All language subtitles for Mysteries.Unearthed.with.Danny.Trejo.S02E11.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[deep rumble]

[soft music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can be
buried anywhere,

under the earth,

[volcano exploding]

[airplane engine revving]

beneath the sea,

[plane engine roaring]

or even right
under our own feet.

[coins clink]

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find
can change history.

[soft music]

Tonight, puzzling discoveries

that lead to more
questions than answers.

From a top secret message
in an unlikely place-

- They find words
like sword and Juno.

These are code names for
Normandy landing sites.

- To MI5, this is no
longer a coincidence,

it's a crisis.

- [Danny] to a
mysterious metal object-

- His heart is racing.

He knows something about
this has to be important.

- [Danny] to a strange
underwater signal.

- SOSUS is top secret.

Sharing what he's figured out

would risk exposing this
classified government program.

[audio system buzzing]

- Join us now,

because nothing
stays hidden forever.

Most of us don't give spare
change a second thought.

We toss it in a jar and move on.

But for one New Yorker,

a few cents cracked open a
vault of Cold War secrets.

- It's June of 1953,

and a 14-year-old news
boy named Jimmy Bozart

is leaving a Brooklyn
apartment building.

It's collection day, so his
pockets are heavy with coins.

- He knows that one
of his regular stops,

a pair of school teachers,
always give him a tip.

They give him 50 cents

on a 35 cent subscription
to the Brooklyn Eagle.

- He finds a quiet corner to
go through the day's take,

and as he's sifting
through the coins,

he drops a nickel on the stairs.

- [Danny] That's when something
extraordinary happens.

- The coin splits clean in half,

like opening an Oreo,

except instead of cream
filling, the coin is hollow.

And inside, there's a
tiny piece of micro film.

- [Martin] Jimmy brings the
coin and the film home

and holds the film up to
the lamp in the living room.

Only this film, it doesn't
include a photograph,

it doesn't show a person,
a place, or a thing.

Instead, it's just
columns of numbers

in eight and 10 digits.

- [Andrew] To most people, these
would be random numbers,

but Jimmy has read his
sheriff spy comics,

so he knows what this really is,

a secret code.

- [John] He shows his dad,

who tells him to take the film
and the nickel to the police.

So, the next day,

Jimmy brings the strange
nickel to his friend,

whose father is an NYPD officer.

- [Danny] The officer can tell

this isn't just pocket change,

so he contacts federal agents
to investigate further.

- [Andrew] Federal agents take
one look

and realize that this is
a precision-built device

meant to convey secret
messages to spies.

- [Martin] The most impressive
part about this

is that it's not one nickel

that has been split
down the middle,

it's two separate nickels that
have been composited together

to make this piece of spycraft.

- [Andrew] There's
even a tiny pinhole

in the letter R of "TRUST,"

which opens a secret latch.

- [Danny] The engineering
is impressive,

but the real mystery
is the message inside.

- [Andrew] The FBI's top code
breakers can't crack this.

They pass it along to the CIA,

but that agency is
still in its infancy

and doesn't have the

sophistication
to break this code.

- [Danny] For four years,

the CIA can't make
sense of the message,

until 1957,

when an unexpected lead
blows the case wide open.

- [Martin] A man walks into the
US embassy in Paris

looking haggard and anxious.

He identifies himself as being
a Soviet intelligence officer

and announces his intention to
defect to the United States.

- [John] His name is Reino
Hayhanen.

He's a low-performing KGB agent

who's been summoned
back to Moscow,

and he's convinced that this
means he's about to be killed.

So instead of following orders,

he decides to switch sides
and work for the Americans.

- [Andrew] He's eventually
interrogated by FBI agents

who begin showing of
different pieces of evidence,

including a photograph
of the hollow nickel.

- [Alex] Hayhanen not only
confirms that the coin was

Soviet, but he gives the FBI the
key to decipher the code.

- [Danny] In a
stunning final twist,

it turns out the
message in the nickel

was meant for Hayhanen himself.

- [John] The code is a
set of instructions

for him to start
up life in America.

Meeting locations, dead drops
sites, contact protocols.

