Free Republic

Trusty's Hill, near Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway, is best known for the Pictish Symbols carved into a natural rock outcrop at the fort's entrance. However, in recent years, many historians have begun to doubt whether these carvings were genuine, some even suggesting that the carvings are forgeries... As well as an abundance of domestic waste, including animal bones, stone and metal tools and a spindle whorl, from 'dark soil' occupation deposits sealed by the collapsed ramparts of the fort, the excavators recovered numerous crucible and clay mould fragments, metalworking debris and a variety of iron pins and...

Some 1,800 years ago, Roman troops used "whistling" sling bullets as a "terror weapon" against their barbarian foes, according to archaeologists who found the cast lead bullets at a site in Scotland. Weighing about 1 ounce (30 grams), each of the bullets had been drilled with a 0.2-inch (5 millimeters) hole that the researchers think was designed to give the soaring bullets a sharp buzzing or whistling noise in flight. The bullets were found recently at Burnswark Hill in southwestern Scotland, where a massive Roman attack against native defenders in a hilltop fort took place in the second century A.D......

Several different types of sling bullets have been found at the site, from small lead bullets drilled with holes that the researchers think were designed to make a whistling noise in flight and terrorize their targets, to the largest lemon-shaped sling bullets, which weigh up to 2 ounces. "The interesting thing is that all the whistling sling bullets are from the Roman camp on the south face of the hill fort, so clearly they are using different sling bullets for different purposes," Nicholson told Live Science.

LAKE RIDGE, Va. - There appears to be another instance of a police impersonator in Virginia. Just two weeks after an impersonator stopped a woman driver in Dumfries, a similar incident occurred in Lake Ridge. Authorities say a man dressed like a cop used a flashing blue light in his car to pull over a woman on the Prince William County Parkway. It happened around 8 a.m. Monday. The man apparently came up to the woman's car, flashed a piece of paper and told her to drive to the other side of the road. After telling her she was speeding,...