Spanish Village That Voted To Remain Blue

For hundreds of years, the houses of the tiny pueblo of Júzcar, near Malaga in the Spanish province of Andalucía, were whitewashed. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the village of 220 and it attracted just a few hundred tourists each year.

Then, in the spring of 2011, executives from Sony Pictures turned up. They wanted to paint one of the White Towns of Andalucía blue. At first, the villagers were incredulous. Sony execs assured them that the publicity stunt, created to mark the opening of The Smurfs movie (Los Pitufos in Spanish) would make the village stand out.

The villagers had little to lose and a wad of Sony's cash to gain, so they held a meeting and voted unanimously to agree to the company's colorful request. After all, it was only for a short time, and Sony promised to paint all the houses back to their original color. 1,100 gallons of vivid blue paint later, Júzcar became Smurftown. 

Six months later, the village council received a phone call from the people at Sony. The town had remained blue for the length of time needed to promote the film. The company wondered they would like to have their houses whitewashed, and the pueblo reverted to its original state? Another town meeting was called, and a vote was held—the city decided to stay blue.

Village Without Doors

Believe it or not, there's a village in India where none of the 300-odd buildings—homes, educational institutions, or even banks—have doors. Cash is stored in unlocked containers, as are valuable pieces of gold jewelry.

Most of the public toilets in Shani Shingnapur's village square have no doors. “For reasons of privacy and following requests by women, we recently agreed to put a thin curtain near the entrance, but not doors because that would go against our belief,” said village shopkeeper Parmeshwar Mane.

Some resident do put up loose door panels against their door frames, but this is done only at night, to keep animals out. The only problem with the lack of doors is that there's nothing to knock on to announce your arrival. But the villagers have a solution for this, too. “Just shout out and somebody will come to the door,'' one of the villagers, Rani, explained.

The residents of Shani Shingnapur village in the state of Maharashtra do not feel the need for security measures because of their undying faith in the deity Shani, the God of Saturn. 

World's Wettest Village

There's a rain gauge in Mawsynram, Meghalaya, India that collects 467 inches (38.9 feet) of rainfall a year. In contrast, New York City averages about 50 inches of precipitation annually. 

Summer air currents sweep over the steaming floodplains of Bangladesh and gather moisture as they move north. When the resulting clouds hit the steep hills of Meghalaya, they are "squeezed" through the narrowed gap in the atmosphere. Once compressed, they can no longer hold their moisture and cause the near constant rain the village is famous for. 

Mawsynram is the wettest place on Earth, and the people who live there have had to adapt accordingly. Laborers who work outdoors often wear full-body umbrellas made from bamboo and banana leaf. One of the most fascinating and beautiful features in the region are the "living bridges" spanning rain-soaked valleys. For centuries, locals have been training the roots of rubber trees to grow into natural bridges, which far outlast the man-made wooden structures that rot in just a few years. The bridges are self-strengthening and become more substantial as their root systems grow.

Chinese Village Where Everyone Knows Kung Fu

Ganxi Dong, a small village hidden deep in the mountains of Tianzhu in central China, is gaining worldwide attention for its unusually skilled residents. Apparently, everyone who lives in the self-sustaining village is a martial arts expert!

The Dong people, one of the 56 recognised ethnic minorities in China, pride themselves on having shunned the outside world in favor of local tradition. Every villager is well-versed in the art of kung fu, and each person is pursuing a different style of ancient Chinese martial arts. They use a range of weapons, including sticks, pitchforks, and fists.

Locals have two theories about their unusual situation—some claim that the area suffered regular heavy attacks from wild animals that would kill livestock and injure the villagers. To combat the problem, certain families had to pick a strong youth to create, develop and learn martial arts. They modeled their actions on the moves of dragons, snakes, tigers and leopards. As each family trained in a different type of movement, different strains of kung fu were invented.

Others say early residents were frequently pillaged by their neighbors. To protect themselves, they invited martial arts experts to their village to teach them the art of combat.

The Venezuelan church that resurfaced after 33 years underwater

Between 1985 and 2008, fishermen and daytrippers traveling by boat along the lake formed by the Uribante Reservoir in Táchira, Venezuela were presented with an eerie sight—a mildewed cross rising crookedly out of the water. It was clearly attached to something anchoring it—something big and deep beneath the surface.

In 2008, the cross started to rise higher and higher out of the water, revealing more of the gothic structure below. It was literally just the tip of something much more massive.

