DOCTORS SUCCESSFULLY TREAT TWO BABIES WITH LEUKEMIA USING GENE-EDITED IMMUNE CELLS

Scientists are using gene-editing techniques to fight cancer.

IT’S A PROMISING APPROACH, BUT STILL NEEDS A LOT MORE RESEARCH

In a study out this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine, a group of British doctors reported that they had successfully “cured” two infants of the blood cancer leukemia using a treatment that involves genetically modified immune cells from a donor.

The study was incredibly small—just two babies—and the infants have only been free of leukemia for 16 and 18 months. Technically, that’s not long enough to say they are cured. Declaring someone who previously had cancer as “cured” usually doesn’t happen until that person has been free of the disease for a few years, at least. But what’s significant about this study is that it combines a promising, novel approach—CAR T cell therapy—with a relatively new gene-editing technique called TALENS, which enables the direct manipulation of genes within a person’s DNA.

In the cancer community, CAR T cell therapy is already touted as a promising immunotherapy treatment (which involves harnessing a person’s immune system to fight cancer on its own), but in preliminary trials, it’s had its limitations. Before it can become a universal cancer treatment, these kinks and logistics need to be worked out. And researchers in the field think that many of them can be solved using gene-editing techniques such as TALENS, the one used in this study, as well as CRISPR, supposedly the easiest such technique to date.


First, what is CAR T-cell treatment?

CAR T, which stands for chimeric antigen receptor T cell, is a new type of cancer treatment which is not yet publicly available, but is in active clinical trials in the United States as well as many other countries such as the United Kingdom and China. The therapy involves removing some T cells (specialized immune cells) from a patient's blood. Then those cells are genetically altered in a lab, giving them special receptors on their surface called CARs. Once the cells are ready, they are infused back into the patient’s blood, where the new (CAR) receptors seek out tumor cells, attach to them, and kill them.
CAR T-cell trials are currently in phase II clinical trials in the United States. A few drug companies, including Novartis, have plans to make the therapy available as early as this year.


How does gene-editing help?

This new treatment has worked really well for blood cancers like leukemia, especially in young children. The problem, as the researchers point out in their study, is that each set of T cells have to be custom made for each patient. That takes a lot of time, and a lot of money. Further, it’s not always feasible, or even possible, to harvest T cells from leukemia patients who simply don’t have enough healthy ones to begin with.
And that’s where gene-editing comes in. The researchers took T cells from donor recipients and made a total of four genetic changes. The two they made with TALENS enabled the T cells to become universal—allowing them to be used in any person without the risk of rejection (a phenomenon called graft-versus-host disease, where the recipient’s immune system creates such an overwhelming response to the foreign cells that the patient can die as a result). The other genetic alterations added that signature receptor to seek out and attack cancer.


What are the limitations of this study?

The two infants in the study—aged 11 and 18 months—both had an aggressive form of leukemia, and had already been subjected to other treatments like chemotherapy and stem cell transplants. And the fact that they have remained cancer free is extremely promising. But again, the study was small. Further, according to a report in MIT Technology Review, many CAR T experts argue that because the children also received other treatments simultaneously (one had a stem cell transplant soon after receiving the CAR T cells) it’s impossible to know for sure whether the CAR T cells were the sole reason the cancer cells stayed away. “There is a hint of efficacy but no proof,” Stephan Grupp, director of cancer immunotherapy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told MIT Tech Review. “It would be great if it works, but that just hasn’t been shown yet.


What’s next?

