[intense music]
- Imagine a pristine valley in Canada
where visitors tend to lose their heads.
- [Dr. Hakeem] This is dangerous territory.
- A search party goes looking for the men.
- And for the fourth time, there's no head.
- Or an island filled with adorable monkeys
carrying a not so adorable surprise.
- It's possibly the highest concentration of herpes B
in the entire nation.
- While it is extremely rare, it is also extremely fatal.
- How about a waterfall that spews blood?
- It is a jarring, almost biblical scene.
Those who witness it don't even make it back alive.
- These are the places so unusual,
they are truly unbelievable.
[intense music]
[intense music continues]
Death Valley, California,
Purgatory, Colorado,
Devil's Pass, Alaska, some far-flung locations
carry names so ominous you'd never dare visit.
But one remote valley in Canada
boasts a title so terrifying,
it's got them all beat,
not just because it's gruesome,
but because it actually lives up to the hype of its name.
[daunting music]
- In the Nahanni National Park
in northwest Canada, there's a 200-mile gorge,
referred to as
the Valley of the Headless Men.
- [Dan] No picturesque metaphors here.
The Valley of Headless Men earns its name
starting back in the early 1900s.
[tense music]
- Most of us associate the gold rush
with San Francisco or Deadwood,
but by the late 19th, early 20th century,
if you wanted to go prospecting in the wilderness,
you had to work a little harder to find it.
[suspenseful music]
- People who had been in the gold rush in California
start pouring into Canada.
- They're going out into
the vast reaches of the Canadian wilderness.
There's no stores here, no hospitals.
This is dangerous territory.
[tense music]
- [Dan] In 1904, two brothers,
Willie and Frank McLeod,
are among those looking for their fortune
in the remote Northern Territories.
- The McLeod brothers know they're gonna be venturing out
much farther than other prospectors.
So they stock up on supplies like flour, rifle cartridges.
Then they jump into their canoe
and they paddle down in Nahanni River.
[tense music]
- The conditions are extremely harsh.
Grizzly bears and wolves,
sub-zero temperatures even during the day.
There's many dangers.
- [Dan] While camped out in the nether regions
of the Canadian wilderness,
the prospector's family doesn't expect
regular communication.
But when two years go by without any word,
their loved ones fear the worst.
- Willie and Frank's older brother, Charlie,
pulls together a search party
and goes looking for the men
in their last known camping location.
[dramatic music]
In 1908,
he finds his brothers dead
on the banks of the Nahanni River.
They are fully clothed,
a few personal effects are scattered around them,
but what's truly strange is
both bodies are missing their heads.
Naturally, Charlie is convinced of foul play,
but Canada's Royal Mounted Police are not so sure.
- Canadian Mounted Police have a theory that,
in fact, the brothers probably died of starvation
and then after the fact,
scavenger animals came and removed the heads.
- This story is full of holes though.
It's unlikely that both brothers
would've starved to death at the same place
and the same time.
- And also it just seems unlikely
that if the bodies were found by wolves or grizzly bears,
the animals would make off with just the heads
of both bodies.
- [Dan] Another strange theory arises.
It might have been a warning to other potential prospectors.
- Throughout history, beheadings are very symbolic.
Putting a severed head on a pike
is a clear message to outlaws and intruders.
So it's very unusual that in this case the head is missing.
- [Dan] Could a local legend provide any insight?
[curious music]
- The Dene people settled in the region 8,000 years ago,
but they never put encampments or settlements
in this particular valley.
What do they fear?
- Tribal folklore tells of a race
of man-eating giants, called the Nakani,
which are said to be twice as tall as an ordinary man.
They consume human flesh, so the lore goes,
and they hunt in the valley.
- [Dan] Still, the case remains unsolved
and appears to be an isolated incident.
Until 1917.
[intense music]
- A Swiss prospector named Martin Jorgenson
appears to strike gold.
He sends a letter back home to his family saying,
"I found it, I'm rich."
- But shortly after he sends this letter,
he too is found dead next to his cabin
which has been burned to the ground.
His body's found among the ashes.
Once again, there's no head.
- [Dan] Three headless men found in the same remote place
a decade apart?
Plenty to earn the nickname Valley of the Headless Men.
Sadly, the mysterious headhunting isn't over.
[dramatic somber music]
- Decades later in 1945,
there's a body found in a sleeping bag,
and for the fourth time, there's no head.
