Well another year is in the bag, and to be honest it might be once again a pretty good one to keep in the rearview mirror. But before we get started with 2024 – and keep our eyes firmly on the road ahead – let’s take a moment to survey the news stories that fascinated us here at the Grail in 2023.
We’ve posted links to thousands of stories in our daily news briefs – but we’ve sorted through them to narrow it down to what we think are the 100 most interesting, odd and/or mind-blowing news items of the past year.
Obviously, these are pretty much restricted to Daily Grail news fare – you won’t be getting financial or political news stories unless they are in some way relevant to the topics we usually cover (and boy, did UFOs cross over with politics big time in 2023!). As such, they are sorted into 10 categories, each with 10 news items: Ancient sites, History, Space, UFOs and Aliens, Life on Earth, Science, Technology, Weird/Forteana, Psychedelics and shamanism, and Conspiracy.
But cutting thousands of news stories down to just 10 in each category made for some tough calls, and we had to leave out some real good ones in our final edit, especially in a few categories like History – so we’ll be posting that all-but-final draft, before each category was cut to 10, over at our Patreon page for anyone that wants an extended list of links.
While you’re over there, please consider helping us continue doing what we do by signing up for a $US1/month (or more) ‘voluntary subscription’ (you get a free ebook for your trouble!), or you can give a one-off donation at PayPal.me/DailyGrail. We are a small, independent website and depend on reader support, so we appreciate it!
Thanks to all our readers for your support over the past year, and all the best to everyone for 2024!
History
- ‘Lost continent’ the size of Japan off the coast of northern Australia may have hosted a population of half a million people before it before it was submerged beneath the ocean at the end of the last Ice Age.
- Many prehistoric handprints show a finger missing. What if this was not accidental?
- Ancient DNA charts Native Americans’ journeys back to Asia thousands of years ago.
- Study finds Neanderthals manufactured synthetic material with underground distillation.
- Humans were in South America at least 25,000 years ago, giant sloth bone pendants reveal.
- Growing body of evidence suggests the oral stories of Australia’s First Nations might be 10,000 years old.
- Did an extinct ‘small-brained ape-man’ species develop a sophisticated culture millennia before humans did?
- Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago – genetic analysis suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.
- Ancient whittled logs could be the earliest known wooden structure, showing that ancient hominins worked with wood almost 500,000 years ago.
- Amazon rainforest hides thousands of ancient Indigenous earthworks under its canopy, says new remote-sensing study.
Ancient sites
- Hidden chamber in the Great Pyramid revealed to the world after 4,500 years.
- Archaeologists discover worship of unknown gods at huge ancient stone monuments in Saudi Arabia.
- Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago near the famed megalithic site of Carnac were destroyed to make way for a DIY store.
- Controversial Stonehenge road tunnel plans approved by British government.
- Thousands of ancient Maya structures revealed by jungle-penetrating lasers.
- New discoveries unveiled at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe, including a 2.3-metre-tall human statue.
- A monumental prehistoric discovery of the world’s oldest known fort in Siberia rewrites human history, scientists say.
- Pre-Incan ‘astronomer priests’ built giant structures aligned to the Milky Way.
- Layout of ancient stilt village in the Amazon may have been based on Pleiades star cluster.
- A 27,000-year-old pyramid? Controversy hits an extraordinary archaeological claim.
Space
- Metallic spheres found on Pacific floor are interstellar in origin, Harvard professor finds. But others have doubts.
- India landed a rover on the Moon in historic milestone, while Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years crashed.
- ‘Hunter satellites‘ are preparing for space war.
- Strange ‘slide whistle’ fast radio burst picked up by alien-hunting telescope defies explanation.
- The JWST discovered six gigantic galaxies that emerged shortly after the Big Bang, stunning scientists by forming at a speed that upends the current understanding of the early universe.
- Species-ending asteroids hit Earth more often than we realized, NASA research suggests.
- Forget ‘Planet Nine’ – scientists say an Earth-like world could be hiding within our solar system.
- NASA spacecraft returns to Earth with pieces of an asteroid.
- A giant solar storm 14,000 years ago leaves the Carrington Event in the dust.
- Scientists say there may be life under Mercury’s salt glaciers.
UFOs and Aliens
- After downing a ‘Chinese spy balloon’, a US fighter jet shot down an unidentified “cylindrical and silver-ish grey” object the size of a small car off Alaska, the US and Canada shot down another unidentified object over the Yukon in north-west Canada, and US fighter jets shot down an ‘octagonal object’ near the Canadian border.
- The US government released their second UAP report to the public in January, and then another in October.
- NASA issued a 36-page report investigating UFOs in September.
- AI created by college student found potential alien ‘technosignatures’ hidden in radio signals from space.
- The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions co-authored an academic paper suggesting that UFOs could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth.
- Repeated signals from the center of the Milky Way could be aliens saying hello, new study claims.
- Whistleblower David Grusch tells Congress the US is concealing ‘multi-decade’ program that captures UFOs. However, the Pentagon’s UFO boss torched claims of an alien cover-up.
- The true story of Mexico’s fake unboxed aliens is wilder than actual aliens.
