stomp around on all fours, the creatures’ paws release distinctive scents. This pungent aroma reveals a bear’s sex and reproductive status. Sometimes, the bear will go that extra mile, mashing its own urine and sweat secretions into the ground.

8 Sneeze For Democracy

The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is an endangered species native to sub-Saharan Africa. These pack hunters typically fall in line with the strongest members of their group. The dominant male bonds with the dominant female, and the pair govern the pack’s day-to-day activities. But the dogs seem to show a curious appreciation for democracy, too.

In 2014, a team of researchers went out to the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust to study the behaviors of the wild dogs. The zoologists were surprised to learn that the dogs were conducting their own social rallies.

The vote system was even more perplexing. After forming an assembly, the wild dogs would sneeze at one another to indicate their preferences. The more sneezes issued, the more likely the pack commenced a hunt.

A “sneeze threshold”—called the “quorum”—is needed before the pack comes to an agreement. If the social rally is initiated by a lower-ranked dog, around 10 sneezes are needed. But if a dominant male or female calls a rally, the threshold could be as low as three sneezes.^[3]

Similar coordination has been observed in meerkats. A chorus of “moving calls” is needed to bring about a democratic consensus over where to forage. When three or more meerkats issue the call, the mob must work together to find a new site.

7 The Internet Of Fungus

Beneath our very feet lies a giant information superhighway, similar to the Internet but biological. This network is comprised of tiny fungal threads called mycelium. Hundreds of millions of years ago, some of these networks even seeded enormous tree-sized fungi that burst from the soil.

Today, these sprawling networks can grow to astronomical sizes. The soil around the Blue Mountains of Oregon is home to a fungal network that spans a staggering 2,384 acres. This 2,400-year-old fungus is Earth’s largest known organism.^[4]

Fungi have a mutually beneficial relationship with 90 percent of all land-based plants. Mycelial networks form around the roots of plants and trees, protecting them from harmful bacteria and improving nutrient uptake. They decompose plant matter, maintain healthy soil, and feed nutrients from one plant to another.

For example, members of many tree species use these networks to share nutrients with young, undernourished trees. In exchange for this service, the fungi receive a source of carbohydrates.

Individual plants can essentially talk to one another through the mycelial network. In 2010, Chinese researchers discovered that tomato plants use these fungal structures to send distress signals.

After encountering a deadly organism, infected plants would use the mycelial network to share information with their neighbors. The healthy plants would then produce defensive enzymes to resist the disease.

6 Spit-Swapping Ants Leave Pheromone Trails

Ants are highly social insects that live and work in large colonies. Coordination of nest construction, navigation, and colony defense are all achieved using a range of biological tools.

Ants often use pheromones to mark a food trail, showing other colony members where to forage. Other ants detect these chemical signals with their antennae and join the trail. As more and more ants strap on their work boots and join the trail, the pheromone scent grows stronger. This entices even larger numbers of ants to join in.

An ant secretes a cocktail of pheromones from the glands lining its abdomen, thorax, anus, and feet. The composition of this pheromone mixture plays a crucial role in communicating different ideas about a food trail. A trail’s scent tells an ant about both rewarding and unrewarding paths. Short-term scents can even serve as “attack signals” which direct the colony toward nearby prey.

Ants also exchange saliva as a means of recognizing different nest mates. This rather curious display, which looks a lot like mouth-to-mouth kissing, is called trophallaxis. The saliva contains pheromones, hormones, food, and genetic material. This exchange provides chemical information on the colony and reproductive status of a worker.^[5]

5 The Honeybee Waggle Dance

During the spring, honeybee workers scour the countryside in search of nectar, pollen, water, and tree resin. As with the humble ant, each individual bee must communicate its findings with the rest of the hive. The honeybee uses a very specific dance routine to do this: the waggle dance.

At first glance, the waggle dance may appear rather haphazard. But the carefully choreographed routine actually conveys a lot of very useful information.

First, the bee must grab the attention of its fellow nectar lovers. It clambers atop another bee and vibrates rapidly. When a large enough crowd has formed, the bee starts to bust some moves. It waggles its body while moving in a straight line. The duration of this “waggle run” tells the others how far away the flower patch is.

The dance direction tells the bees which way they must fly with respect to the Sun. If the dancer is jiggling upward, then the food is located in the direction of the Sun on the horizon. If the bee is facing downward, then the food is located in the opposite direction to the Sun on the horizon.

The dancing honeybee may provide onlookers with a sample of what she has found, regurgitating some of the nectar from her stomach. Before taking flight, the colony members sniff the dancer to get a better idea of what flower patch they are looking for.^[6]

4 African Knifefish Use Electrolocation

In 1949, British zoologist Hans W. Lissmann was enjoying a trip to the London Zoo when he noticed something unusual in one of the aquarium tanks. One of the fish demonstrated an incredible aptitude for swimming in reverse, blindly weaving around obstacles dotted about the tank.

It was the African knifefish. Lissmann already knew that the creature had an organ that could generate weak electric discharges. But he began to wonder whether these discharges were helping the fish navigate.

As luck would have it, Lissmann was given an African knifefish as a wedding gift. Within a short time, the researcher had answers. It became clear that the fish was transmitting electric fields from a small organ in its tail.

The distortions in these signals, which are detected via receptors in the skin, told the fish about its environment. Incredibly, the creature could distinguish between different materials based upon an object’s electrical conductivity.

Mormyrid fish not only use these electric organs to hunt in the murky depths of rivers and lakes but to also send coded messages to one another. Different discharge patterns indicate the behaviors, sex, species, and social status of the fish.

A particular type of mormyrid, the bulldog fish, uses electricity as part of its courtship ritual. The females are attracted to longer pulses as they are a sign of a strong partner. There is a slight problem, though. Predatory catfish have been known to intercept these signals, catching the crooning male with his pants down.^[7]

3 Crested Pigeons Use Wing Whistling

Crested pigeons have evolved a warning system that broadcasts information about potential predators. The crested pigeon, Ocyphaps lophotes, is native to mainland Australia. The bird has a very distinctive appearance with its green-purple wings and mohawk-like crest.

When startled, the bird launches into the sky and emits a series of panic-induced whistles. But these noises are not produced by the bird’s vocal cords. They are the result of vibrations in a part of the wing—specifically, the eighth primary feather.

With each upstroke of the wing, a low-frequency note is generated. Each downstroke produces a high-frequency note. The bird frantically flaps its wings while trying to escape an incoming predator. This triggers a quick succession of high and low notes, which other crested pigeons interpret as a warning signal.

Crested pigeons always whistle when taking off. However, a relaxed takeoff does not initiate any sort of warning signal. This is because the wing beat is too slow, resulting in a slower tempo of notes.^[8]

2 White-Lipped Frogs Communicate via Seismic Signals

During the 1980s, physiologist Peter Narins participated in a field trip to the El Yunque National Forest of Puerto Rico. The animal kingdom asserted its might, filling the professor’s ears with “a cacophony as loud as a subway train passing 6 meters (20 ft) away.” But Narins took a much keener interest in what was happening closer to the ground.

While observing the white-lipped frog, Leptodactylus albilabris, Narins noticed some unusual behavior. The nocturnal amphibian buried its rear in the ground and repeatedly inflated its vocal sac. The research team used geophones to listen in. As the frog chirped away, its sac would strike the ground and generate a sequence of thumps.

It turns out that this ritual was part of a territorial announcement issued by male frogs. The white-lipped frog is small and cannot compete with the bellowing croaks of much larger frogs. So the clever little guy evolved a rather ingenious work-around.

The inner ear of L. albilabris boasts a crystal-filled structure—the sacculus—which behaves like a biological seismometer. When the frog’s vocal sac inflates, the resultant vibrations travel through the ground and trigger the sacculi of nearby frogs. These signals allow male frogs to pinpoint one another and maintain their distance.

Narins went one step further and created his own faux frog out of spare typewriter parts. When he mimicked the thumping pattern, all the frogs within a 3-meter (10 ft) radius would respond in unison.^[9]

1 Elephants Use Sign Language, Sniffing, And Rumbles

Elephants are the masters of communication. These gentle giants communicate using touch, smell, acoustics, and sign language.

Elephant researcher and biologist Joyce Poole discovered that elephants use over 200 different calls and gestures. After studying the creatures for 40 years, Poole can reliably predict what an elephant will do based upon its posture, movement, and sounds. From the curl of a trunk to the flick of a head, each movement is deliberate and meaningful.

“I noticed that when I would take out guests visiting Amboseli [National Park in Kenya] and was narrating the elephants’ behavior,” explained Poole, “I got to the point where 90 percent of the time, I could predict what the elephant was about to do.”

Poole used her findings to create a database of elephant language. She even helped develop an online translator. Like humans, elephants have different personalities. Some elephants are coy and subtle. Others are expressive and outgoing.

An elephant that stands tall and spreads its ears is projecting aggression. Head waggling is a sign of playfulness. Foot-swinging gestures are a way of telling the herd which way to travel. And trunk “high-fiving” is seen during times of celebration.

An elephant adopts the “freeze position” when it espies potential danger. It alerts its allies by trumpeting a mix of high- and low-frequency sounds.^[10] The high-frequency sounds travel a short distance through the air. Low-frequency rumbles travel seismically over a much greater distance, typically between 8–10 kilometers (5–6 mi).

The Earth’s vibrations are detected in special nerve endings in the elephant’s trunk and feet. This allows elephants to talk to each other when separated. An elephant can even sense a zeal of stampeding zebra from several miles away.

An elephant’s trunk is essential for communication, too. Their trunks are packed with millions of olfactory receptor cells, giving elephants an incredible sense of smell.

Elephants will sniff and taste each other’s urine, feces, and secretions for chemicals. During bonding ceremonies, the females become so excited that they defecate and urinate everywhere. Important information about a herd member’s physiological state is encoded within these scents.