This is thought to be the body of a missing minor
named Ernest Savard.
Here's the strange thing,
gold mining has been going on in Canada
for decades across vast regions.
So it's unusual that it's only this one little tiny area
that there are missing heads.
Whether you believe these deaths are the result
of some sort of legend or folklore,
or maybe animal attacks or rival prospectors,
simple fact is they remain a mystery until today.
- Not all mysterious locations
have such colorful macabre names,
but there's one small body of water in Central New Jersey
that sounds adorable,
Round Valley Reservoir.
But its strange history is anything but.
[tense music]
- If you look at other infamous locations
like the Bermuda Triangle or the Dragon's Sea, these are deep,
expansive natural locations with erratic weather.
What's weird about Round Valley
is that it's comparatively tiny and man-made.
- [Dan] For what it lacks in size,
it more than makes up for in strange disappearances,
earning the nickname the New Jersey Triangle.
[suspicious music]
- The longest unsolved disappearance dates back to
May 4th, 1973, when two men,
Thomas Trimblett and Christopher Zajaczkowski,
are fishing on the reservoir in a 12-foot aluminum boat.
- A few days later, the boat is found capsized
on the eastern shore of the reservoir.
There's two life preservers, an oar,
and a broken fishing rod.
And no sign of bodies.
- [Dan] And this is just the first chapter
in this very disturbing mystery.
- A few years go by.
It's now March of 1977,
and Craig Stier and Andrew Fasanella
are out on the reservoir enjoying themselves,
in their canoe rowing.
- They're last seen paddling their canoe
on the north side heading east.
- And they just disappear.
[dramatic music]
- Just like the previous incident,
their canoe and camping gear is discovered on the shore
a few days later.
The authorities send divers in almost immediately.
They search the area,
and they find no bodies.
[dramatic music]
- Andrew's father is determined to find his son's remains.
And he appeals to the New Jersey State Police,
and they have access to a privately owned submarine
and they bring that to the reservoir.
[tense music]
- Unfortunately, they find no bodies.
And this is a man-made reservoir.
These are fairly calm conditions.
You're not dealing with ocean squalls,
or massive waves, or great white sharks.
[tense music]
- Another decade goes by.
We're now 1989,
John Kubu and Andrew Lawson,
they take a fishing boat out onto the reservoir.
They again go to the eastern side.
- [Dan] You can probably guess how this ends.
- We're on our third time now.
All of their items are accounted for,
they're camping gear, you name it,
but they're nowhere to be found.
It's the same pattern again and again.
[dramatic music]
- [Dan] Conventional searches turn up no signs of
any bodies that have gone missing over the past 15 years.
But in 1993, some hungry fishermen catch something
that finally sheds some light
on this cold case.
- It's the remains of Albert Lawson.
The remains that a submarine could not find
have been caught by fishermen.
John Kubu, his friend, still nowhere to be found.
[dramatic music]
- [Dan] This break leads to a full-scale
search effort in 2006,
when authorities take advantage of unusually low water levels.
- A team of state police, FBI,
and Bergen County sheriff's officers, fan out
on foot and in boats, all across the 180-foot-deep reservoir.
They even bring in another state-of-the-art submarine.
- And yet with all this technology, all this attention,
all these people focused on this objective,
they find nothing.
- [Dan] Six years later, another unexpected clue surfaces.
- In 2012, a fisherman's hook catches on something heavy
that doesn't resist like a fish would.
And he reels it in.
There is a massive boot on the end of that line.
He takes a closer look inside,
and there is what looks like bones and decayed human flesh.
- Unfortunately, due to the amount of time
that the foot has spent underwater,
authorities are unable to use it to determine
any kind of connection to the missing bodies.
As of today, the New Jersey Triangle has claimed 26 lives
and at least six bodies remain undiscovered.
[suspenseful music]
[eerie music]
- As far as the mysterious foot,
that might not belong
to any of the Jersey Triangle's official victims.
At just 50 to 100 miles from Newark or Atlantic City,
a deep lake is a very convenient place
to dump inconvenient people.
That foot could be anybody's.
- Every day, a half million people jam onto the 405 freeway
in Los Angeles just to sit in the world's most brutal traffic.
I'm sure none of these poor tortured commuters
could even imagine a place
where daily travel offers stunning mountain views
and a decent upper arm workout.
If that sounds good to you,
and you don't mind the chance of plummeting to your death,
you might wanna start job hunting in Los Pinos, Colombia.
