2013

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Dipeea Lahiri Soumya Ghosh Soumi Banerjee Soumitra Mandal Prodip Guha Roy Sritama Mukhopadhyay

Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology

CSE 2nd Year

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
All rights are reserved. No part of this report is to be published in any article in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the authors. Any form of copying will be strictly dealt with.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
MEGHNAD SAHA INSTITUTE TECHNOLOGY Techno Complex,Madurdaha(beside NRI complex) Post-Ucchepota,Kolkata-700150 To, IM Sir ,SD Madam, (Assistant Proffessor ,Basic Science and Humanities Dept. ) 16th May,2013. Subject: Introduction to our presentation topic. Sir/Madam, We would like to present to you our report on the topic BELIEVE IT OR NOT in Meghnad Saha Institute Of Technology. In our report, we have clearly elaborated the different facts that we have focused on and lucidly mentioned the theories that support these facts. Thanking you, Yours sincerely, Dipeea Lahiri Soumya Ghosh Soumi Banerjee Prodip Guha Roy Soumitra Mandal Sritama Mukhopadhyay (Second Year,CSE Department).

CONTENTS
PAGE NO. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT 1)INTRODUCTION 2)PROCEDURE 3)THE FACTS
I)SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION II)NAZCA LINES III)CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN IV)LITHOPEDION V)HITLERS SECRETS VI)TURIN SHROUD

4)CONCLUSIONS 5)REFERNCING 6)GLOSSARY

Acknowledgement
We take this opportunity to thank our respected teachers- Mr. Indranil Mitra and Mrs. Sanchita Dutta to letting us choose this report and lending us a helping hand whenever we needed them and guiding us through every step. We would also like to thank John Farndon, author of the book Do Not Open- an enclyclopedia of the worlds best-kept secrets, whose book has given us the inspiration and knowledge about this report and has driven us to explore this report. We also want to thank Websites like Wikipedia for lending us the information we needed and making it easier to get the details of the report.

Abstract
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
The very evidence of this famous idiom is this report. The report is about some strange fictitious truth of our life and world. This report compiles six different weird facts which leave people surprised and shocked.We liked such a topic for our project because at first we ourselves were astonished to know all these strange facts. How does a person normally walking in the street can turn into ashes??How does a woman having a baby inside her womb for more than 50 years can give birth to other babies?? What is the mystery of turning shroud??? How the Nazca people drew those lines so many years back??? In this way every fact leaves a thought and a puzzle behind which give amazing answers. From the nuclear bunker in Colorado to the top secrets of Hitler every fact is very hard to be believed though they are true with strong evidences supporting them. We think the readers would enjoy these weird truths that are present in our life and in this world where we live.

INTRODUCTION
Believe it or not is a short package of some uncanny events that have or might have taken place across the globe, with some unbelievable valid proof behind their existence. We start with SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION, a phenomenon where a person goes up in flames without any known external source of fire, turning into ashes within few minutes. Next we present THE NAZCA LINES dealing with some weird but amazing gigantic tribal drawings. Following Nazca, comes THE CHEYENNE MOUNTAINS, a secretive underground military base containing some exceptionally interesting facts. Facts here are not any weapons or ammunitions, guess what? Its beyond anyones imagination to even think, what lies inside this very fishy Military base. Then comes Lithopedion! A woman pregnant for 47 years??Nothing to say except Believe it or NOT.Hitlers secret deals with the Nazi masterminds plan of creating an atom bomb. Did he succeed?? Fingers crossed!!!At last comes the TURIN SHROUD, a linen cloth bearing an uncanny image but who is this person?? To know the answers, surf through pages of this thrilling packageBELIEVE IT OR NOT

PROCEDURES
In the process of development of this presentation World Wide Web has played a major role. Images are been collected from Google site. Different genuine data, videos, informations has been collected from websites. In order to make the videos presentable it has been edited in windows movie maker.