In reality, the structure was not rising out of the water, but rather the water of the reservoir was receding, revealing what the lake had concealed for more than two decades. By 2010, the water had receded almost entirely, revealing a large stretch of flat land and a towering, gothic church that was once nearly submerged.

The church belonged to the city of Potosi, which in 1985 was purposefully flooded by the damming of a nearby river to create hydroelectric power. All of Potosi's citizens had to be relocated. For 20 years, all that remained of their former life was the cross at the top of the church's steeple, once reaching high into the sky, and then brought down to earth and nearly—but not completely—drowned.

The amazing underwater sanctuary that transforms into a county park

The Grüner See (also known as “Green Lake") is located in Styria, Austria. It is known for its scenic views and emerald-green water that trickles down from the surrounding snow-capped mountains. During the winter, before the ice melts, the lake is only 1-2 meters deep, and the surrounding area is used as a county park. However, by spring, the basin of land below the mountain fills with water, transforming the lake into an underwater sanctuary nearly 12 meters deep.

The Grüner See is pollution-free and is an immensely popular tourist destination for hikers, campers, and adventurers looking to enjoy nature.

The Argentinian town that resurfaced after being underwater for 30 years

Back in the 1920s, a tourist village named Villa Epecuen was established along the shores of Lago Epecuen, a salt lake some 600 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lago Epecuen is like most other mountain lakes, except for one important difference—it has salt levels second only to the Dead Sea, and ten times higher than any ocean. 

The town's population peaked in the 1970s with more than 5,000 people. Nearly 300 businesses thrived there, including hotels, hostels, spas, shops, and museums. During that time, a long-term weather event was delivering far more rain than usual to the surrounding hills, and Lago Epecuen began to swell. On November 10, 1985, an enormous volume of water broke through the dam and inundated much of the town. By 1993, the slow-moving flood consumed the town until it was covered in 10 meters of water.

Nearly 25 years later, in 2009, the wet weather reversed and the waters began to recede. Villa Epecuen started coming back to the surface. No one returned to the town, except 81-year-old Pablo Novak, who is now Villa Epecuen's sole resident.

400 years old Church

In 2015, the remains of a Colonial-era church emerged from the receding waters of a river in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The Grijalva River watershed was hit by a drought this year, which caused the water level in the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir to decrease by 82 feet. 

The church was built in the mid-16th century by a group of monks (led by Friar Bartolome de la Casas) in the Quechula region, which was formerly inhabited by the Zoque people. It was originally lost to the waters of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in 1966 when it flooded.

Railway carriages into Holiday Homes

It's a first class idea that is also an original alternative to other accommodations out there. The Old Station in Allerston, North Yorkshire used to be a working railway station, but it has been converted into a family home and guest houses. The idea has proved to be a hit with visitors, and the houses evoke romantic images of the great age of steam trains as seen in Brief Encounter and The Orient Express. The homes are owned by Carol and Mark Benson. Mark, 55, who still has a day job as a surveyor for Network Rail, made the railway station their home.

Decorating cues from "The Simpsons"

A fridge full of Duff beer would make Joel Hamilton and Marcia Andreychuk's kitchen even more “excellent.” But for now, the Calgary couple are fine with transforming it into a replica of the one from the Simpsons, complete with orange and purple cupboards, lime green appliances, and carrot adorned curtains.

Hamilton, 35, is a lifelong fan of the show that's spanned 26 seasons and is part of the pop culture lexicon. A framed picture of the cartoon kitchen hangs on the wall as their inspiration, and the couple figures their real-life tribute is about 80% complete. The cost so far? About $2,300 estimates Andreychuk, 43, who noted the checkered floor made up the bulk of the price tag.

Andreychuk sewed the carrot curtains herself. The countertops, appliances, and cupboards have been touched up with colorful contact paper. Andreychuk said they weren't planning to extend the tribute to the living room and bedrooms.

Home into an Airplane

Lovebirds Steve and Vicky Everson took their marriage to new heights after spending £40,000 ($60,000) to turn their modest home into a plane. The pair transformed the two-up two-down terraced house in Bacup, Lancs into a replica of a Boeing 737.

The aviation project started in 2009 after they created a flight simulator in the spare room of their previous home in Milton Keynes. After moving north, they put it back together again. It was so big it stretched from one side of the house to the other.

The couple, who even tied the knot in a Concorde four years earlier, regularly take up to 12 passengers in their "airplane," on simulated “flights” to New York and Hong Kong. Broadcast engineer Steve, 42, said: “Everyone thinks we're a bit eccentric, but you have to do what makes you happy.”

