Free Republic

Archaeologists have discovered a panel containing the only known example of spider rock art in Egypt and, it appears, the entire Old World. The rock panel, now in two pieces, was found on the west wall of a shallow sandstone wadi, or valley, in the Kharga Oasis, located in Egypt's western desert about 108 miles (175 kilometers) west of Luxor. Facing east, and illuminated by the morning sun, the panel is a "very unusual" find, said Egyptologist Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo who co-directs the North Kharga Oasis Survey Project. The identification of the creatures...

According to the health department, all of the patients have had flu-like and/or pneumonia like symptoms. However, all of them have tested negative for the flu. There have been eight confirmed patients ranging in age from 41 to 68. Four of those patients have died.

One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala in Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an internet forum. The message was in stark white type, against a black background.

Nigel Hussey, a researcher who works with the Ocean Tracking Network, says the fish some speculated was a goblin shark is actually the mysterious "long-nosed chimaera" — mysterious because they're rarely caught.

The MI6 spy found dead in a bag three years ago probably locked himself in the holdall and died as a result of a tragic accident, Scotland Yard has said. Outlining the results of a three-year investigation on Wednesday, the Metropolitan police said Gareth Williams most likely died alone in his flat. But Detective Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said the police could not "fundamentally and beyond doubt" rule out the possibility that a third party was involved in his death. Williams's naked body was found in the padlocked bag, with the keys discovered under his body, in the otherwise empty...

Reflexively distrustful, eager to make powerful enemies, the young journalist whose Mercedes exploded in Los Angeles one night couldn’t possibly have died accidentally, could he? A t the end of his life, Michael Hastings, like many of the progressive journalists he counted among his friends, felt besieged by an overreaching government. Hastings was living in Los Angeles, and at a Beverly Hills theater in April, he took part in a panel discussion about the documentary War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State. Interviewed in May on The Young Turks, a talk show on Current TV, Hastings railed...

It is the secret ingredient of many a homemade meal. But the precise contents of this tangy relish itself have remained a mystery. Until now. After more than 170 years, the original recipe for Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce has been revealed. It was found in notes dating from the mid-1800s that were dumped in a skip by the sauce factory. Brian Keogh, a former Lea and Perrins accountant, discovered the notes, which were neatly written in sepia ink in two leather-bound folios, and rescued them. Today, the label on bottles of the sauce lists vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies,...

| The discovery of mysterious rocks on the brightest large asteroid in the solar system, Vesta, deepens the mystery surrounding the huge object's origins, researchers say. Vesta is the second-largest asteroid in the solar system. The 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer) protoplanet is also the brightest large asteroid, with a surface about three times more luminous than Earth's moon.

Nearly 1,000 people were injured in Russia today when a meteor exploded somewhere over the Ural Mountains. But crazy cosmic phenomena are nothing new in the Ural range: 54 years ago this month, the northern part of the Urals played host to one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries in the modern age. On the surface, what's become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident seems fairly explicable: Of a party of ten skiiers, nine perished in the middle of a high-difficulty trek in conditions that reached -30 degrees Celsius. But the details, which are mostly based on diaries of those...

One of the things that most amazes me about the universe is its order. And its order is even more striking for its context of another widespread force: disorder, the tendency of things to fall apart. Let me explain.When we look at things we can observe that, left to themselves, things tend to fall apart and and become disorderly.Consider for example a house in Detroit (Photo upper right). Let’s say that in 1890 human beings assembled basic elements like wood, nails, brick, glass, and so forth and ordered (or assembled) these materials into a complex system known as a “house.”...

I found these three photos I haven't seen before. First glance, it seems to answer some of the anomalies with the wall that I thought were a problem with the phony president. The suspicious picture.

On Wednesday, Good Day New York spoke with people on the Upper East Side at 72nd St. and Third Ave. who described what they smelled: “It’s weird. I’ve been here about 50 years off and on and it’s the first time I’ve smelled that. There are other smells but never that.” "Like a slight honeysuckle scent," said another woman. The smell appeared to be headed south from the Upper East Side all the way to the City Hall area.

Miss Uzbekistan Mystery: Rakhima Ganieva Adds Allure to Miss World 2013 There’s a new face in the Miss World 2013 competition that has sparked the most interesting teaser. Currently trending worldwide is “Miss Uzbekistan mystery” and whether you’re a fan of beauty pageants or not, you’re most likely to be intrigued by this tale. You see, no one knows exactly where Miss Uzbekistan (whose real name is Rakhima Ganieva) came from, and some say she is simply an imposter. According to the latest panic in the celebration of beauty, charm and talents, there is no Miss Uzbekistan title, competition or...

A strange, unearthly “shriek” greeted NASA’s Voyager I spacecraft as it became the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. A strange rising “howl” was detected by instruments aboard the 36-year-old probe, which has travelled 12 billion miles away from our sun. The sound was transmitted back to scientists on Earth, over a distance so vast radio waves take 17 hours to reach us. Science site iO9 described the sounds as “creepy” and “wraithlike”.

A newly declassified CIA history from 20 years ago spills the story about Nevada's Area 51 and its secret mission — which was not to study UFOs, but to test the U-2 and other spy planes. The CIA's story about the legendary test site is contained in "The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: the U-2 and Oxcart Programs." The document was approved for release in June, with just a few remaining redactions, in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by George Washington University's National Security Archive back in 2005.

One of the more difficult Biblical themes to understand is the concept of God hardening the hearts and minds of certain human beings. The most memorable case is that of Pharaoh wherein, before sending Moses to him God said he would “harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Ex 4:21). But there are other instances where biblical texts speak of God as hardening the hearts of sinners, even from among his own people.What are we to make of texts like these? How can God, who does no evil, be the source of a sinful mind or heart? Why would God do such a thing...

National Security Archive / AP ***************************************************** Newly declassified documents, obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive, appear to for the first time acknowledge the existence of Area 51. Hundreds of pages describe the genesis of the Nevada site that was home to the government's spy plane program for decades. The documents do not, however, mention aliens. The project started humbly. In the pre-drone era about a decade after the end of World War II, President Eisenhower signed off on a project aimed at building a high-altitude, long-range, manned aircraft that could photograph remote targets. Working together, the Air...

The identity of a priest, who appeared at an accident scene, is a mystery. Illinois rescue crews spent the first 45 minutes after the accident trying to get a 19-year-year old girl out of a car. They were running out of options when a priest came out of nowhere, even though the road was blocked for miles, WEWS-TV reported. "I went back and talked to the priest and told him we were worried she would think we'd given up hope. He said 'I just want to anoint her' and so we just let him come up to the scene," New...

Mysterious lights that appeared in the skies over Arizona and Missouri July 27 have people buzzing across America, now that videos have been posted on YouTube. The lights appear to be floating in formation over Tucson, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo., with witnesses indicating they were silent. “Look over there! There’s another one,” says a man recording video of the event in Tucson. “What the hell are they? They’re not jets. We heard jets fly over us all morning. … They’re completely silent.” A woman on the recording says, “You can’t even see what they are. … It’s freaking us...