Most Mysterious Formations On Earth | What on Earth | Science Channel

when historians cross reference the ruined structure with historic maps of the area what they discover stuns them in the first ordinance map of Scotland done in 1857 we see this exact image the exact topography what's so fascinating is that it's got a label on it it says Wallace's house the document fuels speculation that the drones have uncovered the long lost hideout of one of the most extraordinary figures in European [Music] history 2000 this striking image is captured from space over North Africa it shows a massive circular structure in the desert at its widest point it's

25 M across geologists struggle to explain what they're looking at but they give it a name the eye of the Sahara across the eye of the Sahara you probably see various Ridge lines come up and down but you wouldn't see anything like what we see from space when you see something as concentrically perfect it's reasonable to ask can this happen naturally or is this man-made it's too perfect in shape and it's too huge in structure to be in active nature in the last 15 years satellites have uncovered evidence of A Lost Civilization in the Sahara

there are man-made structures there as sophisticated as many found in the ancient near East but there's nothing on this scale if these are the remains of a man-made structure it would have dwarfed the other Wonders of the Ancient World some experts believe this is unlikely it's hard to disprove a hypothesis that you can't test in my opinion it's a little crazy but those who insist the eye is a natural structure are finding it hard to say what kind a lot of early scientists started to think maybe this is an example of a big impact [Music]

structure at first the theory makes sense in the Yucatan Peninsula there's a crater 180 Mi wide caused by an asteroid that smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago an event many believe wiped out the dinosaurs is the eye of the Sahara evidence of something similar the eye of the Sahara lacks certain features suggestive of an impact such as shocked minerals any asteroid impact that produced circles 25 M in diameter would have left behind a large quantity of something called shocked quartz but when geologists are dispatched to the site they're unable to find any this

is no asteroid crater and these initial field studies are unable to explain it geologists then explore the idea that the eye might be volcanic there are volcanoes in the Sahara the biggest is called Amy cusi towering 11,000 ft above sea level at the summit of Amy cusi are three volcanic craters known by volcanologists as calderas but they're a fraction of the size of the giant rings in this image volcanologist Dr Britney brand has researched the volcano Theory a 40 km wide volcano would be some volcano but we have them I mean look at Yellowstone Caldera

for example but then Dr bran notices some key differences when she compares the shape of the eye with the Caldera at Yellowstone it doesn't look like what you see in the Eye of Sahara it's not these concentric rings so while it's possible to have a huge Caldera that's 40 km in diameter this is not a Caldera yet another theory has been proposed if the eye is not the result of volcanic eruption could it have been caused by a vast magma chamber beneath Earth's crust Magna has been known to create a dome on the Earth's surface

like a pimple on the skin sticky hot Magna breaks the surface piles up then cools in a dome shape could the eye have been such a Magna lump that has somehow eroded over time when rocks get Warped into a bow-shaped structure one layer after another after another all pushed up in this bolt and then eroded the result is a set of concentric Rings we do see around the planet many examples of uplifted strata around a central point that generate rings but nothing quite so striking as the eye itself but what could erode something so big

how much Rock did you have to remove from this thing how can you rad that much in the middle of a desert there's a huge volume of rock that's missing there there's only a handful of agents that we know that can possibly erode something that deeply you got wind not bloody likely you have glaciers not in the Sahara and then you have water but the Sahara is one of the dry highest places on Earth so if water did create these Rings where did it come from there are parts of the world that have changed dramatically

both favorably and unfavorably in terms of their climate over the last few hundred and even few thousand years 6 to 8,000 years ago what is now the Sahara Desert a bone dry location was actually much wetter had much more water than it does today many features of the Sahar were formed by water erosion millions of years ago there are still the outlines of extinct riverbeds and dried out Lakes but nowhere else on the planet has water created such a thing as this great eye what is there that we're missing here uh what could possibly cause

such perfectly concentric Rings like this this eye in the desert captured by our eyes in the sky remains a mystery if nature did this we don't know how and if humans did this we don't know [Music] who August 1968 the corona Satellite photographs an island in the East River close to Brooklyn it shows what appears to be a functioning island with several buildings but over 40 years later in 2010 an aerial photograph of the same area reveals nothing but abandoned overgrown ruins in a place like New York City to see something that's crumbling and falling

apart is just really out of place what happened on this island that caused everyone to stay away from it journalist Dave Mosher is a New Yorker who lives in Manhattan though he knows the city well until he sees the satellite image he has no idea that the island even exists so when I've talked to other New Yorkers about this island few people really seem to know what it is or what it's about we've heard stories of a woman being brought there for some disease uh but beyond that it's sort of a mystery all I do

know is that you're not supposed to go there it's completely off limits for over 50 years the island known as North brother island has been uninhabited and impossible to reach by regular transport so after a bunch of phone calls I finally got permission to go to North brother Island and not only that I found someone who's willing to take us there mosher's boat approaches the island but the original dock is crumbling away the skipper is forced to beach the boat from ground level the island looks even more more weird and Sinister this is super creepy