Massive Indoor Aquarium

We all love fish, right? Well, maybe not as much as Martin Lakin, who almost destroyed his house to install a 5,000-liter aquarium right in the middle of it.

An architect warned him the bizarre renovation would make his whole house collapse. He went ahead with it anyway and tore the house in Rochester, Kent, apart, as his bemused wife Kay and son James looked on. Apparently the tank was so huge they could even swim in it before the fish arrived.

The tank cost around £50,000 ($75,000), but with the half ton of live coral, complex machinery (including an automated sunroof), pumps and computers that run the aquarium 24 hours a day, Martin reckons the total cost is around £150,000 ($230,000). Now that it is complete, it's home to more than 120 fish.

The men who held Charlie Chaplin's body for $600,000 ransom

In 1978, two men stole the corpse of Charlie Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland. 

Immediately after the body snatching, Chaplin's widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of some $600,000, which she refused to pay, saying that her husband would have thought the demand “ridiculous.” The callers then made threats against her two youngest children. 

After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics—Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria. Busted, the criminals led police to Chaplin's body, which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from his family's home in Corsier.

In December 1978, Wardas and Ganev were convicted of grave robbing and attempted extortion. Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin's body in an attempt to solve their financial difficulties. 

Wardas, identified as the mastermind of the plot, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor. Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was believed to have limited responsibility for the crime. 

As for Chaplin, his family reburied his body in a concrete grave, where he remains, in peace, to this day. 

The famous family who staged a phony grave robbery in order to move a body to the place of their choice

Did Elvis Presley's family stage a plot to snatch the King's body after he died in 1977? An FBI informant says yes, and was also allegedly involved in the scheme. 

The goal was to persuade Memphis officials to move Elvis from the public cemetery to Graceland, which is now a $15 million-a-year tourist attraction. 

The late Vernon Presley, Elvis' father and executor of his estate at the time, wanted his son buried on the mansion grounds, but it was in an area not zoned for burials. Three weeks after Elvis died of a heart attack, Vernon had lawyers for the Presley estate petition the Memphis and Shelby County Board of Adjustment for a zoning variance. They cited what they called an attempted theft of Presley's body several days earlier and the expense of round-the-clock security.

Obviously, the grave robbery was a hoax, but nonetheless, three men were arrested on August 29, 1977, near the Forest Hill Cemetery mausoleum where Elvis was entombed in a 900-pound copper coffin. One of them was Ronnie Tyler, who later became an FBI informant.

Tyler “had been in cahoots with a crooked deputy sheriff, who swooped down and ‘captured' the thieves,” said Ivian C. Smith, former head of the FBI's Arkansas office.

On September 28, 1977, the board OK'd Presley's request to move his son's body to Graceland. The singer was reburied there on October 2. 

More than 600,000 people, at about $77 a head, visit Graceland and Elvis' gravesite each year. 

The disgruntled employee who stole Groucho Marx's remains and left them at a different cemetery

After the lovable and iconic comedian Groucho Marx died in 1977, his remains were placed at Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills, California. In May 1982, his ashes were stolen from a sealed crypt and were found later that day at the gates of Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Burbank, about 12 miles away. The kidnapper — or, in this case, ash-napper — has never been caught, but questions remain. Why were Marx's ashes stolen and who was the culprit? An obsessed fan looking for the ultimate souvenir? A ghoulish opportunist planning to make a ransom demand, then changing his mind? Or simply someone who thought the comedian should be buried at a more high-profile location closer to Hollywood?

Rumor has it (though we don't know for sure), an employee of the cemetery, angry that he was fired, pried the cover off Groucho's niche and stole his urn. He brought it to Burbank in part because Groucho had once said, “I would never be caught dead in Burbank.” 

Whatever the reason, management at the cemetery responded to the incident by moving Marx's remains to a more remote location in a room inside the mausoleum, and installing security monitoring devices throughout. They have since been reluctant to give out the exact location of any of their more famous residents.

The mysterious grave robbers who stole the hands of Juan Perón

In 1976, former Argentinian president Juan Perón's coffin was placed in the Perón family tomb in Chacarita Cemetery, located in the Chacarita ward of the city of Buenos Aires. Thirteen years later, the Peronist Justicialist Party received an anonymous letter claiming Perón's hands had been removed from his tomb along with his army cap and sword. The letter demanded the party pay an $8 million (U.S.) ransom for their return. 

