- 2 days ago
Old maps can hide incredible secrets including a mysterious “sea” that once showed up in America. And Scotland? It has a bizarre straight gap running right through the middle. In this compilation, we dive into the surprising history and science behind these two geographic mysteries. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
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Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
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For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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FunTranscript
00:01Some mistakes have the power to change the course of history.
00:05One such story has to do with an old, boring key that could have saved the Titanic from its infamous demise.
00:13The key belonged to the crow's nest locker that housed binoculars, which could have helped the lookout spot the iceberg sooner.
00:22There's more. The key wasn't even on board the ship when it set sail.
00:26The second officer took it with him when he was taken off the ship at the last minute.
00:33As the story goes, the officer forgot to hand the key over to his replacement in his hurry to disembark.
00:40So, when the lookouts were in desperate need of binoculars, they were out of luck.
00:46One of the lookouts, named Fred Fleet, even testified that if they had had binoculars, they would have spotted the iceberg in time to avoid it.
00:55And, when asked how much sooner, Fleet replied, enough to get out of the way.
01:02In 2015, some auctioneers got their hands on Blair's key and presented it as one of the most important artifacts from the Titanic.
01:12They truly believed it could have saved the ship.
01:16Blair kept the key as a souvenir and passed it down to his daughter, Nancy.
01:20At one point, it was up for auction, with a price tag of over $80,000.
01:29Blair himself was quite the hero, it seems.
01:32A year after the Titanic disaster, he was awarded a gallantry medal for saving a crewman who had fallen overboard while he had been on board the liner Majestic.
01:42He may have forgotten a key, but he sure didn't forget to be a hero when it counted.
01:47This next story is both funny and tragic.
01:53It's about NASA's lost $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter.
01:59The spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements before the craft was launched, and as a result, they lost it.
02:07The navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the metric system of millimeters and meters,
02:16while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver used the English system of inches, feet, and pounds.
02:23JPL engineers mistook acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds.
02:33What's worse is that none of JPL's quality control procedures caught the error in the nine months it took the spacecraft to make its 461 million-mile flight to Mars.
02:45That's a long time to be lost in translation, don't you think?
02:48The miscalculations were enough to throw the spacecraft so far off track that it flew too deeply into the Martian atmosphere and was destroyed when it entered its initial orbit around Mars.
03:02It's embarrassing to lose a spacecraft to such a simple math error.
03:06And it's hard to think of another example of such a large loss due to English versus metric infusion.
03:15Ever heard about the mathematical mistake that led to the discovery of the New World?
03:20Spoiler alert, it involves a guy named Christopher Columbus and a really big globe.
03:26Back in 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain with a mission to find a new trade route to Asia.
03:32He was convinced that he was less than 3,000 miles away from Japan, and just a bit more sailing would get him to the Indies with all their tasty spices.
03:43The only problem was that Columbus was a bit off in his calculations, like way off.
03:49He made a mistake in estimating the size of the globe, which led him to believe that Earth was far smaller than it actually is.
03:57Now I know what you're thinking.
04:01Wasn't Columbus afraid that he would fall off the edge of the world?
04:05Contrary to popular myth, Columbus and his crew knew the Earth was a globe, just like the ancient Greeks did two millennia earlier.
04:14They weren't worried about falling off the edge, but rather about the size of the ocean they planned on crossing.
04:20And to make matters worse, Columbus had no idea that an unknown landmass existed between Spain and Asia.
04:30After weeks at sea, Columbus finally reached the Caribbean.
04:35He believed that he had landed on the outskirts of Asia, and so named the islands the West Indies.
04:41He went on to explore the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America.
04:46But here's where things get really interesting.
04:50Even though Columbus insisted until his last day that he had reached Asia,
04:55another Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci mapped the eastern shore of South America down to Brazil,
05:02and proved conclusively that Columbus had actually discovered a whole new world.
05:07A German mapmaker saw Amerigo's maps and labeled the new landmass America, after him.
05:15And since his maps were super popular at the time, the name stuck.
05:21One man named Alexander Fleming stumbled upon one of the most significant medical discoveries of all time by accident.
05:30At one point in his career, Fleming observed the demise of many people from uncontrollable infections.
05:36Antiseptics were used to fight this, but they often did more harm than good.
05:43In 1922, while he had a cold himself, Fleming transferred some of his, well, nasal discharge to a Petri dish and left it on his cluttered desk.
05:54When he finally examined it weeks later, he found that an enzyme had some antimicrobial properties.
06:01It wasn't until 1928, when Fleming left an uncovered Petri dish next to an open window,
06:09that he stumbled upon the discovery that would change the world.
06:13The dish became contaminated with fungus spores.
06:17And when he examined them under the microscope, Fleming discovered that the bacteria near the fungus were dying.
06:23He managed to isolate the fungus and found that it was effective against numerous things that caused diseases.
06:30And thus, penicillin was discovered.
06:33As Fleming himself put it,
06:35I did not discover penicillin.
06:37Nature did that.
06:39I only discovered it by accident.
06:41Talk about a lucky break.