[curious music]
- There's an area 60 miles south of Bogota, Columbia, and it's
some of the most beautiful sites of terrain you've ever seen.
Mountains, valleys, rivers.
Nestled there is the tiny village of Los Pinos
in the Rionegro valley.
- It is extremely remote.
It is a 2 1/2-hour hike to the neighboring village,
where you can buy supplies or go to work,
or where the kids can go to school.
- But for the last five decades,
locals have figured out a way to cut that commute
down to a fraction of the time.
- Each day, hundreds of residents
zipline 1,200 feet above the ravine below,
speeding along a 2,500-foot steel cable.
- Not surprisingly, accidents do happen there.
Routinely, people break arms and legs from crash landings.
- [Dan] Some might call it risky,
and the 22 people killed doing it might agree.
But that's not keeping the rest of this town
from hopping on the zip line to get groceries, visit family,
and most often send their kids to school.
- I lecture my kids to wear a helmet
if they so much as ride a block on a bicycle,
but it shows that you care about education
if you send your kids down a zip line to get one.
- Obviously, most places in the world
would forbid busing toddlers to school by zip line,
but the more remote you are,
the more you get to make your own rules,
like one unbelievably tiny place with big ambition.
- 6 1/2 miles off the coast of England
is a tiny platform about 60 feet off of the ocean surface.
It looks like, from a distance, maybe that it's an oil rig.
- This small little speck,
about the size of maybe two tennis courts,
is the Principality of Sealand.
Does the United Kingdom, the United States,
or the United Nations recognize this small little micronation?
No, but its royal family and small number of citizens
have fought fiercely for Sealand's independence.
[tense music]
- [Dan] Before asserting its itty-bitty independence,
Sealand served as an anti-aircraft post
during World War II.
There were three others like it called Maunsell Forts.
- Their job was to shoot out of the sky
German Luftwaffe bombers.
[dramatic music]
And they were pretty successful.
They shot down 22 enemy aircraft and 30 V-1 rockets.
- [Dan] After the war ends, the battered British servicemen
leave the post to return to their families back home,
all except one.
- He's a retired major named Patrick Roy Bates.
And he and his family take up permanent residence
on one of these platforms.
- [Dan] Roy isn't just making this a vacation home getaway.
His grand vision, to make this tiny fort
an independent and free nation.
- The reason he's able to do this
is that at this point a nation sovereignty
ends at about three nautical miles out from the coast.
So these forts that have been built 6 1/2 miles out
puts it beyond the reach of the United Kingdom.
That puts Roy in a position to say,
"This is out in international waters."
- [Dan] That might tell us how this retired major
claimed this former fortress for his own,
but it doesn't tell us why.
The answer is pretty unexpected.
- One of Bates' motivations
is that he is a World War II veteran.
He has fought against fascism,
and now 20 years later in the mid-1960s,
he is disgusted with the way the British government
is repressing freedom of expression, freedom of speech,
and even different kinds of music.
- He's dealing with a country that, because of the Cold War,
censors popular culture.
And from his platform
just outside of the international limit,
he will broadcast a pirate radio station.
- Patrick sees the possibilities
beyond just setting up a pirate radio station.
If he's successful in creating his own micronation,
that means creating his own constitution,
issuing his own currency.
The possibilities really are endless.
- The British government is not happy with Bates,
and they jam his radio station.
Bates resists this, and in 1967
decides that he is going to formally announce
the sovereign independence of this nation.
And he names it the Principality of Sealand.
[dramatic music]
And he gives himself the title of prince
and his wife the title of princess.
- This is truly a slap in the face
to the British government.
To show Roy and his family that they mean business,
the government has the British Royal Navy
go out and destroy the other three Maunsell Forts.
- [Dan] The Bates family is unfazed by this show of force,
so the British Navy tries a more direct approach.
- The British government decides to send a message
by sailing around the Sealand platform,
harassing the family.
- Roy's 16-year-old son, Michael Bates,
fires a .22 caliber pistol shot
[gun firing]
down at the boat as a warning.
That does not sit well with the British Royal Navy.
- [Dan] You'd think civilian firing upon the British Navy
in broad daylight would be an open-and-shut case,
but the proceedings take an unbelievable turn.
- Michael discharged this gun outside of UK jurisdiction.
Meaning that they can't pursue it.
