Free Republic

Mosul Iraq -- Match Historical Pictures to Today's Headlines Jihadi forces overran Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, this week. Analysts explain Mosul's significance as the center of Iraq's oil-rich areas, the gateway for the Sunni radicals to attack Baghdad, and a debacle for the U.S.-supported Iraqi army. But Mosul also has an ancient history. It was the Biblical city of Nineveh, so large that the Book of Jonah describes it as a "great city of three days journey in breadth." The Assyrian King Sennacherib built a massive palace there on the banks of the Tigris River. We present pictures...

Father Jamie MacLeod unknowingly bought the work of Anthony Van Dyck 12 years ago at an antique shop for $670. But after being authenticated by the TV program ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ the portrait could now sell for as much as $839,000 at auction. MacLeod plans to use the money to buy church bells to commemorate the end of WWI. A British priest who picked up a painting for $670 is likely to see it sold at auction for as much as $839,000. The BBC reported that Father Jamie MacLeod found Anthony Van Dyck’s Flemish Baroque work 12 years ago in a...

Video of assault Video from Quadcopter

Pictures are worth... No excerpt necessary

<p>As Don Henley continues on what has been a well-received, but apparently endless, hits-packed reunion tour with the Eagles, he’s developed a laundry list of audience behaviors that get under his skin.</p> <p>That includes, but is not limited to, fans who stand up, fans who text, fans who take too many pictures and fans who post raw concert videos to YouTube.</p>

What these kids do is amazing.

This past weekend British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss accompanied by numerous volunteers, took to the beaches of Normandy with rakes and stencils in hand to etch 9,000 silhouettes representing fallen people into the sand. Titled The Fallen 9000, the piece is meant as a stark visual reminder of the civilians, Germans and allied forces who died during the D-Day beach landings at Arromanches on June 6th, 1944 during WWII. The original team consisted of 60 volunteers, but as word spread nearly 500 additional local residents arrived to help with the temporary installation that lasted only a few hours...

Burton Wilson’s camera was Austin’s memory during the hippie era when, as the saying went, if you could remember it, you weren’t there. The former Vermont farmboy who documented the vibrant scene at the Vulcan Gas Company in the 1960s and the Armadillo World Headquarters in the 1970s passed away Monday morning. He was 95. Wilson got it down while those around him were only concerned with getting down. In the process, he created the defining documents of an enchanting era in Austin’s history. “Burton was one of my mentors,” said photographer Todd V. Wolfson. “He made me want to...

Two photographers recently traveled to France, seeking to rephotograph images captured back then. Getty photographer Peter Macdiarmid and Reuters photographer Chris Helgren gathered archive pictures from the 1944 invasion, tracked down the locations, and photographed them as they appear today. Starting with photo number two, all the images are interactive -- click on them to see a transition from 'then' to 'now', and see the difference 70 years can make

To cleanse the palate. As a confirmed beta male myself, I’m no position to judge — although the eight thousand “Do you even lift, bro?” jokes on Twitter today did make me giggle. Remember back in the summer of 2008, at the zenith of Obamamania, when a German reporter claimed she watched him curl 32-kilogram, a.k.a. 70-pound, dumbbells? Either that was part of the Hopenchange hype or he’s lost a lot of mass since, so much so that this practically serves as a metaphor for how far he’s fallen. Don’t be too judge-y, though: In his defense, he’s going to...

File this one in Planned Parenthood’s “whoopsie” folder to be sure. Nevertheless, up on Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio’s Facebook page at the moment is a photo of an abortion victim, along with half an “ABORTION IS MURDER” sign. Note the “like’s” are all by pro-lifers. Click to enlarge… The event being promoted by Planned Parenthood was a Columbus, Ohio, stop this morning of the “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds” bus tour, featuring pro-abortion Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Obviously there to greet Pelosi were pro-life activists, including Created Equal, which noted on Facebook, “How can women succeed so...

Watch this rabbit in action!

duhn duhn duhn duhn duhn duhn

Meet the Rowleys, a genetically blessed family where mother, father and all three childen all share model looks. And they're making the most of their attractiveness: the family, from Warwick, have appeared in hundreds of adverts - including campaigns for Mothercare, Next, Argos, Aldi, Umbro and Centre Parks - getting paid up to £1000 a day to pose for pictures. Father Anthony, 33, mother Kimberley, 31, and children Tilly, five, Maisie, three, and Henry, 18 months, are an advertiser's dream - and collectively they make thousands upon thousands of pounds a year from their photogenic looks.

In terms of basic creepiness, few buildings in Detroit can match the Masonic Temple. Stained by a century of Detroit soot and weather, the building's limestone exterior is almost comically foreboding. Legends surround the Temple's interior, which is said to contain a labyrinth of rooms, some connected by secret passageways. It's also full of dramatic, unused spaces&#8212;the most famous being an unfinished swimming pool on the sixth floor. Unfortunately, most of the building is off-limits to the public. But with rumors of renovation and a possible loft conversion floating around, we snapped some photos during a recent tour from...

The dream first happened in 1994, when Maia Flore was just 7 years old, and it continued on and off for the next nine years: An older man is pushing Flore toward the sea — pushing, pushing — and Flore, almost airborne, gets closer and closer to the water that she's deathly afraid of. It was as if Alfred Hitchcock himself were orchestrating Flore's nocturnal stirrings. In the dream, Flore would always wake up before she entered the waves. "At first, I wondered why this nightmare was coming back. Why did I have just this one nightmare?" says Flore, who's...

Oh no, Kate. Not again. How my heart sank when I saw the Duchess has had yet another embarrassing wardrobe malfunction, this time as she prepared to board a helicopter with her husband, William. Pictures published yesterday by a German newspaper show Kate during the royal couple’s recent tour of Australia and New Zealand, when her flimsy Diane von Furstenberg frock was lifted sky-high by a gust from the chopper’s blades, exposing her bare bottom. A cheeky passing photographer managed to capture the Duchess’s rear in all its glory. To make matters more humiliating, Kate appears to be wearing a...

"I lost my mother in 2008 and she left me Zarathustra. I got horrible depression after her death and for two years I was unable to do something creative. By chance a friend asked me 'why don't you make an art project with your cat because he's so funny'.

FULL TITLE: Meet the original Gerber baby: Ann Turner Cook, now 87, on how a drawing turned her into the most iconic baby in history The woman whose face inspired the Gerber baby drawing has opened up about what it has meant to be such an iconic symbol for nearly nine decades. Ann Turner Cook, now 87, was just a few months old in 1928 when a charcoal sketch of her was selected in a contest to represent Gerber baby food. Little did she know just how important that drawing would be, both for the company and for her. 'I...

Bunny Yeager, a model turned pin-up photographer who helped jump-start the career of then-unknown Bettie Page, died Sunday, her agent said. She was 85 years old. Yeager died at a North Miami hospice where she had been for about a week, her agent, Ed Christin said. Yeager’s legacy is her cultural impact, from pin-up photography and fashion, helping to popularize the bikini, and influencing other artists such as Cindy Sherman, who read Yeager’s guides on photographing nudes and making self-portraits, Christin said. “Anyone in Miami in the 1950s who wanted a bikini would come to her, and she’d make one,”...