Free Republic

In what will be a first for New England and perhaps even the rest of the United States, Boston is about to get its very own Uyghur food truck. Although the truck won't have an onboard noodle maker turning out plates of lagman, the truck -- which is scheduled to hit the streets in the coming days -- will be serving Uyghur style kebabs, sold on skewers or inside wraps. The truck, Uyghur Kitchen, is the brainchild of Payzulla Polat, a professional musician currently studying music production and engineering at Boston's Berklee School of Music and who originally hails from...

Easter often is associated with the candy aisle, and its tempting display of rainbow-hued jelly beans, foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and bright-yellow marshmallow Peeps. For an 85-year-old cheese company in Verona, the 40-day Lenten season is punctuated not by sweets but by an unusual cheese product that for two days each week leading up to Easter puts its small staff into curd-making overdrive. And no, it's not the ricotta on which the family has built its name over three generations. It's called basket cheese, and it's been an Easter tradition at Lamagna Cheese Co. for as long as anyone can remember...

Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet. Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center, was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that they...

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Central-east Mexico gave birth to the domesticated chili pepper—now the world's most widely grown spice crop—reports an international team of researchers, led by a plant scientist at the University of California, Davis. Results from the four-pronged investigation—based on linguistic and ecological evidence as well as the more traditional archaeological and genetic data—suggest a regional, rather than a geographically specific, birthplace for the domesticated chili pepper. That region, extending from southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca to southeastern Veracruz, is further south than was previously thought, the researchers found. The region also is different from areas of origin that have been suggested...

I'm liking what Fiat is doing with Chrysler more and more, even their choice of ad agency and marketing campaigns. This is a startling, hilarious and cool ad commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Dodge and announcing the 2015 Challenger.

They are the colourful carpets used to coat the streets of Guatemala's cities during their iconic Easter Holy Week processions. And this year the strongly Catholic country has a new reason to celebrate - it has been recognised by Guinness World Records for producing the longest sawdust carpet in the world. Using 5,000 volunteers to create it, as well as 54 tonnes of sawdust, the record-breaking carpet measure a whopping 6,600ft - more than 2,000ft longer than the previous record holder.

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Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,-- One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and...

The researchers have been using an established technique known as magnetometry, which involves systematically and rapidly scanning the landscape with small handheld instruments in order to identify localised magnetic anomalies relating to buried ancient structures. These are then mapped out with specialised computer software, providing images similar to aerial photographs, which can be interpreted by archaeologists. In antiquity, the landscape in this recent study was known as the Isola Sacra and was surrounded by a major canal to the north, the river Tiber to the east and south, and the Tyrrhenian sea to the west. At the southernmost side of...

...The contract includes a clause that Demetrius is still to be paid if the judges realize the match is fixed and refuse to reward Nicantinous the win. If "the crown is reserved as sacred, (we) are not to institute proceedings against him about these things," the contract reads. It also says that if Demetrius reneges on the deal, and wins the match anyway, then "you are of necessity to pay as penalty to my [same] son on account of wrongdoing three talents of silver of old coinage without any delay or inventive argument." The translator of the text, Dominic Rathbone,...

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a rare sarcophagus featuring a slender face and a scarab ring inscribed with the name of an Egyptian pharaoh, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The mystery man whose skeleton was found inside the sarcophagus was most likely a local Canaanite official in the service of ancient Egypt, Israeli archaeologists believe, shining a light on a period when pharaohs governed the region. "This is a really beautiful face, very serene," said Edwin van den Brink, an Egyptologist and archaeologist with Israel's government antiquities authority. "It's very appealing." Van den Brink said archaeologists dug at Tel Shadud, an...

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Klahoose carving settles question of territory A face carved into a tree trunk was discovered by forestry workers in a remote location up Toba Inlet. It had been staring down an ancient river valley in the rainforest for almost 200 years. The recent chance discovery was made approximately 60 miles up the inlet and helped to silence a question of doubt regarding the geographic limits of Klahoose First Nation traditional territory. Two employees of Fireball Contracting Ltd., Rob Reynolds and Keith McCrea, were working in a cutblock and turned around to discover the carved face. Klahoose Forestry Limited Partnership manager...