It's everything a freshly
deployed Soviet spy would need.

- [Martin] It seems like the
kind of crazy coincidence

that would be
featured in a movie,

and eventually that's
what it became.

Decades later, the story
of the hollow nickel

becomes a part of
Steven Spielberg's movie

"Bridge of Spies."

- [Andrew] In the end, this
Cold War mystery

wasn't solved thanks to
advanced espionage techniques,

but really instead
thanks to a paperboy

counting change on
a step in Brooklyn.

- [Danny] That wasn't the
only surprising place

secrets turned up.

In wartime Britain,
a different puzzle

almost unraveled a
mission far bigger.

- [Don] It's 1942, and World War
II is raging throughout Europe.

As bombs fall across London,

a British intelligence officer

tries to find a moment of
peace with his morning ritual,

the crossword puzzle
in The Telegraph.

- [Kavitha] He sits down with
a hot cup of tea

and reads the first
clue, French port.

He knows the answer, Dieppe,
and starts to write it in.

- [Danny] Then his hand freezes

as a chill runs down his spine.

- [Don] Dieppe is more
than a French port.

It's the name of the French town

where, in just two days,

Allied forces planned to launch
a secret amphibious raid.

The invasion is meant to
test the Allies' ability

to take back a small piece
of France and boost morale.

- [John] This town being in the
crossword puzzle is weird,

but he figures it's
just a coincidence

and goes on with his day.

Two days later, the raid
proceeds as planned.

[artillery fires]

However, instead of
becoming a morale boost,

it's a massacre.

- [Austin] Of the 6,000 Allied
troops that land that morning,

nearly 60% are killed,
wounded, or captured.

The survivors retreat,

and everyone else is
taken by the Germans.

The Allied commanders
can't shake the feeling

that the Germans were
waiting for them.

- [Danny] To figure
out what went wrong,

MI5 is brought in
to investigate.

- [Don] That's when one of the
intelligence officers

remembers that crossword puzzle.

- [Kavitha] They tracked down
the puzzle's creator,

a man named Leonard Sydney Dawe.

Dawe is a respected
headmaster at a local school,

a World War I veteran.

By all accounts, a
modeled British citizen.

- [Austin] After a thorough
investigation,

MI5 determines no
signs of espionage.

This was just an
unfortunate coincidence.

- [Danny] Almost two years
later, it happens again.

And this time, the
stakes are much higher.

- [Don] In May of 1944, the
Allies are preparing

for what is the largest
amphibious assault

in military history,
Operation Overlord,

the D-Day invasion

that could crack open
Hitler's Fortress Europe

and change the
course of the war.

- [John] Over the next several
days,

MI5 personnel once again

find a series of strange
crossword puzzle answers

in The Telegraph.

Words like sword,
Juno, and gold.

All of these are top
secret code names

for Normandy landing sites.

- [Kavitha] Then even more
code words show up.

Utah, Mulberry, Omaha.

- [Danny] Finally, the most
alarming of all, Overlord,

the classified code name

for the entire D-Day operation.

[artillery fires]

- [Don] To MI5, this is no
longer a coincidence,

it's a crisis.

They storm into puzzle
writer Dawe's classroom.

He is escorted out in front
of his stunned students.

Within hours, he's interrogated,

accused of being a German spy.

- [Austin] Dawe is baffled.

He maintains he's innocent.

He claims that he
doesn't even choose

the words of his
crossword puzzle.

He enlists the help of
his teenage students

to give the words, and
then he creates the clue.

- [John] As D-Day approaches,
he maintains his story,

but MI5 keeps him in custody,
anxiously waiting for updates.

- [Danny] If the
Germans are tipped off,

Dawe will be tried as a traitor.

- [Kavitha] Fortunately, this
time, the invasion succeeds,

and the Germans are caught
completely off guard.

- [Danny] With no evidence
linking the puzzle to a leak,

MI5 has to let Dawe go.

But decades later,

an unexpected confession finally
sets the record straight.

- [Don] In the 1980s, some of
Dawe's students come forward.

They explain that in
the weeks before D-Day,

their small English
town was swarming

with American and
Canadian soldiers.