06:43In the early 1520s, the east coast of the United States of America was a big mystery waiting to be solved.
06:52The Spanish found Florida, and the English and Portuguese found Newfoundland,
06:57but the area in between was like a blank spot on the map.
07:02France decided to take action and sent an expedition to explore the area.
07:07They chose a guy called Giovanni da Verrazano to lead the trip.
07:11For this expedition, he got four ships.
07:15Unfortunately, two of them were shipwrecked,
07:17and a third one went home after doing some other business on the Spanish coast.
07:22Only the flagship, La Dolphine, crossed the Atlantic with Verrazano and his 50-man crew.
07:30Verrazano set sail from Madeira and landed at Cape Fear.
07:36From there, he sailed south, but got a little scared of running into the Spanish,
07:40so he returned somewhere north of Charleston.
07:44He anchored not far from his original landing spot,
07:47but unlike other explorers, he preferred to anchor well out at sea.
07:52He did send a boat to the shore, and he met the natives.
07:56They were described as wearing just some animal skins covering their bodies
07:59and garlands of bird feathers.
08:03As Verrazano sailed along the coast, he reached the outer banks of North Carolina.
08:10He thought that the waters he discovered were those of the Pacific.
08:14In reality, what he'd stumbled upon was the pomlicose sound.
08:18He thought that North America was just a long, extremely narrow strip of land.
08:22This mistake led mapmakers to show North America as almost completely divided in two.
08:31Moving on, Verrazano reached a beautiful place that he called Arcadia.
08:37Probably Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
08:40Sailing further north, he missed the entrances to Chesapeake and Delaware Bays
08:45because he kept quite far from the coast until New Jersey.
08:48Then, the moment we've all been waiting for, Verrazano discovered New York Harbor!
08:56And he anchored in the Narrows.
08:57Later, it was named after him, and now it is spanned by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
09:05Once Verrazano's Sea appeared on the map,
09:08it became widely accepted and impacted loads of future explorers.
09:12For example, Henry Hudson went looking for a passage to the Pacific in the middle latitudes of the continent.
09:20But, as it turns out, the Englishman never did find the Pacific Ocean anywhere near Virginia.
09:27And the cartographic myth eventually faded away.
09:31It's funny to think about how a mistaken belief could have such an impact on history.
09:35There's something curious about Scotland when seen from above.
09:43An almost perfectly straight line cuts right across the country from coast to coast.
09:48You might have never noticed, but that giant Scott has existed for hundreds of millions of years.
09:54And right along its path lies one of Earth's biggest mysteries, the Loch Ness Monster.
10:00Meet the Great Glen Fault.
10:03Just like other major fault zones around the world,
10:06it was born because of the movement of Earth's tectonic plates.
10:10So, let's go back in time, like 430 million years ago.
10:14At that point, a massive geological drama was going on called the Caledonian Orogeny.
10:20Now, orogeny is just a fancy scientific word for how mountains are formed.
10:25So, this whole region looked totally different back then.
10:28There were these three ancient continents called Laurentia, Baltica, and Avalonia.
10:34Think of them like, I don't know, giant puzzle pieces slowly floating around on Earth's surface.
10:41Over millions of years, these enormous chunks of land drifted and eventually smashed into each other.
10:47When they collided, the edges of the continents crumpled and folded,
10:51kind of like a piece of paper bunching up when you push it from both sides.
10:54But some scientists believe the continents didn't just crash straight into each other.
11:00Instead, they started sliding sideways past one another.
11:04Imagine pressing your fingertips together and rubbing your hands back and forth.
11:08That sideways motion is what scientists call a strike-slip fault.
11:13What I mean is, these massive blocks of rock move side to side rather than up and down.
11:19So, bit by bit, the land on either side of the fault kept inching past each other,
11:26shifting by several miles over geologic time.
11:29During the late Cretaceous to early Tertiary, which happened roughly 66 million years ago,
11:35the region shifted once again.
11:37This time, scientists believed the land's displacement was about 64 miles.
11:42Then, the ice ages came along.
11:45Rivers and glaciers found that giant crack in the earth and dug it out even more,
11:50making it deeper and wider.
11:52That's how they carved out the lakes that follow the fault's path.
11:56Finally, dump all of that into a geological blender,
11:59and there you have it, the Great Glen Fault in all of its majestic glory today.
12:05Yep, all that movement of the land helps sculpt the mountains and deep valleys
12:09that shape the highlands as we see now.
12:11Now, the interesting thing is, the story of the Great Glen Fault doesn't stop in Scotland.
12:17This scar in Earth's crust actually has a secret twin across the ocean.
12:22The fault probably continues on the other side of the North Atlantic, over in North America.
12:28But over there, it's no longer one continuous crack.
12:32About 200 million years ago, Earth decided to shake things up.
12:36That's when the Mid-Atlantic Ridge began forming.
12:39Basically, a giant underwater mountain range that started pushing the continents apart
12:44and broke the original fault.
12:46So now, the North American side of the Great Glen Fault shows up as what is now called the Cabot Fault,
12:54also known as the Long Range Fault.
