Free Republic

Saqqara, in Egypt, is the oldest stone complex ever built by humans—and within it sits the oldest pyramid in Egypt. It’s a piece of irreplaceable history that’s been crumbling for 4,600 years. But according to one local report, it’s currently being destroyed by the company hired to “restore” it. In fact, the company hired by Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities may have even committed a crime in its restoration. According to the Egypt Independent, preservation laws require that any new construction be less than 5 percent of the preserved structure. Instead, the company—which has reportedly never worked on a preservation project...

How many Jews were aboard the Titanic before it sank? This question will likely forever remain unanswered. "According to the White Star Line company's list, there were several hundred Jews onboard," says Eli Moskowitz, who studied the story of the Jewish passengers on the most famous ship in history, which sank 102 years ago, claiming the lives of 1,517 people. "Some of them were in first-class cabins, but most were in the third class which was reserved for immigrants, and where men had the lowest chances of surviving. The exact number of Jews in the third class is still unknown."

This is an excellent documentary I saw a few years ago but recently found online again on a Ukrainian facebook group. I highly recommend it. It begins with the Holodomor, the starvation of some seven million Ukrainians, which you will find quite shocking and sad. Some estimates are 10 to 11 million people slowly killed in this way by the Soviets, while others give it a low estimate of 2 million (which I do not believe). It also talks about how the Left in general actually supported Hitler early on since they were in favor of mass murder. Hitler's problem...

A series of lines scratched into rock in a cave near the southwestern tip of Europe could be proof that Neanderthals were more intelligent and creative than previously thought. The cross-hatched engravings inside Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar are the first known examples of Neanderthal rock art, according to a team of scientists who studied the site. The find is significant because it indicates that modern humans and their extinct cousins shared the capacity for abstract expression. The study, released Monday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined grooves in a rock that had been covered with...

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Many problems with kids can be traced to their parents. So why have millennials been singled out as a uniquely depraved generation? Weren’t they raised by somebody? For those who may have missed the latest skirmish in America’s generational warfare, a new survey by marketing firm DDB finds millennials — those between 19 and 34 years old, more or less — may be more venal and self-aggrandizing than older folks. They’re more likely to consider themselves workaholics — even with a work ethic their elders find lacking — and a scandalous 27% of millennials say they’d take credit for a...

The jet fighter can’t maneuver, the critics say. It’s based on a wrongheaded concept. It relies on unproved technologies. It’s a one-size-fits-all jet for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, and yet it doesn't really meet any of their needs. Is this Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter I’m describing? No, it’s actually the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the ubiquitous fighter-bomber, reconnaissance and radar-hunting aircraft that formed the backbone of U.S., NATO and Israeli air power in the 1960s and 1970s. More than 50 years later, the Phantom still flies, as evident when Syrian gunners downed a Turkish RF-4...

<p>How did this small city-state of 7.3 million people go from having a per-capita income of only a few hundred dollars per year to a per capita income that is equal to that of the United States in only 50 years? The simple answer is they had the British common law legal system, strong private property rights, competent, honest judges, a non-corrupt civil service, very low tax rates, free trade and a minimal amount of economic regulation. There was no big brother government looking after the people, so they had to work hard, but they could keep the fruits of their efforts.</p>

When You Read What Happened to the Titanic, You'll Cry Buckets! You Won't Believe What Hitler Said Over the Radio Last Night! When You Find Out What the Japs Did at Pearl Harbor, You'll Blow a Gasket! You'll Jump Out a Window When You Find Out What the Stock Market Did! When the Lincolns Went to the Theater, They Probably Weren't Expecting This!

Learn the story behind the official dessert of the Chinese Moon FestivalThe fable of Moon Goddess Chang’e is an integral one during the Chinese Moon Festival. It is the tale of an ancient hero Hou Yi—a heroic archer—who shoots down nine of ten suns during a disastrous year when ten suns arose at once (and you thought this summer was sweltering). In one telling of the legend, Yi becomes corrupted and tyrannical from his new power and is offered an elixir of immortality. However, his wife Chang’e, fearful for her people of an immortal and cruel king, steals the potion,...

am very far from original in noticing similarities in the histories of Rome and America—republics that became empires. The decline and fall of the former has often been thought to foretell the fate of the latter. A Frenchman some years ago wrote a fairly convincing book called The Coming Caesars. Such analogies are interesting and suggestive but should not be put forward too dogmatically. History does repeat itself because human nature remains the same and because civilized people build institutions that then perpetuate themselves for their own sake rather than for the purpose for which they were established. Power-seeking, luxury,...

