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Tim Wollack and his daughter, Henley, were on a fishing trip at Lake Michigan when they thought they saw an elusive Green Bay octopus hovering beneath their boat, the Wisconsin Historical Society said in a Facebook post. But what they actually uncovered was a shipwreck that had been missing for more than 152 years. Officials believe the boat is the George L. Newman. “Working with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Conservation Warden Mike Neal, the shipwreck was investigated with Video Ray ROV on December 4,” the society noted in the post. “The wreck is of a wooden three masted sailing...

The Federal Aviation Administration has declared a "national defense airspace" over part of Lake Michigan, the organization announced Sunday. The FAA has not clarified why it has banned civilian air traffic from the area. The FAA last established a national defense airspace over Montana this weekend in reaction to an unidentified flying object. This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates.

- United States closes airspace over parts of Lake Michigan, NOTAM states "national defense airspace

It was the night of March 8, 1994. Working at the National Weather Service, Bushong’s radar was lighting up with stuff he’d never seen before. He was on the phone with an Ottawa County emergency dispatcher who was looking for help identifying lights in the sky over Holland. The dispatcher was getting a lot of calls. Police officers were calling in, too. Bushong was seeing images on his radar that corresponded to what people were calling in from the ground. He had to control his radar by hand to zero in on the sky south of his station in Muskegon....

An elaborate array of linear stone lanes and V-shaped structures has been discovered on an underwater ridge in Lake Huron, marking what is thought to be the most complex set of ancient hunting structures ever found beneath the Great Lakes, according to a new report. Researchers based at the University of Michigan think the roughly 9,000-year-old-structure helped natives corral caribou herds migrating across what was then an exposed land-corridor the so-called Alpena-Amberley Ridge connecting northeast Michigan to southern Ontario. The area is now covered by 120 feet of water, but at the time, was exposed due to dry conditions of...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes. The researchers located what they believe to be caribou-hunting structures and camps used by the early hunters of the period. "This is the first time we've identified structures like these on the lake bottom," said John O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology and professor in the Department of Anthropology. "Scientifically, it's important because the...

December 21. 2006 6:59AM Turning back the clock 10,000 yearsScientists explore land bridge, petrified trees in Lake Huron. PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) -- Scientists hope to learn more about what the Great Lakes' shorelines looked like about 10,000 years ago. They explored a limestone land bridge that went from Alpena, Mich., to Goderich, Ontario -- a distance of about 125 miles -- and an underwater forest of petrified trees in Lake Huron. The 2006 research, in which more than 500 dives were made, is the subject of a documentary film, "Great Lakes, Ancient Shores, Sinkholes." It premiered recently at the Cranbrook...

Archaeologists found something much more fascinating than they got credit for when searching under the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks: they uncovered a rock with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a collection of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner.

Archaeologists found something much more fascinating than they got credit for when searching under the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks: they uncovered a rock with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a collection of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner. In modern archaeology, the use of remote sensing techniques is common: scientists regularly survey lakes and soil for hidden objects. Archaeologists uncovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier at a depth of around 40 feet into Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, using sonar techniques to search for shipwrecks, but among all these,...

Hunter Biden is facing fresh questions over business dealing in yet another nation — Kazakhstan. Between 2012 and 2014 — when his father Joe Biden served as Vice President — Hunter Biden worked as a go-between to Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh oligarch with close ties to the country’s longtime kleptocratic leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, The Daily Mail reported. The British tabloid said they obtained emails from “anti-corruption campaigners” in Kazakhstan showing Hunter making contact with Rakishev and attempting to facilitate investment for his cash in New York, Washington DC and a Nevada mining company. Through his connections, emails show Hunter Biden...

232 waterspouts/funnels have been confirmed over the Great Lakes from September 28 to October 4, 2020, in the second world record waterspout outbreak of the year, according to the International Center for Waterspout Research (ICWR). From August 16 to 19, 2020, a short-lived waterspout outbreak produced 88 funnels, setting a new world record waterspout outbreak -- the first of the year. Both outbreaks were a result of Canadian cold air sweeping over the region, which made surface air prone to rise. "There were an average of 33 per day," said ICWR director Wade Szilagyi, also a meteorologist at Environment Canada....

