Free Republic

Sam Maccarone and Jessica Burzichelli say they have been in love since they were 10 years old. They dated through high school, and didn’t let going to different colleges break their relationship. “In the end, I just think both of us realized we were meant for each other,” Burzichelli told BuzzFeed News. Maccarone says his girlfriend had been dropping hints about getting engaged for months. Little did she know, the proposal was already in the works. Maccarone told his sweetheart that his cousin – who is a musician – wanted to feature them as a couple in his music video....

If you've wondered whether there's a downside to wearing superskinny jeans, this story's for you. A 35-year-old Australian woman wound up in the hospital after wearing skinny jeans while helping a family member move. The move involved "many hours of squatting while emptying cupboards," according to a report published Monday in the journal Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. As the day went on, those jeans were making her increasingly uncomfortable. But it wasn't until that evening that the situation went south. As she walked home, the woman found herself struggling to lift her increasingly numb feet. She fell to the ground,...

An 8-year-old boy suffered minor injuries Wednesday afternoon from what appeared to be a small shark bite, according to the Surf City Police Department. Officials said the incident happened around 12:25 p.m., near 700 South Shore Drive. Police say the wounds were superficial and the child is expected to be okay. Surf City Police and Pender East EMS responded and provided treatment on scene. According to the police chief, the victim had what looked like a bite mark on the top of the foot and a puncture wound on the heel. The bite was about 7 inches in diameter. A...

A man suspected of bashing Asian women in the face with a hammer in a series of brutal, racially motivated attacks in New York city has been found dead in an apparent suicide, police said, just days after he detailed in an online blog a plot to attack the women and then kill himself. Tyrelle Shaw, 25, was found hanged in an elevator shaft in an apartment building Monday, police said on Tuesday. Shaw was wanted for four attacks on Asian women two weeks ago. In each instance, the attacker hit the victim in the face with a hard object....

With Rachel Dolezal being in the news, I thought now would be the perfect time to write an article on this subject. “He told us that the silks he carried were the same kind that our people used in their home country, and that he was from there. So we asked him to tell us about our own country.” Scholar C Eric Lincoln wrote this about Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of Nation of Islam.The man known as Fard came to Detroit claiming to know all of how the blacks should correctly live. The culture hungry blacks invited him into...

Downtown Baraboo is about to party like it’s 1915. A century ago today, people paused at 2 p.m. to gather on the courthouse square and hear speeches lauding Al. Ringling and the palatial theater he was building across the street. On Thursday before this week’s installment of Concerts on the Square, those assembled at that very spot will witness a re-enactment of Al. Ringling Day. Four dignitaries – Mayor Mike Palm, Al. Ringling Theatre Friends President Charlene Flygt, Sauk County Historical Society President Paul Wolter and Wisconsin Historical Society Executive Director Ellsworth Brown – will repeat parts of the speeches...

In a 12-hour span beginning Tuesday afternoon, three people were killed, and at least 16 others were wounded -- including a 14-year-old girl -- in shootings across the city.. In four of the shootings, two or more people were killed or wounded, including a Bronzeville incident in which a 52-year-old bystander was fatally shot and three others were wounded.

It is time for State governments as well as the National government to ban display or sale of the Mexican Flag in the United States since Mexicans in general are prejudiced against blacks (fact).

Five boys, ages 14-16, have been arrested and booked with illegal possession of a firearm after a St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's deputy on patrol in Reserve on Tuesday said he saw one of the teens drop a gun behind a tree. The deputy said he began to draw his own weapon after it appeared that another boy pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants as he approached the group in the 8800 block of Houma Drive around 3:30 p.m. The boys ran off, and authorities say the deputy found two handguns behind a tree.

A brilliant example of what America can be.A ffew humble thoughts on race, violence, and South Carolina. The crimes of Dylann Roof were spectacularly horrible. To murder in cold blood nine men and women who were praising the Lord is unfathomably evil. There is simply no excuse for it. The moral power and restraint of the Charleston black community is historically magnificent. Nothing less than that. The love and forgiveness of the victims’ families is breathtaking, one of the great moments in human history. And while I don’t think that the rebel battle flag flying over the statehouse in Columbia...