The combination of CAR T cell immunotherapy with gene-editing remains an incredibly promising area of research. Not only to create a “universal donor” CAR T cell, but also to make the treatment more effective. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are currently researching using the the gene-editing technique CRISPR to edit out two genes—called checkpoint inhibitors—that prevent CAR T from working as well as it should. The trial, which could take place this year, would be the first case of a CRISPR-altered cell being used in a human patient in the United States. In November, a Chinese group tested their first CRISPR gene-edited T cells in a patient with lung cancer.
However, it’s important to remember that CAR T cell therapy is in its early stages, and CRISPR/TALEN gene edited CAR T is even newer. There’s still a lot more work to be done, including many, many more studies like this one, with a lot more patients, before it’s available for everyone.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Popsci . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Secret room of the famous Rushmore

After its completion 75 years ago, the colossal presidential sculpture carved into Mount Rushmore quickly became an American icon. However, few know that hidden behind the hairline of Abraham Lincoln is a doorway to an unfinished chamber originally intended to hold some of America’s most treasured documents.

On Halloween in 1941, the 14-year effort to carve the enormous profiles of four American presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt—into the southeastern face of Mount Rushmore was finally completed. However, one little-known, but critical, element of Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s “Shrine of Democracy Sculpture” was left unfinished and remains concealed from view behind Lincoln’s mighty brow.

Mount Rushmore as carving began with conceptual drawing of Borglum’s idea for a the never-built entablature inserted. (Credit: NPS, Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

Carved into the solid granite wall of a small canyon running right behind the presidential lineup is an 18-foot-tall doorway that resembles the entrance to an ancient tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh. While Nicolas Cage’s character in the movie “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” discovered the entrance to a legendary city of gold inside a cave on Mount Rushmore, no such riches can be found in the actual chamber chiseled into the mountain. Anyone crossing the threshold would discover an empty room approximately 75 feet in length with a 35-foot-tall ceiling. Holes jack-hammered into the walls to hold dynamite for blasting lend a honeycomb effect. Red numbers, perhaps painted by Borglum himself, give instructions for the removal of rocks.

Gutzon Borglum (Credit: Library of Congress)

Borglum had intended for this incomplete chamber to be, in essence, his artist’s statement explaining the meaning of his sculpture—not for present generations but for future civilizations, and even interplanetary visitors, thousands of years in the future. “You might as well drop a letter into the world’s postal service without an address or signature, as to send that carved mountain into history without identification,” the sculptor wrote. While the four faces carved on Mount Rushmore are instantly recognizable even to school kids today, Borglum thought they might one day become as mysterious as Stonehenge. “Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor,” he lamented. “Civilizations are ghouls.”

The sculptor’s early plans for Mount Rushmore included next to Washington’s head a massive 80-by-120-foot inscription in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase that would list nine of the most important events in the history of the United States between 1776 and 1906. However, even with the most astronomical of point sizes, the text would not have been legible at great distances, and ultimately logistics required that portion of the mountain to be used for Lincoln’s head. Borglum abandoned the inscription and instead drew up plans to build a repository deep within the mountain that would hold some of America’s most treasured artifacts and documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Plans for the Hall of Records. (Credit: Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

The sculptor envisioned a grand, 800-foot-long staircase ascending Mount Rushmore that would lead to a glorious chamber called the “Hall of Records.” “Into this room the records of what our people aspired to and what they accomplished should be collected,” Borglum wrote, “and on the walls of this room should be cut the literal record of conception of our republic; its successful creation; the record of its westward movement to the Pacific; its presidents; how the Memorial was built, and frankly, why.”

Visitors to the Hall of Records would enter through great glass doors over which would be perched a bronze eagle with a 38-foot wingspan and the inscription “America’s Onward March.” A cross pointing to the North Star would be mounted upon the vaulted ceiling, and friezes on the wall would depict “the adventure of humanity discovering and occupying the West World.” An inscription written by John Edward Bradley, who won a national contest sponsored by the Hearst newspapers, would detail the history of the country from its founding through the construction of the Panama Canal. Bronze and glass cabinets in the recesses of the 80-by-100-foot chamber would hold documents such as the U.S. Constitution. There would be busts of more than 20 prominent Americans, ranging from Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock to Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers.

Workers in the early stages of constructing the Hall of Records. (Credit: Charles D’Emery photo, courtesy of NPS, Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

In July 1938, workers began to cut into the rock on the north wall of a small canyon concealed by the presidential faces to build Borglum’s American shrine. However, a year into the construction, the federal government, which covered nearly all the cost of constructing the monument, tightened the pursestrings and ordered Borglum to stop work on the Hall of Records and focus his full efforts on completing the presidential profiles.