- The showdown with the Crown government
tracks the attention of a German businessman
named Alexander Achenbach.
He sees potential for an offshore enclave
where money can be parked with no questions asked,
with no taxes being levied.
- Achenbach decides to reach out to Roy
to talk to him about possibly becoming a citizen of Sealand,
maybe even buying the whole place.
And he invites them to meet him in Austria to discuss it.
But this is all a trick
because while the prince and princess of Sealand
are on their way to Austria,
Achenbach is flying a helicopter
full of German and Dutch mercenaries
to go invade Sealand while they're gone.
- So Achenbach takes the Bates son, Michael, hostage
and declares himself to be the prime minister of Sealand.
This may be the smallest coup in recorded history.
- [Dan] The coup may be small,
but they're messing with the wrong monarch.
- Let's remember that Achenbach
is a businessman and a scientist
and Roy is a retired major.
- Bates organizes his own force,
which flies in and air assaults onto Sealand
using helicopters.
- Most of Achenbach's men flee.
However, Roy manages to take Achenbach as a prisoner.
- [Dan] Bates allows his prisoner
the proverbial one phone call while in custody
to contact the German embassy in London.
This is where things take another strange turn.
- The German officials contact their British counterparts,
and the British officials say,
"We don't have any jurisdiction there,
so you're on your own."
Now the German government
has to negotiate with this tiny little micronation
over the release of a German citizen.
- Incredibly, this coup d'etat only further demonstrates
the viability and reality of Roy's principality.
- Today, Sealand, like any other country,
has its own currency featuring the royal family,
its own stamps, even its own constitution.
They can also stamp your passport when you visit.
Though be warned, there's not a single decent hotel.
- Tourist attractions come in many forms, places of
natural splendor, sacred spiritual meaning,
or deep historical significance.
So it seems odd that one isolated plane in Missouri
would draw people by the thousands,
even though what's beneath it
would send most people running for their lives.
[tense music]
- In Weldon Springs, Missouri, you'll find this
sloping hill, that's covered in gray stones.
It's very brutalistic in its aesthetic.
- 16,000 people a year
come to walk in what looks like a massive rock garden.
The huge scale of it produces
this calm, meditative state.
- [Dan] What is the name of this curious monument, you may ask
This is known locally as the Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail,
which sounds way more fun than it should.
[dramatic music]
- Beneath these rocks and encased in concrete
is a million and a half cubic yards
of asbestos, mercury, radioactive uranium,
and other toxic byproducts of Cold War era nuclear weapons.
This is the former site of an explosives factory.
The Department of Energy now uses this land as a dump.
It's carefully engineered
to safely contain these nasty products,
but it's a dump.
And now it's also a tourist attraction.
[somber music]
- Coming here and seeing this 17,000-acre space
gives you some sense of how huge
the world's nuclear arsenal must be.
I mean, this is just for leftovers.
- So an odd meditative thought
that one might have walking on this trail
is that humanity has the capacity to wipe itself out
a number of times over
and to contemplate and think about
the close calls where we've nearly unleashed
that incredible arsenal on ourselves.
[explosion booming]
- What's more toxic than a tourist attraction
with a radioactive half-life?
How about an island of dirty monkeys?
[dramatic music]
- It is 1930s Florida, and a
tour boat operator named Colonel Tooey
takes people on a boat ride around a small man-made island
in Silver Springs, Florida.
But business isn't great.
- He needs a gimmick.
He needs something to increase interest.
His genius marketing strategy,
release 6 rhesus macaque monkeys on the island.
So word will spread about the tour on the island
and the sightings of rare animals it provides.
[monkeys screeching]
- The rhesus macaque is not indigenous to North America.
They shouldn't even be here.
[tense music]
- [Dan] But that doesn't stop Colonel Tooey from setting them
loose in Silver Springs Park
and inviting the world to come see.
- The monkeys are very resourceful.
Macaques can survive in any conditions.
And what do monkeys do well?
Procreate.
They make a lot more monkeys.
[monkeys screeching]
- Eventually, the monkey population in
Silver Springs State Park explodes to over 300.
[monkeys screeching]
And tourists come out in droves to snap photos
[camera shutter clicking]
of these cute little monkeys.
[camera shutter clicking]
But before you snap that monkey photo,
there's one thing you might wanna know.
[monkeys screeching]
- Rhesus macaques are common carriers of the herpes B virus.
In monkeys, it causes little more than a cold sore,
but in people, it causes
high fevers and brain swelling.
