Free Republic

The rites and habits associated with ‘midsummer’ clustered around a number of dates in Shakespeare’s time. The June solstice occurs on a day between the 20 and 22 June, but ‘Midsummer Day’ was fixed in the calendar as 24 June (also known as St John’s Day). Midsummer was one of the most popular and keenly-observed festivals throughout the early modern period. Rural communities marked it with Morris dancing, processions, late-night drinking, the blessing of crops and the ritual banishment of devils and other unwelcome sprites – precisely the sort of pagan-originating, Catholic-saint-encompassing mishmash that Protestant reformers despised. But by the...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The next space shuttle flight, designed to test repairs that might have saved the Columbia, will not make the March target set by NASA (news - web sites) and may not fly before midsummer, a top space flight official said on Tuesday. The space agency plans to intensify its observation of the shuttle during future flights, training twice as many cameras on the orbiter during launch and developing a number of repair techniques that could be used by spacewalking astronauts. But many of the safety measures are technologically challenging to develop, said Bill Parsons, the shuttle program...

For the first time since the game began in 1933 the league winner of baseballs All Star Game will have psotseason home field advantage in the World Sere is come October.This is a pretty significant advantage since only 8 teams with a deciding game on the road have ever one.Will Roger Clemons thow at Barry Bonds? Will the managers refuse to pull their good players? We will find out..