- [John] The students overheard
troops using strange words

like Utah, Overlord, Omaha.

They didn't think
they were secrets,

just cool sounding words for
their headmaster's puzzles.

- [Don] And to think, had the
D-Day invasion failed,

Leonard Dawe would've faced
a firing squad for treason.

And he most likely
would've been convicted on

nothing more than an incredible
string of coincidences.

- [Danny] In 1831, a walk along
Scotland's coastal sand dunes

uncovers the first pieces
of a tantalizing puzzle.

- Malcolm MacLeod, or Sprot,
as he's known to his friends,

is out tending his cattle
amongst the sand dunes

on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland

when he comes upon something
strange in the sand.

It looks like a chess piece.

- Sprot starts digging.

And before he knows it,

he's pulling out all
these ornate game pieces.

78 chess pieces to be exact,
and 14 backgammon pieces.

- He doesn't know
what to do with them,

so he sells them for
around 30 pounds.

They change hands
a few more times,

and eventually,

they end up at the Society
of Antiquaries of Scotland

in Edinburgh.

- [Danny] When
experts take a look,

they can't believe
what they see.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Turns out, these
chess pieces aren't just old,

they're medieval

- Researchers date them
to about 1150 to 1200 AD.

And then, they realize
that these pieces

are made out of walrus ivory.

- [Andrew] Walrus ivory was so
rare and valuable in the Middle

Ages that it was referred
to as "Arctic gold."

- [Dr. Hakeem] The craftsmanship
on the pieces is stunning.

The faces are so expressive,
they're almost human.

These are some of the
most well-preserved

medieval chess pieces
ever discovered.

And they're also among

some of the very
first medieval objects

in the British Museum.

- [Danny] Today, they're
known as the Lewis Chessman.

But the discovery also
sparks a new mystery.

The set is incomplete.

- [Adam] It appears to be a
mix of multiple sets.

But several pieces, four rooks,
a night, and multiple pawns

are missing.

- [Danny] And they remain
missing for nearly 200 years,

until an unexpected
encounter in 2019.

- [Adam] In Edinburgh, Scotland,
a woman walks into Sotheby's

with a little figurine, and
she wants to have it appraised.

- [Andrew] She doesn't know what
it is,

but says her grandfather,
who was an antiques dealer,

acquired it from 1964.

It's a warrior with a helmet,
a shield, and a sword.

- [Dr. Hakeem] She tells the
appraisers he bought it

for five pounds.

But he didn't think much
of it, so he threw it in a

drawer, and there it remained
for 55 years.

- [Adam] At Sotheby's, expert
Alexander Kader examines the

piece, and his
heart nearly stops.

The level of craftsmanship
is unmistakable,

and every test confirms it.

It's one of the missing
Lewis Chessman warders,

which functions like a
rook in modern chess.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Since the
Scottish woman is the owner,

she decides to
cash in and sell it

rather than donating
it to the museum.

So now, this is the
first Lewis Chessman

to be available for
private collections.

- [Danny] Around the same time,

interest in this age-old
artifact is soaring,

thanks to a boost by
a blockbuster cameo.

- [Andrew] In 2001, the Lewis
Chessman became part of a movie,

inspiring the look of the
giant enchanted chessboard

in the film "Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone."

So when it hits the market,
the art world goes crazy.

- [Danny] Bidding starts
low but climbs quickly.

The final price:

$929,000.

- [Andrew] This is one of the
most profitable antique sales

in history.

An item originally
purchased for five pounds

sells for nearly $1 million.

- [Danny] 9,000 miles away,

another stretch of dunes guards
a different kind of secret.

- [Don] In January 2018, Tonya
Illman is strolling along

the shoreline of Wedge
Island in Western Australia.

As she passes some sand dunes,
something catches her eye.

- She makes her
way to this object

and picks it up off the ground,

and she notices that it's a
very distinct-looking bottle

with some raised
lettering on it.

Then she hears a faint rattle
on the inside of this bottle.

And as she looks inside,

she sees this small,
rolled-up piece of paper.

- [Danny] It's like something
out of an adventure tale,

an actual real life
message in a bottle.