Seven months after the 73-year-old sculptor died in March 1941, Borglum’s son Lincoln led the effort to finish the carving of the four presidents. The Mount Rushmore National Monument was deemed to be complete, although Borglum’s ultimate plan—and the Hall of Records—remained unfinished.

Mount Rushmore under construction. (Credit: NPS, Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

Borglum’s hopes for the Hall of Records were at least partially fulfilled on August 9, 1998, when four generations of his family gathered in the incomplete chamber as 16 porcelain enamel panels inscribed with the words of documents such as the Declaration of Independence, biographies of the sculptor and his presidential subjects and histories of the memorial’s construction and the United States were placed inside a teakwood box and titanium vault that was lowered into the ground and covered by a 1,200-pound black granite capstone inscribed with a quote from Borglum delivered at the 1930 dedication of the carving of Washington. “It’s the end of the creation of Mount Rushmore as my father saw it,” said Borglum’s daughter, Mary Ellis.

It’s one part of Mount Rushmore, however, that few people can see today. Due to safety and security concerns, visitors are prohibited from scaling the mountain to view the Hall of Records.


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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by History . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

A dog saved his master's life after the man fell on ice and broke his neck and spent 20 hours in the cold

Source: Personal Archive

His action can be described as a heroic act, a golden retriever managed to save his master's life after he fell on ice and broke his neck.

New Year's Eve, Bob, a man of 64 years in Petoskey, decided to go outside to bring firewood. Dressed only in a shirt, pants and shoes on their feet, the man slipped on ice and because of the coup could not move, notes Oddity Central.

The man began to shout for help, but his neighbor's house is about half a kilometer away, at that hour was not someone who could help him. Fortunately, his dog five years old came to help him.

Source: Personal Archive

,, I screamed for help, but the neighbor is at a distance from my house. By morning I lost my voice almost completely, but Kelsey (dog) never stopped barking. A barking for help and did not go near me kept me warm and kept me awake, '' says Bob.


Snow man remained paralyzed for about 20 hours at a temperature of -4 ° C. Kelsey has done everything possible for the man to stay alive, including was sitting on his chest to keep them warm. After 19 hours, Bob and lost consciousness, but Kelsey continued barking and yelling for help.

Source: Personal Archive

Despite efforts dog, Bob would be frozen in the snow if his neighbor had not heard Rick's desperate howling dog. The man was found at 6: 30 p.m. New Year's Day and was taken to hospital. Column injuries can result in permanent paralysis, but Bob was lucky, before the operation was warned that it might not be able to go, but the next morning he managed to move his arms and legs.


Bob and Kelsey are inseparable, they remain together even when the husband go shopping.

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The man who is married 107 women. '' What I do is divine. It is my mission and I will keep doing this until the end of life '

Source: Buzz Nigeria

Mohammed Bello Abubakar is one of the most controversial figures in Nigeria. Husband of 92 years was married 107 women, 97 of them still being wives.

Belo came to fame in 2008 when the papers wrote about his marriage to 86 women and 150 for children. At that time, Muslim clerics accused him of violating their religious rules. The man was put before a choice, 82 women are divorced or suffer the consequences, according to Oddity Central. He refused, claiming that there is no rule in the Quran that prohibit marriage to more than four women, and that every man should be free to marry as many women as he wants.

Belo was arrested at the request of the local court, but was released on condition to keep only four wives. The man ignored the requirement of the court and then was married to other women, reaching a total of 107 of which 10 wives divorced him. Despite his age, Abubakar says that he wants to marry again,, What I do is divine. It is my mission and I will keep doing this until the end of life ''.

Belo advises men not to follow his example as a husband,, normal '' would not do 10 wives. He says he has managed to control on 97 women using divine power.