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

DEFINITION:Spontaneous human combustion describes reported cases of the burning of a living (or very recently deceased) human body without an apparent external source of ignition. As of 1995, there have been about 200 cited case worldwide over a period of around 300 years. There are many hypotheses that attempt to explain human spontaneous combustion. These include several natural explanations as well as supernatural and biblical explanations.

INCIDENTS:In 1800s Charles Dickens wrote a novel named Bleak House. Inspired by the phenomenon of Spontaneous human combustion, he made a character named Krook to die of this unnatural death. Some of the incidents are as follows:-

 On July 2, 1951, at about 8 a.m., an old woman popularly known as Cinder Lady was found in an condition which were largely ashes, were found among the remains of a chair in which she had been sitting. Only part of her left foot (which was wearing a slipper) and her backbone remained. Plastic household objects at a distance from the seat of the fire were softened and had lost their shapes. On the evening of 15 September 1982, Jeanie Saffin's case has been held as an example of spontaneous human combustion by paranormal researchers and authors. Jack Saffin who was in the home at the time of the fire, has stated that Jeannie had flames coming from her mouth, and made roaring noises like a dragon. Saffin have repeatedly claimed that prior to Jeannie being lit aflame there was no source of ignition and it was stated that Jeannie's clothes were unburned and that there was no smoke damage. On August 24 1998, Agnes Phillips mysteriously caught fire while unattended inside her daughter's car. Several people witnessed this event, and amazingly, the victim lived for a short time afterwards. Jackie parked the car and left her sleeping mother inside while she quickly went into the store to pick up a few items. Shortly thereafter she noticed smoke billowing from the car, followed by an explosion of flames. As the car became engulfed, a passerby managed to drag Agnes out of the car and extinguish the flames. Though she remained remarkably calm throughout the whole ordeal, Agnes

did manage to utter the words "It's too hot... It's too hot!"

Some of the theories are as follows: Wick Effect:-The wick effect theory essentially says that a person is burned through his/her own fats after being ignited, accidentally or otherwise. The clothed human body acts like an "inside-out" candle, with the fuel source (human fat) inside and the wick (the clothing of the victim) outside. Hence there is a continuous supply of fuel in the form of melting fat seeping into the victim's clothing. Fat contains a large amount of energy due to the presence of long hydrocarbon chains. Static Electricity:- Other theories speculate that the fire begins as a result of a buildup of static electricity inside the body or from an external geomagnetic force exerted on the body. Other Explanations:-production of abnormally concentrated gas or raised levels of blood alcohol might cause spontaneous ignition.Relating to health and lifestyle factors One of the most popular proposes that the fire is sparked when methane builds up in the intestines and is ignited by enzymes. There are many explanations given by Science to explain this unnatural phenomenon. Many researchers find hard to agree completely with these explanations. Studying about this topic, all that one can conclude is that it is hard to believe, that this phenomenon is explainable.

NAZCA LINES
Stretching across Perus Nazca desert are gigantic drawings, or geoglyphs, only visible from the sky .Known as the Nazca Lines, they were rediscovered in the 1920s when aircraft flew over the area.We now know that they were created by the ancient Nazca people, between 200 BCE and 70 CE, by taking away strips of the dark oxidecoatedpebbles that litter the desert to revealthe light dirt beneath. The mystery is,why did they do it? No one really knows why the Nazca people made these lines.Some believe.

That they acted like a giant map to locate underground water that they were actually walking temples-lines along which the Nazca walked , led by a priestlike figure,in a pattern dedicted to a particular

God.There is also the theory that the lines are simply pictures intended for the Gods to look down on.Or they could point to places on the horizon where the sun and stars rise and set. Archeologists started excavating a buried city in the 1980s at Cahuachi, just south of the Nazca Lines.Along with mummified remains of the Nazca people, pottery has been unearthed that has patterns painted on it, identical to the Nazca Lines themselves.Signs of an ancient weaving technique for making such patterns were also discovered, which could have been used to plan the Nazca Lines
.