A 64-year-old tried to stop a man from driving away in his car by hanging out the window as the man backed up, deputies said. The carjacking happened around 7:40 a.m. when the man parked at a walk-up ATM at the Chase Bank on 105 N. El Camino Real in Encinitas, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department said. The victim had left his keys in his 2009 Toyota Corolla and saw an unidentified male suspect, later described as a 24-year-old male from Costa Mesa, walking toward his car. The suspect got into the car, started the engine, putting it in reverse...

A British tourist has been booted out of Canada after he helped his girlfriend decorate her flat. Tom Rolfe was just being helpful, but immigration officials in the country felt that he was ‘doing a Canadian out of a job’, after they found photographs of him helping girlfriend Sam Edwards to fill in cracks in the walls of her flat. Tom, 24, from Abergavenny, said: ‘It is ridiculous, I was just helping Sam to tidy up her flat before she sold it so we could get a place together. I was treated like a criminal and told I have eight...

The San Diego Zoo's Galapagos tortoise Speed, estimated to be more than 150 years old, has died. Speed had been under veterinary care for geriatric conditions including arthritis and was euthanized by zoo staff on Friday. Veterinarians had worked to treat Speed with medications, hydrotherapy, acupuncture and physical therapy treatments during his later years. The tortoise came to the zoo in the 1930s as a part of an effort to help preserve tortoise species from the Volcan Cerro Azul Island of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. Speed was known in his younger years as an alpha male who would butt...

Jason King, 21, faces two counts of murder after a crash killed two medical studentsStanding in the parking lot, the two briefly argued before Talbott said she backed away, yelled something at him and drove off in her own car. During cross-examination, Talbott told the defense she could not recall the number of drinks the two had through the night. When asked if she was drunk as well, Talbott admitted, “I was.” Prosecutors have previously alleged that King was drinking with friends at the Mission Valley Hotel before meeting up with Talbott. Gary Martin, a manager at In Cahoots, took...

A Richmond police officer shot one of the department's K-9 officers on Tuesday morning after the dog bit him, authorities said. Sgt. Nicole Abetkov said the act was in self-defense. She said the dog, a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, bit the officer just before 7 a.m. in the parking lot of the Richmond Police Department. The K-9’s handler left his car with the dog still in it to go inside the station for a meeting, police said. The dog somehow got out of the car and bit another police officer in civilian clothes. The officer who was attacked, a four-year veteran...

Fargo Police have their guns drawn and are ordering two men to the ground with their hands up near the Cork N' Cleaver in Fargo. Workers at the Cork N' Cleaver tell us an incident happened a few buildings down the road and everyone was instructed to stay put. University Drive has been blocked off at 32nd Avenue South. We have a crew on the scene and will bring you more updates as information becomes available.

At a recent stop in Minneapolis, Lil Wayne had no problems getting through club security, but his entourage was another story… specifically, a story about a group of dudes who flat-out refused to be searched. The show ended up being cancelled, with the venue simply saying that “members of his (Lil Wayne) entourage refused to take part in the Venue’s standard safety procedures” in a Facebook post.

On June 18th, 1815, 400 Hanoverian soldiers were the only thing standing between defeat and victory for the alliance against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.In 1811, Napoleon's empire and its allies had over 44 million subjects and covered most of Europe. But after being defeated in 1813 and 1814 by the Sixth Coalition, which included Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and other German states, Napoleon was forced to abdicate and exiled to the island of Elba. The First French Empire was dissolved, and the Bourbon monarchy restored, but in February 1815 Napoleon escaped from his exile and...

A cat bit a woman in Germany, sending her into such a rage that she then repeatedly bit and beat her boyfriend, the owner of the pet, police said on Sunday.A police spokesman said that the 26-year-old woman was attacked by her 39-year-old partner’s feline in the western city of Hagen in the early hours of Saturday. After she tried in vain to discipline the cat, "a fight between the bitten person and the cat's owner ensued in which the 39-year-old was hit and bitten several times," the spokesman said in a statement.

Rachel Dolezal's 15 minutes of fame have (thankfully) come and gone. But because many comedians — including Dave Chappelle — didn't quite know what to make of her story, most refrained from poking fun at her expense. Maya Rudolph isn't one of them. Since Rudolph can no longer use Saturday Night Live to scratch her impersonation itch, Seth Meyers provided both a forum and and a wig to get her into full #AskRachel character on Monday's Late Night. It doesn't disappoint.