Authorities checked Perón's tomb, to find that it had indeed been broken into, and the hands and other items had been removed, including a poem written to him by his last wife, Isabel. 

Vicente Saadi, the head of the Justicialist Party, refused to pay the ransom. After a criminal investigation, six men were arrested, and five arraigned. However, no one was ever charged in relation to the incident, and the hands were never recovered. 

There is evidence that the theft had some official support, as the robbers used a key to access the tomb. Many involved in the criminal investigation have since died under mysterious circumstances.

The inept gang who tried to snatch Lincoln's body

In 1876, Abraham Lincoln's body lay within an aboveground white marble sarcophagus in a handsome tomb on the grounds of Springfield, Illinois' Oak Ridge Cemetery.

The only thing standing between the body and any would-be grave robbers was a single padlock on the tomb's chamber door. His sarcophagus wasn't at all burglarproof: Its lid was sealed, not with cement, but with the less permanent plaster of Paris. There was no groundskeeper, no security. After all, who would want to steal Lincoln's body? 

Enter a gang of Irish counterfeiters from Chicago led by a small-time crime boss named Big Jim Kennally. Early in 1876, Kennally's best engraver of counterfeit plates, Benjamin Boyd, had been sentenced to 10 years in the state penitentiary in Joliet. To pressure the governor to release his man, Kennally recruited two members of his gang, Terence Mullen, a saloonkeeper, and Jack Hughes, a sometimes manufacturer of counterfeit nickels, to kidnap Lincoln's body. For ransom, they would demand $200,000 in cash and a full pardon for Boyd.

With the lack of security, the gang should have had an easy time of acquiring the body, but neither Mullen or Hughes had any body-snatching experience. So, they invited a man named Lewis Swegles, who they thought was a grave robber, to help them. They couldn't have made a worse choice because Swegles was a paid informant—a "roper"—of the Secret Service.

Swegles reported every detail of the plot to his boss, Patrick D. Tyrrell, chief of the Chicago district office of the Secret Service. On the night he accompanied Mullen and Hughes to Oak Ridge Cemetery, Tyrrell and his agents were lying in wait for them at Lincoln's tomb. 

Despite being career criminals, they didn't know how to pick a lock, so they cut through the padlock with a file. Once inside the chamber, they found they could not lift Lincoln's 500-pound cedar-and-lead coffin. The men were considering their options when a detective's pistol accidentally went off outside. Mullen and Hughes bolted, but it wasn't much of a getaway—they headed straight back to their saloon in Chicago where Tyrrell arrested them a couple days later. 

The eccentric man who built a giant “chicken church” in the middle of the Indonesian jungle

Buried deep in the Indonesian jungle is a very odd structure, shaped like a giant chicken. The long-abandoned building, known as Gereja Ayam (Chicken Church), is a popular tourist attraction in the hills of Magelang, Central Java.

Rumor has it this strange building was designed to be a church, but according to its creator, it is neither a chicken nor a church. Daniel Alamsjah, 67, revealed that he was working in Jakarta when he suddenly received a divine message from God to build a prayer room in the form of a dove. 

Within six months, locals offered him 3,000 square meters of land on Rhema Hill for two million rupiah ($170). He paid off the amount over four years and started constructing his dream project in 1994. The place is now open to visitors of all religions. Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians travel there to use it for worship.

According to Daniel, the building was once used as a rehabilitation house for disabled children, drug addicts, and the mentally challenged. Most of the interiors were incomplete, however, and the house had to shut its doors in 2000 due to insufficient funds. 

Regardless, people continue to visit the site and admire its beauty. The serene location and the mystery surrounding the building also make it a great place for unique weddings.

The millionaire who built a pirate-themed island on his estate

It looks like a backdrop for Jack Sparrow to sail toward, but this pirate island was actually built by an eccentric millionaire on his English country estate. 

Situated in the middle of a lake, it includes a working pub named The Black Doubloon, a boat dock, a waterfall and a beach. Coffer Cabin even contains a specially designed pirate bed.

The owner has not been named, but he is under 40 and is said to have been inspired by “his love of all things pirate." He commissioned the construction of Challis Island on his 60-acre Cambridgeshire estate in 2011 and was said to be “over the moon” with the result. He apparently bought himself a pirate costume and is preparing to live like his idols in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (the films in which Johnny Depp plays Sparrow.)

