Free Republic

FORT MORGAN, Ala. – When the waves from Hurricane Ike receded, they left behind a mystery — a ragged shipwreck that archeologists say could be a two-masted Civil War schooner that ran aground in 1862 or another ship from some 70 years later. The wreck, about six miles from Fort Morgan, had already been partially uncovered when Hurricane Camille cleared away sand in 1969. Researchers at the time identified it as the Monticello, a battleship that partially burned when it crashed trying to get past the U.S. Navy and into Mobile Bay during the Civil War.

Don't get the idea that we've found every kind of astronomical object there is in the universe. In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers working on the Supernova Cosmology Project report finding a new kind of something that they cannot make any sense of. Now you don't see it, now you do. Something in Bootes truly in the middle of nowhere — apparently not even in a galaxy — brightened by at least 120 times during more than three months and then faded away. Its spectrum was like nothing ever seen, write the discoverers, with "five broad...

Mystery of the missing millionaire Samuel Israel III was living the good life with other people's money — playing a dangerous game, with staggeringly high stakes By Dennis Murphy Correspondent NBC News updated 7:51 p.m. ET Sept. 5, 2008 This report aired Dateline Friday, Sept. 5, 10 p.m. Dennis Murphy Correspondent NEW YORK CITY - No one knows for sure why the story of Sam Israel III found its way to Bear Mountain Bridge. Israel a millionaire living the high life. He had a boat, a nice house, and some cars. Suddenly, he was at the center of a mystery...

Rural Kanpur is fighting its most frightening scourge — a mystery disease that has left a long line of bodies in its trail and doesn’t seem anywhere finished. What started from one village two weeks ago has now spread to 350 and has so far claimed 160 lives. Thousands more are bed-ridden. On an average, 15 to 20 people have been dying every day; Saturday saw the highest toll in a day: 24. The district’s health department is somewhat confused about the nature of the disease that has struck. At the beginning, the diagnosis was viral fever. Then doctors concluded...

It's said that dead men tell no tales. But a severed arm and hand that emerged from a Wrangell Mountain glacier nine years ago just might -- with the help of two pilots, several forensic and genetic scientists and a raft of state and federal officials. Their combined efforts, detailed at an Anchorage press conference Friday, have determined that the human remains belong to one of the passengers on board a DC-4 airliner that slammed into the side of Mount Sanford 60 years ago last spring. More specifically, they belong to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant marine from...

It has the makings of international intrigue. Less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention a man has been found dead in a Denver hotel room with a container of what authorities initially suspect to be the deadly poison cyanide. Adding to the intrigue is that the dead man, Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, 29, appears to be from outside the U.S. No passport was found on Dirie, who is believed to have entered the country from Canada. A large container of a white powdery substance was found in the man's room on the fourth floor of the Burnsley Hotel at...

TRANSCRIPT By Keith Morrison Correspondent NBC News updated 9:09 p.m. CT, Mon., June. 11, 2007 This report aired on Dateline Monday, June 11 HOMER, ALASKA - It was the question that wouldn’t go away. The question that haunts many people even now. Lary Kuhns: People would ask, ‘Hey, whatever happened to that case with the lady on the cliff?’ Her name was Wanda — “the lady on the cliff.” Jay Darling: Everybody asked what happened. And everybody seemed to scratch their head when I said, ‘I don’t know’. Farrah Tittle: I dreamed about Wanda every single night. And in several...

Last year two severed size-12 right feet washed ashore on Gabriola and Jedediah islands in British Columbia. The feet were still in their running shoes. A third foot was found on the beach in February on Valdez Island. Police were mystified. In late may Another right foot wearing a sock and sneaker was discovered washed ashore near Vancouver. It was wearing a sock and a running shoe. This past weekend a shoe with a human foot inside it washed up on a beach near Port Angeles, WA. The shoe is an Everest brand, size 11. The sock is a Levi’s...

Seven years after Chandra Levy's remains were found in a Washington, D.C., park, a year-long investigation by the Washington Post offers evidence the congressional intern was murdered by an illegal alien. As suspicion mounted that Levy's boss, Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., might be involved in her disappearance, the case became front-page news in the summer of 2001. But with the Sept. 11 attacks, law enforcement personnel in the capital quickly turned their attention to the the nation's security, and Levy's case became a distant memory for the public. But the Post says that as authorities searched for Levy in Rock...

