Free Republic

Men like Ford was the catalyst that generated opportunities and because of needs provide jobs for many, many citizens across the nation and than spawn other kinds of creations that we enjoy today. Capitalist Henry Ford’s Mirror of America museum what a legacy Ford left us! - Clip 1 video Introduction

The remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that has been dated back to the time of Jesus have been unveiled - just days before Christmas. The find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy, Israeli archaeologists said. The dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from...

Printer Friendly December 19, 2009 Obama and the Malleability of History In pursuit of noble goals, Obama ignobly twists the truth. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online President Obama has given a number of major speeches touching on world affairs since he announced his bid for the presidency. All have invoked historical examples — usually for moral purposes, but often at the expense of both literal and figurative truth. ...

A noted historian debunks the conventional wisdom about America's War of Independence We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are. The Declaration of Independence, the Midnight Ride, Valley Forge—the whole glorious chronicle of the colonists’ rebellion against tyranny is in the American DNA. Often it is the Revolution that is a child’s first encounter with history.Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps more than any defining moment in American history,...

For those that don't know about history ... here is a condensed version that will take about 2 minutes or less to read: Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers.. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter. The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundations of modern civilization and together were the...

Charter Colleges? Deborah Lambert, December 18, 2009 Amid the heavy-handed bureaucracies that dominate our nation’s colleges and universities, there are seeds of opportunity. Professor Marvin Olasky noted in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education that a move toward Charter Colleges might be the answer. Dr. Olasky, editor-in-chief of the news magazine World and a journalism professor at the U. of Texas, Austin, hails Rob Koons, “the University of Texas professor removed last fall as head of a UT Western Civilization program, who is proposing that Texas legislators back the creation of charter colleges, as they now support...

MICHELLE OBAMA: "Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation." (END VIDEO CLIP) Change our traditions and change our history. What did she mean by that? I think we are starting to see it. Changing history means not just telling the same old tall tales of the free market system and the Founders. No, it's the history according to progressives. And it's not merely spinning...

Aug 21, 1932 Eugenists from all over the world will attend the Third International Congress of Eugenics today and tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History. At general and sectional meetings they will discuss advances in the study for the physical and mental improvement of the human race. Aug 23, 1932 Eugenic reforms must be adopted within the next hundred years if civilization is to go on, was the message of Major Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, founder of the modern theory of evolution, read last night at the Third International Congress of Eugenics, which opened yesterday at...

WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) - EXCLUSIVE - Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization. Guarding the location’s coordinates carefully, the project’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza. The site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Russian explorers near Cuba in 2001, at a depth of 2300 feet. “To be...

Hollywood celebrities and education gurus have teamed together to distribute to schools across the country a dramatic new curriculum that casts American history as an epic march of victims seeking to shrug off the shackles of the warmongering, racist, capitalist, imperialist United States. Celebs to kids: America stinks! '55 rich white men drafted Constitution to protect their class – slaveholders'Hollywood celebrities and education gurus have teamed together to distribute to schools across the country a dramatic new curriculum that casts American history as an epic march of victims seeking to shrug off the shackles of the warmongering, racist, capitalist,...

Images of Nazi or Soviet atrocities always provoke surreal astonishment, “How could people let this happen to themselves? Didn’t they see the signs, hear the insane speeches? Why didn’t they die fighting this?” Watching Matt Damon’s The People Speak, I ask myself, “Are we there yet…there where all those millions of victims were, when I shouted at them for their supposed apathy, lethargy, culpable complacency?” Will someone look back at me one day and ask, “How could she watch rising Communism on television and shuffle off to bed…didn’t she hear what they were saying?” Damon’s troubadours stirred the people to...

<p>In 1997, Matt Damon played the part of a janitor who turned out to be not only a math wizard, but one of the most brilliant men you could find anywhere. Trying to impress an arrogant Harvard student, who thought he knew everything, Damon’s character quotes from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. He tells the Harvard kid and a psychiatrist at the hospital he works at that “you’re surrounding yourself with all the wrong fuckin’ books. You wanna read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll [explitive deleted] you on your [explative].”</p>

For Old Timers or fans of old time movies, list your favorite movies made before 1950. Include the date of the movie. Please don't list any movies made after 1950. Thanks!