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
Deep inside a mountain in Colorado, in a huge cavern blasted out of solid granite, is a secret military base. This mountain in Colorado looks like any other tree-covered mountain from the surface but an entire underground city was developed inside. The Cheyenne mountain base is no longer a major command center. Long back military personnel, stationed there, monitored the potential attack of United States with a crew of 40 people. If one passes the security check and the guards of Cheyenne Mountain, one can see a city which can accommodate 800 people. The buildings float on 1,319 Strong steel springs that can soak up the vibration from nuclear explosion by squeezing or stretching. The steel doors (24tons each) protect the bunker from any kind of nuclear blast. Various centers were developed to enhance security. There were chambers which scans the sky for terrorists planes, detects missile attack or any protest movements in the city. Metal walls on the chambers and buildings shield the complex from the electromagnetic pulse of Nuclear Explosion. In the event of a big explosion at the surface, blast valves, built in to all the pipes to the outside, can detect pressure waves and snap shut instantly, sealing off the complex from damage or contamination. The weather center watches the weather, using data fed in from satellites and weather stations. The air intakes have sophisticated filters to remove germs and dangerous radiation and chemicals. To keep the people inside the bunker comfortable various arrangements are done. A dentist was kept to

ensure everyone is smiling in face of danger. The pharmacy stocked a vast range of medication- from headache medicine to life saving drugs. Staffs had to keep themselves neat henceforth a hairdresser and a barber set up their rooms. In case of emergency the hospital had fully functional operating rooms. For fitness regime, two gyms were made. After a visit to gym, a sauna was there for the people to take rest. A church was present for daily prayers, religious duties, and doubled up as a place for rest in peace. A huge kitchen was made for a vast food supply for the residents. It mostly had food in frozen form to guarantee meals for months. The food was served from the restaurant which was the only place in the base to eat. During peacetime, electricity is fed into Cheyenne Mountain from local power plants. In emergencies six big 1,750 kilowatt, diesel-powered generators kick in. Water is stored in four huge underground pools, each holding up to 1.8 million gallons (6.8 million liters). It is patrolled constantly by the worlds smallest fleeta single rowboat. These are the few basic arrangements present inside the Cheyenne Mountain. Now the structure is no longer used. The government allows common people to explore and see the infrastructure of the bunker. Each section of the bunker was very well-planned leaving everyone mesmerized.

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN

Missile Warning Center

LITHOPEDION:
It may sound unbelievable to you but its true, its very rare fewer than 300 cases have been noted in 400 years of medical literature. In 1955 a 26 year old woman named Zahra Aboutalib was rushed to the hospital to deliver her baby, but after

and excruciating 48 hour labor, she still could not deliver the baby so she had to undergo a caesarean section but the thought of dieing in child labor terrified the woman and urged her to flee the hospital and hide in her home. After doing so, she gave birth nearly 50 years later to a mummy baby. How is that possible? Take a look at the pictures and read the story about ancient beliefs of sleeping babies Below you can see pictures of Zahra Aboutalib, the amazing mother who gave birth to a mummy..

Zahra Aboutalib with her baby There is a specific term for this called Lithopedion is better known as a stone baby.

THE TERM :
A lithopedion (Ancient Greek: = stone; Ancient Greek: = child), or stone baby.

MEDICAL MEANING:
A lithopedion, or "stone fetus," is usually the result of an extra uterine (abdominal or ectopic) pregnancy. Extra uterine pregnancies generally end in rupture of the fallopian tube, miscarriage, or absorption of the fetus, but in the rare cases (about 0.0045% of pregnancies) where none of these occur, the fetus may remain in the body and calcify. Fetuses that become lithopedia are occasionally lodged in the ovaries or vagina rather than in the uterus or fallopian tubes. A fetus large enough to avoid expulsion or absorption takes a long time to accumulate enough calcium deposits that it turns to stone. Lithopedia have been extracted from women as old as 94, who have been unknowingly carrying the fetuses for upwards of 60 years. Serious complications like intestinal obstruction can result from lithopedion formation, but many cases are stable for a very long time, sometimes going unnoticed for decades. Often the lithopedion is initially misdiagnosed as acyst or tumor, and is only shown to be a calcified fetus upon removal. The physician Albucasis was the first to document the lithopedion phenomenon, in his 11th century treatise on

surgery. In 1557, physician Israel Spach included in his gynecological text an illustration of a lithopedion in situ (that is, inside a woman's opened womb). He appended this caption: "Deucalion cast stones behind him and thus fashioned our tender race from the hard marble. How comes it that nowadays, by a reversal of things, the tender body of a little babe has limbs nearer akin to stone?" Spach apparently considered the lithopedion to represent a reversion to (mythical) early forms of humanity, in something like the way that Ernst Haeckel would later see the early evolution of man reflected in the fish-like fetus.