The mayor of a small Missouri town has mostly nice things to say about the white supremacist accused of killing three people at Jewish facilities last weekend. Marionville, Mo. Mayor Dan Clevenger spoke warmly this week of Frazier Glenn Miller, who allegedly went on a killing rampage on Sunday in Overland Park, Kan. "He was always nice and friendly and respectful of elder people, you know, he respected his elders greatly. As long as they were the same color as him," Clevenger said while laughing, according to television station KSPR. "Very fair and honest and never had a bit of...

One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Only improbable ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska. Captain Francis...

One of the oldest surviving complete Roman mosaics dating from 1,700 years ago, a spectacular discovery made in Lod in Israel, will go on show at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, UK... from 5 June – 2 November 2014. Measuring eight metres long and four metres wide, and in exceptional condition, the Lod mosaic depicts a paradise of birds, animals, shells and fishes, including one of the earliest images of a rhinoceros and a giraffe, richly decorated with geometric patterns and set in lush landscapes.Ancient city of LyddaThe mosaic was accidentally discovered in 1996, during highway construction work in the Israeli...

With luck, I put this in the right place. Though I was born in R.I., my parents moved to VA when I was 2. I lived in the Old Dominion for decades and even though I left there about 10 years ago, I consider it home. I practiced law in NOVA for a long time. I stumbled across this wonderful Facebook page entitled, "Abandoned in Virginia". It is a beautiful pictorial of abandoned old buildings all across the State. Those who live, or who have lived, in VA know how special it is. Enjoy.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 THE NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE25 26 27

Cut off some cross-shaped chunks from the chicken wire using a bolt cutter. Then cut the ends off again at an angle to make them sharp. Watch out for flying bits of sharp metal hitting you in the eye. Bend the sharp wires as shown. You're done! Be super careful with these nasty things and don't leave them lying around. These are only to carry in your pouch at the renaissance festival as part of your costume.

U. S. Constitution

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — In its prime, a massive steam locomotive known as Big Boy No. 4014 was a moving eruption of smoke and vapor, a 6,300-horsepower brute dragging heavy freight trains over the mountains of Wyoming and Utah. It's been silent for half a century, pushed aside by more efficient diesels, but now it's coming back to life. The Union Pacific Railroad is embarking on a yearslong restoration project that will put No. 4014 back to work pulling special excursion trains. "It's sort of like going and finding the Titanic or something that's just very elusive, nothing that we...

After listening to one of my favorite podcaster, Dan Carlin & his Hardcore History, about the beginning of World War I, I would love to find out more about this time in history. I know that Freepers are a well read bunch and I am asking for any recommendations you may care to make in a good book covering this time in history.

Academics restart work to unlock secrets of mystery medieval civilization with links to Persia on edge of the Siberian Arctic. A red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating [Credit: Kate Baklitskaya/Go East] The 34 shallow graves excavated by archaeologists at Zeleniy Yar throw up many more questions than answers. But one thing seems clear: this remote spot, 29 km shy of the Arctic Circle, was a trading crossroads of some importance around one millennium ago. The medieval necropolis include 11 bodies with shattered or missing skulls, and smashed skeletons. Five mummies were found to be shrouded...

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Next week, the city will celebrate its official, 2,767th birthday. According to a tradition going back to classic times, the brothers Romulus and Remus founded the city on 21 April in the year 753BC. But on Sunday it was reported that evidence of infrastructure building had been found, dating from more than 100 years earlier. The daily Il Messagero quoted Patrizia Fortini, the archaeologist responsible for the Forum, as saying that a wall constructed well before the city's traditional founding date had been unearthed. The wall, made from blocks of volcanic tuff, appeared to have been built to channel water...

Harry Chapman Pincher looks back on his extraordinary career as Daily Express defence correspondent, as he marks his 100th birthday. His employers called him "the lone wolf of Fleet Street", the man who got the stories other journalists seemed to miss. For over 30 years, until his retirement in 1979, Harry Chapman Pincher was the defence and science correspondent for the Daily Express, then Britain's biggest-selling daily newspaper. Few military or atomic secrets in the 1950s and 60s were safe from Pincher. His contacts in the scientific and military establishment brought him one exclusive after another. In retirement he turned...