<p>Masamune Date is not an obvious heart-throb for today’s young Japanese women. He has an aristocratic lineage and love of the arts — but he is also a one-eyed ruthless killer. He lost an eye to smallpox and in his relentless pursuit of power is said to have slaughtered his own brother, as well as Christian missionaries, Korean peasants and countless of his compatriots.</p>

History serving “a social aim,” rather than chronicling the past in a detached manner, is what readers get in A People’s History of the United States. With any luck, “The People Speak,” the History Channel documentary based on the book that premieres this Sunday, will be, like so many Hollywood productions, unfaithful to the original. Given A People’s History of the United States’ infidelity to facts, this might be the only chance viewers have of seeing anything resembling an accurate retelling of history.Through Zinn’s looking-glass, Maoist China, site of history’s bloodiest state-sponsored killings, transforms into “the closest thing, in the...

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey... A team led by University of Akron archaeologist Timothy Matney has been excavating the massive mud brick palace, once inhabited by the governor of the empire's Tushhan Province, for more than a decade. The palace is located in Ziyaret...

There was a Medieval Warm Period (900-1100 AD), in central Greenland at any rate. But we knew that — that’s when the Vikings were naming it Greenland, after all.

Ontario, Canada (AHN) - In the first study of its kind researchers detected the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians. The study subjects lived between 550 and 1532 A.D. and like us today stress was a part of their daily lives.Researchers say cortisol is released into the body including the hair when an individual is stressed due to real or perceived threats. Emily Webb, a Ph.D. the lead author of the study says, "By studying the lives of people using traditional archaeological methods like surveying and excavation and combining that with new research techniques like sampling ancient...

Here is a CNN video report that says Russian officials claim they burned the body of Adolf Hitler in 1970 and threw the ashes in an East German river. In newly released details, the Russians claim they buried the body of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun on an East German Base where they remained until 1970, when the Russians turned the base over to the East Germans. They did not trust the East Germans not to make a shrine out of the graves, so they dug the bodies up and disposed of them. That is the Russian version of...

PHILADELPHIA –- Environmental scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Durham University have employed a novel combination of geological and model reconstructions of wetland environments during a 10,000-year period to address spatial variations in sea-level history and provide quantitative estimates of subsidence along the east coast of England. The findings indicate that glacial rebound — the rise or fall of land masses that were depressed by the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period — explains differences in relative sea levels along the English coast. Current sea levels in Northeast England, the most northerly study area, have...

Ancient DNA retrieved from extinct horse species from around the world has challenged one of the textbook examples of evolution - the fossil record of the horse family Equidae over the past 55 million years. The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved an international team of researchers and the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) based at the University of Adelaide. Only the modern horse, zebras, wild asses and donkey survive today, but many other lineages have become extinct over the last 50,000 years. ACAD Director Professor Alan Cooper says despite an excellent...

Recent studies show that one in three Canadians suffer from stress and the number is on the rise. But stress isn't a new problem. While the physiological state wasn't properly named until the 1930s, new research from The University of Western Ontario proves stress has plagued humans for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years. The first study of its kind, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, detected the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians, who lived between 550 and 1532 A.D. When an individual is stressed – due to real or perceived threats – cortisol is...

Here are a series of places I found on Google Earth where significant events happened in World War Two.

As a share of GDP, the U.S. Federal debt held by the public exceeds 50 percent in FY2009, the highest debt ratio since 1955. Projections indicate the debt ratio may be in the 70-100 percent range within ten years. In many respects, the temptation to inflate away some of this debt burden is similar to that at the end of World War II. In 1946, the debt ratio was 108.6 percent. Inflation reduced this ratio about 40 percent within a decade. Yet there are some important differences –shorter debt maturities today reduce the temptation to inflate, while the larger share...

SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place? ... The one who had the greater effect on Japan’s...

While in the midst of researching another piece, I ran into some photos of a rather beautiful church near Nepi, Italy; the Basilica of Sant'Elia in Castel Sant'Elia. It is beautiful for reasons of its architecture, its cosmatesque floors, its vibrant wall paintings, its ambone, and its altar with ciborium. The basilica was constructed in either the 10th or 11th century, and the ciborium likewise dates from this period. By tradition, it is suggested that this basilica was erected over the spot of a former pagan Roman temple constructed by Nero for Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. In...

Description of simple experiment that shows CO2 can't cause warming by trapping Infra Red (Credit to mystery blogger) The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by "trapping" infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood's experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Wood was an expert on IR. His accomplishments included inventing both IR and UV (ultraviolet) photography. Wood constructed two...