Lithopedia are less common in developed countries with adequate health care, since pregnancies that are neither carried to term nor obviously terminated are not likely to go unnoticed.

CAUSE :
The age of the diagnosed patients varied from 23 to 100 years, 2/3 of them being over 40 years old. The period of fetus retention was from 4 to 60 years. Fetal death occurred between 3 and 6 months of pregnancy in 20% of the cases, between 7 and 8 months in 27% and at full term in 43% of cases. Lithopedion pregnancy results under very specific conditions. Abdominal/extra-uterine pregnancy, often as a result of a ectopic pregnancy. Fetal development, on average needs to reach at least 12 weeks of development before death. When the fetus is under 12 weeks, it is often small enough in mass to be reabsorbed by the the body.

In an ectopic pregnancy, if the dead foetus is too large to be re-absorbed by the mother's body it becomes a foreign body to the mother's immune system. To protect itself from possible infection the mother's body will encase the foetus in a calciferous substance as the tissues die and dehydrate. As the calciferous wall builds up, the foetus is gradually mummified becoming a lithopedion or stone baby.

CREDITS:
All of the above information came from the UK Channel 5 "Extraordinary People" documentary series

OCCURENCENCE:
The condition was first described in a treatise by the physician Albucasis in the 10th century.The earliest lithopedion is one found in an archaeological excavation, dated to 1100 BC. According to one report there are only 300 reported cases of stone baby in the world. In February 2011, doctors in Andhra Pradesh, India removed a 35-year-old stone baby from a woman.

HITLERS SECRET
During World War II, the German dictator Adolf Hitler was hatching a secret plan to develop a nuclear bomb that could have changed the outcome of the war. There were rumors that a plant in Vemork in Norway was making heavy water for the Nazis. This form of water is used in the making of nuclear bombs. On hearing these reports, Europes Allied forces decided to carry out a series of daring raids in Norway to sabotage the Nazi plan before a catastrophe could occur.

Operation Grouse:
In the first operation on October 19, 1942, four men parachuted from an aircraft in Norway and skied all night to the heavy water plant. They memorized a secret question to ensure they contacted the right people in

the Norwegian resistance (a secret force fighting Nazi occupa tion of Norway). The question was Wha t did you see in the morning? The correct answer was Three pink elephants.

Operation Freshman:
On November 19, 1942, Operation Freshman got underway15 men were meant to be dropped from gliders to meet up with the men from Operation Grouse. Bad weather caused the the gliders to crash, and the survivors were caught by the Gestapo (Nazi police). The Grouse men were luckierthey survived the winter by living in a cave and eating reindeer moss.

Operation Gunnerside:
Six more men were dropped by parachute on February 28, 1943, to meet up with the Grouse four. The group of ten traveled through an icy ravine to the plant. They laid explosives, blew up the plant, and then escaped. Four stayed in Norway to help the resistance; the other six skied 250 miles (400 km) to Sweden and freedom.

The sinking:
Following the explosion, the Nazis decided to take what was left of the plant to Germany, including the heavy water. On hearing about this, Norwegian resistance fighters drew up a secret plan to sink the Hydro, the ferry boat that was to carry the heavy water. On February 20, 1944, a bomb was smuggled on the boat. As Hydro crossed Lake Tinnsjo in Norway, the bomb exploded and the boat sank, finally ending Germanys nuclear program.