The most incredible aspect of his family is that none of the members has a fixed income. The man does not work and does not allow any wife to work

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Pine Leaf was a Woman Chief and warrior of the Crow people. And she married four wives

Left photo - Assiniboin Boy, a Gros Ventre man, photo by Edward S. Curtis. Wikipedia/Public Domain, Right photo - Gros Ventre moving camp with travois. Wikipedia/Public Domain

A girl was born in 1806 to the Gros Ventres but in a wave of inter-tribal rage and revenge, she was kidnapped by a raiding party of Crows when she was only 10. A Crow warrior adopted her and raised as one of his people. She seemed quite rebellious toward “girl’s behaviour” and was keen to acquire skills which were traditionally perceived as male ones. Her foster father had already lost his sons in battles or illness and keenly encouraged the pursuits of his daughter – Pine Leaf. She was educated as she was a boy and assisted in gaining her skills in horse riding, marksmanship, and ability to field-dress a buffalo. However, she kept dressing as a girl.

Idealized illustration of “Pine Leaf,” possibly identified with Woman Chief, from James Beckwourth’s autobiography.

After the death of her father, she gained the leadership of his lodge. She got the respect as a warrior after she proved her skills in a riot with the Blackfoots. Pine Leaf was also the most reliable in defending her people whenever there was a need for it. She would answer to any fight in order to protect her people. Also, she formed a group of warriors with whom she reportedly attacked the Blackfoot and stole their horses.

Six Blackfeet chiefs painted by Paul Kane along the South Saskatchewan River in Canada ( c.1851-1856).

It was natural for her to be chosen as bacheeítche (Chief) in the Council of Chiefs and to represent her lodge. She was given the name Bíawacheeitchish, or “Woman Chief.” Later, she would become third among the Council’s 160 lodges. From all data about her, it is hard to say if she married four wives because she was attracted to them or for the benefits of their dowry to increase her wealth.

She made peace with the Gros Ventres party but after a few years, some of their people killed her.


She met with a number of Western explorers including Edwin Denig and Rudolph Kurz, and they were enchanted by her. All stories written about Pine Leaf praise her bravery, cleverness, and skills.

Crow Indians, c. 1878–1883.

Most of the information the world has about her come from James Beckwourth who wrote about Pine Leaf – the Crow warrior. In his writings, he seems fascinated by her, which leaves the reader with the question if he used his fascination lead him to an imagination about the things he wrote. Beckwourth claimed that he met Pine Leaf while living with the Crow in the 1820s.

Left photo – James P. Beckwourth, circa 1860, in Denver, Kansas Territory.  Right photo – Beckwourth as an Indian warrior, 1856.

He also claimed to have had a romantic relationship with Pine Leaf, which is also not a very reliable fact.

There are a few other woman-warriors beside Pine Leaf, all from the Crow Nation. Two such are Akkeekaahuush and Biliíche Héeleelash who was a prominent war leader.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Thevintagenews . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

The most expensive house in the United States. It costs 250 million dollars and comes with a helicopter 12 luxury cars and 10 motorcycles.

The most expensive house in the US was put up for sale at a price of 250 million dollars. Despite the exorbitant price, it comes with a helicopter 12 luxury cars and 10 motorcycles.

The property has helipad, its own cinema, bowling alley, art, luxurious rooms and a garage already "equipped", 12 cars and 10 motorcycles.

Those who purchase the house will enjoy cars like Bugatti, Rolls Royce Dawn, Ferari 488 GTB or Bentley Continental GT.

The video presentation of the property 250 millions fully illustrates the opulence:

An alternate History: If Martin Luther King had not been killed?

Credit: Wikipedia/Rowland Scherman   

A life devoted to peace ended in a sickening act of violence on April 4, 1968. The gunshot that echoed across the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, not only took the life of 39-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., it silenced one of the world’s most strident voices against racism, war and poverty. It also left a lingering question: How would the course of history have been different had the social activist and civil rights leader not been felled by an assassin’s bullet nearly 50 years ago?

