Free Republic

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...

End austerity: it’s cheating us all; Jobs not Trident; No cuts; Defy Tory rule; Cut war not welfare; Stop fracking; a Living Wage for mothers; and, The Pope gets it, why can’t you? With the slogans emblazoned on banners, posters and flags, anti-austerity marchers shouted slogans, sang, and beat drums, as they walked through London in what is being called the biggest protest march that the city has seen. The ‘End Austerity Now’ demonstration saw participation by an estimated crowd of between 70,000 and 250,000, all coming together to protest against cuts imposed due to austerity, the threats to the...

Spanish and U.S. officials have signed an agreement to grant the U.S. military permanent presence at an air base in southwestern Spain, creating a center for a rapid reaction force to deal with crises in Africa and elsewhere. Authorities signed the accord Wednesday in Washington after approval was delayed when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry broke his leg ahead of a signing ceremony scheduled for June 1 in Madrid.

A local politician in Spain faced a major backlash after asking for religious symbols to be removed from his swearing in ceremony. A new leftist councillor of a small town south of Madrid faced boos as he officially took office, after requesting that a bible and crucifix be removed from the podium at which he was about to make a speech. Alberto López, of the United Left party, asked that religious symbols be removed from his official inauguration ceremony in the town of Argés, near Toledo, which provoked loud booing and shouting from the assembled audience. The United Left party...

A man has died of massive internal burns after mistakenly being served undiluted detergent, which was being stored in an empty bottle of white wine.The 49-year-old man died of internal burns after drinking cleaning fluid he thought was white wine in the city of Benicarló in the Spanish province of Castellón. Andrés Lorente was in bar Raconet, on Isabel de Villena square, for a Sunday afternoon drink on June 14th when he was served what he thought was a glass of white wine. In fact the liquid he was served was cleaning fluid that had been stored in an empty...

credit: Heather Humphries (Twitter feed)

Storms off the west coast of Ireland have disturbed the seabed to reveal two 16th century cannons wrecked from the Spanish Armada. The cannons were brought to the surface this week by underwater archaeologists and are said to be in "extraordinarily good condition". They are thought to come from the wreck of the merchant vessel La Juliana, which sank in storms off Stredagh, Co Sligo on Ireland’s west coast in September 1588 along with two others,La Lavia and Santa Maria de Vision. The artifacts were recovered by the Underwater Archaeology Unit of Ireland’s Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht. One...

Now the Spanish government is planning to tax homes that produce their own energy through solar power and store some of it using batteries. El País reports: <> A draft decree prepared by the Industry, Energy and Tourism Ministry establishes a new fee to discourage the use of batteries or other storage systems by people who produce electricity, with solar or photovoltaic panels for instance, and who are connected to the national power grid. This latest royal decree follows on the heels of an earlier one announced in 2013 that levied a tax solely on those who generate their own...

In Spain, a biotechnology company called Genoma placed a building sized banner advertisement for a new prenatal test called “Tranquility”, which screens for Down syndrome. Unfortunately, in the predominantly Catholic country, 95% of babies who are diagnosed with the condition prenatally are aborted. The ad features a little girl with Down’s and the National Review reports that the picture was used without her parent’s permission. Although it’s no secret that children with Trisomy 21 are aborted at an astronomical rate, pro-lifers have discovered that the abortion industry has waged a full-fledged attack on these innocent humans. For example, in a...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

Columbus mystery nearly solved 500 years after death By Phil Stewart Fri Mar 10, 11:30 AM ET ROME (Reuters) - Nearly 500 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, a team of genetic researchers are using DNA to solve two nagging mysteries: Where was the explorer really born? And where the devil are his bones? Debate about origins and final resting place of Columbus has raged for over a century, with historians questioning the traditional theory that he hails from Genoa, Italy. Some say he was a Spanish Jew, a Greek, a Basque or Portuguese. Even the location of his...

It's been nearly two years since Spanish scientists asked to examine the contents of this Caribbean nation's most celebrated tomb to determine whether the centuries-old bones are actually those of Christopher Columbus. They've been told yes, no and maybe. The protracted deliberation through two Dominican administrations has deepened suspicions that authorities here don't really want a definitive answer for fear that the mammoth lighthouse mausoleum they've built into a tourist draw isn't the bona fide resting place of the explorer. Even those who favor letting modern science settle the matter are loath to concede that they might have invested millions...

