Free Republic

Thousands of Italians emigrated to Scotland in the 20th Century, but it seems that 400 years earlier a group of Scots may have settled in a village in the Italian Alps. So local legend has it… And there are plenty of signs to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it's true. High up in the mountains of northern Italy, just a few kilometres from the Swiss border, the people of the tiny village of Gurro speak a strange dialect, incomprehensible even to the other villages in the same valley. They have peculiar surnames, and the women's traditional costume features a patterned...

When the sun came up on May 28 in the year 585 BCE, the Medes and Lydians were still at war. They had been at each other’s throats for years, and it looked like there was no end in sight for their conflict. But something extraordinary happened on the battlefield that day, which changed everything. This episode also features an interview with Dr. Fred Espenak, an astrophysicist, and scientist emeritus at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

1. A breakthrough study from the Institute of Crystallography in Italy has just confirmed that the image of the man on the Shroud of Turin is composed of real blood and in fact a microscopic analysis of blood particles reveals that the blood had to come from someone undergoing torture.  This just further confirms the possible authenticity of the Shroud (see here). 2. Using a recently developed X-ray imaging technology, archaeologists were able to read the inside of a biblical scroll that was covered in ash during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.  The results?  The current manuscripts...

1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools This copy of the Eighth Grade Exam for Bullitt County Schools in 1912 was donated to the museum. We thought you might like to see what the test looked like more than a hundred years ago. Obviously it tested some things that were more relevant at that time than now, and it should not be used to compare student knowledge then and now. Note that there are several typesetting mistakes on the test including a mistake in the spelling list. The word "eneeavor" should be "endeavor." This version of the exam...

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831 to study its prisons, but ended up documenting nearly every facet of American life. With journalistic curiosity, the French aristocrat scrutinized America’s religion and government, its society and industry. He wanted to know what allowed the United States to surpass Europe as the world’s political and economic superpower. His conclusion? Women. The women Tocqueville saw were not CEOs or celebrities, politicians or professional athletes. They were largely confined to the home: cleaning, cooking, taking care of children. But to the young political historian, no position seemed more important. “There have never been...

Incredibly, it wasn’t until I was 19 that I learned that there had been a Holocaust. My hyper-assimilated, New England Jewish family and friends looked only to the present and future. We focused on the polio vaccine that promised to banish the iron lungs that had been our childhood terror. We trusted in the United Nations, whose gleaming buildings my father took me to see when they were brand-new, and from which I came away with hopeful admiration—mixed, however, with a vague sense, which I couldn’t have put into words then, that perhaps an enterprise housed in architecture so grandiosely...

Democrats in Louisiana have caved to the political correctness of the modern age, just like Democrats in several other states have already done, suggests a prominent historian. The Louisiana Democratic Party has announced its annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner will no longer bear the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson; this year’s event, set to be held in New Orleans on Aug. 26, will instead be called the True Blue Gala. The Louisiana Democratic Party and its chairwoman, state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, announced the dinner would be renamed “to reflect the progress of the party and the changing times.” Jefferson,...

The U.S. should NEVER put itself in that position. The Brits sent their civilian boaters to save them. Destroyers and most planes were left behind to 'save England.' Make sure the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is always filled. Get the hell out of the Middle East with no more immigrints from that region. The Brits should get out of the Falklands. They have bigger fish to fry. Maybe we should al store food like the Mormons. My history teacher, retired military, said Hitler should have bombed them all on the beach. Cost him the war.

Mainstream media bias isn't just against President Trump, but also Israel. On Friday, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS published headlines equating three terrorists behind clashes in the West Bank during the day with three Israelis who were stabbed to death the following night in the area: CNN.com.com: "3 Israelis killed in stabbing; 3 Palestinians killed in clashes." NBCNews.com: "Al Aqsa Mosque Clashes: 6 Killed as Jerusalem Shrine Tensions Worsen." CBSNews.com: "3 Palestinians, 3 Israelis killed in violence over Jerusalem shrine" ABCNews.com: "3 Palestinians, 3 Israelis killed in violence over holy site" Additionally, the Associated Press published an article with the headline "6 killed as tensions...