- [Kavitha] Tonya brings it home
to show her husband, Kym.

But as they try to
extract the paper,

they realize it's super fragile,
water-logged, and decaying.

- [Don] They worry that any
wrong move

might destroy the whole thing,

so they carefully place it
in a very low-heated oven

to dry it out.

Slowly, some faded
writing appears.

- [Alex] It's written in German.

And at the bottom of the page

are a bunch of random
numbers and blank spaces.

But from the look of it,

it doesn't appear to
be a personal note,

it looks like an
official document.

- [Don] Kym can tell it
contains some printed text

requesting coordinates

with some handwritten
entries in the blank spaces,

and scrawled faintly in
the center of the form

is the name Paula.

- [Danny] To get to the
bottom of the strange clues,

Kym and Tonya turned to the
Western Australian Museum.

- [Sami] Experts find out
that the name Paula

doesn't refer to a person,

it actually refers to a ship.

And they soon discover
that the ship Paula

was part of this massive
oceanographic experiment.

- [Danny] Even more incredible,

it took place over
150 years ago.

- [Kavitha] Between 1864 and
1933,

thousands of bottles
with messages in them

were launched
overboard from ships,

part of a 70-year study
to examine ocean currents.

- [Don] Each message contained
the ship's name, coordinates,

data, and instructions for
whoever found it.

"Record where and when
the bottle ended up,

then mail it back to the
German Naval Observatory."

- [Alex] When combined with data
from all the other bottles,

scientists could map the
ocean current movement

from all over the globe.

- It might sound primitive now,

but at the time, it was
pretty groundbreaking.

It was one of the
first comprehensive

oceanography studies ever.

- [Don] Of the thousands
of bottles released

during this German
oceanographic experiment,

only 662 messages had
ever been returned

before Tonya and
Kym's discovery.

- [Sami] This particular
message in bottle

that was launched by
the crew of the Paula

took place on June 12th, 1886,

roughly 590 miles off
the coast of Australia.

That makes this
132-year-old discovery

the oldest message in
a bottle ever found.

- [Danny] When you picture war
heroes,

you probably think of great
generals on the front lines.

But during World War I,

a very different
kind of hero emerges.

- It's 1915 in England,
and World War I is raging.

[artillery fires]

But in the back rooms
of Britain's war office,

a different battle is underway.

- [John] Here, a mostly
female team of workers

sift through thousands
of letters every day.

Under special wartime powers,

they monitor all correspondents

entering or leaving the country.

They're checking for any
details or information

that might accidentally
provide Britain's enemies

with an advantage in the war.

- [Andrew] One gray morning,

an assistant censor
clerk named Mabel Elliot

is sorting through her pile.

The letter she opens

appears to be routine
business correspondence,

very dry, talk of
trade and deals,

but something
about it feels off.

- [John] Mabel holds the
paper up to the light

and notices a slight
discoloration between the lines.

- [Danny] She's
seen enough letters

to know these marks
aren't accidental.

So Mabel makes moves to
confirm her suspicion.

- [Martin] She gently exposes
the letter to low heat

from a clothes iron,

and as the heat
reaches the paper,

suddenly those
stains and splotches,

they take the form of clear
and distinct lettering.

What she was seeing
on the letter

was the telltale signs
of invisible ink.

- [Adam] The secret message
dictates the deployment of ships

all along Britain's highly
vulnerable coastline.

[artillery fires]

It details the deployment
of troops, the numbers,

the types of equipment
that are defending London.

And that information in
the hands of the Germans

could have easily turned
the tide of the war

and destroyed Britain.

- [Andrew] British intelligence
is able to trace the letter

to a German-born American
named Anton Kuepferle.

They find him living
under an assumed identity

in a London flat

and promptly arrest him.

- [Danny] After
hours of questioning,

Kuepferle finally confesses.

- [Adam] He admits that

he's not a German-born
American wool merchant,

he is in fact a German
military captain

who is sent to Britain as a spy.

- [John] As British agents
continue to drill him,

the terrified spy
reveals the names

of two other German agents
operating on British soil.

From there,

the confession helps crack open
an entire hidden spy network

operating in the country.