The subject here is naval history and the naval history to come. This is particularly relevant, given the subjects I've been immersed in over the last year—the so-called war on terrorism and the attacks of 9/11, what went wrong, and what we should do to fix it. I have learned that what these two institutions—the U.S. Naval Institute and the U.S. Naval Academy—stand for are at the center of what we face as a nation going forward. The Naval Institute is one of the great intellectual institutions in this country. I first joined when I was an undergraduate in college,...

The Parthenon represents, for many, a golden age in human achievement: the 5th-century b.c. Greek flowering of democracy, sciences, and the arts. But what if its chief ornament, the Parthenon frieze, turned out to be not an embodiment of reason and proportion—of stillness at the heart of motion, quiet piety, and enlightened civic responsibility—but (or, rather, also) something darker, more primitive: a representation of the critical moment in an ancient story of a king at war, a human sacrifice, and a goddess’s demand for virgin blood? That’s the argument at the heart of The Parthenon Engima. The plot involves not...

It has laid largely unstudied in a university library for more than 100 years. But now a 1,500-year-old papyrus has been identified as one of the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms. The ‘remarkable’ document contains some of the earliest documented references to The Last Supper and sheds new light on early Christian practices, experts say.

They are mystery stories, written large as life in mineral ink on the pages of the northern plains. A 360-foot snake – reportedly once with a blazing red tongue – slithering along a grassy slope. A long-tailed turtle lying next to woman near an earthen mound. A large grid spread across the spur of a hill. All created from lines of small boulders. Hundreds of these stone effigies or alignments, ranging from animal forms to mosaics can be found across the seven Midwestern states and parts of Canada, including more than a hundred such figures in South Dakota. The mystery...

About how America became involved in certain wars, many conspiracy theories have been advanced -- and some have been proved correct. When James K. Polk got his declaration of war as Mexico had "shed American blood upon the American soil," Rep. Abraham Lincoln demanded to know the exact spot where it had happened. And did the Spanish really blow up the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the casus belli for the Spanish-American War? The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, involving U.S. destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy, remains in dispute. But charges that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships...

A Pee-Chee folder art hack—afros, hairy legs, and frying eggs(image: Greg Narvas, Flickr) Growing up in Denver, I called sugary, carbonated beverages “pop.” When I moved to California for college and all the coastal kids called it “soda,” I realized just how much geography defines even the most quotidien bits of our lives (I now call it “soda,” too.). I had that realization all over again recently while reminiscing about Pee-Chee folders, encountering a completely blank stare from a New York-native friend who had never heard of them. And here I’d thought the pulpy paper pockets had been a part...

Not too long ago I posted a video produced in the mid-nineties concerning a U.S. Army soldier, SPC Michael New, who refused to wear the UN insignia and uniform, or accept orders from a foreign commander under the auspices of the United Nations. New’s reasoning was simple: he pledged an oath to defend the United States and the U.S. Constitution, not the United Nations and its Charter. The Michael New case received very little press coverage at the time. New was threatened with court-martial, but he decided to fight the charges. Unfortunately, Michael New lost the case and eventually received...

Local newspapers in the US don't cover education in any depth. Maybe they'll tell you superficial and trivial stuff (for example, that a superintendent was hired or fired, that there will be a meeting next month of the school board). But you won't find anything about the nuts and bolts that determine whether you child learns to read, or learns anything at all. At first glance, this non-coverage can seem to be a mystery. Everybody's interested in education, especially parents and grandparents with kids in K-12. Probably one of the most valuable things that you could tell these people is...

On the Anniversary of World War 2, September 1, 1939 Seventy Five Years Ago Today, We Must Bear in Mind That Our own Circumstances Do Not Augur Well For The Future. The political circumstances in which we find ourselves today, is as treacherous and dangerous time as any. On so many fronts, perspectives, danger lurks within to exponential capacity for the greatest destruction the world has ever seen. So many various, varied circumstances, of nations brimming with hate, enmity, having acquired or in the process of acquiring weapons of mass destruction, imperialistic design, and more, much more, does not bode...