The island, built three feet above the lake from scratch, also includes landscaping features such as a beach, stream, a lagoon and a waterfall. It was built by The Master Wishmakers, who specialize in making wealthy clients' dreams come true without using "plastic imitation theme park trickery."

The eccentric millionaire who built an aquarium fence around his mansion

In 2005, a millionaire built an amazing aquarium fence around his luxury Villa in Turkey. The giant fish tank contains hundreds of fish and has become a huge tourist attraction.

A decade ago, Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu replaced the metal fence at the front of his property with a 50 meter-long aquarium filled with hundreds of fish and octopuses. Located just a few feet away from the shores of the Aegean Sea, Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu's property has become one of the most popular tourist spots in Çeşme. It attracts up to a thousand visitors a day, according to its owner. The villa itself is pretty impressive, but it's not what draws so many people to this place. They come to see the aqua-fence. 

Building the transparent structure was the easy part of the project. The hard part was linking the aqua-fence to the Aegean through a 400 meter-long buried pipeline, so the water could be changed continuously to keep the aquarium looking clean and its inhabitants happy. Gökçeoğlu hired a team of private divers to perform the task and ended up paying approximately 40,000 Turkish Lira ($21,000) to fulfill his dream. The businessman says seeing people line up outside his house staring at his creation makes it all worthwhile.

To make sure no one comes close enough to damage his fragile fence or steal some fish, the owner set up a surveillance network of 17 cameras with facial recognition. Visitors can look, take photos and record videos, but getting too close will probably set off some kind of alarm.

The tech millionaire who spent $150 million to make his company headquarters look exactly like the STAR TREK spaceship

State-of-the-art offices for Chinese game developer NetDragon Websoft are shaped like Star Trek's USS Enterprise. The company's founder, Liu Dejian, spent around 600 million yuan ($150 million) constructing the 260-meter sci-fi building.

The company made sure they had the proper permission to build in the likeness of the starship by contacting the TV show's rights holder, CBS.

Work began in 2010. The building is specifically inspired by the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, which appeared in all three Star Trek movies in the late 1990s and 2000s. It is located in the city of Changle in China's Fujian province and was finished in October 2014.

The building features 30-foot metal slides between levels and automatic sliding gates. Inside the giant spaceship is a life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton replica, modeled after a specimen discovered in South Dakota in 1987.

Dejian, 43, is China's 320th richest person, and according to Forbes, his family is worth a reputed $600 million.

The eccentric man who built a replica of Stonehenge on an island off the Irish coast

He hit the headlines when he drove his cement mixer, emblazoned with the words "Toxic Bank Anglo," into the gates of the Irish parliament. Two months later, self-styled Anglo Avenger Joe McNamara was back in Dublin city Centre, this time staging a protest from atop a cherry picker. 

McNamara is known in Ireland for a series of protests against the Anglo-Irish Bank and the government's handling of the Irish financial crisis. But in 2011, the 42-year-old developer pulled his biggest protest yet. He built his version of Stonehenge on an Achill Island hilltop off the Mayo coast. The 15-foot high circle is 30 meters in diameter and almost 100 meters in circumference, with 39 standing stones and lintels. It took six months to plan and was built during a single weekend.

What it does not have, however, is planning permission. The Mayo County Council requested a court order to force McNamara to remove the edifice as it had been built without the required paperwork. McNamara claimed that the structure was exempt from planning rules because it was an "ornamental garden." It is still standing to this day.

Talpiot Tomb: The Lost Tomb of Jesus Christ and His Family?

The Talpiot Tomb is a rock-cut tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighborhood, five kilometers south of the Old City in East Jerusalem (Israel). The archaeological team determined it to be from the Second Temple period, which lasted from about 538 BC to AD 70. It is also assumed that a tomb of this type would have belonged to a wealthy Jewish family.

The tomb was discovered by construction workers who were laying the foundations for an apartment complex when preparatory demolition work accidentally uncovered the tomb's entrance. Construction of the apartment buildings was completed in 1982. Due to the fact that some children got into the tomb and played inside, the authorities sealed the entrance for safety reasons.

In 2005, a team led by biblical historian James Tabor, who is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, and the controversial filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, opened the tomb again and claimed to find a 2,000-year-old engraving on an ossuary, which they say depicts Jesus' resurrection. The limestone burial box contained human bones and an inscription that has been interpreted as "Yeshua bar Yehosef" ("Jesus, son of Joseph").