Each spring on Lake Michigan, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to see shipwrecks due to the incredibly clear springtime waters. Every winter, ice forms on the Great Lakes. That ice is often thick enough that the people who live on their shores can not only go ice fishing, but even ride snow mobiles across their surfaces. At the coming of spring, the ice melts, leaving the waters of some of the lakes especially clear for a while until warmer weather creates algae blooms and other events that reduce the water’s clarity. In the early spring, the waters of Lake...

According to the 1975 book Man Eating Sharks! by Felix Dennis, on a beautiful, clear summer day in 1955, one beach along the shores of Lake Michigan was packed with people looking to cool off and enjoy the sunny day, and one of these was George Lawson, a boy from Chicago. Lawson was out with many others splashing about and swimming off a boat near the beach when witnesses allegedly saw him pulled underwater, seemingly by something yanking him under and accompanied by the boy's panicked screams. Shockingly, a dorsal fin was reported by several others on the boat as...

The US entered World War II with 7 Aircraft Carriers and by the end of the war would have several times that. It's one thing to build ships, it's another thing to train the men that would eventually fly off those ships. So the US built some ships which would serve that purpose and that's where we come in. In March of 1942, the Navy purchased the steamer and started to convert her into an aircraft carrier. She was designated as IX-64. IX is the designation used by the Navy for ships that aren't otherwise classified. She was named the...

"The road, trees, houses and even ourselves were bathed in a blinding phosphorescent-like glow which had its center in a bright streak in the sky above us," highway construction superintendent Leroy Milhan of Centerville, Michigan, would recall in a paper published the following year. "It passed over us toward the west. Immediately came a muffled report or jar that shook houses and the very earth like an earthquake." The following day, the Washington Times reported that "telegraph and telephone communications and electric lighting plants in several cities in southern Michigan and northern Indiana are out of commission" as a result...

Raj and I are off for the weekend to visit friends at the beach – or “to the shore” as they say on the Eastern seaboard.  And shore may be more accurate than beach this year as Lake Michigan - like all the Great Lakes - is near all time record high water levels. As a result even the largest beaches at the State parks are smaller this year and places with smaller beaches to start with have virtually no beach at all.  The water laps at the very base of the bluff and erodes it away. The stairway to...

What a week. I think it’s time for a virtual trip to the beach.It might rain, which affords it’s own dreary charms.But if the sun rises over Lake St. Clair in southeast Michigan,as well as over Lake Huron in Tawas in northeast Michigan,it might just be a lovely day to take a partial Great Lakes Circle Tour around the Mitten state. As it’s still early in the season, and the water is still very chilly the Lake Michigan beaches in the north are unlikely to be crowded. Sleeping Bear National LakeshoreThat may be the case with those in the middle...

A contentious theory that the first Americans came here from Europe - not Asia - is challenging a century-old consensus among archaeologists, and a dig in Kenosha County is part of the evidence. The two leading proponents of the Europe theory admit that many scientists reject their contention, instead holding fast to the long-established belief that the first Americans arrived from Siberia via a now-submerged land bridge across the Bering Sea to Alaska. The first of the Europe-to-North America treks probably took place at the height of the last Ice Age more than 18,000 years ago, said Dennis Stanford, ...

Decades ago, Lake Michigan teemed with nutrients and green algae, casting a brownish-green hue that resembled the mouth of an inland river rather than a vast, open-water lake. Back then, the lake’s swampy complexion was less than inviting to swimmers and kayakers, but it supported a robust fishing industry as several commercial companies trawled for perch, and sport fishermen cast their lines for trout. But in the past 20 years, Lake Michigan has undergone a dramatic transformation. In analyzing satellite images between 1998 and 2012, researchers at the Michigan Tech Research Institute were surprised to find that lakes Michigan and...

Our story today begins millennia ago, as the retreating glaciers (formed during the Ice Age) carved out the Great Lakes basin (during the earth’s last global warming period caused by carbon emissions). Along with the magnificently clear waters of the Great Lakes this global warming phenomenon left huge deposits of quartz sand behind that over time gathered in massive sand dunes that are still here today, although they are ever shifting and changing. The largest of these dunes reside in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore…where they rise 450 feet above the lakeOverlook at Pierce Stocking 9 Mile marker, Sleeping Bear...