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Sept 23rd 1800.

The greatest work of art George W. Bush ever took part in was in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at his head. “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,� screamed the journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who had been arrested twice by U.S. forces during the occupation.Bush dodged the shoes with the same ease with which he’d had dodged consequences all his life; those for drunk driving, for ruined companies, stolen elections, war crimes, the destruction of Zaidi’s country.After he dodged the shoes, Bush joked about free countries. Meanwhile, guards beat Zaidi bloody. Police tortured him...

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Far be it from me to defend Putin’s annexation of Crimea, which had been part of another country, the Ukraine. And most of reasons Putin and his gang trot out in defence of the heist is hogwash. But the Americans brought this on themselves and not just Obama, the most incompetent president in the history of that country, and as far as foreign policy goes, the most untrustworthy Israel should pay attention, not so much to Russia, but to the Americans, because they are stuck in our craw as well. When the Soviet Union fell, the Ukraine was a nuclear...

A while back I read a terrific essay on why our failure to insist on more assimilation by immigrants (and immigrants' failure to speak English) was going to destroy America. IIRC, the essay was written (and may have been a speech) by a former Senator or Congressman, and was written in the form of "if you want to see America destroyed, then keep allowing this, and keep permitting that…" I'd appreciate any links to that essay.

"On the trail of the phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace" In the world of early-20th-century African-American music and people obsessed by it, who can appear from one angle like a clique of pale and misanthropic scholar-gatherers and from another like a sizable chunk of the human population, there exist no ghosts more vexing than a couple of women identified on three ultrarare records made in 1930 and ’31 as Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley. There are musicians as obscure as Wiley and Thomas, and musicians as great, but in none does the Venn...

It was thought to have built by King Offa in the 8th century as border between England and Wales But even though it has been part of the British landscape for centuries, the ancient Offa's Dyke may have to be renamed, after archaeologists discovered it could have been completed 200 years before the great Anglo Saxon leader was born. Experts used radiocarbon dating on the 177-mile dyke and revealed it could have been constructed as early as the 4th century... The group behind the project said it is a 'tremendously exciting discovery' which challenges the accepted history of the ancient...

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The National Archeological Excavation Center has found more evidence of the existence of the Sailendra civilization, believed to have prospered during the 7th century in Ngreco hamlet, Kesongo village, Tuntang district, Semarang regency, Central Java. Previously, a team found pieces of bricks, artifacts and a jaladwara waterway segment, while recently it discovered a foundation believed to have been used for a temple structure. A jaladwara was a water sewage system commonly found in bath houses during ancient times. The tip of the jaladwara is usually the shape of a dragon’s head. The finding is strengthened by the discovery of soil...

As a specialist in prehistoric underwater archaeology, Dr Jonathan Benjamin looks at rising sea levels differently from most people and his fascination with this global phenomenon began when as a PhD candidate at Edinburgh University he came across the work of the Danish archaeologists Anders Fischer and Søren H Anderson. In the 1970s and 1980s, Fischer and Anderson recovered some of the most well preserved material ever seen from sites such as the 6,500-year-old settlement at Tybrind Vig. This was the first submerged settlement excavated in Denmark and from 1977 was the scene of intensive archaeological activity. Lying 300m from...

Known as Vada Volaterrana, it has been identified as a key port system located in present-day Tuscany, Italy, used anciently by the Romans of the city of Volaterrae (today's Volterra) for the import and export of trade goods throughout the Mediterranean. The main harbor was located north of the mouth of the Cecina river, at S. Gaetano di Vada... The ancient city of Volterra, or Volaterrae, which was served by the Vada Volaterrana port system, was first settled by the Etruscans in the 8th century B.C.E. During the succeeding centuries the village had developed into a major city with power...