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed. The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- A woman accused of not reporting her daughter missing for five weeks refused to answer a judge's question of where her daughter was in a bizarre missing person case that continues to frustrate investigators. Casey Anthony, 22, was taken into custody Wednesday after her daughter's grandparents called Orange County sheriff's deputies over concerns about the well-being of Caylee Marie Anthony, 2. Detectives said when they contacted Casey Anthony it was determined that she apparently never told anyone that Caylee has been missing for more than a month. Thursday, Judge John Jordan asked Anthony where her daughter...

MORE than 40 members of the Deeper Life Church in and around Umuolighe in Alaoma community near Omoba in Isialangwa South Local Government Area of Abia State died mysteriously at the weekend shortly after a family deliverance prayer session. The incident, which occurred early Saturday morning, came to people’s knowledge on Sunday. Nigerian Tribune gathered that one Mr. Martin Iheukwumere, a zonal coordinator of the Deeper Life Bible Church, had organised the family deliverance in his newly-built house in the community and had invited other church workers and family members. Sources also said since he built the house, he had...

-snip- The Chandra Levy case is the most famous unsolved murder in modern Washington, a mystery involving sex, power and secrets. At its center is a vivacious young intern who had crossed paths with a handsome, married congressman. The story triggered months of feverish worldwide media attention in 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks shoved it aside and the investigation stalled. The Washington Post spent a year reconstructing the disappearance of Chandra Levy and the investigation into her death. Reporters interviewed police officials, investigators and suspects, many for the first time, and obtained details about dozens of previously unknown private...

Inuit oral stories could solve mystery of Franklin expedition Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service Published: Wednesday, June 25 More than 150 years after the disappearance of the Erebus and Terror - the famously ill-fated ships of the lost Franklin Expedition - fresh clues have emerged that could help solve Canadian history's most enduring mystery. A Montreal writer set to publish a book on Inuit oral chronicles from the era of Arctic exploration says she's gathered a "hitherto unreported" account of a British ship wintering in 1850 in the Royal Geographical Society Islands - a significant distance west of the search...

ollowing up on previous posts in the past couple of days about Barack Obama’s “birth certificate,” here and here, I became more curious about Barack’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham (known as “Ann”), and spent several hours reading about her. In particular, I was searching for information about the circumstances surrounding Barack’s birth. It seems reasonable to ask at this point: Is it possible that Barack Obama, Ann’s son, was born someplace besides Honolulu? Here’s a rough sketch of what I’ve pieced together so far based on information available on the Internet, but I could use some help filling in the...

VANCOUVER -- Yet another human foot encased in a running shoe has washed up on B.C.'s south coast, intensifying a macabre mystery that has flummoxed police and forensic investigators. It's the second foot to turn up this week and the sixth in less than a year. Wednesday's discovery on Vancouver Island is the most gruesome. The man-sized right foot appeared to have been sawn from its owner's leg. Unlike the others that have been found, including one discovered Monday near Vancouver, this one was not detached at the ankle joint; there was no evidence of disarticulation. "It was cut clean,...

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats. Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius. Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of “a compelling unknown force” — and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret. The deaths, which occurred 49 years ago on Saturday, remain one of the deepest mysteries...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Another severed human foot has been discovered washed ashore on Canada's Pacific coast, but police are no closer to solving the gruesome mystery.

Austin police said Thursday that they are leaning toward a ruling of suicide in the death of a middle school teacher and activist whose body was found Wednesday in Lady Bird Lake with his hands and legs bound and tape over his eyes. Police identified Riad Hamad, 55, at a news conference Thursday and said the binding of his limbs and the placement of the tape was consistent with Hamad having done it himself. Austin police homicide Sgt. Joe Chacon said family members told investigators that the Clint Small Jr. Middle School teacher had "several stressors" in his life and...

Many years ago (I won't give the exact number) I was a college student, and for a while worked in the college radio station which at that time concentrated on jazz and instrumental music (it was a religious college and many contemporary song lyrics were problematic). Each weekday morning there was an hour of what is conventionally called "new age" music. One of the new age albums was entitled New Age Songs and was by a duo named the Frugivores ("fruit eaters"). It appeared to be a man and a woman (though the pic on the front of the album...

Unravelling The Mystery Of The Kitty Litter Parasite In Marine Mammals ScienceDaily (Jun. 5, 2008) — Researchers at California Polytechnic State University have discovered what may be a clue to the mystery of why marine mammals around the world are succumbing to a parasite that is typically only associated with cats. The key may just be the lowly anchovy, according to research presented today at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston. Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite which causes toxoplasmosis, considered to be the third leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in...