Altogether, ten limestone ossuaries were found, with six of them bearing epigraphs, although only four of them were recognized as such in the field. The archaeological team determined the ossuaries to be of little note, and delivered them to the Rockefeller Museum for analysis and storage. In addition, three skulls and crushed bones were found on the floor of the tomb, indicating that the tomb had been disturbed in antiquity. Their footage was incorporated into the 2007 documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, in which the authors claimed that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth, as well as several other figures from the New Testament. Of course, this claim was disputed by many archaeologists and theologians, as well as language and biblical scholars.

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA that was performed by Lakehead University on the remains found in the ossuary marked "Jesus son of Joseph" and the one marked "Mariamne" or "Mary" (who some claim to be Mary Magdalene) found that the two occupants were not blood relations on their mother's side. Based on these tests, the makers of the documentary suggest that "Jesus" and "Mariamne" were probably married "because otherwise they would not have been buried together in a family tomb," but the remains were not dated using radiocarbon to further sustain this supposition. Neither was any announced DNA testing performed on the others ossuaries to see if any familial relation existed there. Additionally, scholars argue the DNA tests only prove that they did not have the same mother and they could easily have been father/daughter, half brother/sister, cousins, or any number of possibilities that do not include a matrilineage line.

Shroud of Turin: The Real Face of the Son of God?

The Shroud of Turin is a length of linen cloth bearing the image of the face and body of a bearded man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. There is no consensus yet on exactly how the image was created, but it is believed by some that the 14ft-long linen cloth was used to bury Christ's body when he was lifted down from the cross after being crucified 2,000 years ago, despite radiocarbon dating placing its origins in the Medieval period.

The image is much clearer in a black-and-white negative than in its natural sepia color. The negative image was first observed in 1898 on the reverse photographic plate of amateur photographer Secondo Pia, who was allowed to photograph it while it was being exhibited in the Turin Cathedral. The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy.

The origins of the shroud and its image are the subject of intense debate among theologians, historians, and researchers. Scientific and popular publications have presented diverse arguments for both authenticity and possible methods of forgery. A variety of scientific theories regarding the shroud have since been proposed, based on disciplines ranging from chemistry to biology and medical forensics to optical image analysis.

In 1978, a detailed examination carried out by a team of American scientists found no reliable evidence of how the image was produced. In 1988, a radiocarbon dating test was performed on small samples of the shroud. The laboratories at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology concurred that the samples they tested dated from the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390.

In March 2013, experiments conducted by scientists at the University of Padua (Italy) dated the shroud to ancient times, a few centuries before and after the life of Christ. The tests dated the age of the shroud to be between 300 BC and 400AD, but with an error margin of 400 years due to the unknown influences of temperature and humidity on the samples during their lives.

The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud, but in 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. More recently, Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI have both described the Shroud of Turin as “an icon.”

As well as can be expected, the shroud continues to remain one of the most studied and controversial archaeological objects in human history.

Jehoash Inscription: A Legitimate Tablet which Describes Renovations of King Solomon's Temple?

The Jehoash Inscription is the name of a controversial artifact rumored to have surfaced in the construction site or in the Muslim cemetery near the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Chiseled in ancient Hebrew and dated to the ninth century BCE, the tablet describes renovations of the First Temple, which is said to have been built by King Solomon, that were ordered by Jehoash, son of King Ahaziah of Judah. It corresponds to the account in II Kings 12:1-17, in which the king laments the state of the temple and commands that money which the priests collect from the people be used to fix it up.

While some scholars support the antiquity of the patina, which in turn strengthens the contention that the inscription is authentic, the scientific commission appointed by the Israeli Minister of Culture to study the Jehoash tablet concluded that various mistakes in the spelling and the mixture of different alphabets indicated that this was a modern forgery. The stone was typical of western Cyprus and areas further west. Patina over the chiseled letters was different from that on the back of the stone and could easily be wiped off the stone by hand.

In a press conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority commission declared the inscription a modern forgery.

The Israel state confiscated the sandstone artifact, charging collector Oded Golan (yes man, the same antiquities collector who is the James ossuary's owner) with forging it and other antiquities and dealing in them.

The court didn't actually rule in 2012 whether the tablet, ossuary, and various other artifacts were genuine or not, just that the state hadn't proven that they were fake, and therefore Golan couldn't be charged with dealing in fake antiquities. Despite the court's ruling, the state refused to return the tablet to Golan and petitioned to bring the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, which has now had its say. On October 17, 2013, a panel of three justices rejected the state's argument 2-1, and ordered that the tablet be restored to Golan.