- [Martin] Kuepferle is put on
trial at the Tower of London

under conditions of
complete secrecy,

and Mabel is the star
witness in that trial.

However, with the knowledge
that German intelligence

would do anything to
try to silence her,

her testimony is
done under an alias

to protect her identity.

- [Danny] Before
Kuepferle is sentenced,

he's discovered
hanging in his cell.

- [Andrew] After the war, Mabel
goes on to become a business

manager at the Royal Society
of Chemistry.

For decades, no one
knows about Mabel's role

in uncovering one of World War
I's most dangerous spy rings.

- [Adam] It isn't until almost
100 years later in 2011

when archivists finally
stumble upon her name,

and Mabel Elliot emerges as
a hidden hero of World War I.

- [Danny] Some messages hide
in enemy letters.

Others are sealed
in objects so sacred

no one would ever think to look.

- [Don] It's 2017 in northern
Spain,

and restoration artists are
hunched over their benches

in a quiet church workshop.

Their latest project

is restoring an
18th-century wooden statue

of Jesus on the cross.

- [Hugo] This isn't just any
crucifix.

This is the church's
centerpiece.

Known as the Cristo
del Miserere,

this near life-sized statue
has hung over worshipers

for over 200 years.

- The restorationists
take this wooden statue

and they're examining
it all over,

looking for any kind of
wear or damage on it.

- [Don] At first, their
examination reveals

pretty normal wear and
tear for the old relic,

splintered wood,
cracks in the varnish.

But when they turn
the statue over,

they see something strange.

- [Danny] Along the seam
of the wooden loincloth

draped around Jesus's waist,

there's an unusual gap.

- [Nicola] Carefully,
carefully they lift up

the back of this piece of wood

and notice that inside
there's a hidden compartment.

And amazingly, inside
the compartment,

they find two delicate scrolls

that have been rolled up and
placed inside that cavity.

- [Danny] As they gently
unroll the scrolls,

it becomes clear
they're holding letters

written over two centuries ago.

- [Hugo] It's dated to the year
1777,

and they're written in an
elegant script on sheepskin.

The author is Joaquin Minguez,

who was the chaplain of the
Cathedral of Burgo de Osma.

The scrolls vividly describe
life in the 18th century.

- [Danny] But between the lines,

Minguez's words reveal
something darker.

- [Nicola] He uses the scrolls
to comment candidly

on two particularly
powerful things going on

at this moment in time.

One is the reign of King
Carlos III of Spain,

the other is the
Spanish Inquisition.

- The Spanish Inquisition
was established

as a religious court in 1478,

but it also was a brutal
enforcer of orthodoxy

using torture and execution
to quash any dissent.

- [Hugo] The court helped
consolidate power

in the newly unified
Spanish monarchy.

It targeted Jews,
Muslims, Protestants,

even Catholics who showed
any signs of wavering

from church orthodoxy.

- [Don] For a Catholic
chaplain like Minguez,

criticizing either
the Inquisition

or the King's policies
was treason.

And if anyone were to find out,

he would face imprisonment,
torture, or execution.

[man cries]
[swords clash]

- [Danny] So he hid his
words in the one place

no one in this devoutly Catholic
country would ever look.

- [Hugo] Historians believe the
letters were meant to be

some sort of time capsule
for future generations.

And so, after careful
documentation,

the letters were sent to
the Archbishop of Burgos

to be carefully
preserved and archived.

But in a poetic gesture,

copies of the two
original letters

were placed back into
the hidden compartment

of the crucifix.

- [Don] Today, the statue
hangs once again,

where it continues to
gaze down upon the devout.

- [Danny] Most metal detector
finds are pretty ordinary,

but this one is something
that stops even the experts

in their tracks.

- [Andrew] It's a cold, crisp
day in December 2022

in northern Belgium.

Amateur treasure hunter
named Patrick Schuermans

is out sweeping his metal
detector back and forth

across a farmer's field.

[metal detector beeps]

- [Sami] In the past, Patrick
had found a few old coins,

but nothing really
worth bragging about.

But for Patrick, it's more
about the thrill of discovery,

what could be
underneath the ground.