The trunk is also used during social rubbing to reinforce bonds between close family members.

The natural world has a few hiccups; from stacked trees to square seas, the results can be weird. However, sometimes, the quirks in nature evolved due to survival.

It is the reason why America has a goldfish plague and an extinct bird made a comeback. Some oddities remain mysterious, like sea life trapped in amber and the night a weather team tracked something huge until it vanished.

SEE ALSO: 10 Recent Stories That Prove Mother Nature Is Screwing With Us

10 Beluga-Narwhal Hybrids

During the 1980s, an Inuit hunter shot three whales in Greenland. One sank from his reach. The other’s remains were left on the beach and eventually washed away. The man kept the skull of the third.

He was confused by the creatures. They were unfamiliar—with gray bodies, strangely sideways teeth, fins like belugas, and tails like narwhals. The confusion spread to the scientific world when a visiting researcher brought the skull back to a museum in Denmark. Nobody had seen anything like it, and although a beluga-narwhal hybrid was suspected, it could not be proven.

Recently, scientists relied on modern research techniques to find the answer. They extracted DNA from the teeth and found that their predecessors were correct. The genes revealed that the creature was male with a narwhal mother and a beluga father.

It lacked the unicorn-like tusk of male narwhals, its head was bigger than both its parents, and chemical analysis showed that it had a different diet. Perhaps due to its unusual teeth, this creature foraged at the bottom of the sea while belugas and narwhals never do.^[1]

9 Blue-Eyed Coyotes

Coyotes look at the world with golden brown eyes. For this reason, it came as a shock when five coyotes in California turned up with piercing blue eyes. When the photographic evidence was shown to experts of eye color in wildlife, nobody had seen anything like it. Two of the animals trotted around in Point Reyes while the rest lived in Santa Cruz and Sacramento.

In wild animals, eye color remains consistent. This drastic change is still unsolved, but at least researchers have ruled out interbreeding with dogs. Domestic dogs sometimes have blue eyes, and they do have puppies with coyotes. However, these crossbreeds have distinctive faces and coat colors but never blue eyes.^[2]

A genetic mutation is more likely. The suspicion is that a single coyote was born with blue eyes a few generations ago and the California five could be this animal’s descendants.

8 Goldfish Invasion

In 2019, a goldfish was pulled from the Niagara River in New York. At 36 centimeters (14 in) long, it was enormous. The creature, which could have been an abandoned pet, was not the biggest to be captured in the US wild.

In 2013, California’s Lake Tahoe produced a 61-centimeter-long (24 in) goldfish weighing 2 kilograms (4 lb). It’s not clear how this member of the carp family got into the waterways as they are native to Asia.^[3]

However, fish that were flushed down the toilet or illegally released as well as goldfish escaping from bait buckets must all have contributed to the growing problem. They are hardy, breed prolifically, and often outcompete native species.

As far as anyone can tell, this popular aquarium fish is now a serious invasive species that was first noticed in New York’s waterways in 1842. The orange plague spread, and today, the Great Lakes ripple with tens of millions of goldfish.

7 Three-Eyed Snake

The rangers suspected that he had two heads which had fused together during development. However, the images clearly showed that this was not the case. Instead, Monty had one skull with three eye sockets. Even more astoundingly, the eyeball seemed to work. For this to happen, the python had to grow an extra optic nerve and undergo major changes to the brain, likely while Monty was still an embryo.

Although he eventually died at two months old, it was still longer than most snakes born with bone deformities. They usually perish within days. In Monty’s case, his abnormal skull made eating difficult and that could have contributed to his death.^[4]

6 The Bug Blob

One night in 2019, a meteorologist in California noticed a blip on the radar. It indicated that something enormous was moving over San Bernardino County, which was confusing. The air was supposed to be clear and free of radar blobs like rain and thunderstorms. Whatever it was, it measured 130 kilometers (80 mi) by 130 kilometers (80 mi).

The team dispatched people on the ground to have a look the old-fashioned way—with their eyes. They found no rain despite the radar showing that the mass consisted of raindrop-sized objects. Instead, there was a swarm of ladybugs.

Although it was in the right place, the cloud of beetles did not match the mysterious blob’s size. Even though the main mass of the swarm occupied an area of just 16 kilometers (10 mi) across, the ground spotters concluded that the insects were responsible.

Several ecologists and insect experts did not agree, but they were surprised that so many ladybugs had gathered when their numbers were supposed to be low. The reason for the mass migration remains unsolved. The blob also vanished from the radar, taking any explanations with it.^[5]

SEE ALSO: 10 Weird And Wonderful Oddities Of Nature

5 A Blonde Zebra

In 2019, Sergio Pitamitz waited near a watering hole in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. The wildlife photographer wanted pictures of migrating zebras. When he noticed a pale zebra arrive with its herd, Pitamitz thought the animal was just dusty. However, when it entered the water and the “dust” stayed, he knew he was looking at something special.

So-called “blonde” zebras remain a mystery. While they exist in captivity, these suspected albinos were a rumor in the wild until the Pitamitz photographs. The extremely rare condition is thought to be partial albinism, resulting in pale yellow stripes and manes.

Captive zebras are skittish, making genetic tests difficult. But thus far, the blonde animals behave like normal black-and-white zebras. They are fully accepted by their herds, with whom they bond and even reproduce.^[6]

As the specimen in Tanzania proved, they can also survive into adulthood in the wild. As researchers cannot agree about the reason for zebra stripes, they do not yet know if yellow zebras face any special challenges because of their condition.

4 A Tree On A Tree

Nestled between the towns of Casorzo and Grana in the Piemonte region of Italy stands a natural oddity. Locals call it the Bialbero de Casorzo. It is a cherry tree standing on a mulberry tree. The latter is an old, gnarly customer, and the cherry’s growth had somewhat flattened the mulberry’s crown.

This phenomenon calls the top tree an “epiphyte.” Such passengers are not parasitic and do not feed on the tree below. Instead, they get their energy from the sun, the rain, and the debris surrounding their roots.

What makes the cherry tree so unusual is its good looks. Normally, epiphytes are short-lived and stunted because they struggle to get the nutrients they need.

The cherry tree is fully grown and handsome with health, resembling its brethren that grow on land. Its roots likely snaked down the mulberry’s hollow trunk and grew into the soil below. It remains a mystery as to how the two trees merged. The most plausible theory suggests that a bird dropped a cherry pip onto the mulberry.^[7]

3 Sea Life In Amber

Myanmar amber from Asia is the Rolls Royce of amber. It often produces rare fossils from 100 million years ago that look like they died a few seconds ago. In 2019, a piece of Myanmar amber outperformed every expectation.

Until then, all the fossils had been land creatures. However, this one contained sea life. Barely as long as somebody’s thumb, the chunk was packed with 36 land species. They included mites, spiders, and insects. This was already an astonishing concentration of organisms. From the ocean, there were four snails, a marine ammonite, and up to seven tidal isopods. There were also grains of beach sand.

Amber forms from tree resin, something that will never solidify underwater. Somehow, the sea creatures got trapped with the other species on land. Some of the shells were eroded, and none had soft tissues.

This suggested that the ocean bits had long since died by the time they ended up in the pine forest. Although a tsunami could have carried them into the forest, it was more likely that the trees were close to the beach and dropped resin onto the sand, capturing both land creatures and the old shells.^[8]

2 A Bird That Evolved Twice

Nobody knows why the birds left Madagascar. This ancient migration ended when the white-throated rails (Dryolimnas cuvieri) found a new home among the Seychelle Islands. They landed on a reef called the Aldabra atoll, a circular haven free of predators.

As time went by, the peaceful existence caused the birds to lose their ability to fly. Around 136,000 years ago, floods engulfed the atoll and the flightless rails became extinct. For 36,000 years, the reef remained submerged. But as an ice age arrived and water levels dropped, the atoll resurfaced.

Incredibly, sometime later, the same thing happened. White-throated rails left Madagascar, landed on Aldabra, and evolved to be flightless—thousands of years after the first clutch. For a single species to evolve in an identical manner twice and independently is known as “iterative evolution.” The phenomenon is rare, and the fossils from the reef remain unique.^[9]

1 Square Waves

A “cross sea” is an unforgettable sight. This rare phenomenon seems to break the rules on how waves work. Instead of rolling in one direction or toward the shore, a cross sea looks like somebody took a pen and drew squares on the water. The “squares” are formed by waves coming from different directions.

For instance, one set of waves follows the normal pull toward the shore but a strong wind creates an extra set of waves going against them. This forms the perfectly square pattern.

As spellbinding as it appears, a cross sea is hazardous. Two opposing swells hitting a swimmer or boat can be dangerously destabilizing. Another factor making the waves deadly is that they can appear within minutes.^[10]

Worse, they often coincide with rip tides. The latter are powerful currents that few swimmers are able to escape. To top it off, a cross sea is more likely to develop near shallow coastal areas where people swim, surf, and enjoy the day in small boats.

Humans have long prized uniqueness. Many people wear it like a badge of honor if they are “not like other people” and march to the beat of their own drum. If you have a unique skill or ability, this is even more highly prized. After all, who wouldn’t want to be the best at something?

In the animal kingdom there are tons of creatures with unique skills, too. And some of them are so unique only one organism can lay claim to them. 

10. Sponges Can Reassemble Themselves After Being Destroyed

Toughness is a nebulous term to define, especially as it relates to a living thing. It can mean strength or resilience or endurance. Is a gorilla tougher than a blobfish because it has more physical strength while a blobfish can endure crushing ocean depths? It’s all relative. 

By most any metric, a sea sponge has to be considered tough thanks to one remarkable skill it has that you won’t find in any other creatures. You can almost completely destroy a sponge and it will pull itself together.

Like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, you can break a sponge down to its very cells and it will reassemble. If you force a sponge through a fine cloth, the individual cells can reconnect where they fall on the other side over several days and form into new sponges, making it nearly indestructible in terms of physical damage.

