This story began in the summer of 1945 when Hitler’s faithful ally, Obergruppenführer SA Ley, who was being held as a war criminal in Nuremberg, alarmed the Allied command with the message that the south of Germany was in danger of disaster. 

He told the Americans that in one of the underground bunkers, code-named Z3, where until the last days of the war the development of Nazi top-secret weapons continued, right before the surrender of Germany, containers with some very dangerous substance were depressurized due to sabotage of prisoners of war. If you do not enter the bunker and do not eliminate the leak, at least a third of the country’s population will die. To prevent so many deaths, Robert Ley, is ready to go down into the dungeon.

Mysterious bunker

Photo © Steffi Loos / Getty Images

The Americans are alarmed. During the war years, the Nazis really launched a stormy activity underground, having built more than 130 underground factories. Obviously, Lei, who held prominent posts and was responsible not only for the Labor Front, but also for the organization of forced labor of prisoners of war and other foreign workers, really could know a lot about the Nazi secret designs.

The Z3 bunker was located in Weimar, and, according to the Americans, the Nazis were engaged in the development of new engines for aircraft. For the manufacture of fuel, they used previously unknown substances and a huge amount of mercury.

The Americans could not let Ley go down to the bunker himself, he had to play a prominent role in the Nuremberg trials – the Nazi was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Americans did not want to risk a prominent captive, therefore, under the guise of fulfilling allied agreements, Soviet specialists were invited to participate in the liquidation of the accident. They didn’t talk about the real state of things, they threw disinformation on the Soviet command about the development by the Nazis of engines for submarines working on hydrogen peroxide.

Of course, the leadership of the USSR was interested in the new product. Despite the victory, the Soviet Union still lagged behind in a number of research and development. For example, the Nazis in 1941 for the first time launched an underwater rocket from the U-511 submarine. In the USSR, even after four years, they could only dream about it. The Soviet leadership was interested in the Nazi development of plasma weapons, new disk-shaped aircraft and climate weapons. Therefore, in the USSR, it was decided to participate in the inspection of the Z3 bunker. As a performer, they decided to send a self-taught chemist, a specialist in the synthesis of phosphors (substances capable of converting energy into light), senior lieutenant Nikolai Zhirov to Weimar.

Orders are not discussed

Nikolai Zhirov was truly passionate about science. Due to the death of his father, he could not get higher education, but at the age of 25 he published the first scientific articles on the synthesis of phosphors. He had a very noble origin for the USSR, graduated from high school and independently mastered a chemistry course that was not taught at the educational institution. Before the war, he graduated from the Kiev school of command personnel for artillerymen, then retired, worked at the Moscow Research Institute of the Commissariat of Ammunition, and in 1940 published a monograph on phosphors. During the war years, Zhirov developed phosphors of blue glow for the needs of air defense.

When he was called to the Lubyanka on July 6, 1945, Zhirov was sure that he would be offered to work with the archives of the Nazis, because he had excellent knowledge of German at the gymnasium. However, they issued him a certificate of the specially authorized State Defense Committee of the USSR, took a non-disclosure subscription and sent him on a business trip to Weimar. From it, a 42-year-old scientist returned a completely different person.

Nikolai Zhirov. Photo © Wikipedia

It is known that in Weimar, Robert Ley personally indicated a hidden entrance to the bunker, after which specialists in chemical protection suits cleared the rubble and found that the lifts were working. However, neither the Americans nor the British decided to go down. And then Nikolai Zhirov did it.

But neither the protective suit, nor the gas mask that Zhirov prudently put on, helped the scientist. After the chemist completed the task and rose to the surface, he became ill. Zhirov was immediately taken to the hospital.

The historian Alexander Voronin in the film “Berlin – Atlantis” mentioned that Zhirov admitted:

In the Nazi dungeon he experienced damage to the nervous system by chemicals unknown to him. But what he saw in the bunker, Zhirov, bound by a state secret, never told anyone.

Patient Zhirov was urgently taken to Moscow and put in the Botkin hospital, where he was until April 1947. The diagnosis, which was given to him by Soviet doctors, did not explain anything: a viral lesion of the central nervous system. At the hospital, Zhirov raved about Atlantis and read excerpts from Plato as a keepsake.

