Free Republic

A 57-year-old Wisconsin woman received superficial wounds to her right buttock earlier this year when a concealed firearm on her person was subjected to the powerful magnetism of an MRI device. Though her injuries were relatively minor, consisting of a clean entry and exit through subcutaneous tissue, the incident is yet another reminder of the potentially deadly consequences of taking a loaded firearm into places where loaded firearms have no place. Detailed in a report by the US Food and Drug Administration, the case follows a shockingly similar incident that took place in Brazil just a few months prior, in...

For the better part of four centuries, Greenland's southern coast defined the westernmost edge of Viking occupation. Seduced by visions of verdant hills and fertile ground, in the late 10th century waves of Norse migrants set sail in hopes of an easier life abroad. At its peak, the colony's population numbered in the thousands, spread out across three major settlements. And then it ended. No word of hardship. No record of struggle. By the middle of the 15th century, the Norse experiment in Greenland was a bust. New research suggests we might have had it all wrong about the prime...

Footprints on the Ciampate del Diavolo. (edmondo gnerre/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0) ============================================================================================= According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock. The tracks are known as the "Ciampate del Diavolo"' or "Devil's Trail" – but details published in 2020 reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they came to be. The mysterious footprints are well known to those living near Roccamonfina, an extinct volcano in southern Italy that hasn't erupted in tens of thousands of years. Since 2001, researchers have...