9. Elephants Can Understand Pointing Without Being Trained

Have you ever tried to point something out to your cat or dog? As in literally pointing at something you wanted them to notice? Chances are your cat rubbed its face on your outstretched finger if it paid you any mind at all. And if your dog has not been trained to understand this gesture, it might just look at you expectantly.

Pointing is not a gesture animals understand naturally because animals are not inclined to use such a gesture or link it to the meaning humans ascribe to it. Elephants, however, have been shown to have such a complex social system that they also use non-verbal gestures to communicate which includes using their trunks to point. As such, elephants can understand the meaning of a human pointing like no other animal. 

Research has shown that elephants can be trained to understand vocal commands, but they could spontaneously and without explanation understand when humans pointed things out and used the gesture to locate food. Even chimpanzees cannot grasp what pointing is for right away. 

8. Pronghorns Are The only Animal With Horns That Branch and Shed Like Antlers

There are a good number of animals in the world that have horns or antlers and they take on a variety of shapes and sizes. One of the fundamental differences between horns and antlers is that horns grow as a permanent fixture of the animal while antlers grow, shed, and then regrow later. This is true of all animals except the pronghorn.

For most creatures, antlers are an extension of the skull. They are bone and usually only found in males. Horns have a two-part structure. Bone is on the inside but the outside is a coating like human fingernails. While antlers continue to branch as they grow, as seen in elk and moose, horns do not branch. Except, again, for the pronghorn.

Unlike all other similar creatures, a pronghorn grows branched horns and they will shed them and regrow them again. So, in function, they are like antlers but in form they are horns.

7. Australian Firehawks Are The Only Animals That Use Fire to Hunt

With a name like firehawk you have to assume there’s a cool story behind these Australian birds and there definitely is. According to Aboriginal stories, firehawks are sacred and brought the gift of fire to humankind. The reason these stories exist is that firehawks are the only animals that actively use fire to hunt. 

The firehawks, which constitute several species of bird of which some can grow to about two feet, have been observed many times. They actively seek fire and large groups of them have been seen circling above man made fires or forest fires. They have learned that fire will flush out prey animals and give them an opportunity to hunt.

More interesting, however, is that the birds now take a proactive approach to fire. They will pick up burning branches and carry them a distance across a road or even across a human made firewall so they can set new fires. 

6. Ants Are The Only Creatures to Have Domesticated Another One

Humans began domesticating animals over 10,000 years ago and we’ve done it many times. Not just dogs but goats, sheep, horses, chickens, all have been domesticated to a greater or lesser degree. Domesticating animals was one of the cornerstones of civilization as it allowed for farming and community to thrive. It is a unique trait that humans have developed but it is not wholly unique. One other creature has pulled it off – ants.

In the simplest of terms, ants have domesticated aphids and farm them. Like humans with livestock, ants can herd aphids to where they want them. The aphids feed on plants and produce a sweet liquid called honeydew that the ants eat. When the plant runs dry in a spot because of overfeeding, the ants will herd the aphids to a new spot. This is good for the aphids who get more food and good for the ants who get more honeydew.

The relationship does not end here, either. Ants will also protect the aphids from predators and even from the cold when the weather turns by carrying them into their dens. The aphids, in turn, let the ants milk them just like small, six-legged cows. 

The relationship is so complex that there are some ant colonies that have farmer ants. Just like some care for the eggs and some forage for food, some will only tend to aphids. Their sole duty is to care for them and carry them around. 

Another rare species of ant has been shown to engage in what is called predatory mutualism. These ants live in huge colonies with insects similar to aphids but research into their stomach contents has shown they don’t farm these ones for honeydew, but meat. They protect the entire colony at the cost of eating a few. 

5. Sea Slugs Are the Only Animal Capable of Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the process through which plants turn light into chemical energy. In rudimentary terms, while animals like humans eat food, plants like a maple tree eat sunlight. Both are converted to energy to sustain life and so far so good for all of us.

The sacoglossan sea slug stands alone as the bizarre bridge between us and maple trees. These animals can eat food for chemical energy. But, in a pinch, they can also photosynthesize it.

The method by which the slugs have a foot in both worlds is just as bizarre as you’d think. They can’t naturally engage in photosynthesis but what they can do is co-opt the chemical process thanks to the food they eat. Sort of like how a poison dart frog gets its poison from the bugs it eats, these sea slugs eat algae that is capable of photosynthesis and store the chloroplasts in their flesh. 

The chloroplast doesn’t seem to care where it is when it turns light into energy so the cells can keep working for months in the bodies of the slugs, providing extra energy for the animal host. It’s unclear to science how the slugs can preserve the cells in their own body but they do a decent job of it. 

4. Owls Can Do a Full Head Rotation of Over 400 Degrees

Most of us have seen images or video of an owl turning its head around backwards in a cool if somewhat spooky display of their range of neck motion. It’s a unique trait of the owl but that trait is a lot more significant than it seems at first. 

To start with, an owl doesn’t just turn its head around. That would be a mere 180 degrees of motion and who cares about such a paltry range? A tarsier can turn its head almost 180 degrees. If you consider turning left and right that means the tarsier has a nearly 360 range of motion. Owls are not about to be beaten by the tarsier.

An owl can actually extend beyond 180 degrees when it turns its head. The range of motion for a half turn like that is over 200 degrees for an owl, some up to 270 degrees in each direction. That means that the full range of motion for an owl is over 400 to 540 degrees. It can see around itself in a full circle and then some.

Owls have fixed eye sockets, so they can’t follow things just by moving their eyes. Their necks adapted to make it easier for them to track prey without having to lose sight of it no matter where it went. The head of an owl is only connected by a single pivot point unlike humans which have two, thus limited out range of motion. Because everything is more flexible, owls can exploit this remarkable range like no other animal. 

3. Pangolins Are The Only Mammals With Scales

Every classification of life seems to have one or two of those weirdos who don’t seem to fit in. A platypus is a mammal, but it lays eggs. Fish like lungfish and snakeheads can breathe oxygen out of the water for days. And the pangolin is a mammal that has scales.

The scales of the pangolin are made of keratin, like hair and fingernails. They use the scales on their tails defensively and they also roll into a ball when threatened, making them very hard for most predators to get to. 

The animals are threatened in many areas because of the illegal trade in their meat and scales. Efforts to study them have been hindered by the fact they do very poorly in captivity. Studying them is so hard, in fact, we don’t even know what their natural lifespan is. 

2. Firefly Squid Produce Light Through Protein Crystals

Many organisms can produce light, from luminescent algae to certain mushrooms and, of course, fireflies. The firefly squid, however, has an entirely unique method of doing this. 

Fireflies produce light chemically inside of themselves but the squid, which emit blue light at the tips of their tentacles, are the only animals capable of making light from protein crystals. But they are chemically similar to what makes a firefly glow, despite the species being so different. They’re also unique among other luminescent squid since the other species glow thanks to bacteria and not light produced by the animal itself. 

1. A Salmon Parasite Is the Only Animal That Doesn’t Need Oxygen

One thing that seems to unite the animal kingdom is breathing. Whether through lungs or across gills, everything needs to breathe something. That’s what we thought, anyway. Opinions changed in 2020 with the study of the parasite Henneguya salminicola.

The parasite is remarkably small and has less than 10 cells. They inhabit the flesh of salmon and have adapted to not breath while still thriving. The little critter, the only multicellular organism we know of that doesn’t need air, is related to jellyfish and coral. Instead of oxygen it steals the nutrients it needs from the body of the salmon, bypassing the need to do such things itself.

While most creatures have cell mitochondria converting food to energy, the parasite doesn’t. They have no mitochondria genome so their cells don’t need to worry about energy production and gene copying.

Nature is a funny thing, in that it can provide for us just as easily as it can lead to our destruction. From extinction events to tsunamis to volcanic eruptions, Mother Nature has proven to be deadlier than the biggest cinematic kaiju. Given the rampant amount of these events that have happened here on Earth, it’s honestly amazing that we’re still here today. With that in mind, these are 10 times that humanity was nearly stomped out by events beyond our control. 

10. The 1811–1812 New Madrid Earthquakes

When it comes to natural disasters, earthquakes are definitely high on the ranking for the most dangerous and unpredictable. Case in point, the New Madrid Earthquakes that occurred in Missouri in both the years 1811 and 1812. Per the United States Geological Survey, there were a total of three earthquakes that devastated the region over the course of three months. These nearly-rapid-fire earthquakes are still regarded as some of the most significant ever recorded in North America, even having a lasting effect on the area. 

When the first quake kicked off in December 1811, the shocks only grew in magnitude, with the most powerful arriving on January 23, 1812. Given the destructive power of the seismic activity, it was felt from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, causing widespread destruction! Not only that, but they were so powerful that they created new lakes and dramatically changed the course of the Mississippi River. 

These quakes were so powerful that the tremors that followed persisted for months, with aftershocks still being felt years later. It was because of the 1811–1812 New Madrid Earthquakes that research into earthquakes was taken far more seriously for the sake of preparedness and monitoring in the United States.

9. The K-Pg Extinction Event (Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction)

Let’s discuss arguably one of Earth’s biggest mass extinction events. That being the K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) Extinction Event, often referred to as the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) Extinction, occurred close to 66 million years ago. Serving as a brutal transition between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, the event is best known for wiping out the dinosaurs. 

As noted by Britannica, the event is commonly accepted to have been caused by the impact of a gigantic asteroid colliding with Earth’s surface. After crashing into what is now known as Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, the impact not only caused massive wildfires and tsunamis, it also released ample debris into the atmosphere. This scattered debris resulted in a quasi-nuclear winter which, after blocking out the sun, resulted in reduced temperatures and the death of plant life.