<p>Somewhere along the line — at a wedding, at a child’s birthday party, in third-grade music class — everybody has done the hokey pokey. Admit it: you sang the silly song, you did the silly dance.</p> <p>And you shake it all about.</p>

It's a new rule of thumb, apparently, that history doesn't matter. Fall of Rome? Who cares? WWII? What's it matter? The Great Depression? Just a blip. It's NOW that we care about, man. All that history stuff? Pffft. If it isn't happening now, it doesn't matter. This notion that history is for the stuffed shirts of academe and that it doesn't mean anything to modern, common folks always screams out when these woeful "Top Ten" lists start showing up in the media. Today we have another example of this historically illiterate sort of list at Time Magazine's website. There you'll...

Archaeologists have discovered the bones of at least 50 prehistoric people killed in an armed attack in Germany around 1300 BC. The signs of battle from around 1300 BC were found near Demmin, north of Berlin. They are the first proof of any war north of the Alps during the Bronze Age, said state archaeologist Detlef Jantzen on Thursday. One of the skulls had a coin-sized hole in it, indicating the 20- to 30-year-old man had received a mortal blow. A neurologist said he was probably hit with a wooden club and died within hours. Scientists plan DNA tests on...

a new study suggests that the nicks seem to be the result of much more recent handiwork. Paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Jörg Orschiedt of the University of Hamburg in Germany reported yesterday at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society here that cut marks in the Krapina fossils he studied are randomly distributed and did not necessarily occur in spots that would permit de-fleshing (such as where muscles attach to bones). What's more, the scratches varied -- some were shallow and others deep. An alternative explanation to cannibalism dawned on him as he sifted through photos of the bones... he came...

All these human remains were found at the stone-age site at Herxheim, near Speyer. About 7,000 years ago farmers, who grew wheat and barley, raised pigs, sheep and cattle, settled here, building a village of four to 12 houses, the post holes of which have survived. At the time the first farmer-stockherders were moving into Europe, supplanting their hunter-gatherer predecessors. The Herxheim settlers came from the north (between 5,400 and 4,950BC) and belonged to the Linear Pottery culture... during a rescue dig just before the area was developed as an industrial estate, in some of the ditches archaeologists uncovered tens...

I have always been fascinated by America's Civil War history, and its aftermath. Some terms such as "Scalawag" and "Carpetbagger" can can be confusing. How exactly do you define those two terms? From the perspective of American history, should "Scalawags" and "Carpetbaggers" be considered heroes or villains? Should the White Southerners who fought for the Union during the Civil War be seen as heroes, who deserve monuments built to them in the South?

Cairo, December 2nd, 2009 – Egypt’s leading Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass, has revealed that an excavation team under his charge are investigating an ancient tomb at the centre of claims regarding the alleged discovery of a cave underworld beneath the Pyramids of Giza. In August British writer and explorer Andrew Collins announced that he had rediscovered the entrance to a previously unexplored cave system, entered via a mysterious tomb several hundred meters west of the Great Pyramid. The cave entrance was found following clues left in the 200-year-old memoirs of British diplomat and explorer Henry Salt, who recorded how in...

MUMBAI: A group of naturalists from Amravati districts has discovered a set of 17 unique cave paintings in the nature-rich Satpura range of Madhya Pradesh – which opens up new avenues of research as this art form are believed to be of Paleolithic period. The group call themselves, ‘Hope’, and has been working since the last six years on this project. The group include scientist Dr V T Ingole, wildlife writer PS Hirurkar, Padmakar Lad, Shirishkumar Patil, Dnyaneswar Damahe and Manohar Khode. They are a group of nature and bird lovers, and luckily chanced upon these unique paintings. Ingole said...

THEIR reputation for raping and pillaging may not have set them out as the ideal role-models for an environmentally-friendly way of life. But it seems that lessons could perhaps be learnt from the Vikings after the intriguing discovery in Yorkshire of what is believed to be a metal recycling centre dating back to the 11th century. Historians and metal detector enthusiasts have made the find which is being heralded as evidence of how the Norse invaders recycled their fearsome array of weapons. Hundreds of pieces of metal including arrowheads, shards of swords and axe heads have been unearthed as part...