And on this particular day,

as Patrick is sweeping
his metal detector,

[metal detector beeps]

it goes off, it starts to beep,

and so he puts it down, gets
down on his hands and knees

and starts digging.

- [Danny] What he pulls from
the earth is no old coin,

but an object unlike
anything he's ever seen.

- It's small, it looks bronze,

it's decorated with
geometric lines,

and it has a small
sphere right at the top.

- [Sami] His heart is racing,

and he knows that something
about this has to be important.

So he takes it to the experts
at the Gallo-Roman Museum

in the nearby town of Tongeren.

- [Danny] When archeologists
examine the artifact,

they immediately recognize it.

It's one of history's
most enduring puzzles.

- [Andrew] It's known as a
Roman dodecahedron.

It's a 12-sided box, hollow,
with a hole in each phase.

You can think of it like a
combination of a wiffle ball

and a 12-sided die.

- [Hugo] Over a hundred of these
dodecahedrons have been found.

When they pop up,

it's usually in northern Europe

in places that used to be part
of the ancient Roman Empire.

- [Sami] Each dodecahedron is
unique.

Some of them are about
the size of a marble,

whereas others can be about
the size of your fist.

Based on the design,
researchers are able to conclude

that this particular

dodecahedron that
Patrick brings them

is around 1600 years old.

- [Danny] While
experts can date it,

even after years of study,

no one knows what
these things were for.

- [Andrew] Some think that this
is an ancient dice

used in a high-stakes
Roman gambling game.

Others speculate that,

because so many have been
found near military sites,

that this was some
kind of military tool

[swords clashing]

may be used to calculate
distances to targets.

- [Sami] Some even suggest
a more mythical

and a more mystical
meaning behind them.

As Christianity was on the
rise in the Roman Empire,

it suggested that Roman
pagans went underground,

and these objects were a
part of their secret rituals.

- [Danny] Whatever
their significance,

the meticulous design

suggests that they
held real importance.

- [Hugo] Every dodecahedron is
unique,

and they were obviously crafted
with great skill and care.

And yet, no Roman
document mentions them.

- [Sami] As for the piece
that Patrick discovers,

he donates it to the
Gallo-Roman Museum,

where it's on display next
to another dodecahedron

that was discovered
back in 1939.

- [Danny] Some puzzles are
forged in bronze,

others are hidden between
the pages of an old book,

waiting for the right
set of eyes to find them.

- [Hugo] It's 2019 at the
University of Cambridge's

Special Collections.

This is the place where
the university keeps

old books and manuscripts
dating back thousands of years.

- [Andrew] Archivist Sean
Collins is flipping through

a 16th-century
property registry,

essentially a record of who
owned what land centuries ago.

In an archive full of exciting
and arcane ancient texts,

this is one of the collection's
more mundane items.

- [Sami] But as she looks
through the book,

something feels
a little bit off.

The binding feels
a little too thick

and also a little too stiff.

- [Danny] Most people
would just move on,

but Collins has a
keen eye for detail.

- [Nicola] She holds the book
up to the light,

and that's when she notices

a piece of what
seems to be parchment

stitched right inside
the 16th-century binding.

- [Sami] Sean looks a bit
closer at this parchment,

and she makes out
ancient writing

that appears to be old French,

but she can't read it.

- [Danny] Luckily, she
has a colleague who can.

- [Andrew] When she squints at
the page, two names jump out,

Arthur and Merlin.

- [Hugo] Arthur and Merlin, of
course, are King Arthur

and Merlin the
wizard from Camelot.

They're the guys from all
of those stories and books,

movies, the Broadway musical.

- [Danny] If this
unassuming book

holds a long lost
King Arthur tale,

unlocking it will take a
different kind of magic.

- [Nicola] Now, in order to read
what this full parchment says,

they need to remove
it from the binding,

but that would
completely destroy it.

And so, they turn to technology.

- [Sami] They use something
that's called multi-spectral

imaging.

Basically what this is,

is technology that takes
thousands of photos of an item

using all manner of light,

everything from UV to infrared.