But, as mentioned previously, the biggest casualty of this event was, of course, the dinosaurs, which went completely extinct as a result. Nowadays, all we have to remember about these once mighty creatures is their fossilized remains and the Jurassic Park movies. More importantly, the event still stands as one of the most major instances of Earth surviving, what could have been, a world-ending event. 

8. The Toba Supervolcano Eruption

Nearly 74,000 years ago, the Toba Supervolcano eruption rocked what is known in the modern day as Indonesia. Per Communications Earth & Environment, the volcanic eruption released a staggering 2,800 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash and smoke into the atmosphere. Volcanic ash and atmospheric debris seem to be a recurring factor among many extinction or near-extinction level events and this is no exception.   

Much like with K-Pg, a volcanically-induced winter covered the earth, massively affecting the ecosystem once again, but this time with a twist. According to the Max Planck Institute, early humans, or Homo sapiens, were severely affected by these negatively altered conditions, severely reducing the previously existing amount of them. Unlike with the dinosaurs, however, this near-cataclysm was not a full extinction of another species, evidenced by the fact that you are reading this article right now. One can even make an argument that it was the conditions brought on by the Toba Supervolcano Eruption that resulted in humanity’s genetic diversity. 

It is impressive that the Earth was geologically sturdy enough to survive something like this, same goes for the surviving Homo sapiens as well. While not brought up as much as the K-Pg Extinction Event, the Toba Supervolcano Eruption is another prime example of humanity dodging a sizable bullet. 

7. The 1815 Tambora Eruption

During April 1815, Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted with a force that can only be likened to the wrath of an actual god. As explained in the pages of Smithsonian Magazine, the eruption sent volcanic ash, smoke, and fumes more than 40 kilometers into the air and into Earth’s atmosphere. What followed were destructive bouts of pyroclastic flows, tsunamis, and rain comprised of ash and pumice, all of which devastated the nearby areas. 

However, it didn’t end there, as the debris now littering the sky resulted in a sizable cooling of the Earth’s climate. In 1816, the Earth experienced what is now referred to as “The Year Without a Summer,” causing people’s crops to die en masse. This resulted in famine in both North America and Europe, which was then compounded by the ensuing destabilization of the economy and everyday life as well. 

It’s a harsh reminder of just how devastating volcanic eruptions can be, especially for the inhabitants of the planet. Additionally, it’s more than a little terrifying to imagine a year without the sun, as well as the aggressive effects it would have on our daily rhythms. 

6. The Magnetic Wandering Event

Breaking from meteoric impacts and volcanic cataclysms for a moment, it’s time to dive into the Magnetic Wandering Event. It’s a curious piece of Earth’s history and one that, once explained, really makes you consider the importance of magnetic shifts. Per information provided by GeoScience World, roughly 40-42 thousand years ago, Earth’s magnetic field underwent a major change, causing the magnetic poles to begin moving erratically. Magnetic Poles are defined as regions at each end of a magnet where the external magnetic field is strongest. 

Acting as a force field of sorts, Earth’s magnetic field mainly protects it against cosmic radiation, but when the poles switch, much like with the Magnetic Wandering Event, the shield weakens, which leaves the Earth vulnerable to high-energy particles. With this in mind, recent research has led scientists to theorize that this particular event is very likely a major culprit in the extinction of the Denisovans and Neanderthals.

With Earth’s magnetic force field in flux, the planet found itself bombarded by cosmic radiation, evident by an increase in carbon-14 levels. These conditions caused an ice sheet to envelope North America, more than likely making conditions quite tough for the population at the time. Prof. Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales even stated, “It probably would have seemed like the end of days.”

5. The 536 AD Mystery

You very well might’ve lived through some tumultuous years in your life, but just be thankful that it wasn’t anything like 536 AD. This is one of the more mysterious events on this list as, even today, historians and scientists are still debating its cause. However, as noted by the Science publication, the most likely cause has been determined to have been a volcanic eruption. This eruption in question was located in either Iceland or North America, releasing a surplus of debris into the atmosphere. This thick layer of volcanic materials led to a volcanic winter which sent Earth spiraling into a state of extreme cold and prolonged darkness.

This prolonged winter led to crop failures, famine, and widespread starvation, which resulted in not only social unrest but mass migrations of various populations as well. Given these harsh, volcanically induced conditions, this means that it has a lot in common with the 1815 Tambora Eruption and the Toba Supervolcano Eruption as well. It also serves as another prime example of humanity surviving another twist of fate from Mother Nature when it very easily could’ve been wiped out entirely. 

4. The 1908 Tunguska Event

In the year 1908, Siberia experienced an event that, even to this very day, is still being discussed and studied. The Tunguska Event was a powerful explosion that was so powerful it was able to knock down close to 80 million trees. Thankfully, the area of impact wasn’t heavily populated. There were no human casualties. Research has led many to believe that the event was caused by the airburst of a meteoroid or comet fragment in Earth’s atmosphere. 

As far as cosmic events go, it’s still regarded as one of the most significant in recorded human history, and it’s not hard to see why. Looking at pictures of the event’s aftermath it almost feels like something you’d see in a piece of fiction but unbelievably, it’s genuine. Not only did the Tunguska Event obliterate 2,000 square kilometers of forest, but it also caused seismic shockwaves that were felt worldwide. 

Curiously, when scientists conducted expeditions to study the event’s aftermath, they discovered no visible impact crater of any kind. This supports the idea that the object more than likely disintegrated in Earth’s atmosphere before what would’ve been its impact. The 1908 Tunguska Event still stands as a sobering example of just how important it is for humanity to keep watching the skies. 

3. The Threat of Near-Earth Objects

Expanding our scope for a moment, let’s discuss the threat of Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, and what exactly they’re capable of. NEOs include the likes of asteroids and comets that have orbits strong enough to bring them close to Earth. The threat of these NEOS remains a significant concern for organizations like NASA, who see them as a significant concern for planetary safety.

The Chelyabinsk meteor event in 2013 serves as a prime example of just how dangerous NEOs can be and why they warrant constant vigilance. Caused by a powerful airburst over Russia, the event created a flash on par with the brightness of the sun and created a shockwave equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT. Further still, the event proved to be so powerful that it resulted in the injuries of several people and extensive property damage.

This is just one example of how devastating NEOs can be and shows why they’ve become a primary concern for NASA. In fact, NASA continues to develop technological innovations and strategies for NEO prevention alongside various international partners. These innovations and strategies include the development of spacecraft and various techniques to change an impending NEO’s trajectory should one be detected.

2. Modern Day Climate Change

The topic of climate change will never leave the spotlight and, in all honesty, it never should. While some may still choose to ignore or even downplay the effects of climate change, its consequences have become too widespread and significant to ignore.

For starters, there has been a global increase in temperatures, resulting in severe mortality rates, reduced productivity, and damage to infrastructure. This is due in major part to the excessive release of greenhouse gasses, most notably carbon dioxide, which is often the result of burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and negligent industrial processes.

These increases in temperature ducktail right into another unfortunate byproduct of climate change, the rise of sea levels. With polar ice caps and glaciers melting at increasing speeds, this means that coastal communities are at greater risk of both flooding and erosion. Add to that the risks that it presents to wildlife, as well as underwater ecosystems, and the whole situation becomes exceedingly more dire. However, this is still an ongoing situation, with many working hard in an attempt to mitigate the effects and even course-correct certain contributing factors. Most notably, the Paris Agreement’s main goal is seeking to lessen the impacts of climate change and develop strategies for a more sustainable future.

1. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

When it comes to more modern disasters, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami is still one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. On December 26, 2004, a massive undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1–9.3 began off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The energy of this quake was enough to displace the seafloor and generate a series of powerful tsunami waves that radiated outward across the Indian Ocean. 

Not long after, coastal communities in 14 countries, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India, were rocked by sizable waves. None of these countries were prepared for the resulting waves which, having reached heights of 100 feet, caused widespread devastation along various coastlines. The damage was immense, with entire villages swept away by the waves, resulting in an estimated 230,000 to 280,000 lives lost. 

In addition, not only were millions left displaced or homeless, but the damage done to the local environment and economy was just as severe. The resulting destruction was so widespread and immense that it prompted a global response for humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts. It’s honestly horrifying to imagine your entire way of life being literally swept away by a disaster of this magnitude.

Let there be light. Someone or other said that once and all things being equal, humans and other living things have benefited from having light. There wouldn’t be much life without it. And while the sun was our big provider for a long time before we mastered fire and then electricity, these are far from the only light sources out there. Science provides some brilliant ways to bring light to darkness. 

10. You Can Crack an Ice Cube Tray in the Dark and Create Light

Triboluminescence is a mouthful of a word but get used to it, we’ll bring it up again later. This is the scientific name for light that comes from friction or compression and it can come about in a variety of very unexpected ways. The fun thing about it is that it’s very accessible for the average person. You don’t need fancy machines or dangerous chemicals or anything. But you’ll probably need patience.

If you have an ice cube tray in your freezer, you can use it to produce light. Twisting the tray to free ice cubes can, sometimes, produce light thanks to triboluminescence. When you break ice, it undergoes mechanical stress that can release electron energy. As the electrons relax and get a little more stable, that can produce light energy. In this case it’s going to be a quick flash that, if it happens at all, can be easily missed so trial and error goes a long way if you want to see for yourself. 

You can also separate and reunite electrical charges or create a current that ionizes molecules. If you’re looking to see it yourself, you need a pitch black room and the ice needs to be as cold as you can get it, the colder the better. You need to let your eyes adjust fully to the dark, then get your ice, then give it a crack. The light can be blue or white and most will be ultraviolent but it may also be so dim you can barely see it. Plus, as mentioned, it may not happen at all.

9. Collapsing Bubbles Underwater Can Produce Light

Water can be used in the production of light if you have some bubbles handy. This process is called sonoluminescence and requires not just underwater bubbles but sound waves. You can’t just pop the bubble with your finger and hope for a fireworks display.