Had Martin Luther King Jr. not been killed as he stood on the Lorraine Motel’s second-floor balcony on that spring evening in 1968, it’s almost certain that the Baptist preacher would have remained a powerful voice against injustice. While King would have spoken out against racism in the ensuing years, it’s important to remember that the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner had begun to pivot his activism to economic inequality and antiwar causes by the time of his death, says Stanford historian Clayborne Carson, who also serves as director of the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. It was economic inequality and fair housing that led him to march through a rainstorm of bottles and bricks in Chicago in 1966 and drew him to Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers.

Inscription marking the spot where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech.” (Credit: jcarillet/iStockphoto.com)

“I don’t think of him primarily as a civil rights leader during the last years of his life,” Carson tells HISTORY. “Once the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, his goals extended beyond civil rights at that point. In his Nobel Prize lecture he pointed out the triple evils in the world. Racial oppression was one, but poverty and war were the other two, and those were what he had turned his attention to.”

“The entrenched racism King confronted during his trip to Chicago in 1966 and the escalation of the Vietnam War broadened his understanding of civil rights to include the entire national landscape and the nation’s role abroad,” says Lillie Edwards, professor emerita of history and African-American studies at Drew University. “By 1968, this broader landscape signaled that he was fully engaged in keeping pace with new arenas of social justice and willing to embrace new paradigms and new strategies.”

High on King’s list of plans was the Poor People’s Campaign, which he had announced in November 1967 along with other civil rights leaders. He planned for an initial group of 2,000 impoverished Americans of all races to descend upon Washington, D.C., in May 1968 to lobby for an “economic bill of rights” that included jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage and more low-income housing.

Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the March on Washington in August 1963. (Credit: Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Before they could march into the nation’s capital, however, King’s followers found themselves marching behind a a mule-drawn wagon bearing his casket through the streets of Atlanta. The Poor People’s Campaign went on as scheduled, but it floundered without King’s leadership. The “economic bill of rights” never came to fruition.

Edwards says King’s presence would have boosted the profile of subsequent anti-poverty campaigns. “Supporting garbage workers in Memphis signals to us that King would have been a hands-on participant in movements to empower the poor and working class. His presence would have provided additional gravitas, leverage and media attention to local movements that the media and general population might have ignored,” she says.


Had King lived, he likely would have continued to speak out against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Exactly one year before his death, King delivered one of the most controversial speeches of his life inside Manhattan’s Riverside Church in which he called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and said it was morally indefensible to send African-American troops to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

Martin Luther King Jr. (Credit: Don Carl Steffen/Getty Images)

While some argue that racial relations would have been different had King lived, Carson says that expectations that King could have dramatically altered the ensuing direction of the civil rights movement, “economic bill of rights” and Vietnam War discount the power of the turning tide of the country. “The United States is like an ocean liner. One person is not going to change its momentum and direction. Even a great individual would not be able to turn it around and make it go in a different direction. The basic attitudes of people don’t change rapidly, and the nation was heading in a much more conservative direction after the 1964 election. We entered an era in which it was difficult enough to defend the gains that had been made before.”


In the year before King’s death, peace advocates tried to draft him to join a third-party antiwar ticket to run with pediatrician Benjamin Spock in the 1968 presidential election. King ultimately decided against a try for political office, and Carson doesn’t believe that he would ever have done so in the future, unlike civil rights leaders such as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson who were at King’s side when he died. 

“He made a decision that he was not going to be a candidate for office,” Carson says. “He would continue to be a voice in the political arena but as a private citizen.”

Ironically, there may never have been a federal holiday honoring King had he not been killed so suddenly in 1968. King was not a universally revered figure at the time of his assassination. In the five years leading up to his death, King appeared on the top 10 of Gallup’s most-admired list only twice—in 1964 and 1965. In 1967 Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, ranked eighth on the list, while King could not crack the top 10. Gallup reported that nearly twice as many Americans in 1966 had a negative view of King as a positive one—and that was even prior to his controversial Riverside Church speech. By 1999, however, a Gallup poll found that King ranked behind only Mother Teresa as the century’s most-admired person.