It was here, in a hospital bed, that he found a new meaning in life – the search for an ancient civilization. Zhirov was sure that the Nazis found the source of ancient knowledge, which means that in the USSR it was necessary to open a department similar to the Nazi research organization Anenerbe and find out where, in what source the Nazis drew ideas for new discoveries.

Finding Atlantis

Photo © Wikipedia

Zhirov was discharged from the hospital as a disabled person of group I, but the scientist was not discouraged – he surrounded himself with textbooks on geology, geography and history and began to search for Atlantis. Despite the fact that in 1948 Zhirov was awarded the degree of Doctor of Chemistry for the totality of works, his new activity did not arouse enthusiasm among the authorities. The chemist continually sent articles to magazines in France and Britain, wrote to foreign colleagues, and therefore was closely monitored by the KGB.

By the second half of the 1950s, Zhirov was sure: Atlantis existed and should rightfully occupy one of the sections of the biogeography of the Quaternary – the geological segment of time, which continues to this day. The bride in a circle. How did the ancient Slavs treat women?

In 1957, his work “Atlantis” was completed, and in 1964 the scientific publication “Atlantis. The main problems of Atlantology” saw the light, in which the author examined the civilization of Atlantis as a period of the formation of mankind and argued that Atlantis really existed, and in the Atlantic when then there was a huge continent, which, as a result of the disaster, plunged into the abyss. Zhirov was sure: the Nazis had somehow found and used the knowledge of this civilization, ahead of the world by decades.

A terminally ill chemist hoped that in the USSR his work would be appreciated, but this did not happen. Soviet science was aimed only at the future, for a great civilization of the past there was no place in it. When Nikolai Zhirov died in 1970, his entire archive was seized and kept secret. Whether this was made out of the principle “no matter what happens” or if the leadership of the USSR really tried to hide something that became known from the archives of the Nazis, we may never know.

But the idea of ​​searching for the ancient Atlantean civilization was eagerly picked up by other Soviet scientists and writers. In 1961, with the introduction of academician Vasily Struve, the book by Atlantis. In Search of the Lost World was published by Ekaterina Andreeva. The search for the mythical Hyperborea took up the famous geologist and geographer Vladimir Obruchev.

In 1974, when researching Mount Amper in the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 80 meters, the MSU Academician Petrovsky research vessel found clear evidence of the existence of an ancient civilization that was destroyed by a cataclysm and sunk under water. Mount Amper is located about 380 kilometers southwest of Cape San Vicente on the Iberian Peninsula (coordinates 35 ° 03 ‘N, 12 ° 54’ W, minimum depth 59 meters). Repeated pictures of the mountain were taken in 1980 by the Paisys underwater vehicle, and in 1981 even an underwater bell with divers was lowered to Mount Amper. According to scientists, Atlantis was located between the mountain and the mainland and plunged into the sea about eight and a half thousand years ago.

But, unfortunately, shortly after this, the scientific community of the USSR considered research in the Atlantic an empty diversion, and all research was curtailed. The Atlantis of Nikolai Zhirov remained closed. Materials on the Z3 bunker are also still classified.

Source: Life

The US does not hold aliens at the most famous top-secret military base, but what is happening there is no less interesting

An unnamed dusty road leads to the main gateway to the mythical Area 51 in the center of the barren Nevada desert. It seems that the area is almost not guarded, but there is no need to cheat, PopularMechanics writes.

Camcorders look over every corner of the surroundings here. According to local residents, each crawling desert turtle and a hare jumping over the fence are known at the base.

For decades around Area 51, the most wild rumors and hypotheses have arisen. The fact that since 1947 UFO debris and the remains of aliens who died in the Roswell accident have been stored at the base is not the most colorful version. Some believe that in fact it is the wreckage of a secret Soviet aircraft, which was piloted by dwarf mutants.

Only a select few are dedicated to what is actually happening at the base, says Peter Merlin, a science and technology historian who has been studying Site 51 for 30 years.

The launch of Area 51 is directly related to the secret development of the U-2 spy plane, which began in November 1954 by order of President Eisenhower. A secret place for the implementation of the project was found in southern Nevada near the air artillery range of World War II.

