Free Republic

The Nutcracker—it’s as synonymous with the holiday season as twinkling lights, candy canes, and fir trees. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet is performed by virtually every ballet company during the month of December. But it may surprise you to learn that it wasn’t always a holiday staple. In this article, we’ll take a look at the history behind The Nutcracker to see how it came to be the cherished Christmas tradition we know it as today. The history of The Nutcracker dates back to 1816 when author E. T. A. Hoffmann penned Nussknacker und Mausekönig (or The Nutcracker and the...

In A Nutshell Around 3,500 BCE in central Jordan, people built over 95 stone burial monuments (dolmens) and standing stone structures on hilltops, creating a ceremonial gathering place that remained active for roughly 200 years. These monuments appeared during a crisis period when the Chalcolithic way of life was ending: large settlements had been abandoned, trade networks collapsed, and climate data shows a severe drought around 3,400 BCE. Unlike typical residential sites, Murayghat had no hearths or permanent housing—instead, excavations found massive 27-liter pottery bowls (suggesting communal feasts), ritual grinding stones stained with red ochre, and animal horn cores. Researchers...

Phys.org reports that a new study of Scythian animal-style artifacts has been conducted by Timur Sadykov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and his colleagues. The artifacts they analyzed, which were recovered from a ninth-century b.c. burial mound known as Tunnug 1 in southern Siberia's Uyuk River Valley, feature representations of rams, felines, birds, and snakes made with bone and bronze. “Clearly, wild animals were very important as spirits inhabiting the natural world, and it's really interesting that we mostly see depictions of wild animals and barely any domesticated animals (the rams are probably wild argali sheep),” said team member...

The latest battleground in the war over MAGA’s future is one of the conservative movement’s most illustrious think tanks: the Heritage Foundation. On Thursday, its president, Kevin Roberts, released a video to defend the honor of Tucker Carlson only a few days after the former Fox News host interviewed white Christian nationalist and proud antisemite Nick Fuentes. In his video post, Roberts began by saying, “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned.” He then went on to attack supporters of President Donald Trump who had been attacking Carlson. “We will...

Roy Woods Jr., of Daily Show fame, and Shannon Sharpe seem a little insane in this clip. [Warning: Language] VIDEO AT LINK.............. Wood: I found the white family that purchased the first black Wood of my bloodline off the slave ships in Charleston ... if I wanted to today I could find the white Wood descendants in southern Georgia and pull up on they ----ing house. One day I will. They ain't got no money, though. [Shannon bursts out laughing] I Zillowed they crib, they broke ... how you broke and you had slaves? What do you bet he'd...

Looks like china is getting its own Apollo 13 mission... The Daily Mail has the details: Three astronauts already in space for six months are now stranded in orbit after their craft may have been damaged by dangerous debris floating around Earth. China's Manned Spaceflight Agency (CMSA) has revealed that crew from its Shenzhou 20 mission will need to stay on board the Chinese station Tiangong. The team of astronauts scheduled to relieve the first group had already taken off and were on their way to swap out with them, but the astronauts aboard the space station discovered a potentially...

In a tiny town called Tappan, NY sits the country's most revolutionary (and oldest) restaurant. Step back in time without leaving the metro area: tucked away in Tappan, New York, just 40 minutes from Manhattan, sits The ’76 House — America’s oldest restaurant. Though today it’s known for its Sunday brunches, candlelit dinners, and live music by the fire, this Revolutionary-era tavern was once the stage for one of the nation’s most dramatic spy stories. During the height of the war, The ’76 House served as the makeshift prison of Major John André, the British officer who conspired with Benedict...

New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani seemed to have an awkward reaction when presented with the news of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney's death. Zohran simply asked, "When did that happen?" and then nodded in response before returning to campaigning after learning Cheney died this morning. The Democrat kicked off his busy Election Day morning schedule by voting with his wife, Rama Duwaji, at a local school. He held a brief news conference outside afterward, wearing an “I Voted” sticker on the left lapel of his dark gray suit jacket. He then embarked on several TV and radio appearances to...

❓WHAT HAPPENED: An interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, has picked up speed unexpectedly as it moves away from the sun and closer to Earth, defying gravitational predictions. 👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: NASA scientists, Harvard physicist Avi Loeb, and astronomers tracking the object. 📍WHEN & WHERE: The object reached perihelion on October 29, 2025, and is now six weeks away from its closest approach to Earth. 💬KEY QUOTE: “If 3I/ATLAS is not enshrouded in a much more massive gas cloud after perihelion than it had in the months preceding perihelion, then its recent non-gravitational acceleration must have resulted from a different cause than cometary...

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney “just loved Israel,” recalls Michael Oren, past Israeli ambassador to Washington. Oren was in the room as an Israeli reservist in the 1991 Gulf War when Cheney, then defense secretary, and his counterpart Moshe Arens met to discuss the response to Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israeli cities. He was the Israeli notetaker, as Cheney sought to convince Israel not to respond. “The Israeli government was telling the administration that we couldn’t wait anymore, that the paratroopers were out on the runway ready to go to western Iraq,” says Oren. Cheney feared that the...