- Since 1932, there really have only been about 50 cases,
but of those 50 cases, 21 died.
So while it is extremely rare, it is also extremely fatal.
- [Dan] It's also very contagious here.
With hundreds of monkeys running wild,
the possibility of transmission is high.
- Even if you're not trying to make contact,
the monkeys have been known to get territorial and attack.
They look cute and cuddly,
but they can be very aggressive.
[monkeys screeching]
The lack of awareness about this place
is a dangerous factor.
People like to think, "Oh, this is a special place where
I can see monkeys," rather than,
"It's possibly the highest concentration of
Herpes B in the entire nation."
[monkeys screeching]
[upbeat classical music]
- I'm speaking for myself here,
but if I know there is a place
where my chances of contracting Herpes B from a feral monkey
are, say, any higher than absolutely 0%,
I'm not going there.
- Grave sites serve to memorialize those who've passed,
but there's one in France meant to honor a World War I hero
that actually holds the remains of something else.
- We all know of General George S. Patton's
storied career in World War II,
but well before he was a general,
he was stationed in France at the end of World War I.
- In 1917, he's Captain George S. Patton.
And he's assigned to the Tank Corps
of the American Expeditionary Force
stationed in Bourg, France.
[tense music]
- This is where tank crews are trained
before they head to the front.
So, to avoid any enemy surveillance
of this new technology,
they're stationed far from the front lines.
- Even though these soldiers are operating
very high-tech machinery,
the camp itself was very hastily assembled.
And it's very, very sparse.
There's no running water, there's no heat.
And for bathroom facilities,
basically they have just a huge open latrine
that's dug at the back end of this encampment.
[intense music]
- [Dan] The summer and fall of 1918 sees some of
the most intense fighting
of an already long and brutal war.
[dramatic music]
Patton is sent to the front lines in order to pack up
and shut down Bourg's tank training facility.
- Just as they're ready to get these tanks out to the front,
the mayor of Bourg approaches George Patton.
And he's distraught.
- Patton hears the mayor saying,
"Oh, I'm so sorry that you lost this soldier.
Oh, what a complete shame that this man was lost
not in battle, but in training."
And Patton's first thought is, "What are you talking about?"
- So the mayor takes Patton to the rear of the camp
and to a, what appears to be,
a freshly filled rectangular hole
on which is a cross that reads "Abandoned Rear."
- The mayor thinks that this is the name of a dead soldier
who's buried under that pile of dirt.
- [Dan] It is not the final resting place
of a fallen soldier,
although you could call it a rest stop.
- It absolutely makes sense
why this would look like a grave to the mayor,
but this is just a filled in latrine.
George Patton, he says absolutely nothing to the mayor.
Patton knows that this mayor has seen
so many young Frenchmen already die.
And now he sees these Americans
who are willing to give their lives for France effectively.
And out of charity, Patton doesn't have it in him
to embarrass the mayor in this moment.
[dramatic music]
- During World War II, Patton's once again in France
and he decides to take a little detour to visit Bourg.
- And Patton sees a man who looks pretty familiar,
and he asks him, "Were you here during the last war?"
It's the former mayor of the town, and he says,
"Yes, General Patton,
I was here and so were you.
Back then, you were, of course, Captain Patton."
- [Dan] Then their reunion takes a strange turn
when Patton is brought over to a very unusual memorial.
- The site of the covered latrine
where he stood with the weeping mayor
during the last world war
is now an actual historic grave site.
The locals had decorated it in honor of the man
they thought had died in the training camp.
- We know this story because
Patton wrote about it in his diary
that this great American hero,
Abandoned Rear, was now
the subject of a permanent memorial in the town of Bourg.
- And he writes about how he never told them the truth and
that he will never share this with anyone.
And we probably never would've found out
had he not been killed in that tragic car accident.
And then his diary gets published,
and so the world knows the truth about Abandoned Rear.
- Even after all Patton had seen,
this grave site dedicated to the Abandoned Rear
has got to be one of the most unbelievable places
the general had ever been.
- Nestled between 2 mountain ranges in Romania is a place
many locals have long avoided
for fear of the terrifying secrets hiding within.
[intriguing music]
- Hoia Baciu is a very ancient forest.
The whole place looks like it's something
out of a dark fairy tale.