The scientific process for this one is still a mystery but what we do know still sounds very cool. You need an air bubble underwater and if you hit it with a sound wave. The bubble will collapse and in that instance you create a burst of light.

When the sound hits the bubble, the bubble expands and then collapses extremely quickly. We’re talking the barest fractions of a second. The prevailing theory is that, in that tiny picosecond period of time, the gas inside the collapsing bubble gets super heated to something hotter than the surface of the sun. You’re creating a super hot plasma that exists barely long enough to exist at all and then it’s snuffed out. But, for a moment, that creates a burst of light.

8. Phosphenes Can Create Closed Eye Hallucinations of Light

Here’s a question for you. If you close your eyes and see lights, are they actually lights? If your brain registers something, even a hallucination or a dream, are the lights you saw still technically lights if they’re not real? You saw them after all, right? 

Most of us have had the experience of rubbing our eyes and registering what looks like flashes of light as a result. The pressure on your eyes causes flashes in your eyes.These lights are caused by phosphenes and they aren’t just your imagination. There are even efforts being made to restore vision to people blinded by retinal disease by using implants that electrically stimulate phosphenes in your retina. 

7. Tribal Rawhide Rattles Filled With Quartz Produced Flashing Lights

Another example of triboluminescence was discovered long ago by Native American tribes in Colorado when they created ceremonial rattles. Like any rattle, these had a handle, a container on the end, and something inside that rattled and made noise when you shook it. But the Ute Indians discovered something unique in the way they constructed these rattles.

While the exterior and the bulb part were just rawhide, for the rattle itself they used quartz crystals. When shaken, thanks to triboluminescence, the quartz crystals rub together and produce a yellow flash. In rattle form, this would cause the crystals to rub together constantly, producing random but frequent light flashes. You can imagine how this would have looked to an ancient, pre-technological society. 

The flashes would have lit up the translucent hide during any rituals performed in the dark. The Ute believed spirits were being called and, as such, the rattles had great significance in rituals. 

6. You Can Crush Sugar Crystals and Produce Light

Triboluminescence is back again and this time in your sugar. In a fashion similar to cracking ice, you can crush sugar and create energy as light. This was likely first noticed back when sugar was shipped in massive bricks and workers had to chip off smaller chunks for sale or for use. Sugar crystals can be broken down into smaller crystals. In doing so, positive and negative charges are separated and boom, sugar lights. 

The light produced by sugar is blue and it is, in a technical sense, lightning. The positive and negative charges build until a static electric charge is produced which ionizes the nitrogen in the air. The result is a brief flash of light and is most often associated with wintergreen lifesavers which used to advertise the fact that if you bit one in the dark you might see a flash of light.  

5. Earthquakes Produce Atmospheric Light

When it comes to natural disasters, you expect a light show with something like a thunderstorm which can even include hurricanes. Likewise, a volcano is not going to just produce glowing, orange lava but some of the most dramatic and chaotic lightning you’ll ever see in your life. But those are not the only disasters which can set the sky alight. Earthquakes actually produce atmospheric light as well, but not always. 

Sometimes called earthquake lights, this phenomenon appears before quakes occur, sometimes days in advance. Even more mysterious is that there’s no specific way they work. They can appear in different colors and in different shapes. Sometimes they’re green or blue, sometimes pink. Some are globes, some are flashes, some look like flames.

Because the phenomenon is so inconsistent and unpredictable, little hard evidence about it exists beyond recordings of incidents. But reports date back hundreds of years and researchers have found 65 cases back to the year 1600.

Because of how difficult it is to pin down what earthquake lights are, not everyone even agrees they exist and aren’t just totally different light phenomena happening at the same time as an earthquake. For instance, sometimes, these effects have been attributed to power lines being down during the quake.

4. Cherenkov Radiation Causes a Blue Glow in Nuclear Reactor Pools

Possibly one of the coolest forms of light in the world comes from Cherenkov radiation. It’s that eerie glow sci-fi assures us comes from radioactive things and it works thanks to wild and weird physics.

If you’ve ever seen a nuclear reactor, you may have noticed there’s a lot of water used to keep things cool. Water makes Cherenkov radiation work. It happens when charged particles in the water move faster than the speed of light.

Normally you will not find particles moving faster than light but, in a medium light water, light travels at 75% speed and that means the charged particles can move faster. When they collide with each other it produces the strange, blue glow discovered by Pavel Cherenkov.

3. Motyxia Millipedes Glow Bright Green/Blue

We didn’t cover bioluminescence because most of us know about that already. Fireflies are no big surprise, nor are the many species of fish that can produce their own lights. But there are one or two oddballs of nature out there producing light that maybe you never heard of before and that’s why the motyxia millipede is on the list. 

Found in Sequoia National Park and limited to a very narrow range in the Sierra Nevada mountains, motyxia millipedes glow bright blue in the dark. This is done to warn off predators by making the millipede hard to miss. In some creatures, like fireflies, light displays attract mates but motyxia are blind so they don’t benefit from their own shiny blue/green show. They are the only millipedes in the world known to do this.

The many-legged light shows are doing predators a favor because if one were to ignore the lights they’d have to deal with the millipede’s toxins which include hydrogen cyanide gas that it can release when attacked. 

2. Will-O’-The-Wisps Are Caused by Burning Swamp Gases

If you haven’t ever been to a swamp, you may not be aware of the phenomenon called a Will-o’-the-wisp or swamp lights. These mysterious lights can sometimes be seen in swamps, floating above the water. They are bursts of flame, sometimes sustained ones, that flicker but remain stationary with an eerie, blue light.

The lights are sometimes called fool’s lanterns, swamp lights, and so on. The fool name, usually translated as the Latin ignis fatuus, comes from the fact it could make a fool of travelers at night. If you were wandering a road near a swamp, you might see one of these lights in the dark and mistake it for a lantern, long before electrical lights were a thing. Thinking you’d found a house or inn, you could stray from the path and wander right into the swamp. 

Swamp lights are actually caused by gas. The bottom of any bog or swamp is likely going to be full of decaying biomatter. Because it’s rotting underwater, without oxygen, bacteria can eat away and produce an abundance of methane gas. When pockets of methane bubble to the surface and mix with phosphines which can spontaneously combust in oxygen, setting the methane aflame and creating the sustain, burning lantern effect hovering above the water for a short time. 

1. The Human Body Produces Visible Light

Has anyone ever told you that you were glowing? Or have you heard someone say it to a pregnant woman, or someone who got over an illness, maybe? It generally means you’re looking good and healthy and vibrant. It’s a figure of speech. But, whether any of us realize it, it’s also a literal description. The human body does produce light; it’s just incredibly hard to see.

There’s no need to squint at yourself in the dark in front of the mirror because it won’t help. The light your body emits, the level of which rises and falls over the course of the day, is not visible to the naked eye. In fact, they’re about 1,000 times less intense than what you can see without help. 

Chemical reactions in the bodies of pretty much all living things produce light as one kind of energy during that process. It’s just a small amount and, since it’s not the point of most of those reactions, that makes sense. The light is basically wasted energy. 

In a human body, light and heat don’t line up, either. The warmest parts of you are not the brightest, so that light-producing reaction isn’t warming you up too much.

Ultra sensitive equipment has to be used to measure the lights produced by humans. Our lights cycle, producing the brightest light in the afternoon and the dimmest light at night. Your face produces the most light, especially your cheeks, forehead and neck area.

Big oddities in nature tend to get noticed. But sometimes it takes a list to showcase the events that deserve more attention. Indeed, some are so strange that they seem fictional—like the air patch that wipes data and the migration of trillions of rocks across the ocean’s surface. For those who like their strange times a little bit more threatening, there is a toxic sea and the first earthquake that, uhm, boomeranged.

10 Most Terrifying Places on Earth

10 A Crater Turned Pink Overnight

Lonar Lake in India resembles most other lakes. You know, kind of round and filled with water. But Lonar, which was created by a meteorite strike 50,000 years ago, recently did something that set it apart from the rest. In June 2020, the water was dull and normal one day—and flamingo pink the next.

At the moment, the vivid flip remains a mystery. The leading theory suggests that several factors combined to create the color. A drop in the water level made the lake saltier and the days were also hot. This mix of saltiness and heat triggered a bloom of algae. More specifically, a kind that often turns red. Only in this case, the bloom went nuts and the overgrowth caused the flamingo moment.^[1]

9 Waterfalls Flowing In Reverse

During another insane 2020 moment, somebody claimed that several waterfalls in Australia were running backwards. News crews investigated and found a grain of truth. The waterfalls were not reversing like a movie in Rewind Mode. However, in each case, misty water flowed back up and over the top of the cliffs. As magical as it seemed, the whole thing was a trick of the wind.

A few days before the waterfalls got weird, Sydney and the surrounding areas experienced storm conditions. The winds were strong enough to flood rivers and trigger evacuation orders for many families. But their speed, howling at roughly 70 km/h (45 mph), was also sufficiently powerful to sweep the course of the falls the wrong way. Once the weather settled, the waterfalls resumed their old look.^[2]

8 The Red Sea Is A Natural Air Killer

Nestled between Africa and Arabia, the Red Sea is a busy bee. Thanks to the Suez Canal, this is one of the world’s most heavily used shipping lanes. The air is badly polluted and the prime suspects are clear. Indeed, industrial shipping and the intense use of fossil fuels in the area are not exactly filling the air with daisies. Unfortunately, the Red Sea is a busy bee in another way too.

In 2017, when researchers measured different gases in the region, the math did not add up. Even when they took into account the gross pollution caused by humans, the northern part of the Red Sea had 40 times too much ethane and propane. The only explanation was that both greenhouse gases are naturally released from reservoirs beneath the sea. The sheer volume that bubbles to the surface make the Red Sea a natural but major source of air pollution.^[3]

7 The Godzilla Dust Plume

Each year, a cloud of sand leaves the Sahara Desert in Africa and heads out over the Atlantic Ocean. The technical term for this dust bunny is the Saharan Air Layer (SAL). But in 2020, the plume was so massive that scientists folded to awe and called this year’s cloud “Godzilla.”