"Available for the first time digitally, Billy Joel Tonight is one of the earliest official video documents of Billy Joel in concert, recorded live at the University of Connecticut over two nights in 1976. Here, Billy and his band play songs from the recently released Turnstiles, plus favorites from his growing catalog of classic songs." Lyrics: Seen the lights go out Broadway I saw the Empire State laid low And life went on beyond the Palisades They all bought Cadillacs And left there long ago They held a concert out in Brooklyn To watch the island bridges blow They turned...

According to a Live Science report, the name of a previously unknown Maya queen has been deciphered from an inscription discovered last year on a staircase at Cobá, an urban center on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula that was occupied from about 350 B.C. into the fourteenth century. Researchers from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) named the staircase Foundation Rock. Although its 123 hieroglyphic panels have been damaged by erosion, David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin and Octavio Esparza Olguín of the National Autonomous University of Mexico were able to match one of the Foundation Rock...

According to a statement released by the University of Exeter, traces of 76 stone chacus, or funnel-shaped traps, have been spotted in satellite images of northern Chile by Adrián Oyaneder of the University of Exeter. The dry-stone walls of the chacus stretch downhill for hundreds of yards, and end in pits surrounded by enclosures. Hunters would have driven vicuña into the traps and then collected them from the pits. Oyaneder noted that the trap builders sometimes employed natural features in the landscape as arms of their traps. He has also found evidence of settlements in satellite images of Chile's Western...

For thousands of years, the rugged limestone highlands of Slovenia's Karst Plateau have kept a stunning secret buried beneath forests and rocky sinkholes.Now, new research has revealed that this landscape once hosted massive, purpose-built stone megastructures that appear to have guided and trapped wild herds in one of Europe's earliest examples of large-scale communal hunting.This discovery not only sheds light on prehistoric hunting practices but also challenges our understanding of early European societies and their capabilities.The discovery, led by archaeologists from the University of Ljubljana, was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Using airborne laser...

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University say their discovery of new inflammatory molecules could transform medical treatment. For many years, scientists believed they had a solid grasp of the biological processes behind asthma, a condition marked by lung inflammation that narrows airways and makes breathing difficult. They pointed to molecules known as “leukotrienes,” which are released by white blood cells in response to airway irritation or allergens, as the primary cause. These molecules trigger a chain reaction that tightens airways, and several drugs have been designed to block this process. However, a research team at Case Western Reserve University suggests...

Introduction In 1997 Ralph Raico published an article titled “Keynes and the Reds.” Raico’s article highlighted John Maynard Keynes’s review of a 1936 book by the British socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb called Soviet Communism. In his review, Keynes discusses Joseph Stalin’s USSR and concludes: “The result is impressive.” For Raico, a historian in the classical liberal tradition, this statement contradicts the conventional idea that Keynes was a model liberal.

Behind the Sun, the comet appears to show signs of acceleration beyond what is expected by gravity. And for reasons not yet clear, it appears to have changed color. Ateam of astronomers monitoring interstellar object 3I/ATLAS have found something a little surprising. Our third confirmed interstellar visitor appears to have changed color for the second time. Meanwhile, another team finds that the comet has begun to show signs of non-gravitational acceleration as it approached perihelion. For those of you who haven't been following the story of our third interstellar visitor, on July 1, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert...

Three Chinese nationals working at a University of Michigan research lab were hit with federal charges Tuesday related to an alleged conspiracy to smuggle biological material into the United States for China. The charges are the latest in a series of cases tied to the Ann Arbor, Mich. school that have raised concerns about the threat of biological terrorism emanating from China. “Allegedly attempting to smuggle biological materials under the guise of ‘research’ is a serious crime that threatens America’s national and agricultural security,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “We will remain vigilant to threats like these...

Backlash is intensifying in Oklahoma after a teenager accused in a series of violent sex assaults avoided prison time, prompting swarms of people to protest outside a courthouse amid renewed scrutiny of how the justice system handled the case. Images show more than a hundred people gathering outside the Payne County Courthouse Wednesday carrying signs demanding justice after 18-year-old Jesse Butler avoided prison under Oklahoma’s youthful offender law, The Oklahoman reported. “Ponca Tribal Victim Services is standing in solidarity with survivors demanding Justice!,” the organization wrote in a post on Facebook. “Jesse Butler needs to be held accountable! Payne county...

Updates to the long-awaited project linking Spain and Morocco suggest that the dream of an undersea tunnel across the Strait of Gibraltar is now within technological reach. The German firm Herrenknecht, a global leader in tunnel-boring technology, has completed a feasibility study confirming that the infrastructure, while highly complex, is technically achievable. Commissioned by Spain’s Secegsa (Sociedad Española de Estudios para la Comunicación Fija a través del Estrecho de Gibraltar) under the Ministry of Transport, the report marks a milestone for a project studied for over fifty years. According to Vozpópuli on Wednesday, the Spanish government has had the report...