I feel like I am walking through a postapocalyptic world everything is just completely overgrown nobody's lived here in what seems like decades there's no obvious clue as to what took place on the island until Dave Mosher spot something check this out right over there I can see that it says Rikers this means it's Rikers Island this is the famous prison outside of New York City the proximity of Riker's Island New York's biggest jail suggests that North brother Island might also have been a prison but a prison of a particularly gruesome kind oh wow what is

this it looks like a certificate of some kind it says past year can't read the last part department of hospitals city of New York North brother Island was no ordinary prison hospital it was used to lock away those with deadly and curable diseases this was an island of plague carriers the most famous inmate was an Irish cook who immigrated to the US in 1883 her name was Mary melan but New Yorkers called her Typhoid Mary she's known to have killed at least three people some believe upwards to 50 in the early 1900s typhoid is one

of New York's biggest killers and Mary malan is an angel of death she spreads the killer disease but shows no symptoms herself she worked as a cook I mean what's a more perfect way to spread a disease than touching people's food a trail of infected and dead people leads to Mary Malon she is arrested and forced to live the rest of her life shut away on this island it's actually incredibly sad dad this woman she didn't mean to contract typhoid we just had no other way of treating her Typhoid Mary lives for three long decades

isolated and alone she dies in 1938 but the buildings here are more recent just by looking at the brick workk here this is not from the time of tyho Mary which is pretty surprising to me what's this over here looks like a mailbox oh hey there you go 1941 so we definitely know this building was erected after Typhoid Mary died this building was known as the tuberculosis Pavilion and it was built in 1941 to house and treat TB patients from all over the city at the time there's no known cure for TB apart from rest

and confinement the rich go to clinics in the mountains the poor are destined to chance their luck cooped up on North brother Island in fact among the working class 40% of deaths were attributed to tuberculosis work on the TB facility begins in 1941 but when construction finishes 2 years later the first antibiotics have appeared and the sanatorium is redundant it is never finished or occupied but as Mosher wanders around the building it's obvious that it was both occupied and furnished with medical equipment you can see right here there's a a weighing scale something like the

suggest a medical purpose of some kind disturbingly there appear to be metal grates covering some of the windows so this looks like some kind of prison almost I see these like grates that you would shut and lock to keep something inside of here or maybe keep somebody out of here mosher's gut instinct is correct the hospital is revived in the early 1950s to treat a new kind of plague I didn't feel so good when I came home high that night my dad knew something was wrong but he didn't know what it became a drug treatment

center a place for people who were addicted to heroin but you can imagine this was not like the drug treatment centers of today there's no walk in the par Park here the hospital has beds for 150 addicts it's like a nightmare inmates prostitute themselves to guards for drugs several die trying to swim to the mainland few Escape one teenager is returned 17 times imagine a whole Hospital full of people going cold turkey probably in not great conditions it's horrifying to think about May 2020 archaeologists deploy drones to scan an isolated area of Dum frer Southwest

[Music] Scotland by combining data captured from dozens of aerial images they create a three-dimensional model of an unusual feature hidden between two Ravines it definitely looks like it's not a natural part of the landscape we've got this kind of vshape of high ground and maybe the vestage of a wool going all the way around the aerial data has uncovered the remains of a fort swallowed by [Music] time when historians cross reference the ruin structure with historic maps of the area what they discover stuns them in the first ordinance map of Scotland done in 185 7

we see this exact image the exact topography what's so fascinating is that it's got a label on it it says Wallace's house the document fuels speculation that the drones have uncovered the long lost Hideout of one of the most extraordinary figures in European history if this is true this is the William Wallace made famous as Braveheart of course despite a campaign of bloody Insurrection against the English overlords which reverberates to this day wallis's life and exploits are shrouded in mystery we don't know where he was born or where he received his military training but he

emerges as a freedom fighter for the Scots during the occupation of Scotland by Edward the in the late 13th century in 1296 ad King Edward deposes and imprisons the Scottish Monarch and claims the country as his own spurred by this a year later Wallace launches his First Act of Revenge by slaying an English sheriff and his men word of his attack soon spreads across the beleaguered Nation Wallace is seen as this great folk hero he's what everyone wants him to to be a figure of resistance against the English coming from the south over the following

months Wallace gathers a band of rebels who launch increasingly audacious raids against their oppressors infuriating the English king he has this wonderful sword he carries around with him that severs English heads it's called Freedom's blade for the English William Wallace was Public Enemy Number One he had to be called in September 1297 King Edward dispatches 9,000 troops North to quell the Insurrection despite being vastly outnumbered Wallace meets them headon defeating the Invaders and massacring 5,000 at the Battle of Sterling bridge this is an overwhelming Victory and it's all down to Wallace uh his tactic genius

and his leadership the remains of the structure discovered from the skies offers new insight into Wallace's historic victories against the English from what we know of the way he operated he has to have had a sort of Base from which to operate and the English never discovered it archaeologists have yet to excavate the site and much remains to be learned but they believe it likely contained barracks and wall defenses its remote location also seems perfectly suited to Wallace's use of Ambush tactics before melting back into Scotland's vast forests like any successful gorilla fighter you've got

to know the land well this seems to be somewhere where he can hide attack and then Retreat back despite being revered by many Scots Wallace had his share of adversaries the secluded structur suggest he may have also used this location as a refuge with his few trusted accomplices this was an enormous advantage to Wallace because they were high in the woods and very difficult to locate they were secure from Attack yet by 1305 Wallace's enemies are closing in and he has given up to the English taken to London he is sentenced to an unimaginably horrific

form of execution he was given the death of a traitor which involved hanging drawing and quartering he's hung till nearly dead but still conscious his internal organs are drawn out of his body then his body is divided into several pieces and scattered around the kingdom his head is set severed and stuck at the entrance to London Bridge King Edward hopes Wallace's death will serve as a warning to all those who dare defy him but his plan backfires Wallace becomes a Scottish hero a year later in 1306 Robert the Bruce raises the Rebellion for the independence

war that ultimately is successful two decades after his death Scotland gains the freedom Wallace gave his life for 150 years after it disappeared from the historical record the site that may have played a key role in those momentous events is rediscovered Once More by eyes in the sky what's so exciting about the discovery of this stronghold is that at last we've got a place that we can associate with his campaigns against the English and if so this would make it one of the most important archaeological sites in all the British Isles