[ominous music]
[ominous music continues] [birds chirping]
- You don't think of trees as inspiring fear,
but when you look at these eerie growth patterns
of the trunks and branches,
it leads you to wonder that something unnatural
might be happening here.
- [Dan] Incidentally, this happens to be in the
Transylvania region of Romania.
Perhaps you've heard of it.
- Because of its presence
in over a century of literature and film,
Transylvania is forever locked in
as the center of vampires and horror stories,
and writers did not choose it randomly as a setting.
- [Dan] Dating back to the Neolithic period,
the forest holds a very long and rich history.
- Settlement in Hoia Baciu
goes back to about 6500 BC,
making it one of the most ancient
settlement sites in Europe,
arguably older than Stonehenge itself.
[tense music]
- In the late 1400s, the area to the south
was controlled by Vlad the Impaler.
This was a famously violent time
that a mass killing would've happened in these woods
is certainly not out of the question.
But there's early folklore
about it being haunted by the souls
of murdered peasants from long ago.
- Legend has it that Hoia Baciu
is named after a young shepherd
who, along with his 200 sheep,
went missing in the forest.
And there were no remains,
whether human or animal, ever found.
- Another story tells of a five-year-old girl
who wanders into the forest and gets lost.
And just like the shepherd and the flock,
she completely vanishes.
Then five years later, she shows up,
and seemingly unaged.
Obviously, the difference between a child
from the age of 5 to 10 would be significant,
but she looks exactly the same.
- [Dan] Centuries later, in 1960
the forest gains international attention
for an otherworldly reason.
- Alexandru Sift, a biologist who is working in the area,
notices some strange activity in the skies
of what he believes is a UFO.
- [Dan] But he is not the only one
to see these mysterious sightings.
- In 1968, another UFO sighting
is reported by a military technician named Emil Barnea
who takes photographs of strange objects
hovering above the forest.
There's now a record
of two people with technical backgrounds
reporting sightings and capturing photographs.
[dramatic music]
- The communist government
considered any sort of paranormal report
to be either complete hogwash or state sabotage.
Barnea actually loses his job
after he makes these sightings public.
- In addition to the UFO sightings,
Emil Barnea's photographs
also point to an area of the forest known as the clearing.
It's an enormous area where nothing grows.
There isn't any apparent anomaly in the soil
and there's no explanation for why the clearing
is barren of trees and other vegetation.
- What is widely known as the mysterious clearing
and the haunting shape of the trees
make the Hoia Baciu Forest unlike anywhere else on earth.
Now it is the absence of trees except for one
that gives this next location
in the otherwise barren Sahara Desert
its unusual appearance.
[suspenseful music]
- When you look at the Tree of Tenere,
you're looking at the only sign of life
in what is this vast desert wasteland of the Sahara.
It is legitimately the only living vegetation
for 250 miles in all directions.
[dramatic music]
- The Tree of Tenere
is regarded as the most isolated tree on the planet.
- If you're traveling from sub-Saharan regions
through Niger to Morocco,
this is one of the few landmarks
that lets people know where they are
and that they're on the right path.
It's like a lighthouse on a sea of sand.
- [Dan] But it wasn't always this bare.
- Many thousands of years ago,
this area was lush and tropical.
We see rock art of giraffes and hippos,
indicating that it was a much more lush, rainy area
than the desert that we see today.
- [Dan] Starting about 6,500 years ago,
weather patterns changed
to turn this area into the desert it is today.
- For over 300 years,
this tree has an incredibly rough life.
It has to dig down deep into the soil
to be able to get what little water is down there
to survive.
- [Dan] But in 1973,
this over 300 year old survivor meets its match.
- In a region where there are very few obstacles,
one drunk driver
manages to plow right into the tree.
[tires screeching]
[car crashes]
[subtle music]
- If you were sober and knew exactly where this tree was,
finding it and hitting it at night would still be difficult.
The fact that this guy was drunk and lost
and just happened to hit it by accident
is almost impressive.
- The remains of the tree are taken to the
National Museum of Niger
where they built sort of a monument to it.
- That's a strange place unto itself.
I mean, this is one of the few tombs in the world
built for a tree.
[tense music]
- Some humans are born with a thirst for knowledge and a
passion for risky exploration.
The Antarctic tundra is full of skeletons that prove it.
But one discovery by a group
of early 20th century scientists is so strange,
it might have had them wishing they'd stayed home.
[tense music]
- We're in Antarctica,
and there is a race to get to the South Pole
between the Norwegians and the British.
