The vast, seemingly endless oceans have hidden some truly bizarre, and sometimes valuable things, over the years.
Click start to play today’s Spell It, where we find ‘sunken’ treasures in the world’s seas.
Here are a few of the strangest items found on the ocean floor:
1. Ancient computer
Long before laptops and desktops, an ancient wonder called the Antikythera mechanism was discovered off a Greek island with the same name, in 1900. Believed to be the earliest form of a computer, the Antikythera had several functions, from predicting astronomical positions to assisting in navigation. The relic is now on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, in Greece.
2. Apollo rocket engines
In the late 1960s, multiple Apollo rockets were launched to orbit the Earth and the moon, but the engines that powered their first stages fell to the ocean and disappeared. For the longest time, they remained lost to the ocean floor, until Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched a privately funded project to find them. In 2012, several parts were discovered, and underwent a two-year renovation process before being displayed at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, US.
3. Alien spaceship?
In 2011, a self-funded treasure hunting team named Ocean X discovered something very peculiar on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea. An usually shaped rock structure that resembled an alien spacecraft caught the attention of scientists and the media. Theories abounded – some surmised it was the remains of a World War II anti-submarine device, others said it was an underwater Nazi base. Scientists, however, weren’t convinced and dismissed it as an unusual rock formation made by Mother Nature.
4. Locomotive graveyard
Archaeologists discovered a train graveyard off the coast of New Jersey, in the US, in 1985. Believed to date back to the 1850s, no one knows why the locomotives were dumped in the ocean – no records have been found of such an incident. Historians theorise that they may have either fallen of a barge by accident, or may have been deliberately thrown overboard during a storm, to stop the ship from sinking. Although they are encrusted in over a century of rust, the trains are still in good condition, and have become a popular spot for wreck diving.
What do you think of these strange sunken wonders? Play today’s Spell It and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.
