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The Great Wall of China is even greater than once thought. A two-year government mapping study has uncovered new sections of the ancient Chinese monument which makes it more than 2,551 kilometres (1,585 miles) longer. The Ming Dynasty Great Wall is 8,851.8 kilometres (5,500 miles) long, said the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.
Using mapping technologies such as infra-red range finders and GPS devices, experts discovered portions of the wall - concealed by hills, trenches and rivers - that stretch from Hu Mountain in northern Liaoning province to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province. The Ming portion of the Great Wall is the most visually striking and well-preserved portion of the world-famous monument.
The newly mapped parts of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasy (1368-1644) to protect against northern invaders and were submerged over time by sandstorms that moved across the arid region,according to a report posted on the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping Web site.
The additional parts mean the Great Wall - which Chinese emperors began constructing 2,000 years ago to keep out Monguls and invaders - spans about 6,300 kilometres (3,900 miles) through the northern part of the country. The joint project, conducted by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, will continue for another year in order to map sections of the wall built during the Qin (221 B.C.-206 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.-9 A.D.) Dynasties, the report said.
Recent studies by Chinese archaeologists have shown that sections of the wall in Gansu are being reduced to 'mounds of dirt' by sandstorms and may disappear entirely in 20 years.
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Since first explored in the 1600’s the Great Lakes have earned a reputation as being a treacherous and unforgiving waterway. Extremely violent storms seem to appear out of nowhere taking both vessel and crew to a watery grave. In 1977 author Jay Gourley’s “The Great Lakes Triangle” proposed there were some sinister forces behind all of these mysterious disappearances. But many sailors on Lake Erie at least, have had a theory for centuries on the unexplainable storms and the shipwrecks that plague the fresh water lake.The Storm Hag.According to legend the Storm Hag lives at the bottom of the lake, close to Presque Isle Peninsula . She is a hideous she demon, her yellow eyes shine in the dark like those of a cat, her skin is a pale shade green. Her teeth are sharp and pointed as a shark, able to tear the skin off of her victims. They are also green, which gives her another less common name, Jenny Greenteeth. Her hands have long pointed nails like talons that have a poison with which she can paralyze a poor soul with just one small prick. Her arms are long and strong, and they wrap around her victims making it impossible for them to escape her flesh hungry attack. The old legend tells that like a siren before she attacks she sings a quiet song over the waves that few have survived to retell. Traditionally the song she sings is:“Come into the water, love,Dance beneath the waves,Where dwell the bones of sailor ladsInside my saffron caves.”And as soon as the seafarer hears this song the Storm Hag attacks. She calls up a violent storm that tosses the crew of the vessel around so she can lurch up from the water and grab them with her long arms. Others tell that she waits the storm out and when the sailors believe all is calm she rises from the waves, spitting lightning and winds with such force the entire vessel sinks in a few seconds.Local history has it that on a fall evening in 1782 an owler ship was caught in a bad storm on the lake and desperately tried to make it back to port at Presque Isle. It was tossed to and fro violently for more than an hour and when it was in site of land the storm abruptly stopped.The clouds dissipated and the moonlight. 
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From goofy to erudite, more than three dozen theories have attempted to explain the origins of grassy mounds that dot the prairies of Southwest Washington. The latest twist won't settle the debate, but it casts the mysterious hummocks in a different light. Laser light, that is.Scientists used airborne laser surveys to create topographic maps that reveal new details about the so-called Mima Mounds scattered across lowlands south of Olympia and Tacoma. The technique fires 23,000 pulses a second toward the ground, and erases signals that bounce back from vegetation and buildings. The result is an exceptionally crisp image accurate to a few inches or feet.The new maps clearly show that all of the mounds formed near the margins of retreating glaciers, supporting an idea first proposed nearly a century ago, said Robert Logan, chief of geological mapping for the Washington Department of Natural Resources.Logan and Timothy Walsh, who leads DNR's geologic-hazards section, tweaked the old theory to fit their new observations. They presented their work in Seattle last week at the 81st annual meeting of the Northwest Scientific Association. Fans of the gopher theory aren't buying it — but more about that later.Standing up to 6 feet tall and measuring 30 feet across, Washington's most famous mounds are at Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve near the town of Littlerock. But "pimpled prairies" cover about 10,000 acres and include tracts on Fort Lewis and near Yelm, Roy and Spanaway.The story the DNR scientists deciphered from the landscape began at the end of the last ice age, about 13,500 years ago, and features gushing meltwater, sun cups and erosion. There's even a hint the ice might have retreated at breakneck speed.As glacial lobes melted, Logan explained, dammed-up water occasionally burst free, gouging channels. The new maps show all of the mounded tracts are adjacent to outburst channels. The surging floodwaters would have carried gravel, which underlies the mounds. The topography also shows evidence that the meltwater pooled up, perhaps dammed by chunks of ice. Cold winds blowing off the glacier would have frozen the ponded water, Logan said.That's where the sun cups enter the picture. As anyone who's trekked across glaciers. 