The plume was the biggest since the first SAL event was logged 20 years ago. For some reason, it packed up to 70 percent more sand and despite its size and weight managed to travel for a greater distance than other Sahara plumes. Usually, the clouds face-plant in the Atlantic Ocean. Godzilla ghosted through the atmosphere for 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) and reached the United States.^[4]

6 This Lightning Bolt Was Ridiculously Long

Two years ago, the weather turned crabby above Brazil. Some people might have appreciated the thunder and lightning because it was Halloween night after all. But one bolt took things to the extreme. When it cut through the atmosphere, it ran from the Atlantic coast into Argentina. All told, it measured over 700 kilometres (440 miles) long.

The mega-flash was long enough to link Chicago with Toronto or even Washington, D.C., with Boston. Satellite technology confirmed that this was a new record. The previous champion singed Oklahoma in 2007 and measured 320 kilometres (200 miles) long. Interestingly, neither holds the record for the most enduring flash. That bolt appeared over northern Argentina in 2019 and remained visible for 17 seconds.^[5]

10 Ways Earth Once Looked Like An Alien Planet

5 Australia’s Coast Is Surrounded By Rivers

Nobody is arguing that Australia is the king of weird ecosystems. But in 2020, a new discovery surprised even the most salted experts. The continent appears to be surrounded by something found nowhere else in the world—a network of underwater rivers covering over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) of coastline. While the phenomenon is not unknown, the scale is unprecedented. This alone makes the system one of the most significant finds in oceanography.

The underwater rivers are possible because their water is different; being more salt-dense and heavier than the ocean’s slosh. They also respond to the seasons. They are weaker in summer but during winter, the cascades turn denser and sink to the seafloor where they flow more strongly.^[6]

4 Volcano F’s Stupendously Huge Rafts

The name might be dull but Volcano F is the source of something amazing. This underwater volcano hugs the seafloor near Tonga and erupts every few years. When that happens, pumice rocks are released and that is when things get interesting.

In 2019, Volcano F belched so much pumice that the floating rocks formed a raft the size of 20,000 football fields. For nearly a year, the raft floated across the ocean to Australia. By 2020, trillions of these rocks started washing up along 1,300 kilometres (807 miles) of coastline, reaching from Queensland to New South Wales. But that was not all.

On the way, each rock picked up organisms like barnacles, corals, and algae. The endless bobbing mass was like a bus bringing new recruits of reef-building critters to the beleaguered Great Barrier Reef. The event was not a one-time deal, either. Volcano F sends a pumice raft to the Reef roughly every five years for a much-needed boost.^[7]

3 This Blip Is The Bane Of NASA

The Earth is a ginormous magnet. Its magnetic field protects the planet’s atmosphere—and human technology—from the sun’s particles. But this protective bubble has a weak spot. Called the SAA (the South Atlantic Anomaly), this is the one place where solar particles can enter the atmosphere and mess with expensive equipment.

The SAA covers a large area over South America and the Southern Atlantic sea. Any space station or equipment that passes through this region run the risk of data wipes or hardware damage. For this reason, NASA often switches off satellites that travel through the SAA until they are back under the proverbial magnetic umbrella.^[8]

2 The Firefall Of Yosemite

During certain years, in February, a spectacular sight occurs in Yosemite National Park. There is a high waterfall with a delicate drop called Horsetail Fall. For most of the time, it looks like a thousand other waterfalls but for a few weeks at the beginning of the year, the transformation is so remarkable that tourists flock to the site.

Some call the event a “firefall” and it is easy to see why. The water seems to have mysteriously vanished. In its place, orange lava pours over the cliff, glowing with heat, steam, and fire. This optical illusion lasts for about 10 minutes and is caused by the setting sun’s position in the sky. Once the sun dips below a certain point, the waterfall returns to normal.^[9]

1 An Earthquake That Boomeranged

A normal earthquake is bad enough. But one that suddenly turns around and runs over the same area? Definitely worse. In the past, something like this seemed impossible. Then it happened in August 2016. Nobody noticed the game-changing event because it happened deep under the ocean.

A 2020 study discovered the strange quake when researchers analysed the data from undersea seismometers. Nothing about the earthquake’s development was normal. Since it was born from a simple fault (the Romanche fracture zone near the equator), it should have been a textbook tremor. Instead, it mysteriously released the world’s first confirmed boomerang shake.

This was no hiccup. It was a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1. Even more terrifying, once it turned around the speed increased. The tremors raced back towards the centre of the fault with speeds clocking up to 6 kilometres per second (3.7 miles per second).^[10]

Top 10 Iconic Places As You’ve Never Seen Them . . . Pictured From Behind

Throughout history, humans have not stopped fighting wars.^[1] We have an innate desire to live in peace, but then we see other people as our enemies, and chaos is unleashed. To this day, psychologists struggle to explain our inclination toward aggression and war, which is considered a pathological behavior of human beings. In fact, much of the effectiveness of war lies in the devastating psychological effects it has on people. When a war breaks out, people’s fear often makes them react insanely to even minimal things, regardless of whether they take an active part in the war or not.

But sometimes, Mother Nature herself also decides to give us an extra push toward the edge of extinction. Due to the paranoia of soldiers in the middle of war, simple things like a shooting star or a bird can take them by surprise, causing panic and destruction. Below, we have ten anecdotal examples of such situations, which show us how easy it is to end up destroying ourselves over a simple misunderstanding.

10 The Marauding Cattle
1864

From its beginnings, the United States constantly had differences with the native tribes living in North American territory, to say the least. Although Native Americans had lived there for centuries, they were forced to negotiate with the US to give up much of what the former considered to be their own land. The tensions between both parts did not diminish but continued to increase toward the mid-19th century, during the US Civil War. Then, in November 1864, hundreds of American soldiers in the state of Colorado killed more than 150 natives of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. This event would later be known as the Sand Creek Massacre.

But a few months before that, on June 16, 1864, the city of Denver was terrified by the warning of an imminent enemy attack. During the previous night, a rancher named William Shortridge entered the city to alert everyone that he had seen a band of indigenous warriors approaching. The people panicked, believing that it was an attack by the Cheyenne. The natives had a very bad reputation among the settlers, being especially known for capturing and brutally killing Americans. So Shortridge arrived in Denver accompanied by dozens of people from other places, who also feared for their lives.

Immediately, the residents of Denver tried to protect themselves. People in the area ransacked the local armory, after which they took cover inside buildings with barricades. But they soon learned that the band of warriors that Shortridge saw on the horizon was actually a cloud of dust created by a cattle stampede.^[2] The animals were being driven by a group of drunk Mexican cattle drivers, who’d provoked the stampede. In those times, it was common to see thousands of cattle being driven by cowboy bands across hundreds of kilometers of open land. So it was a common livestock activity that mobilized the entire city of Denver that day, combined with a good dose of fear, of course.

9 A Space Nuke Over America
2001

2001 was a particularly tense and bellicose year for the United States. After several years of difficult relations, the Americans invaded Afghanistan in retaliation for the terrorist attack on September 11 in New York. In April of the same year, tensions between China and the United States increased when an American spy plane collided with a Chinese jet, killing the latter’s pilot. So the government of the United States was quite nervous around that time. It was then, also in the month of April, that nature decided to play a nasty trick on the authorities.

On April 23, several American satellites and ground systems detected a large explosion in the atmosphere, at a height of almost 30 kilometers (19 mi). The explosion occurred in the early morning 1,800 kilometers (1,118 mi) from San Diego, California. While the satellites detected the flashes of the explosion, the shock wave was sensed even 11,000 kilometers (6,835 mi) away in Germany. If this isn’t enough to illustrate the magnitude of the event, scientists estimated it was similar to a small nuclear explosion, releasing a quarter of the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

So the US government had solid reasons to worry about this issue. Given the exceptionally inconvenient timing of the occurrence, tensions began to increase again in Washington. Then, the Pentagon came to save the day and assured the authorities that there was no danger. The explosion was not caused by an enemy bomb but by a meteor 3 meters (10 ft) long that could not withstand its entry into the atmosphere.^[3] The researchers studying the event stated that had the meteor reached the Earth shortly before or after, the explosion would have happened over a large city.

8 Denver Is Razed
1955

On May 22, 1955, the residents of Jelm and Woods Landing, Wyoming, heard a strange and deep noise that was immediately followed by an earthquake. Inside many houses, the dishes and cupboards began to shake uncontrollably. Meanwhile, the earthquake also caused a group of fishermen to end up trapped inside their tent. In the midst of the chaos, a frightened Jelm resident quickly concluded that the earthquake had been caused by an atomic bomb which had been dropped on Denver. Of course, such an assumption was based on the common fear of an imminent nuclear war at that time, although it proved to be an incorrect conclusion.

The earthquake that occurred that day was of intensity V on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale.^[4] In other words, it was a moderately strong earthquake which, in addition to the ground shaking, also caused the fall of household objects and the shattering of windows. But we know that your typical nuclear bomb is not capable of causing such damaging earthquakes beyond a few tens of kilometers around. So for a nuclear bomb detonated in Denver to cause a strong earthquake in Jelm, which is almost 180 kilometers (112 mi) away, it would have to have been quite a device. If so, the residents would have faced worse problems than the tremor under their feet.

But in any case, we must understand this concerned citizen. In 1955, the Cold War was at one of its most critical points, with the United States and the Soviet Union competing to have the largest atomic bomb. And the year before, the United States formally declared its intention to pulverize the Soviets with nuclear weapons if they attacked first. So the Americans were worried that an enemy atomic bomb could fall on them at any moment. Confusing an earthquake with a nuclear explosion in those times was certainly excusable.