- The search for extraterrestrial intelligence received a $200 million boost from the estate of a long-time supporter.
- The head of the Pentagon’s UFO office announced he would be stepping down from the role in November.
Life on Earth
- A human-like ‘living fossil’ could still be alive in Indonesia, anthropologist says.
- Ancient ‘zombie’ virus revived almost 50,000 years later is still infectious.
- Bumblebees learn to solve puzzles by watching peers, study finds.
- Plants make sounds when hurt, scientists confirm.
- Octopuses possess a brain wave that has never been seen before in animals, along with others that are similar to those found in humans, first-of-their-kind brain recordings reveal.
- Long-extinct Tasmanian tiger may still be alive and prowling the wilderness, scientists claim.
- Orcas sank several boats off southwest Europe and appear to be teaching others to do the same.
- Elephants give each other names — the first non-human animals found to do so, study claims.
- Scientists have reported a breakthrough in understanding whale language.
- Electricity from electric eels may transfer genetic material to nearby animals.
Science
- Groundbreaking gravitational wave discovery could unlock our Universe’s deepest mysteries.
- Vision restored in mice using revolutionary gene-editing technique.
- Rosalind Franklin knew DNA was a helix before Watson and Crick, unpublished material reveals.
- Synthetic human embryos created in groundbreaking advance.
- Global temperatures in June were the hottest on record for 3 consecutive days.
- Surging methane suggests Earth is brewing an ice age termination event.
- Scientists finally acknowledge that they got their solar cycle predictions wrong, and that we are fast approaching the sun’s explosive peak.
- CRISPR cure for HIV now tested in three patients.
- Sensational claims were made about ‘LK-99’, an alleged room-temperature superconductor – but after examination by other experts, most researchers involved wanted the scientific paper retracted.
- Has the holy grail of physics finally been reached? New theory claims to unite Einstein’s gravity with quantum mechanics.
Technology
- AI consciousness: scientists say we urgently need answers.
- Are we living in a computer simulation…and if so, can we hack it?
- Artists sue AI art generators over copyright infringement.
- Could brain-computer interfaces lead to ‘mind-control for good‘?
- Ex-Open AI safety researcher says there’s a 20% chance of an AI apocalypse.
- Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink approved by the FDA for in-human studies.
- The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans.
- AI read text from previously unreadable ancient Herculaneum scroll for the first time.
- OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough “that could threaten humanity” ahead of CEO Sam Altman’s ouster (and subsequent hasty reinstatement) in November.
- AI identified three new ‘Nazca Lines’ figures in Peru.
Weird/Forteana
- Twenty eight girls were hospitalised after using Ouija board at school in Colombia.
- 900 Bears per Bigfoot: New statistical analysis finds that many sasquatch encounters are likely misidentified bear sightings.
- The mummy’s curse might be real — but it’s caused by a fungus.
- Filmmaker and occultist Kenneth Anger died in May at age 96.
- ‘Flying aliens’ harrassing village in Peru are actually illegal miners with jetpacks, cops say.
- Study suggests Vlad the Impaler suffered from hemolacria, a condition that causes a person to cry tears of blood.
- Hundreds joined a huge new search for the Loch Ness Monster in August.
- Some people whose brains flatline but survive can recall lucid ‘experiences of death’, study shows.
- Is telephone telepathy real? A new study found positive results when they put it to the test.
- ‘Yeti hair’ found in Himalayas is actually from a horse, BBC series reveals.
Psychedelics and shamanism
- ‘Psychonauts’ are training to explore another dimension in extended-state DMT trips.
- Scientists find earliest direct evidence of people using psychedelics in Europe.
- A single, moderate dose of psilocybin reduces depressive symptoms for at least two weeks, controlled study finds.
- Scientists scanned people on DMT inside fMRI machines. This is what they found.
- Psychedelic treatment linked to substantial reduction in alcohol misuse and PTSD symptoms in US Special Operations Forces Veterans.
- This new church wants to get you high on synthetic toad venom.
- Philanthropist gives $1.5 million to support research on effects of DMT on the brain.
- Hallucinogen use hits record high in adults, survey reveals.
- Psychedelic chemist Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin left behind an archive of more than 500 psychedelic compounds – a research institute continuing his legacy is scouring the collection for overlooked gems.
- Psilocybin from shrooms could be effective future treatment for depression, meta-analysis argues.
Conspiracy
- Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in December after poll of the site’s users.
- Investigation uncovers deeply held secrets about the world of global espionage during exploration of the mystery of ‘Havana Syndrome’.
- The enduring mystery of an aggressive FBI raid near Area 51.
- Havana Syndrome unlikely caused by foreign adversary or weapon, U.S. report says.
- US military signs contract to put facial recognition tech on drones.
- U.S. intelligence is building a system to track mass movement of people around the world.
- The secret history of Bigfoot and the CIA.
- Pentagon scientists discuss cybernetic ‘super soldiers’ that feel nothing while killing in dystopian presentation.
- Elon Musk repeatedly boosted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in November.
- Treasure hunter accused FBI of a ‘major cover up’ claiming agents made off with missing $500 million in Civil War gold in the middle of the night after he found long-lost burial site.