Dishes of chicken blancmange and porpoise porridge are unlikely to whet the appetite of most modern food lovers. But such recipes were apparently fit for a king 600 years ago. Written by chefs employed by Richard II, they are included in what is thought to be the world's oldest cookbook. The unusual dishes rival modern creations by British TV chef Heston Blumenthal, who is famous for his snail porridge. Experts from Manchester University's John Rylands Library, who discovered the manuscript, have translated a handful of its 150 recipes, which are written in Middle English and date back to 1390. They...

Geologist Scott Wolter wants you to forget 1492. While you're at it, forget the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Forget all of it. Forget Christopher Columbus because he wasn't the first European to visit North America and Wolter is out to prove it in his new book, "The Hooked X: The Key to the Secret History of North America." Minnesota and the Great Lakes states play a key part in that history, Wolter said, as Vikings and Cistercian monks traveled here leaving behind inscriptions and evidence that they were here long before Queen Isabella hocked her jewels to...

You gotta see this video of Dragnet's Jack Webb giving Obama a lesson on what it means to be an American. Jack Webb Of Dragnet Fame Scolds Obama

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade. For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to...

CHIÈVRES, Belgium, Dec. 1, 2009 – Sixty-five years after World War II's landmark Battle of the Bulge, U.S. and Belgian troops will again march side by side in Bastogne on Dec. 12 and 13. Veterans and servicemembers from both nations are scheduled to join thousands of well-wishers, including town officials, dignitaries and local residents, in commemorating the Allied forces' victory in the famous World War II battle. "The traditional carnival-like atmosphere in Bastogne over the weekend celebrates the historic grit and determination of our two nations' veterans 65 years ago, and the solemn ceremony at the Mardasson Memorial overlooking the...

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- More than 200 years after they were written, about 5,000 previously unpublished documents of the founders of the United States -- including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison -- are now available to the public at no cost. The Documents Compass group of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia has spent much of the past year proofreading and transcribing thousands of pages of letters and other papers. The documents are available online for free at the University of Virginia Press' digital imprint called Rotunda. "It's an exciting project," said Penelope Kaiserlian, director...

November 30, 2009: Today is the 10th anniversary of the Battle of Seattle. This is not a call to arms for anarchist thugs, but to remember their actions that day 10 years earlier. I am willing to discuss with FRiends about the day that generated worldwide attention and left downtown Seattle a scarred battlefield - 11/30. Many people across the world, even the anarchists themselves, saw the Battle of Seattle as a 'war' against globalism - the globalist nature of the WTO. Here is an article about the 10th anniversary of the Battle of Seattle and how the American right...

SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River. One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up...

SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River. One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up...

Gettysburg Address Remembered Thursday, November 19, 2009 - The Civil War by Martha M. Boltz Today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, delivered at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA on November 19, 1863. The assembly had just heard a speech by noted orator Edward Everett, who spoke for two and one-half hours, using 13,607 words. Quite honestly, today there are perhaps a handful of people who can remember any of what he said. The President, Abraham Lincoln, stood up at the podium, pulled a small slip of paper from his coat pocket, and began to...

The real Woodrow Wilson, it turns out, was a far less admirable character than the cardboard hero we learned about in school. In fact, in some ways the boring Midwesterner who succeeded him looks better than him when one compares what the two actually accomplished. Harding famously said he wanted to restore “normalcy” to a nation on the verge of a breakdown at the end of the Great War and set about working to heal the wounds that divided the nation. During the war, Wilson attacked those he called “hyphenated Americans” as disloyal and set about systematically using his power...

From Hour 3 of The Rush Limbaugh Show, 25 November 2009, beginning with the Pilgrims...

HUNTSVILLE, AL, Nov. 25 Christian Newswire -- Two creation films called "inappropriate" were denied the opportunity to be shown in government facilities this week--which marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species". While the intelligent design film "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" has not been granted permission for a showing in California, "The Mysterious Islands", a new 90-minute Vision Forum film that challenges Darwin's evolution by taking audiences back to engage the enchanted Galapagos Islands, has enjoyed a victory and will premiere as previously scheduled tonight, Nov. 25, at 6:30 PM, at...

An Iraqi tour guide looks on as Soldiers from the 4th Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division explore what is thought to be the biblical home of Abraham. The ruins were discovered near the Great Ziggurat of Ur, built by the Sumerians four thousand years ago to honor their moon god, Nanna. Photo courtesy of the 1st Armored Division. COB ADDER — More than 40 Soldiers from 4th Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division "Strike Force," were recently given the opportunity to tour the historical Great Ziggurat of Ur here. A local Iraqi man who has...