7 Meteorites Are The Real Enemy
2016

Above, we saw that the US military does not particularly like meteors. But in the middle of a conflict, even civilians can also see shooting stars with some suspicion, fearing that they’re actually something less friendly. To put us in context about the following item, the republics of India and Pakistan have maintained a territorial conflict for decades. After their independence from Britain in 1947, both nations failed to agree on who would control a large border region called Kashmir. For this reason, India and Pakistan have fought wars in that place, and the territorial dispute remains strong to this day.

In September 2016, India launched an attack on the border with Pakistan after militants killed 19 Indian soldiers that month. India made a precise attack on Pakistani launchpads in the area, causing numerous casualties on the enemy side. Then, a few hours after the event, the inhabitants of the city of Srinagar witnessed something that made them fear for their lives to an extreme degree. When they looked up, they saw a streak of light descending across the sky above their heads. The residents panicked at the thought that it was a missile launched by Pakistan in retaliation for the previous attacks by India.^[5] But soon, the Indian government calmed the population by explaining that what they saw was not a missile but a simple meteorite.

6 The Sun Wanted Us Dead
1967

To detect any attack by the Soviets in advance, the US Army placed missile-detection systems in Alaska, Greenland, and the United Kingdom. On May 23, 1967, all three systems stopped working simultaneously. The American authorities were convinced that such thing could only be sabotage by the Soviets, which would be enough to start a full-scale war. So the US Air Force authorized the deployment of fighter jets equipped with nuclear weapons. A new world war was approaching on the horizon, being only minutes away from beginning.

By then, NORAD—formed by the American and Canadian militaries to analyze enemy threats—had been studying solar activity and its effects on Earth for years. On the same day that the defense systems mentioned above turned off, solar forecasters detected that the Sun had launched a powerful solar flare straight at Earth. In contact with the atmosphere, such a burst of energy causes large electric discharges that can fry systems on the surface. The sighting was confirmed by multiple observatories around the world, and then the scientists realized that the American radars were not sabotaged by the Soviets but that the solar flare had hit them.

Just in time, the forecasters notified both NORAD and the Pentagon of the situation.^[6] Both the high-ranking military officials and the president understood that they were not being attacked by the USSR, so they finally calmed down. The American warplanes were ordered not to take off, and the military returned to a normal state of alert. Nuclear war had been postponed, although that day, outer space did make an effort to annihilate us once and for all.

5 The Father Of Earthquakes
1976

After years of tension between the two nations, relations between China and the Soviet Union began to break down in the 1970s. At the beginning of the decade, China had decided to approach the US government while perceiving the Soviets as a serious threat to its security. By 1976, China and the USSR had abandoned all diplomatic communications, approaching dangerously close to armed conflict. And it was in that same year that China suffered one of the deadliest earthquakes in history: the Tangshan earthquake.

It was 3:42 AM on July 28 when the ground in the city of Tangshan began to shake violently. In just half a minute, most of the buildings across dozens of kilometers around collapsed to the ground, killing at least 240,000 people. And we know that the first thing that came to minds of survivors to explain what was happening was a nuclear war.

A 26-year-old student named Zhu Yinlai, who was sleeping with other classmates at his college, was abruptly awakened by the earthquake and thought at first that a nuclear explosion had occurred. When he saw the building shake, he soon understood that it was an earthquake, and at that very moment, his bedroom collapsed. Unlike many of his roommates, Zhu managed to survive. Meanwhile, other people in nearby regions had the same fear and believed that a Soviet atomic bomb had been dropped somewhere in the vicinity.

They had reasons to believe something like that. Tangshan seemed like an obvious target to be attacked first by the Soviets, since it was an industrial city. Another thing that seems to have terrified the victims even more is that, shortly before the earthquake, they could see big flashes of light in the sky. For a moment, these lights might have seemed reminiscent of a nuclear explosion, although they were a natural phenomenon known as “earthquake lights.” A geologist in the area saw the lights and immediately proceeded to take shelter. Although the earthquake was not the result of a nuclear bomb, it had the power of one. It is estimated that the event released the same energy as 400 Hiroshima atomic bombs.^[7]

4 ‘Jupiter Is Spying On Us!’
2013

It happens that India doesn’t just have territorial problems with Pakistan. Also around the region of Kashmir, India and China share a border more than 4,000 kilometers (2,485 mi) long. As China claims that part of the territory belongs to it and has even occupied it, both nations have had—for a change—conflicts and wars and have been unable to reach an agreement so far. Due to this incursion of the Chinese that India considers “illegal,” the latter country has deployed and maintained troops along the border.

In August 2012, the Indian army in that region began to report sightings of bright objects flying in the sky. The troops assumed that these lights were actually Chinese spy drones, so they decided to keep a daily track of the objects. By February 2013, the army had sighted the mysterious lights 329 times. And on 155 of those occasions, the objects seemed to have entered Indian airspace, violating the agreed territorial limit.

As expected, these events heated up the situation between India and China. But fortunately, the Indian army did not rush to take action and instead decided to call the Indian Institute of Astrophysics to be sure of the origin of the objects sighted.^[8] After the military gave them the collected data on the time and trajectory of the lights, the astronomers concluded that what the former had actually seen was Jupiter and Venus. It seems that the atmosphere had distorted the apparent brightness of these planets at the altitude of more than 4,700 meters (15,420 ft) where the troops were located.

3 The Aftermath Of A Bombing
1915

Throughout the history of warfare, attacking civilians has been a frequently considered tactic due to the wide range of destructive effects it produces on the population. It is well-known, for example, that bombing not only leaves physical consequences in the survivors but also psychological ones. Those who are victims of an enemy attack with bombs are often prone to nightmares, flashbacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder, if they do not suffer even worse pathologies. Understanding these effects during World War I, Italian general Giulio Douhet theorized that aerial bombings on strategic cities could be decisive in any war.

The following story comes from the words of Douhet himself and is contained in his book The Command of the Air. In November 1915, two Austrian planes bombed the city of Brescia, Italy. The result was seven dead and ten injured, all of them civilians. Then, Douhet says that during funeral services for the dead, one of the mourners mistook a bird for another enemy bomber approaching and thus aroused panic among the others present. Douhet used this anecdote as an example to demonstrate the enormous, long-lasting impact on an emotional level that an aerial bombing would have on the civilian population, ultimately demoralizing the enemy country itself.^[9]

2 Maximum Alert
1960

The truth is that during the Cold War, American systems of missile detection had serious difficulties when it came to differentiating natural phenomena from an enemy attack. They were slow and unable to handle large amounts of data, which sometimes led them to misinterpret unexpected events. One particular case of this type occurred in 1960. A missile-detection system placed in Greenland was directly connected to the high command of the US Air Force. On October 5 of that year, the system sent an alert about a massive Soviet attack directed at the United States, composed of dozens of nuclear missiles.

The system showed a 99.9-percent certainty that the attack was real, so the US military panicked and fell into chaos. The Strategic Air Command (SAC), a former division within the Air Force and the Department of Defense, went into its highest alert level. This meant that the authorities would have only a few minutes to make a decision; the president had just ten minutes to decide whether to launch a counterattack or not. However, some people in the division began to doubt that an attack was really taking place. A nuclear strike on American soil did not make much sense when, at that very moment, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was visiting New York.

So a member of the SAC decided to check the alert data of the detection system again. Then, he realized it was all a mistake. What the early warning system in Greenland had actually captured was the Moon rising on the horizon over Norway.^[10] Since nobody had adjusted the system to ignore the interference of the Moon, the computers interpreted its emergence as a fleet of missiles about to blow up America. Soon, everything was calm again, and this unfortunate event forced the United States to improve its defense systems.

1 Military Neurosis
1943

During the first part of World War II, the island of New Georgia in the Pacific Ocean was occupied by the Japanese, who considered it strategic for air combat. Then, in 1943, the United States decided to take control of New Georgia by sending numerous troops to the island. But already from the beginning, the American soldiers knew that it was not going to be an easy task. The island was hot, humid, and dense with vegetation.

During the first days of July, the 43rd US Division arrived in New Georgia and deployed troops from the 172nd and 169th infantry on the coast of Zanana Beach. Their target, an airfield occupied by the Japanese, was a few kilometers away, and surprisingly, there were no traces of the enemy on the coast. It seemed that the operation would be quick. But it only appeared so. The only way to reach the airfield was to cross the dense jungle through a horrible footpath called the Munda Trail, and a lot of Japanese soldiers were hiding there. While the 172nd infantry knew how to defend themselves relatively well, the soldiers of the 169th were inexperienced in combat.

To spend the night, they dug small trenches called foxholes, but these were too far apart from each other. Taking advantage of the darkness, some Japanese silently got into foxholes and murdered the Americans or shouted phrases to demoralize them. Little by little, the men of the 169th began to lose their sanity. They did not sleep and confused everything they saw or heard with Japanese soldiers. Phosphorescence on rotten logs was seen as Japanese signals, the repulsive smell of the jungle was poisonous gas, and the land crabs moving through the vegetation were Japanese approaching.

The American soldiers gave in to their fear and started shooting or throwing grenades at everything in the middle of the night. In the morning, the results of this mayhem became evident. Many soldiers of the 169th had killed each other after mistaking their comrades for the Japanese.^[11] Although the US soldiers ultimately defeated the Japanese and took over New Georgia, the 169th infantry suffered a psychological torment like no other troop in that engagement.

Economy student, passionate about Graphic Design, an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.

Sometimes, nature has had enough of us killing ourselves and has just intervened. Throughout history, armies and navies have met in combat, only to find themselves battling storms and hurricanes instead.

Nature may separate the warring parties, forcing one or both to retreat. At other times, it delivers the decisive blow, causing a crushing defeat to one army or navy and favoring the other. Or it just prevents the larger force from decimating the smaller or less advantaged one.