12:56It slices through the length of northwestern Newfoundland in Canada
13:00and even stretches out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
13:03Meanwhile, back in Scotland, the fault lines up perfectly with the Great Glen,
13:08a valley about 62 miles long, stretching from Inverness in the northeast all the way to Fort William.
13:16And it's filled with gorgeous locks.
13:19One of the largest and most famous of these locks, of course, is Loch Ness.
13:23Yes, I'm talking about THE Loch Ness.
13:26That mysterious stretch of water that's said to be home to the Loch Ness monster.
13:31You know, the legendary creature with the long neck that likes to poke out of the water every now and then,
13:37and that sends shivers down the spines of anyone lucky or unlucky enough to catch a glimpse.
13:42At least, that's what people say.
13:44But despite many years of searching for the creature,
13:48everything from thermal imaging drones to miniature submarines,
13:52no one has found any real evidence of the monster.
13:56And one interesting fact is that the Loch Ness monster might be directly linked to the Great Glen Fault.
14:02Some geologists think that plenty of Nessy sightings might actually be, well, just simple bubbles.
14:09Big ones.
14:09And they were probably caused by the fault itself.
14:12The thing is, all the movement in this region hasn't been confined to millions of years ago.
14:19Over the past 150 years or so, there have been occasional moderate earthquakes rumbling through the highlands.
14:26When the fault lines shift, even just a tiny bit, they can release gas pockets, trapped underground.
14:32Then rising gas bubbles can disturb the surface of a lake,
14:36creating ripples, waves, or sudden bursts of movement across the water.
14:39And that's exactly the kind of thing that might look to someone standing on the shore
14:44like a giant creature swimming just beneath the surface.
14:48But in reality, it could simply be the Earth shifting by a fraction of an inch along that ancient fault.
14:54Or, as I like to put it, the lake has farted.
14:58Big question.
14:59Is this region still moving?
15:01I mean, is this big geological map actually getting bigger nowadays?
15:05Well, it's hard to say.
15:08Because scientists don't all agree.
15:10Some researchers think the Great Glen Fault is still active today.
15:14They consider it a reactivated strike-slip fault,
15:17meaning there might still be some action happening deep underground.
15:21The rocks on either side might still be straining and inching past each other.
15:25And, in fact, occasional moderate tremors have been recorded over the past 150 years,
15:32usually with magnitudes of around 3 or 4.
15:36But not everyone is convinced.
15:38Other scientists point out that there is no solid evidence of significant modern activity along the main fault.
15:45And the seismic activity over the past few centuries hasn't been strong enough to prove the fault is seriously on the move.
15:52Take the Inverness earthquake that happened in 1901, for instance.
15:57To this day, it's considered one of the strongest that ever happened in Scotland.
16:02People felt it all across the country, and the earthquake damaged several buildings in Inverness.
16:07The situation was so intense that it gave the feeling of,
16:10oh boy, this crack is definitely growing.
16:14But the specialists aren't so convinced.
16:16Some believe it likely happened on a secondary fault connected to the Great Glen Fault,
16:21but not directly on the main fault itself.
16:24So, once again, it's hard to say for sure whether the Great Glen Fault is still actively moving today.
16:31Despite all the different studies and debates over many years,
16:35there are only a few conclusions about this huge gap that everyone agrees on.
16:40The fault is unusually straight, it is super-ancient, and it is extremely deep by any standards.
16:47That's not the only cool fact about Scotland's territory, though.
16:50Let's travel to the islands that lie off the northwest coast of the mainland, to the Isle of Skye.
16:57This place was once home to a wide variety of dinosaurs during the Middle Jurassic period.
17:02The thing is, finding dinosaur fossils from this time period is super-rare,
17:08but the Isle of Skye is an exception.
17:12Specialists discovered that about 167 million years ago, give or take,
17:17dinosaurs were mingling on the muddy edges of a warm lagoon over there.
17:22As they gathered around this ancient watering hole,
17:24they left behind layers of overlapping footprints.
17:28Specialists first noticed these tracks in the early 1890s,
17:32but at the time, they concluded that the impressions were petrified burrows of ancient fish.
17:37But then, in 2019, a graduate student from the University of Edinburgh went there and figured,
17:44nah, these are definitely three-toed dinosaur footprints.
17:48And he was right.
17:50Over several years of fieldwork, he and his colleagues discovered more than 130 individual prints.
17:56The team believes that the tracks were left by megalosaurs.
18:00These were large dinosaurs, around 20 feet long, and they were serious meat-eaters.
18:05In fact, they sat right at the top of the local food chain during the Middle Jurassic.
18:11But at the time those footprints were made, these big boys probably weren't hunting prey.
18:16No.
18:17Their tracks showed that they were just walking around, wandering in different directions,
18:22probably hanging out near the water.
18:24And this spot is so special because it gives us a rare peek into what life was like in the Jurassic period.
18:32That's it for today.
18:33So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:38Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side!
18:42Let's go ahead.
18:42Let's do it!
18:43Let's do it!
18:51Let's go ahead!
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