- [Andrew] Each wavelength
reveals a different feature

of the hidden text,

and it enables them to
scan the entire manuscript

without touching it.

- [Danny] After taking
thousands of images,

computer programs are able
to reconstruct the text.

- [Sami] What emerges is a
brand new 800-year-old

3000-word Arthurian story.

- [Hugo] It comes from
the Vulgate Cycle,

which is sort of like
the medieval equivalent

of a cinematic universe.

It was written
between 1210 and 1230,

and it's the
collection of stories

that catapulted
Arthur and his knights

to fame all across Europe.

- [Sami] Now, most stories
of this period

focus on the characters of
Lancelot, Guinevere, and Arthur,

a lot of like soap
opera-style drama

that was considered to be real
spicy for the 13th century.

- [Danny] But this
story is different.

[swords clashing]

- [Hugo] It depicts Arthur
as a military leader.

He's defending England
against Saxon invaders.

And it shows Merlin using
some serious magical powers

as a wizard.

He's conjuring mist to
hide Arthur's troops.

He's also summoning storms to
try to thwart enemy archers.

- [Andrew] This new story

fills in a crucial piece
of the bigger picture.

It portrays a much more
warrior, like Arthur,

and a much more
magically powerful Merlin

than we see in
some later stories.

- [Nicola] It makes you wonder,

"If this story slipped
through the cracks,

what other legends
might be lost,

just hidden inside the
bindings of an ancient book?"

- [Danny] When divers uncover
a baffling formation

on the ocean floor,

the quest to learn
more about it begins.

- [Dr. Hakeem] It's 1995,

and a group of divers are
exploring the Philippine Sea

off the coast of this
remote Japanese island.

They're about 80 feet down,

following the school
of parrotfish,

when suddenly their eyes
catch something unusual.

- [Andrew] It looks like a
perfect geometric formation

etched into the sea floor.

It's about six feet across

and is comprised of variety
of ridges, peaks, valleys,

seemingly meticulously
carved right into the sand.

- It looks like a massive
mandala or elaborate snowflake.

Concentric circles, rays
radiating out from the center,

framed by pebbles
and shell fragments.

- The divers swim closer
for a better look,

and what they found looks
too perfect to be natural,

but also too strange
to be manmade.

- [Danny] They
snapped some photos

and raced to shore to share
their strange discovery.

- Back on land,

they show some pictures
to local fishermen.

And the more these
photos are circulated,

the more of a stir they cause.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Eventually, the
photos air on a local

TV program.

And after that, they go global.

And the more people
that see them,

the more ideas come about,

and some of them are
truly out of this world.

- [Andrew] Some self-proclaimed
experts

say that these are too
mathematically precise

to be naturally occurring.

And among those, some
see this as proof

of an alien civilization

trying to our attention.

- [Micah] UFO enthusiasts began
to compare these shapes

to the famous crop circles

that started appearing in fields
during the 1980s and 1990s.

And although those were
eventually ruled out

to be elaborate hoaxes,

these formations
appeared underwater,

and no one could explain

exactly how they could
have gotten there.

- [Danny] Who created
these shapes and why

remains a mystery
for another 16 years.

- [Andrew] In 2011,

a Japanese marine biologist

and underwater photographer
named Yoji Ookata

decides he's going to
get to the bottom of this

once and for all.

He spent nearly 50 years
documenting sea life,

and with the help of a team,

installs time-lapse
cameras underwater

just off the coast

and waits.

- [Danny] The footage they
capture blows everyone away.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Turns out the
architect

of these magnificent formations
aren't aliens at all.

It's a tiny, previously
undocumented

species of pufferfish.

- [Andrew] The footage shows a
male working day and night.

He uses his tiny fins like rakes

sculpting the
valleys and ridges,

slowly moving pebbles and
seashell fragments one at a time

into place around the
perimeter as decoration.

- [Micah] Ookata is astounded.

This little pufferfish
is working like a builder

on the sea floor laying
tiles for a masterpiece.

And the geometric
designs he creates

would even impress
human architects.

- [Danny] It's
not just for show.

These designs serve
a practical purpose.

- [Dr. Hakeem] The geometric
formations actually function

as a sophisticated
current control mechanism.