Edward says public memory of King would have been quite different had he lived. “King is a martyr whose nobility of consciousness—non-violence—is embedded in the American and international consciousness,” she says.

 “However, King’s martyrdom has also diluted, if not erased, the power of his militant and revolutionary messages about human dignity and taking immediate rather than piecemeal action. Some people find it easy to embrace what I call ‘the birthday King’ who is devoid of urgency and militancy. The public has framed a ‘moderate’ King as a foil to a ‘militant’ Malcolm X for this reason.”


Death brought King a reverence that never existed during his life, and in 1983 the federal government designated his birthday as an annual holiday. “If he had lived, there clearly wouldn’t be a Martin Luther King holiday,” Carson says. “I think it was easier to see the idea of the holiday when he was no longer around.”

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by History . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

In Australia, bees and wasps are more dangerous than spiders and snakes

Australia has a reputation for being a hotbed of deadly spiders, snakes, and jellyfish, but a new study shows that bees and wasps are not to be trifled with either, because they're actually Australia's most dangerous stingers.

The country's first national analysis of data on bites and stings reveals that bees and wasps send the most people to hospital each year, and contribute to the equal highest number of sting-related deaths.

A team led by public health researcher Ronelle Welton from the University of Melbourne analysed national coronial data from 2000 to 2013, when bites and stings resulted in almost 42,000 hospitalisations, including fatalities.

Among this, stings from bees, wasps, and hornets were responsible for 31 percent of hospital admissions, edging out bites from Australia's more infamous venomous predators – spiders (30 percent) and snakes (15 percent).

But while snake bites requiring hospitalisation may be significantly less common than stings and bites from bees, wasps, and spiders, they're no less deadly when it comes to causing fatalities – and in fact are the most lethal proportionally.

Between 2000 and 2013, 64 people were killed by a venomous sting or bite, with 27 fatalities due to snakes, and an equal number attributable to bees and wasps.

Even more remarkable, despite popular fears of Australian spiders – which are pretty well-warranted, given they sent almost 12,000 people to hospital during 2000 to 2013 – they're not ultimately as deadly as we might think they are.


During the study period, spider bites didn't cause a single fatality, which the researchers attribute to the success and availability of anti-venom treatments.

According to the team, the last documented death from a spider in Australia was a redback spider bite in 1999.

A 2016 fatality was also reportedly due to a redback bite, but the cause of death wasn't conclusive.

In terms of non-venomous animals causing death, again the perception of Australia's dangers doesn't meet up with reality.

While the coronial data shows that 19 deaths between 2000 and 2013 were due to crocodiles, and 26 deaths caused by sharks, the leading animal-related cause of death was a much less fearsome creature: horses.

In the period, 74 deaths were caused by horses trampling or throwing people – and encounters with dogs led to 23 fatalities.

But in terms of venomous creatures, the fact that so many deaths and hospitalisations are being caused by bees and wasps suggests that people might not realise how dangerous these stingers really are.

Of the 27 snake bite fatalities recorded in the study, about three-quarters of those bitten made it to the hospital alive, before later dying during treatment.

When it comes to bees and wasps though, only 44 percent of those who died made it to hospital alive, and the researchers think it's because they initially underestimated the danger – not realising how deadly sting-based anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction) can be.

"Perhaps it's because bees are so innocuous that most people don't really fear them in the same way they fear snakes," says Welton.

"Without having a previous history of allergy, you might get bitten and although nothing happens the first time, you've still developed an allergic sensitivity."

Allergen sensitivity in Australia made headlines around the world last year, when eight people were killed and more than 8,500 hospitalised after a severe outbreak of thunderstorm asthma, brought on by a massive pollen dispersal following a storm.

The researchers hope their findings will help better inform people and health providers about the real risks posed by Australia's stingers and biters.