The British have Robert Falcon Scott,
one of the greatest explorers of all time.
As part of his party,
he has a geographer by the name of Taylor.
- Taylor is in this valley in Antarctica,
and he finds something pretty unbelievable.
- Emerging from the glacier
is a five-story frozen waterfall
of deep red.
- This is something that you definitely find
in the Book of Revelations.
- It really stands out.
The entire landscape is blanketed in white snow.
And there's this waterfall that looks like
hundreds of gallons of blood pouring down.
So you've gotta wonder, "What is the cause of this?"
- It is an extraordinarily rare sight.
Not only are these the first Western eyes
that have ever seen this extraordinary sight,
but five of those who witness it don't even make it back
alive from the expedition.
- Thomas Griffith Taylor does make it home
and is one of the few people who has seen
the blood waterfall with his own eyes.
- [Dan] Through the years,
scientists worked to finally uncover
the secret of the falls.
- The mystery of Blood Falls
leads scientists to discover the source of
the water, a lake of salty brine
buried deep beneath the glacier itself.
But why red?
The primary suspect is algae.
There are many species of red algae
that can bloom in numbers high enough
to stain waterways red.
But when they look at the samples,
there's no algae present.
- [Dan] It's not blood, but something far stranger
and almost otherworldly.
- This briny lake has been cut off and trapped
by the glacier for over a million years,
but amazingly, it's full of life.
A community of microorganisms
has evolved there in complete darkness,
taking their energy not from sunlight,
but from minerals dissolved in the water itself,
including iron.
Iron provides color,
but the brine is not red beneath the ice.
It only turns red when it oxidizes at the falls,
when it mixes with air.
- Blood Falls is an unbelievable natural phenomenon,
perhaps only to be outdone by an unusual lake in Venezuela.
Whoever coined the phrase
"lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice"
clearly has never visited Lake Maracaibo.
[tense music]
- In 1499,
the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci,
when he first reaches South America,
encounters this strange lake, Lake Maracaibo.
And he sees on this lake a floating city of huts.
And he calls this city Venezuela or Little Venice.
- Today, Lake Maracaibo
supports the livelihood of about 20,000 fishermen,
many of whom still live on these small tin shacks
that sit on stilts above the lake.
- [Dan] This city on the water
also happens to get struck by lightning
more than any other place on Earth.
[thunder roaring]
- Right where the Catatumbo River
empties into South America's largest lake,
lightning storms rage for up to 10 hours a night,
almost 300 nights a year.
[thunder roaring]
- The footage of this place might remind a person
of some sort of Hollywood special effect,
but it's altogether real.
[thunder roaring]
- [Dan] Throughout history, this lightning has also provided
a strategic advantage to the locals.
- In 1597, when Sir Francis Drake tries to sneak attack,
the light from the constant barrage of lightning
actually uncovers his attack
and the inhabitants are able to fight him off.
- In 1823,
during Venezuela's war of independence against Spain,
Spanish ships attempt to descend on the settlement
under cover of night.
But again, they're given away by lightning storms,
and Simon Bolivar's makeshift navy
is able to drive them off.
- [Dan] What exactly is attracting lightning
to this location specifically?
- In order to get lightning storms in the United States,
we generally need to have severe thunderstorms that are
created when cold air comes down
from Canada, and it meets
nice moist air coming up
from the Gulf of Mexico.
But here in Lake Maracaibo,
the conditions are constant.
Every night, we have this battle
of moist air meeting dry air,
and it creates a constant thunderstorm.
- The area receives thousands of strikes per night
and about 1.6 million per year.
This wins it the Guinness World Record
for the location with the highest concentration
of lightning on Earth.
[thunder roars]
- Here in Lake Maracaibo,
recently, a group of researchers discovered
an entirely new kind of lightning,
a lightning that we call dark lightning.
[thunder roaring]
It's a flash of gamma rays.
The same kind of radiation
that transformed Bruce Banner into the Hulk
is the kind of radiation that we first identified
here in Lake Maracaibo before we found it out
anywhere else in the planet.
- Despite the frequent storms,
I'd advise against bringing an umbrella,
especially if it's metal.
[upbeat music]
We visited the world's tiniest nation,
and met some very infectious monkeys,
celebrated parks built on nuclear waste,
and monuments dedicated to human waste.
All proof in the end
that our planet is home to some places
that are truly unbelievable.