Another severed human foot has been discovered washed ashore on Canada's Pacific coast, but police are no closer to solving the gruesome mystery on where they are coming from. The shoe-clad foot was discovered on Thursday on a small uninhabited island south of Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia, and is the fourth discovered in the region in the past 10 months. All four cases involved right feet, and each was found on a different island. The earlier feet were also still in shoes. The discoveries have sparked wide speculation over where the feet came from and who they belonged...

By Bae Ji-sook Staff Reporter A 14-year-old American boy died this week in a sauna in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province, on the outskirts of Daegu, however police are seemingly unable to pinpoint the cause of his death. The tragedy took place last Sunday, when Stephanie White, her son Michael and two of her friends went to a jjimjilbang (Korean style sauna). Her son went into the male bathing room, while White and her friends went to the ladies section. Some considerable time later, sauna staff called the mother to check on her son who was in a critical condition. When...

PIKESVILLE, Md. (WJZ) ― Officers Vickie Warehime and J. Posluszny Jr. have solved a lot of mysteries, but this one is over their heads--literally. In fact, it may be about 30 to 40 feet in the air. For months, the Baltimore County Community Outreach officers have been investigating a bizarre phenomenon disturbing neighbors in an area of Pikesville near Beth Tfiloh Community School. Now, they say they may be closer to an answer. Derek Valcourt reports 911 callers complain about a deafening explosion and a bright flash of light in the middle of night. "The bedroom actually lights up like...

Vikings acquitted in 100-year-old murder mystery By Alister Doyle Fri Apr 25, 10:06 AM ETReuters Photo: Archaeological conservationist Brynjar Sandvoll and his co-worker Ragnar Lochen (R) study the bones of a... OSLO (Reuters) - Tests of the bones of two Viking women found in a buried longboat have dispelled 100-year-old suspicions that one was a maid sacrificed to accompany her queen into the afterlife, experts said on Friday. The bones indicated that a broken collarbone on the younger woman had been healing for several weeks -- meaning the break was not part of a ritual execution as suspected since the...

On Monday evening, April 21, mysterious lights were seen over Phoenix, Arizona. At just after eight, hundreds of residents called police and local news media to report four bright red lights hovering silently over the city. They changed shape after a while, moving from a triangular to rectangular configuration, then disappeared one by one.

Perched on a lonesome bluff above the dusty San Pedro River, about 30 miles east of Tucson, the ancient stone ruin archaeologists call the Davis Ranch Site doesn’t seem to fit in. Staring back from the opposite bank, the tumbled walls of Reeve Ruin are just as surprising. Some 700 years ago, as part of a vast migration, a people called the Anasazi, driven by God knows what, wandered from the north to form settlements like these, stamping the land with their own unique style. “Salado polychrome,” says a visiting archaeologist turning over a shard of broken pottery. Reddish on...

A mysterious bomb-making experiment that ended with the accidental death of a government scientist has remained an official secret for more than five years, leaving his family in the dark about what went wrong. Terry Jupp, a scientist with the Ministry of Defence, was engulfed in flames during a joint Anglo-American counter-terrorism project intended to discover more about al-Qaida's bomb-making capacities. There has been no inquest into his death, as the coroner has been waiting for the MoD to disclose information about the incident. An attempt to prosecute the scientist's manager for manslaughter ended when prosecutors said they were withdrawing...

Mystery tribe comes to light in Shaanxi 03-25-2008 10:46 There is something amazing, standing at a museum observing exhibits hundreds and even thousands of years old. But how does one top the mystery of a lost civilization? Archaeologists believe they may have discovered evidence of a lost tribe, never before known in Chinese history. Archaeologists believe they may have discovered evidence of a lost tribe, never before known in Chinese history. The findings come from an excavation in northwest China's Shaanxi province. The site of what's believed to have been a major settlement is in Qishan county, Baoji city. There...

Mystery food poisoning traced to salads 24 March 2008 NewScientist.com news service Analysis of 2006 spinach poisoning outbreak in the US The rate of food poisoning from salad greens in the US is hugely outstripping increases in their consumption. Three large outbreaks in 2006 that between them made 300 Americans sick were traced to bulk-prepared greens. "For most outbreaks, investigators are unable to pinpoint where contamination occurred," says Michael Lynch of the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Whatever the cause, increased consumption is not it. Between 1986 and 1995, Americans ate 17 per cent more leafy greens...

· Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when...

Mysterious pits shed light on forgotten witches of the West Simon de Bruxelles Evidence of pagan rituals involving swans and other birds in the Cornish countryside in the 17th century has been uncovered by archaeologists. Since 2003, 35 pits at the site in a valley near Truro have been excavated containing swan pelts, dead magpies, unhatched eggs, quartz pebbles, human hair, fingernails and part of an iron cauldron. The finds have been dated to the 1640s, a period of turmoil in England when Cromwellian Puritans destroyed any links to pre-Christian pagan England. It was also a period when witchcraft attracted...

The mystery of mammoth tusks with iron fillings By By Ned RozellMarch 5, 2008 A giant meteor may have exploded over Alaska thousands of years ago, shooting out metal fragments like buckshot, some of which embedded in the tusks of woolly mammoths and the horns of bison. Simultaneously, a large chunk of the meteor hit Alaska south of Allakaket, sending up a dust cloud that blacked out the sun over the entire state and surrounding areas, killing most of the life in the area. Embedded iron particles surrounded by carbonized rings in the outer layer of a mammoth tusk from...

Mysterious Pyramid Complex Discovered in Peru Kelly Hearn in Buenos Aires, Argentina for National Geographic NewsFebruary 20, 2008 The remnants of at least ten pyramids have been discovered on the coast of Peru, marking what could be a vast ceremonial site of an ancient, little-known culture, archaeologists say. In January construction crews working in the province of Piura discovered several truncated pyramids and a large adobe platform (see map). Last week they announced that the complex, which is 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide, belonged to the ancient Vicús culture and was likely either a...

** EXCERPT ** **snip** Obama is a phenomenon in American politics -- a candidate who has ignited an enthusiasm among young people that I haven't seen in decades. He promises a nation in which, as his supporters chant, "race doesn't matter." And for a world that is dangerously alienated from American leadership, he offers a new face that could dispel negative assumptions about America -- and in that sense boost the nation's standing and security. But these are symbolic qualities. What Obama would actually do as president remains a mystery in too many areas. Before he completes what increasingly looks...

February 18, 2008 The skunk ape: Florida's answer to the abominable snowman Jacqui Goddard Deep in the swamps of Florida, something is stirring. Witnesses to its haunting presence speak of howls in the night, unexplained footprints in the mud and glimpses between the trees of a fiery-eyed creature that reeks of death. Now, a 30-strong team from The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) has embarked on an expedition to try to flush out the mighty skunk ape - the Sunshine State's answer to the abominable snowman. They have thermal imaging equipment, video cameras and microphones poised to capture the secrets...

BEDFORD, Ind. -- A rank, rotten-eggs-like smell was permeating parts of southern Indiana Thursday, prompting calls to authorities and leading state officials to investigate. The source of the smell wasn't known and may never be found, Lawrence County Emergency Services Director Valerie Luchauer said. One possibility is that it's a leaking tank of odorizer that is commonly applied to natural gas lines to alert people to leaks. No reports of health problems were made. Luchauer said the wind appeared to be spreading the smell northward. The first reports about the smell came from Orange, Lawrence and Bedford counties Thursday morning....

The Mystery of the Voynich ManuscriptNew analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish By Gordon Rugg STRANGE IMAGES of heavenly spheres, fantastic plants and nude women adorn the pages of the Voynich manuscript, which is written in an odd script that does not match that of any known language. The manuscript now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long,...

Is pig-brain 'mist' linked to mystery ailment? 09 February 2008 NewScientist.com news service WORKERS at two pork-processing plants in the US have developed a mysterious nervous ailment after using compressed air to blast brain tissue from severed pig heads. The end product is a pink food paste that is canned and exported, but the process also generates an aerosol of brain matter that workers may inhale. Since 2006, 12 workers at a Minnesota slaughterhouse have developed symptoms ranging from weakness, tingling and numbness to acute paralysis, US health authorities reported on 31 January (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol 57,...

Medici philosopher's mystery death is solved By Malcolm Moore, Rome Correspondent Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 07/02/2008 After 500 years, one of Renaissance Italy's most enduring murder mysteries has been solved by forensic scientists. Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul play was involved. Scientists display the bones of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Pico's fame has faded, but he was a celebrated figure at the Medici court. He gained notoriety when, at the age of 23, he...