James Ossuary: Archaeological Evidence of Jesus of Nazareth?

The James ossuary is a 2,000-year old chalk box which was used for containing dead bones. Carved into one side of the box there is an Aramaic inscription that reads, "Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua" (English translation: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). The inscription is very significant for adherents of Christianity because, if genuine, it might provide archaeological evidence of Jesus of Nazareth.

For a 90-year period, from 20 B.C. to A.D. 70, the Jewish burial custom was to place the body in a cave for a year or so and then retrieve the bones and put them in a bone box—ossuary—that could then be placed in a niche in the family tomb.

Several hundred such boxes from that era have been found, 215 of which have inscriptions. Only two boxes mention a brother.

The box was originally tested in Israel by scientists at the Geological Survey Group, who judged it to be about 2,000 years old. But the inscription divides the believers and the non-believers due to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which determined in 2003 that the inscriptions were forged at a much later date. Also, statistical analyses of ancient names suggest that in contemporary Jerusalem, there would be an average of 1.71 people named Ya'akov (James) with a father Yosef (Joseph) and a brother named Yeshua (Jesus).

According to the James ossuary's owner, an Israeli engineer and antiquities collector named Oded Golan, the box came from the Silwan area in the Kidron Valley, southeast of the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem. Golan purchased the artifact from a Jerusalem-based dealer in the 1970s.

In December 2004, the James ossuary's owner was charged with 44 counts of forgery, fraud, and deception, including forgery of the Ossuary inscription. In 2012, Golan was acquitted of the forgery charges but convicted of illegal trading in antiquities. He was also fined 30,000 shekels and sentenced to one month in jail for minor non-forgery charges related to the trial. The judge said that this acquittal "does not mean that the inscription on the ossuary is authentic or that it was written 2,000 years ago."

Saitaphernes' Golden Tiara

On April 1, 1896, the Louvre announced that it had purchased, for 200,000 gold French francs, a gold tiara that had belonged to the Scythian king Saitapharnes . According to experts at the Louvre, a Greek inscription on the tiara confirmed an episode dating to the late 3rd century or early 2nd century B.C.

At 7 inches in height and weighing a little more than a pound in solid gold, the pointed dome-like tira was decorated with a lower, narrower band that shows genre scenes of Scythian daily life; an upper, wider band shows episodes from The Iliad, including Agamemnon and Achilles quarreling over Briseis.

Shortly after the Louvre exhibited the tiara, a number of experts challenged its authenticity. Among them was the German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler, who noted stylistic problems with the tiara's design and questioned the lack of aging apparent on the artifact. For several years, the Louvre defended the authenticity of its treasure. Eventually, news of the story reached Odessa.

Almost immediately, questions about its origins arose, and the crown's amazing state of preservation was the key clue.

In 1903, a Russian jeweler from a small town near Odessa, Israel named Rouchomovski told the Louvre's researchers that he made the tiara per order for a certain Mr. Hochmann, who gave him books showing Greco-Scythian artifacts on which to base the work. It was a gift "for an archaeologist friend."

Taken by the desire to acquire the tiara, the Louvre had missed warning signs that could have saved them considerable embarrassment. The tiara was flawed; there were traces of modern tools, there was modern soldering (though cleverly concealed), and an inscription was raised in relief.

The Louvre still owns the Tiara of Saitaphernes. In 1954, the museum included it in its "Salon of Fakes," along with eight Mona Lisas.

Ancient Persian Princess

This mummy was allegedly found after an earthquake near Quettaand, Pakistan. The alleged Persian princess had been put up for sale on the black antiquities market for 600 million Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of US$6 million. On October 19, 2000, Pakistani authorities were alerted. The "sellers" were accused of violating the country's Antiquities Act, a charge which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

It was started in November 2000, when the international press reported an amazing find: a mummy, which was claimed to be that of an ancient Persian princess, over 2,600 years old. The mummy was encased in a carved stone coffin inside a wooden sarcophagus and was wearing a golden crown and mask. Of course, the Persian princess was immediately hailed as a major archaeological discovery.

The princess was wrapped in ancient Egyptian style. All of the internal organs had been taken out of her body in the same way that the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Her cloth-bound body was dressed with golden artifacts, with an inscription on the golden chest plate that read, "I am the daughter of the great King Xerxes, I am Rhodugune." The situation led archaeologists to speculate that she might have been an Egyptian princess married to a Persian prince, or a daughter of Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia. However, mummification had been primarily an Egyptian practice, and mummies had never been found in Persia before.