Tests of the spy plane began in July 1955. Almost immediately, the first reports of UFOs appeared. From the CIA report, which was fully declassified in 2013, it can be seen that these messages came from pilots of commercial airlines, who had never seen before, so that military aircraft could take off as high as the U-2.

The U-2 program ended in the late 1950s, but in Area 51, tests continued for other top-secret military aircraft: A-12, Bird of Prey, F-117A and TACIT BLUE.

Attempts were made in the skies over Nevada to study and master the Soviet MiGs secretly trapped in the USA in the 1970s. According to some reports, such flights continue today. In September 2017, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force died in Nevada, crashing on a plane identified as foreign.

Area 51 is currently under active construction, as seen on Google Earth maps. The strange lights in the sky in the zone are explained simply – these are local airline planes with the call sign Janett transporting employees under a semi-secret contract to the base from McCarran Airport.

Merlin and other researchers believe that now they are testing improved stealth technologies, electronic warfare systems, drones, directional energy weapons and lasers.

Whatever the case, the inventions around the base are actively used by the local residents and local authorities to attract tourists. As far back as 1996, Nevada renamed Highway 375 to “Extraterrestrial Highway,” and the “Alien Research Center,” alien sculptures, grew around, even to the west of Area 51, “The Only Alien Themed Brothel in the World.”

Source: www.popularmechanics.com

When the inhabitants of Wales and the county of Devon went to work in the mines, they often heard strange taps there, and after they saw little green men in a mining robe and with a pickaxe in their hands. At the word “Tommyknocker”, most people recall the famous science fiction novel by Stephen King, while the original meaning of this term is almost forgotten today.

However, hundreds of years ago, Tommyknockers were no less popular than leprechauns, with which they have a lot in common. The difference is that Tommyknockers live in caves and dungeons, like European gnomes.

Most often, Tommyknockers (originally just knockers) are described in Welsh and Devonian folklore. Their name can be translated as “Those who knock” – it was believed that it was the knockers who knock on the walls of the mines to cause deadly collapses. Local miners have repeatedly heard these mysterious taps. Some are convinced that the knockers are vicious and long for death, but many of the miners themselves, who personally saw strange little men in underground tunnels, assured that the knockers, on the contrary, try to warn people about the danger and that if they hear these taps, leave in time then you can happily avoid a rock collapse.

Eyewitnesses described Tomminokers as tiny men half a meter tall, with greenish skin, normal human body proportions, and dressed in dirty clothes that looked like a typical mining robe. All tomminokers seen were men. When the gold rush began in California in the 19th century and everyone began to dig mines and look for gold, many British miners went to the United States and brought with them faith in the Knockers. When they began to meet strange little men in American mines, stories about this quickly spread throughout the states and at some point they began to call the Knockers tomminokers.

At the same time, it was believed that strange knocks in a mine might not portend a blockage, but rather indicate rich deposits of ore or other valuable minerals. And when someone heard these sounds, he set off to wander through the tunnels in search of their source. Most often, such miners then simply went missing, but there were also those who really came across a rich mine. That is why it is difficult to say unequivocally whether Tommyknockers were considered bad or good creatures. When collapses occurred, people died or disappeared, Tommyknockers were scolded, but if thanks to their knocks they managed to find a vein or get out of the labyrinth of tunnels, they were called good and thanked.

After a few decades, a whole layer of “urban legends” appeared, according to which strange knocks in mines produce ghosts of dead miners and they do this to warn the living of danger. It was after this that folklore about Tomminokers began to be forgotten gradually, yielding to faith in ghosts. Now the miners began trying to appease the ghosts and brought pieces of bread or cake with them to the mine to leave them in some niche and ask the ghosts for protection and mercy.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Tommyknockers had almost sunk into oblivion. They were remembered only by collectors of fairy tales or by locals whose houses stood next to the mines and who sometimes also heard strange taps.

There were rumors that when the mine closes, Tommyknockers “go live” to the nearest houses and knock already there, now predicting not collapses, but the death of family members or accidents.

Today, many researchers believe that centuries ago, small children often worked in mines, including illegally, and that it was precisely the miners who faced them underground. The greenish skin of children could become so from contact with copper.