Christian tradition maintains that after Rome nearly burned to the ground, Nero engaged in a brutal crackdown on Christians which led to the executions of Peter and Paul. On the evening of July 18, in the scorching summer of 64 CE, a fire started in a shop under the Circus Maximus in Rome. The fire quickly spread to nearby homes and businesses and the Circus itself. The fire burned for six days, ravaging the city. It left only four of Rome’s fourteen quarters untouched. The reigning emperor, Nero, a man known for his cruelty and love of theater, scapegoated the...

The national movement to change racially offensive names of buildings, sports teams and landmarks will soon touch a group of schools in southeast Portland. Lynch Meadows, Lynch Wood and Lynch View elementary schools will shed their "Lynch" before the upcoming school year in response to growing concern about the word's racial connotations. The schools, part of the Centennial School District, were named for the Lynch family, which donated land over a century ago to build the first of the schools. But Centennial Superintendent Paul Coakley says many newer families coming into the district associate the name with America's violent racial...

While slavery constitutes one of the grossest encroachments on human liberty, it is by no means unique or restricted to the Western world or United States, as many liberal academics would have us believe. Much of their indoctrination of our young people, at all levels of education, paints our nation's founders as racist adherents to slavery, but the story is not so simple.

It was on this date in 1945 that, for good or ill, the "nuclear age" began, with the explosion of the first experimental atomic bomb, code-named Trinity, in the western desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Trinity, with a yield equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, was the first spherical implosion bomb, developed at Los Alamos under the auspices of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The weapon designers were so confident of the success of the simpler gun-barrel configuration that the device of that type dropped on Hiroshima only three weeks later had never been tested. The subsequent Nagasaki...

Americans have celebrated the Fourth of July for almost 250 years, with the 241st such celebration just behind us, but the vast majority of Americans have only the vaguest notion of why this holiday matters so much. The Fourth of July does not represent the beginning of the American Republic. Indeed, there was practically no real government at all on July 4, 1776. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were largely volunteers in a thankless task: express the reason why the thirteen colonies were declaring their separation from Britain.

I recently met the good people of St. Benedict Elementary School in South Natick, Massachusetts, which offers classical Catholic education to some very fortunate youngsters. The extensive summer reading lists the school suggests to those kids’ parents put me in mind of my high school English teacher, the late Fr. W. Vincent Bechtel—who did not, however, do suggestions, but made sure that his charges kept their noses to the grindstone from June through August by assigning us at least a half-dozen novels. Some of them—like Paul Horgan’s Things As They Are—I still reread with pleasure, a half-century later. So herewith,...

Swiss journalist Sacha Batthyany knew he belonged to an aristocratic family, centered around his respected aunt. He didn’t know about the murderous ball held in 1945, that led to a personal quest, threats from relatives and a book One morning in April 2007 journalist Sacha Batthyany was approached by an elderly colleague at the Swiss daily where they both worked at the time. The colleague waved a newspaper clipping in front of him. It was an investigative report entitled, “The Hostess from Hell,” published by a German daily. Glancing at the headline, Batthyany didn’t understand why he was being shown...

Although it can’t be denied that President Trump has upset the status-quo apple cart ... I’m hard-pressed to think of the multitude of good things that happened that didn’t meet the same objections similar. The point is that much of this is what has always been(a different kind of tweetness) in our Free Republic, for good reason. Before the constraints of political correctness changed the landscape to where hyper-outrage drama queens became our king. The subtle rulers of indignation. One Example: “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not...

I always savor the insight Freeper History Buffs offer, especially the spirited difference in opinion. The easy answers are Washington, Jefferson, the like. Who are the ones unsung, where the tide may not have turned without?

Today, Peter Jones explains the origin, nature, and character of the sexual revolution, and shows why it continues to be a powerful force...

Back before the Industrial Revolution most people were rural, and they lived off the land. Families took care of their aging families. Parents had big farm houses that encompassed not only Mom, Dad, and children, but Grandma and Grandpa were a part of the mix…possibly even Aunt Hilda if she needed a roof over her head. The whole family worked together to make the living. Even little Johnny had his chore of feeding the chickens. His little sister gathered the eggs, and Mama fixed them for breakfast. Meanwhile, Daddy had already gotten up at the crack of dawn to build...