THE WORLD’S MOST
MYSTERIOUS OBJECTS
THE WORLD’S MOST MYSTERIOUS OBJECTS
Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe
A HOUNSLOW BOOKA MEMBER OF THE DUNDURN GROUPTORONTO • OXFORD
Copyright © Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-wise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
Copy-Editor: Andrea Pruss
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Transcontinental
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Fanthorpe, R. Lionel
The world’s most mysterious objects / Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe.
ISBN 1-55002-403-5
1. Curiosities and wonders. I. Fanthorpe, Patricia II. Title.
AG243.F358 2002 001.94 C2002-902289-4
1 2 3 4 5 06 05 04 03 02
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
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This book is dedicated with great affection to our (unofficially!)
adopted son in the USA, Rick Seidita, who shares our fascination
with all things mysterious and unexplained phenomena in general.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Canon Stanley Mogford, MA
Chapter 1: The Curse of the Hope Diamond
Chapter 2: Prehistoric Moon Map
Chapter 3: The Shroud of Turin, The Mandylion, and Veronica’s Handkerchief
Chapter 4: Alexander of Abonoteichous
Chapter 5: The Nuggets from the Lost Dutchman Mine
Chapter 6: The Statuette of Yemanja
Chapter 7: The Relics of Saint Anthony of Padua
Chapter 8: Orffyreus’s Perpetual Motion Engine
Chapter 9: Did the Eldridge Travel Through Hyperspace?
Chapter 10: The Tarot
Chapter 11: Ball Lightning
Chapter 12: Strange Steeples
Chapter 13: Mysterious Locks, Keys, and Containers
Chapter 14: Murderers and Mandrakes: Gallows and Gibbets
Chapter 15: Anomalous Codes, Symbols, and Alphabets
Chapter 16: Crystal Skulls
Chapter 17: The Lance of Longinus
Chapter 18: Screaming Skulls
Chapter 19: Holy Waters and Holy Wells
Chapter 20: Ymir and the Derby Ram
Chapter 21: The Mysterious Golem of Prague
Chapter 22: The Philosophers’ Stone
Chapter 23: Mysterious Mazes and Labyrinths
Chapter 24: Miscellaneous Mysterious Objects
Bibliography
FOREWORD by Canon Stanley Mogford, MA
We live in an ordered universe. There is a pattern to it, a regularity, a system so coordinated and complete that we can base our lives on it. We know, accurately, when darkness is due to fall and the sun to rise. The movement of planets can be pre-dieted long years ahead, and no eclipse of moon or sun now takes us by surprise. The force of gravity is constant and will always make walking on the street safe and falling off a skyscraper dangerous. The tidal system is so regulated that we know when to dock a ship and when not. We have times for planting and times to harvest what we grow. Generations long ago came to appreciate the consistency and order of their world. As the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, put it, centuries before Christ: “There is a time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.” The universe is, in truth, like the mechanism of a great clock, each piece designed for a purpose and each fitting accurately into the whole.
Into this established order and consistency, human beings like ourselves are born and seek to make the best of our lives. A disordered life on an ordered background would seem a hazardous way to live. Those who set out to “buck the system” will clearly do so at their peril.
The Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe and his wife, Patricia, in the course of a long writing career, have recently completed a trilogy of books, both fascinating in their content and challenging in their interpretations. They have extracted from the