Free Republic

The Fairy Investigation Society, dedicated to tracking down modern accounts of the Little People, must rank as one of the strangest British organisations ever to come into being. SIMON YOUNG tells the story of this curious enterprise through five key episodes – from a Fairy Census to a tabloid scandal – in its eccentric and largely forgotten history.1. SLEIGH AND CRAUFURD MEET (1927)It was the kind of moment over which flies queue up for wall space. Two of the most eccentric men in Britain in one room – and they had come to talk about fairies. On the one...

A Toxic Goo rains on residents of Oakville, Washington May 8, 1997 It sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but for the little town in Washington there was nothing entertaining about the scourge that befell them in 1994. Six times it rained down from above, leaving dozens of local residents ill, and several pets and small animals dead. It all happened in Oakville, Washington, population 665. Here in Oakville, clouds fill the skies daily, bringing rain some 275 days a year. So, when it began pouring on the morning of August 7, 1994, no one was particularly concerned -...

Last Updated: Monday, 20 October, 2003, 11:11 GMT 12:11 UK Ancient carved 'faces' foundBy Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor If this is genuine, the artist would have been an extinct human species that died out about 150,000 years ago. Cliff face Local inhabitants say that prehistoric human faces are nothing new to the region and point to a rock cliff that they believe has been sculpted. They call it the Face of Borzone. In 2001, in a pile of rubble collected for use as building material, Pietro Gaietto, from the Museum of the Origins of Man, saw...