Underwater Exploration:
In 2005, a television company sent a crew down to the bottom of Lake Tinnsjo to explore the wreckage of the Hydro. Using robotic underwater cameras, they discovered one of the barrels, which was found to contain heavy water. The discovery provided proof that the Nazis were developing a nuclear program, though it seems they were only in the early stages of building a bomb.

Turin Shroud
The Shroud of Turin or Turin Shroud (Italian: Sindone di Torino, Sacra Sindone) is a length of linen cloth, of Medieval origin according to radiocarbon dating which stands in some dispute, bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy. The image on the shroud is commonly associated with Jesus, his crucifixion and burial. It is much clearer in 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 origins of the shroud and its image are the subject of intense debate among scientists, 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. 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 Roman Catholic 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. In 1978, a detailed examination was carried out by a team of American scientists called STURP. STURP found no reliable evidence of forgery, and called the question of how the image was formed "a mystery". 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. Since 2005, at least four articles have been published in scholarly sources stating that the samples used for the dating test may not have been representative of the whole Shroud. The people who performed the dating process, a former STURP scientist who studied the radiographs and transmitted light images taken by STURP, a textile expert who handled the shroud during its 2002 restoration process and a carbon-dating expert who examined a surviving portion of the original radiocarbon sample have all individually confirmed that the radiocarbon sample was part of the original cloth, and was not part of any later repair.According to former Nature editor Philip Ball, "it's fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever. Not least, the nature of the image and how it was fixed on the cloth remain deeply puzzling". The shroud continues to remain one of the most studied and controversial artifacts in human history.

Conclusion
To believe what one sees with his eyes is often a fallacy. A person only believes what he sees through his heart. Life as such runs on age old equations and formulas. Believe it or not is presented here in order to step out of the monotonic facts of everyday life and peep in through the keyhole of the door which opens a room of untold unheard facts and mysteries, in order to let the brain ask the heart should I believe it? Equations do not work here. Different people throughout the globe have different theories about these facts. Whether the shroud of Turin portrays the face of the son of God or its Da Vincis Vitruvian Man, whether Hitler really achieved success in making weapon grade plutonium or whether the Nazca people flew hot air balloons back at 200BC is yet to be proven. The only question that remains is whether we believe it or not. Many other facts and mysteries form everyday behind us, beside us, around us and maybe within us every day. Believe it or not!

Referencing
^Farndon,John. Do Not Open Edited by Claire Nottage.United States:DK Publishing, Inc., 375 Hudson Street,New York, NY 1001,2007. ^[http:// google.com] last accessed on 16th May 2013 ^[http://en.wikipedia.org] last accessed on 16th May 2013 ^[www.unbelievable-facts.com/2012/12/a-woman-who-gave-birthto-mummy.html] last accessed on 11th April 2013 ^[http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ ] last accessed on 11th April 2013 ^[aagklithopedion.wordpress.com/lithopedion-pregnancy/] last accessed on 11th April 2013 ^[www.howstuffworks.com] last accessed on 11th April 2013 ^[www.livescience.com/spontaneoushumancombustion] last accessed on 30th April ^[http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/nazcalines] last accessed on 11th April 2013 ^[www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hitlerssecret] last accessed on 11th April 2013 ^[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/archi tecture/strangest-military-bases-gallery-cheyenne-mountaincomplex] last accessed on 11th April2013 ^[www.popularmechanics.com] last accessed on 11th April 2013

Glossary
WICK-A woven strip of cord, fabric, fiber or other porous material of a candle. STATIC ELECTRICITY-A static charge transfer. GEOGLYPHS-A large design or motif(usually longer than 4 meters) drawn on the ground. SHROUD-An item or cloth that covers or protects other object. LITHOPEDION-Litho-Stone, Pedion-Baby. CALCIFICATION- Hardened by deposition of or conversion into calcium carbonate or some other insoluble calcium compounds. ECTOPIC-A condition when an organ is displaced. FOETUS-The unborn young of a viviparous vertebrate having a basic structural resemblance to the adult animal HEAVY WATER- Heavy water, formally called deuterium oxide or 2H2O or D2O, is a form of water that contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen isotope. GESTAPO- German secret police under Nazi rules.