And at the same time, if the research can provide a little context – and help lay to rest some of the hyperbole and stereotypes swirling around the country's 'deadliest creatures' – that might not be a bad thing either.

"The biggest surprise is just how small the numbers are — from a national perspective, we get a lot of media hype on how dangerous [animals] are, but if you look at things like drowning, there was nearly 5,000 deaths in the same study period," Welton told Loretta Florance at ABC News.


"[S]o it's nothing to be alarmed about, just be prepared, make sure you understand your first aid, if you do have allergies or know someone who does."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Sciencealert . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

8 Mysterious Underground Cities

There’s not much to be said for the views, but underground cities have frequently been used throughout history as wartime shelters, refuges from the elements and sacred spaces. Many even included dedicated infrastructure and their own subterranean schools and churches. From ancient hideouts to Cold War-era bunkers, explore eight astonishing settlements beneath the earth’s surface.


Derinkuyu underground city

The volcanic rock landscape of Turkey’s Cappadocia region is pockmarked with several different underground cities, but perhaps none is as vast or as impressive as Derinkuyu. 

Derinkuyu Underground City is an ancient multilevel underground city in the Derinkuyu district in Nevsehir Province, Turkey. (Credit: ralucahphotography.ro/Getty Images)

This labyrinthine complex dates to around the 8th century B.C. and was most likely built to serve as a refuge during periods of war and invasion. With this in mind, its 18-story interior was a self-contained metropolis that included ventilation shafts, wells, kitchens, schoolrooms, oil presses, a bathhouse, a winery and living space for some 20,000 people. 

A passage in the Underground City credit: wikipedia

When threatened by attack, each level of the city could be sealed off behind a collection of monolithic stone doors. Historians believe that the Hittites or the Phrygians were among Derinkuyu’s earliest builders, but it was later occupied and expanded by a host of other groups including Byzantine-era Christians, who left behind a collection of underground frescoes and chapels. Despite its long history, the city wasn’t rediscovered until the 1960s, when a local man stumbled upon some its tunnels while renovating his home.


Naours


Located in northern France, the underground city of Naours includes two miles of tunnels and more than 300 man-made rooms—all of them hidden some 100 feet beneath a forested plateau. The site began its life around the third century A.D. as part of a Roman quarry, but it was later expanded into a subterranean village after locals began using it as a hiding place during the wars and invasions of the Middle Ages. 

A tourist takes a picture inside the Naours underground city. (Credit: FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP/Getty Images)

At its peak, it had enough room for 3,000 inhabitants and included its own chapels, stables, wells and bakeries. The Naours caves were later sealed off for decades before being reopened in the 19th century as a tourist attraction. 

Chapel in the underground city of Naours Credit: wikipedia

They became a popular sightseeing spot during World War I, and modern visitors can still see more than 2,000 pieces of graffiti left behind by Allied soldiers, many of whom fought nearby at the Battle of the Somme.


Wieliczka Salt Mine


Also known as the “Underground Salt Cathedral,” Poland’s Wieliczka Salt Mine is a massive subterranean complex of rooms, passageways and statues located on the outskirts of Krakow. The site dates to the 1200s, when miners first descended beneath the earth’s surface to find rock salt. In the centuries that followed, they slowly carved the mine into a warren of galleries and tunnels that extended more than 1,000 feet underground. 

Chapel in the cathedral carved out of the rock salt in Wieliczka salt mine. (Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images)

When they weren’t digging for “white gold,” the workers also used the mine’s salt crystal deposits to build a stunning collection of chapels, chandeliers, statues and bas reliefs, including a detailed replica of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” The Wieliczka mine stopped producing salt in 2007 after some 700 years in operation, but it remains a popular tourist attraction in Poland. It’s also home to a health spa that touts the therapeutic properties of the mine’s salt-rich microclimate.

Lalibela


In the 12th century A.D., a devout king ordered the construction of 11 eye-catching Christian churches in the Ethiopian village of Lalibela. This “New Jerusalem” is notable for having been fashioned from the top down: all of its churches were hewn from volcanic rock below the earth’s surface then hollowed out, giving them the appearance of having grown directly out of the ground. 