10 Typhoons Thwarted Mongol Attempt To Invade Japan

In 1274, a Mongol fleet of 500–900 vessels carrying 30,000–40,000 soldiers left China to attack and capture Japan. The ships anchored at Hakata Bay, Japan, anticipating an invasion, until they were destroyed by a typhoon. One-third of the fleet sank. About 13,000 soldiers drowned, forcing the survivors to retreat to China.

The undeterred Mongols returned in 1281 with 4,400 ships and 140,000 soldiers. This was far more than Japan’s 40,000 samurai and soldiers. The weather fought on Japan’s side again when another typhoon destroyed the invading fleet right before they attacked on August 15.

Half the Mongols died, and almost all the ships were destroyed. Only a few returned to China. The samurai also hunted and killed survivors. The Japanese were so impressed with the 1281 typhoon that they formed the word kamikaze (“divine wind”) to refer to a typhoon. They believed that the typhoons were sent by the gods.^[1]

9 An Island Claimed By India And Bangladesh Slid Underwater

New Moore Island was a small, uninhabited piece of land tucked between India and Bangladesh. It was just 3.5 kilometers (2 mi) long, 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) wide, and barely 2 meters (7 ft) out of the water. The island was first discovered in 1974. However, some experts said back then that it had been around for 50 years.

India and Bangladesh both claimed the island after its discovery. In 1981, India even sent some ships and personnel from its Border Security Force to hoist a flag on the island. Things started to change in 1987 when satellite images showed that the island was slowly submerging. By 2010, it was gone.^[2]

8 A Storm Ended France’s Invasion Of Ireland

1796 was a turbulent year for British and French relations. Britain was funding some disgruntled aristocrats and rebels against the French crown. At the same time, Britain was subsidizing several allied nations in a war against France.

This prompted the French to plot revenge. Instead of invading Britain directly, France teamed with the Irish patriots who were fighting for independence from Britain. The idea was to help the Irish patriots defeat Britain. Once done, Ireland would have turned into a French ally and kept Britain at bay.

On December 15, 1796, a French force of 15,000 soldiers left France on several ships. Midway, the fleet ran into trouble after they were split by a terrible storm. Some made it to Bantry Bay, where the fleet had planned to rendezvous before the invasion. However, the attack was stalled because several ships—including the Fraternite which carried General Hoche, the commander of the operation—were still missing.

The fleet left a few days later over concerns that the weather was getting worse and the British might attack. General Hoche finally arrived with his ship. But he was informed that the French fleet had already arrived and then departed. He, too, left for France, ending the invasion.

Interestingly, an attempt by the Batavian Republic to invade Britain the following year was also thwarted by bad weather. The assault was suspended after a storm stopped the fleet from leaving port.^[3]

7 The Russian Winter Of 1709 Ended Sweden’s Era As A Superpower

If military strategists were asked for one piece of advice about invading Russia, it would be to avoid an invasion right before winter. Otherwise, you had better get out before winter sets in. Several military commanders like Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte found out the hard way after they were defeated by the harsh Russian winter.

Nobody remembers a third country that tried this—Sweden. In 1708, 40,000 Swedish soldiers invaded Russia as part of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. At the time, the smaller but more professional Swedish army was famous for defeating larger opponents in battle. Facing defeat, the Russians fled deep into Russia and burned their villages.

This is called scorched earth, a tactic used by Russia to ensure that the enemy cannot live on whatever is left behind. At the same time, some Russian units ambushed Swedish resupply units, leaving the Swedes with insufficient supplies. The Great Frost of 1709 soon set in. It was the coldest winter in Europe in 500 years.

Lacking basic supplies, the Swedish troops froze to death. Approximately 2,000 died in one night, and half were dead by the time winter was over. The demoralized survivors attempted to destroy Russia as summer set in, but they were no match for Russia’s 80,000 soldiers. Ultimately, only 543 Swedish soldiers survived.^[4]

6 A Disastrous Storm Destroyed The Spanish Armada Attempting To Invade Britain

In 1588, King Philip II of Spain decided that he had had enough of the protestant Queen Elizabeth and decided to replace her with a Roman Catholic. So he ordered 130 ships to sail to Flanders to pick up 30,000 troops for the invasion.

The British got wind of the operation and intercepted the Spaniards just off the coast of Plymouth. Both navies engaged in several battles that all ended in a stalemate. The Spaniards were finally defeated when a storm threw their ships off course from Flanders and far into the ocean.

With the threat of diseases and low supplies, the Spaniards decided to abandon the war and return to Spain. The storm continued to batter the armada as it retreated, causing several ships to either sink or smash into the shore. Only 60 of the 130 ships returned to Spain, and 15,000 sailors were killed.^[5]

5 Dust Storms Ended US Attempt To Free Hostages In Iran

On November 4, 1979, Iranian students invaded the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats and embassy workers hostage. President Jimmy Carter later ordered a military operation to free the hostages. The US had no central special operations command at the time, so different units of the military were brought together for the invasion.

The operation was doomed from the start because the units never trained together. Problems began when the C-130 transport planes and RH-53D helicopters ran into sandstorms while flying to a rendezvouz point code-named “Desert One.” The planes flew through the storm. But the helicopters couldn’t, forcing them to return to base.

Six of eight helicopters later returned to Desert One, but one was damaged on landing. The operation was scrapped because five helicopters were not enough to achieve its objectives. All units were ordered back to base.

Unfortunately, a sandstorm obstructed the view of a C-130 plane taking off from Desert One. The plane slammed into a helicopter flying overhead, sending both crashing to the ground. Eight crewmen were killed. The remaining troops, helicopters, and planes hastily retreated.

The failure of the operation forced a change in US military doctrine. Individual arms of the military formed commands to coordinate special operations. The Department of Defense also created the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to coordinate operations among all US military special forces.^[6]

4 Low Clouds, Rainfall, And Thunder Stopped Hitler From Destroying The Allies At Dunkirk

Allied troops stationed in France were no match for Nazi Germany during the 1940 invasion of France. The Allies fled to the port of Dunkirk after a series of defeats. The Germans could have moved in and decimated the Allies, but Hitler ordered them not to.

This gave the Allies enough time to begin a hasty retreat from Dunkirk on May 26. The next day, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch convinced Hitler to resume the assault. But the Allies had assembled stronger defenses by the time the German tanks arrived, so Hitler ordered the tanks to stop and attack elsewhere. By June 4, over 338,000 British, French, and Belgian troops had fled Dunkirk for Britain.

The reason why Hitler stopped his army from decimating the Allies remains unclear. Some believe that Hitler expected the British to surrender. Others think that Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, the commander of the Luftwaffe (Nazi Germany’s air force), had assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could destroy the Allies without the army.

If the latter is true, then the Germans could not attack the Allies because low clouds, rainfall, and thunder stopped the Luftwaffe from conducting air strikes against Allied targets. The Luftwaffe attacked for two and a half days when the skies were clear, but it was not enough to make a difference.^[7]

3 A Storm Decimated The French Fleet In The Battle Of Trafalgar

On October 21, 1805, the British Navy found itself in combat against the unified navies of Spain and France. The French and Spaniards were defeated in battle but continued fighting until a hurricane came along and decimated the remains of their fleet.

The French ship Fougueux was the first casualty of the hurricane. Captured in battle, it was being towed by the British ship Phoebe when the stormy seas caused the rope to snap. The ship slammed into some rocks, killing the French and British sailors on board. The French Redoutable was lost under similar circumstances the next day.

Several other French ships seized by the British were also at risk of sinking. French sailors on the Algesiras rebelled against their British captors. The British surrendered to these rebels because they did not want the Algesiras to sink.

Several French ships led by Captain Cosmao-Jerjulien tried fighting back but were limited by the fog and the storm. The British also had a hard time controlling their ships and the French ships under their command.

On October 24, the stormy seas forced British Admiral Collingwood to order the abandonment and destruction of all captured ships. Fourteen of the captured French and Spanish ships were destroyed.^[8]

2 A French Cavalry Captured A Dutch Fleet

January 23, 1795, was one of the weirdest days in the history of warfare. A cavalry captured several warships. That should not even be possible because cavalries use horses and fight on land while navies use ships and fight on water.

The ships were captured in the Battle of Texel during the French Revolutionary Wars. A storm had caused a Dutch fleet to anchor in the strait of Marsdiep right next to Texel Island, Netherlands. The Dutch waited for the storm to pass, but they could not leave because the water around the shore was frozen.

The French heard of the fleet’s problem and sent a cavalry. The Dutch saw the French and considered destroying their ships to prevent capture. However, they dumped the idea when they heard that the French revolutionaries had won the war. The Dutch surrendered on the condition that the French allow them to remain on their ships.^[9]

However, reports indicate that the Dutch fleet was not a sitting duck and could have fought back. The Dutch had larger guns and numbers—14 ships in all. The French also needed ladders to climb onto the ships, but they did not have any.

1 An Unpredictable Storm Forced The Union To Abandon The First Battle Of Fort Fisher

The First Battle of Fort Fisher was fought on December 23–27, 1864, when Union troops under the command of Major General Benjamin Butler and Rear Admiral David D. Porter tried to capture Fort Fisher from the Confederates.

At the time, all Confederate ports except Wilmington, North Carolina, were under Union control. The port at Wilmington was protected by Fort Fisher. The assault was delayed when heavy storms prevented the fleet from sailing. The Union ships finally set sail on December 14 and reached Fort Fisher on the December 19.

General Butler and his men soon retreated over concerns of an approaching storm. Admiral Porter launched an attack when the storm subsided on December 23. General Butler and his men returned that evening but did not attack the fort over concerns that the Confederates were prepared.

General Butler finally ordered a retreat when he heard another storm was brewing and Confederate Major General Robert Hoke’s unit was coming to defend the fort. However, the storm did not protect the Confederates for long. A week later, it was captured by a Union force led by Major General Alfred H. Terry.^[10]