Old photo helps solve drowning mystery By STEPHANIE REITZ, Associated Press Writer Feb 2 2008 A treasured old photograph, a police investigator's long-shot appeal to the public and a retiree's sharp memory have combined to solve a 15-year-old drowning mystery. State police in Somers, N.Y., tried for years to identify a body found in the Titicus Reservoir on June 13, 1993, carrying 38 pounds of rocks in a backpack. The man left no clues to his name and matched no local missing-persons reports. The only lead was a black-and-white snapshot found on the body that showed a grandfatherly man holding...

Mystery ‘mound’ to be saved from the sea Gavin Morgan 26 January, 2008 ARCHAEOLOGISTS plan to save a fine example of a Bronze Age burnt mound from disappearing into the sea in a unique £70,000 removal operation on Shetland this coming summer. Historic Scotland has given permission for the site at Cruister, on Bressay, to be shifted to the islands’ heritage centre. The unprecedented project will see the prehistoric version of a water heater, a third of which has already been eroded by the sea, dismantled and rebuilt in fully functional order. Barbara Anderson, of Bressay Heritage Centre, said it...

There were strange goings on at the farm today when a flock of sheep made their own version of a crop circle. About 100 of the woolly creatures formed an orderly ring - baffling the farmer and passers-by. But after hearing the roar of the boss's tractor the animals scattered like a group of naughty schoolboys. Snip...

HAVANA (AFP) - Cubans Sunday cast show-of-support votes for a new National Assembly which will choose the country's president amid doubts about whether ailing Fidel Castro will retake the reins of the only communist government in the Americas. Castro, who has been sidelined from power for nearly 18 months following major intestinal surgery, is among 614 uncontested candidates for the legislature, which will name 31 lawmakers to the Council of State led by the president. The election is free of surprises and choices. But the new assembly will be closely watched as it will name by March 5 a new...

Mysterious Explosion Detected In The Distant Past, Halfway Back To Big BangNobody knows how the short gamma-ray burst GRB 070714B was triggered, but a leading possibility is the in-spiral and merger of two neutron stars, depicted in this artist rendition. (Credit: NASA/Dana Berry) ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — Using the powerful one-two combo of NASA’s Swift satellite and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have detected a mysterious type of cosmic explosion farther back in time than ever before. The explosion, known as a short gamma-ray burst (GRB), took place 7.4 billion years ago, more than halfway back to the Big Bang....

D.B. COOPER REDUX Help Us Solve the Enduring Mystery 12/31/07 On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash. Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced? It’s a mystery, frankly. We’ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths...

Last Updated: Saturday, 29 December 2007, 15:17 GMT Mystery container found on beach The container is about 27m high and is thought to have fallen from a ship. Picture by Allan MacDonald Experts are trying to identify a huge metal container that has been washed up on a beach in the Western Isles. The tank, which is 27m high, has no markings and is thought to have fallen from a ship before being washed up on the west of Benbecula. It was discovered by a dog walker on Poll Na Crann beach - known locally as Stinky Bay - near...

Experts are trying to identify a huge metal container that has been washed up on a beach in the Western Isles. The tank, which is 27m high, has no markings and is thought to have fallen from a ship before being washed up on the west of Benbecula. It was discovered by a dog walker on Poll Na Crann beach - known locally as Stinky Bay - near Griminish. Stornoway Coastguard is using two numbers on the container to try to find out where the item has come from. Alasdair MacEachen, assistant director of environmental services at Comhairle nan Eilean...

MADRID (AFP) - Mystery and confusion surrounded a private trip Moamer Kadhafi is making to Spain's southern Andalucia region this weekend, ahead of an official visit to Madrid. A Spanish diplomatic source said early this week that the Libyan leader will use his two days to visit Cordoba and Grenada, which were centres of power during the centuries of Moorish Muslim domination from 711 et 1492. But "unless there was a change at the last minute," Cordoba and Grenada were dropped from the agenda for logistical reasons, the Spanish foreign ministry said, which suggested he may go to Malaga instead....

A quick request, as I trust and value the prayers of all the saints on here...the daughter of one of my best friends is home sick from college with something they can't pin down. She is studying to be youth minister and as vibrant and wonderful as anybody you've ever met. Three weeks ago, she began running a 103 degree tempterature, and went in the hospital near Cleveland I think. Temp finally dropped but all her immunities are low' they've shipped her home to Cincinnat, but have "white roomed" her room at home, and in recent days she's gone back...