When the curator from the Karachi National Museum, Dr. Asma Ibrahim, began her investigation into the mummy, a different story began to emerge. There were some strange puzzles about this ancient princess. The inscriptions on the mummy's breastplate had some grammatical errors, and there were peculiarities in the way she had been mummified. Several detailed operations common to Egyptian mummification had been omitted. It began to look like the mummy was not the princess she was supposed to be; perhaps she was a more ordinary ancient mummy dressed up to be a Persian princess by forgers trying to increase her value. So, forensic experts all over the globe analyzed the mummy and her magnificent trappings and discovered that she is an elaborate fake.

Sadly, this mummy had an even darker history. Computerized tomography scans and X-ray photographs of the body inside the mummy revealed that this was no ancient corpse but a woman who had died in the recent past, and that her neck was broken. An autopsy confirmed that this young woman may indeed have been murdered to provide a body for the fakers to mummify, a body that they intended to pass off as an ancient mummy for millions of dollars on the international art black market.

The Piltdown Chicken

Early in 1912, Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, and Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, joined forces to follow what they termed "evidence of the evolutionary 'missing link' between apes and humans".

The findings during excavations at Piltdown, England included a piece of a thick human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds, a jawbone with two teeth, and a variety of animal fossils and primitive stone tools.

Believing the skull fragments and jawbone to be from the same individual, Smith Woodward made a reconstruction. It suggested an early human with a large brain, indicating a level of intelligence that set it clearly apart from the apes. The jawbone, ape-like but with human-looking teeth, linked the skull with its supposed evolutionary ancestors. So, they decided that the evidence added up to an early human relative who lived about 500,000 years ago.

In the 40 years since the original 1912 announcement of Piltdown Man, increasing numbers of ancient human fossils have been discovered, most notably from Africa, China, and Indonesia, but also from Asia and Europe. However, none of these discoveries showed the large brain and ape-like jaw of Piltdown Man. Instead, they suggested that the jaw and teeth became human-like before the evolution of a large brain.

As the discrepancies became too many to ignore and as new dating technology emerged, investigations on the Piltdown fossils recommenced.

At the Natural History Museum in the late 1940s, Kenneth Oakley ran a series of fluorine tests that made use of fluorine's tendency to accumulate in calcium-containing organic matter such as bones and teeth. Oakley discovered that the fossils were probably less than 50,000 years old, not nearly old enough to be from a species with such ape-like features.

Further research proved that the skull and jaw fragments actually came from two different species, a human and an ape, probably an orangutan. Scratches on the surface of the teeth, visible under the microscope, revealed that the teeth had been filed down to make them look human. Also, it discovered that most of the finds from the Piltdown site had been artificially stained to match the local gravel.

In November 1953, Piltdown Man hit the headlines again, this time to be revealed as a hoax. The so-called "missing link" between humans and apes now became a sensation as a sophisticated and infamous scientific fraud. But who did it, and why? Many people have been suspected but no one really knows the answer.

The Fiji Mermaid

In mid-July 1842, an English gentleman named Dr. J. Griffin, who was a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, arrived in New York City bearing a real mermaid that was supposedly caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific.

Soon after this, the showman P.T. Barnum tried to convince Dr. Griffin to display the mermaid at his museum. Dr. Griffin agreed to exhibit it for a week at Concert Hall on Broadway. Barnum distributed ten thousand copies of a pamphlet about seductive mermaids throughout the city. In August 1842, huge crowds showed up for the exhibit.

Throughout all of this, the deception of the public had been two-fold. First, Dr. Griffin was a fraud. He was no English gentleman. In fact, there was no such thing as the British Lyceum of Natural History. Griffin's real name was Levi Lyman. He was Barnum's accomplice and this had all been done to give the mermaid an appearance of scientific respectability. Second, the famous mermaid was constructed with half of the skeleton of a monkey (torso and head) sewn to the back half of a fish and then covered in papier-mâché, and Barnum knew it.

According to one theory, the Fiji mermaid was destroyed when Barnum's museum burned down in 1865. But this is unlikely, since she should have been at Kimball's Boston museum at that time. More likely, she perished when Kimball's museum burned down in the early 1880s.

There is no accurate information about how this fraud was finally discovered, but the Fiji mermaid will be present in the top 10 cryptozoology frauds.