Low angle view of the orthodox rock-hewn church of Saint George, Lalibela. Lalibela is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Credit: Santiago Urquijo/Getty Images)

The most iconic building is the cross-shaped Church of Saint George, which was cut from a monolithic slice of stone inside a trench 100 feet deep. It was then connected to the rest of the complex via a network of underground passageways, hidden caves and catacombs. Legend has it that the construction of Lalibela took just 24 years, but many historians believe it was actually completed in phases over several centuries. The village is now considered a sacred site for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and its subterranean places of worship continue to draw as many as 100,000 pilgrims each year.


Beijing Underground City


In the 1960s and 70s, as the threat of nuclear war loomed, the Chinese government ordered the construction of a mammoth fallout shelter beneath their capital of Beijing. Also known as Dixia Cheng, the hand-dug site was supposedly capable of safeguarding around one million people for up to four months. 

A mural dedicated to the workers who dug the tunnels that later became the Beijing Underground City in Beijing, China. (Credit: Bryan Chan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)

It consisted of fallout-proofed rooms and tunnels that snaked their way underground over an area of several dozen square miles. Certain passageways were reportedly large enough for tanks to pass through, while other housed purpose-built schools, hospitals, granaries and restaurants. There was even a skating rink and a 1,000-seat movie theater. While the Beijing bunker was never put to use, its decaying tunnels still exist today, hidden beneath the city’s homes and businesses. Most are sealed off, but they were briefly opened as a tourist attraction in the early 2000s.

Petra 

Famed for its cameo in the film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Petra is an ancient caravan city tucked away in the mountains of southern Jordan. The site has been inhabited since prehistory, but it reached its peak some 2,000 years ago, when the ancient Nabataeans hand-chiseled the surrounding sandstone hillsides into a dazzling collection of tombs, banquet halls and temples. 

A classic view of El Deir, The Monastery in Petra. (Credit: Nick Brundle Photography/Getty Images)

One of the most exquisite edifices is Al Khazneh, or “The Treasury,” which includes an ornamental façade that extends 130 feet up a rock face. Petra may have been home to 20,000 people at its height, but it was later abandoned sometime around the seventh century A.D. and wasn’t known to Europeans until the 1800s. Excavations at the site are still ongoing today, and it’s believed that the vast majority of its ruins may still lurk underground.

Orvieto

The Italian hilltop town of Orvieto is known for its white wines and picturesque architecture, but its most mysterious wonders lie underground. Beginning with the ancient Etruscans, generations of locals burrowed their way deep into the volcanic rock bluff on which the city was originally built. 

Underground Below The City Of Orvieto, Italy. (Credit: traveler1116/Getty Images)

The subterranean maze was first carved to build wells and cisterns, but over the centuries it grew to include more than 1,200 interlocking tunnels, grottoes, and galleries. Some chambers include the remnants of Etruscan-era sanctuaries and medieval olive presses, while others show signs of having been used as storage places for wine or roosts for pigeons—a common local delicacy. Orvieto’s underground city was also frequently employed as a hiding place during times of strife. As recently as World War II, people were still using certain sections as bomb shelters.

Burlington

In the event of a Cold War-era nuclear strike, the most important members of the British government would have retreated to a 35-acre underground complex located 100 feet beneath the village of Corsham. 

The GPO exchange at the Central Government War Headquarters aka “Burlington.” (Credit: NJ/Wikimedia Commons)

This “Burlington Bunker,” as it was codenamed, was first built in the 1950s from a series of existing tunnels and stone quarries. It contained office spaces, cafeterias, a telephone exchange, medical facilities and sleeping quarters—all of it designed to keep the British Prime Minister and some 4,000 other key government personnel alive during an emergency. There was even an in-house BBC studio that the PM could use to address the public. While never put into active use, the Burlington facility remained partially operational until 2004, when it was finally decommissioned and declassified.

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