By making these
ridges and valleys,

that disrupts the water
flow across the seabed.

And as a result, in the
center of the pattern,

there is an area of calm water,

and that area is perfect for
the female to lay her eggs.

- [Austin] If the female
pufferfish is impressed

with the male's
architectural skills,

she'll mate with him.

- [Andrew] Even with all of the
underwater footage,

scientists are still unsure

what criteria female
pufferfish use

to judge a potential
mate's design.

Is it beauty?

Symmetry?
The placement of shells?

Size?

We still don't know.

- [Danny] In the middle of
Cold War surveillance,

a mysterious sound deep in
the ocean unlocks a discovery

that has nothing to
do with enemy subs.

[water splashing]

- [Don] It's the 1950s, and the
Cold War is in full swing.

As the US and USSR build
up their nuclear arsenals,

deep beneath the surface
of the Atlantic Ocean,

a different technological
arms race is unfolding

in complete secrecy.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Frank Watlington
is a US Navy engineer

stationed at a classified
underwater listening post

off the coast of Bermuda.

This site is part of a
network known as SOSUS,

the sound surveillance System.

- [Don] SOSUS is one of the most
ambitious engineering projects

of the Cold War.

It's a massive array of
underwater microphones,

called hydrophones,

all positioned across
the ocean floor.

Each microphone is wired to
a coastal processing center.

- [Jen] Watlington's mission
is to search the sea

for the acoustic signatures

that might indicate the
presence of Soviet submarines

prowling America's
coastal waters.

- [Austin] One day, he hears
something,

but it doesn't sound like
the mechanical signature

of a submarine.

Instead, it's long, low groans

followed by high piercing cries.

[humpback whale groans]

- [Danny] Watlington considers
a disturbing possibility

that this is the
sound of a new weapon.

[missile engine roars]

- [Jen] He comes through
shipping records and title

charts looking for any evidence
of what these sounds might be,

but he can't figure it out.

- [Don] Eventually, he decides
to place hydrophones

closer to the surface

to see if he can
track whatever it is

in the vicinity of where
he is hearing the sounds.

Sure enough, one day,

as he's listening to the
long, low notes he notices,

[humpback whale groans]

a humpback whale swim
right past his microphone.

- [Danny] It's a breakthrough.

These aren't random noises.

The humpbacks are communicating,

[humpback whale groans]

but Watlington
can't tell a soul.

[water splashes]

[audio recorder beeps]

- [Dr. Hakeem] SOSUS is top
secret.

Sharing what he thinks
he's figured out

with marine biologists

would risk exposing this
classified government program.

So Watlington has no choice.

He has to keep his data
and his theory secret

for the next 15 years.

- [Danny] In 1967,

when the recordings are
finally declassified,

Watlington is able to share
his amazing discovery.

- [Jen] He reaches out
to Dr. Roger Payne,

a biologist studying
animal vocalizations.

He travels to Bermuda to
listen to these recordings.

And when he hears
them, he is stunned.

[audio player buzzing]

[humpback whale groans]

- [Dr. Hakeem] These sounds
aren't random.

They're fixed, repeated
patterns of rhythmic sounds.

In other words, they're songs.

These compositions can last

from anywhere from
six to 30 minutes,

and the whales will repeat
them for hours on end.

- [Don] Eventually, he discovers
that all humpback whales

in a region

sing nearly identical
versions of the same song,

and the song gradually
evolves over time.

[water splashes]

- [Danny] Eager to
share their discovery,

Watlington and Payne
released an album in 1970,

"Songs of the Humpback Whale."

- [Dr. Hakeem] The album turns
out to be a surprise sensation.

They quickly sell
about 125,000 copies

and eventually go
multi-platinum.

It becomes the highest
selling environmental album

of all time.

- [Don] Frank Watlington's
ears were trained

to detect Cold War
danger beneath the waves.

But instead, he discovered music
that moved not just whales,

but people as well.

[humpback whale groans]

- [Danny] From coded clues
to covert coins,

tonight showed us that even
the most unassuming objects

can hold world-changing secrets.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching
"Mysteries Unearthed."