Researchers at Cambridge University, U.K. finds that after agriculture’s emergence in Central Europe starting around 5300 BC, bones of those living in the Danube River valley became progressively less strong, pointing to a regressive decline in human mobility and loading... Research by Alison Macintosh, a PhD candidate in Cambridge University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, finds functional adaptation in postcranial skeletal morphology in response to prolonged cultural and behavioural change across ~6150 years of agriculture in Central Europe (~5300 cal BC to 850 AD)... Dr. Ron Pinhasi of the University College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that colonization of Europe by...

Twelve boats, dating from 2,500 BC to the 11th century AD, along with other Viking artifacts have been discovered in Lough Corrib in Connemara, County Galway. Archaeologists have used radiocarbon dating to establish that one of the boats dates from 2,500 BC. Other items that were found include several battle axes and other weapons... The 4,500-year-old log boat settled into the mud when it sank and was covered over time. A mixture of organic sediment and lake water assisted in the preservation process. Even the seats in the boats are preserved... The oldest of the vessels is the Annaghkeen log...

...archaeologists at the University of York are challenging the traditional view that Neanderthal childhood was, in Hobbesian terms, difficult, nasty, brutish and short, fraught with continual fear and danger of violent death... The research team say there is evidence that Neanderthals cared for their sick and injured children for months and often years. A study of child burials, meanwhile, reveals that the young may have been given particular attention when they died, with generally more elaborate graves than older individuals. Neanderthal groups, believed based on fossil findings to have ranged throughout Europe, Asia Minor and into central Asia, were typically...

Japanese Tech Firm NTT Is Scanning the Ancient Texts in the Vatican Apostolic Library Almost 600 years after Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Holy See is now turning to 50 experts, five scanners and a Japanese IT firm to digitize millions of pages from its priceless manuscripts, opening them to the broader public for the first time. When the project is finished, one of the richest and most important collections of historical texts in the world will be available with a click of the mouse—and free. The plan marks a revolution for an institution known as...

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Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of the presence of humans in Scotland with an assemblage of over 5,000 flint artefacts which were recovered in 2005-2009 by Biggar Archaeology Group in fields at Howburn, South Lanarkshire. Subsequent studies have dated their use to 14,000 years ago. Prior to the find, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Scotland could be dated to around 13,000 years ago at a now-destroyed cave site in Argyll, northwest Scotland. Dating to the very earliest part of the late-glacial period, Howburn is likely to represent the first settlers in Scotland. The flint tools are strikingly...

The canoe, made from a hollowed tree trunk by some of the earliest American Indians to live on the lake and in the state, was initially dated to about 1750. But recent radiocarbon testing now dates it to between 1025 and 1165 — making it one of the oldest watercraft finds in the state... The canoe was discovered in 1934 as a family was building a dock on the shore of Lake Minnetonka’s North Arm in Orono. Severe drought had dropped the lake below normal water levels, and one of the dock posts hit what family members thought was a...

Long after the dust from the last battle has settled, the dead have been laid to rest and the confetti from the victory parade has been swept into the gutter, the nature continues to bear the scars of human conflicts. A remarkable series of photos taken in a Russian forest have been making the rounds on social media sites, showing what happens over time to instruments of carnage discarded in the woods.

In 2012, Harvard researcher Karen King revealed the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife." A small piece of papyrus, the lightly worn document was written in Coptic Egyptian, with parts missing and ink faded, and didn't say much. But what it did say, wrote Ariel Sabar in Smithsonian Magazine two years ago was enough to “send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship—and beyond.� The fragment’s 33 words, scattered across 14 incomplete lines, leave a good deal to interpretation. But in King’s analysis, and as she argues in a forthcoming article in the Harvard Theological Review, the “wife� Jesus refers to is probably Mary Magdalene, and Jesus...

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In 1993, the era of girls' six-on-six basketball in Iowa came to an end. This one-hour IPTV documentary takes a look back at the game and what it meant to generations of girls who played it. One of the most acclaimed sports in Iowa history, six-on-six was especially popular in small towns. It was there that young women became queens of the court, where communities rallied behind their daughters, and where school leaders, mostly male, fought for girls' equality. Like no where else in the country, young women in Iowa have played the game of basketball for over a century....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWmr0Afr4f8