Young bones lay Columbus myth to rest Giles Tremlett in Madrid Wednesday August 11, 2004 The Guardian (UK) A centuries-old historical row over the whereabouts of the body of Christopher Columbus appeared to have been solved yesterday when scientists in Spain conceded that the corpse buried at Seville's gothic Santa Maria cathedral was not that of the famous explorer. Instead, the bones they studied were probably those of his lesser known son, Diego, who was a small and weedy man, unlike his father. Christopher Columbus's body, the experts say, almost certainly lies back in the "new world" he sailed to...

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/609341858045497344 https://twitter.com/TraderStef/status/609355146842275840 https://twitter.com/JAFF3/status/609343992803774464 https://twitter.com/russian_market/status/609341880623591424 The bank runs (and capital controls) begin. Macedonia Central Bank Governor Bogov states: *GREEK BANKS IN MACEDONIA CAN’T WITHDRAW CASH: BOGOV*MACEDONIAN BANKS PROTECTED IN CASE OF GREXIT: BOGOV How long before the rest of Europe follows suit and a bank holiday is declared Monday to "Cyprus" depositors? He further added: *MACEDONIAN CENTRAL BANK SEES MAJOR RISKS FROM POLITICAL CRISIS http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-12/macedonia-central-bank-blocks-greek-bank-withdrawals-case-grexit Macedonia Central Bank blocks Greek bank withdrawals FXStreet (Córdoba) - Macedonian Central Bank's Governor Dimitar Bogov has stated that Greek banks are not able to withdraw cash. According to Bogov, this withdrawal halt is protection against...

The decision comes after an interview in which a former militant revealed the government collaborated in attacks carried out in 2007. Spain's top prosecutor, Javier Zaragoza, called on Monday to investigate claims of links between the former Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh and al-Qaida. The decision comes after an investigation made by Qatar's Al Jazeera TV network, which revealed in an interview earlier this month that a former member of the designated terrorist group confirmed that Saleh had collaborated with the group. The revelation has sparked the prosecutor's reaction as one of the case cited by the former al-Qaida member...

After nearly 30 years, a team of archaeologists will be returning once again to the site of So na Cacana on the island of Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, to renew investigations of a prehistoric sanctuary complex that archaeologists believe represented the remains of the Talaiotic Culture , a prehistoric culture that flourished, particularly on the islands of Majorca and Menorca, during the 1st Millenium BCE... The ancient settlement remains are located about six km away from the municipality of Alaior. The site features a tower-like monument resembling a large rectangular talaiot (Bronze Age megalithic structure) at the highest point of...

Spain's royal bad boy has hit the headlines again after shouting racist abuse at a teenage boy who criticised him for attempting to jump the queue at a Madrid theme park. From King Juan Carlos’ rumoured affairs to Princess Cristina’s fraud trial, the Spanish royal family is never far from another controversy and now the next generation of Spanish royals are living up to their family’s reputation. King Felipe’s nephew, Felipe Juan Frolián de Todos los Santos de Marichalar y Borbón, known as Frolián, threw a hissy fit last week when, like a mere commoner, he had to wait in...

An examination of ancient remains from a cave in Spain turned into an episode of CSI: Middle Pleistocene when scientists found evidence of what they say is the first known murder. The skull found in the "Pit of Bones" site belongs to a young adult who lived around 430,000 years ago and bears what researchers say are unmistakable signs of deadly violence, reports Forbes, which notes that the scientists have assembled enough evidence to convince a modern jury that the early human was likely killed by a right-handed attacker who hit the victim in the head twice with some kind...

Buried beneath shells, rocks and sand, for 2,600 years, ...a treasure of incalculable value has lain just off La Manga...The find appears to be the cargo of a commercial ship carrying ivory from African elephants, amber and lots of ceramic objects. The find has been kept secret for the past three years by the team of divers led by the Spaniard Juan Pinedo Reyes and the American Mark Edward Polzer. The recovery project is being financed by National Geographic, who have reached an agreement with the Spanish Minister of Culture, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and the University A&M of...

A BBC documentary depicting Winston Churchill as a drunken enemy of the working class has been branded as ‘graceless’ and ‘ill-informed’ by his grandson. Churchill: When Britain Said No, broadcast on BBC2 last week, was an account of how the wartime leader lost the 1945 General Election. It showed him as a deeply hated figure among the working class, in part because of the harsh economic policies he pursued as Chancellor in the 1920s. The most vocal critic of Churchill in the programme was a man presented as ‘activist and writer’, Dave Douglass. He said of Churchill: ‘His role during...