Free Republic

Ooparts ? What are Ooparts? That stands for Out of Place Artifacts. Things that show up where they shouldn't, a piece of gold chain found in a coal seam, what appears to be a sparkplug embedded in rock that is thousands of years old and what appears to be a bullet hole in the skull of a mastodon. These things are ooparts. A Gold Thread Workmen quarrying stone near the River Tweed below Rutherford, Scotland in 1844, found a piece of gold thread embedded in the rock of the quarry eight feet below ground level. A small piece of the...

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The cross and resurrection of Christ is a present reality that attracts us to his love, Benedict XVI said when celebrating the Mass of the Lord's Supper. During this evening's Mass in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Pope reflected on the way in which the Eucharist makes the sacrifice of the cross present throughout time. "Let's ask the Lord," the Holy Father said, "that he may help us understand more and more deeply this wonderful mystery, to love it more and more, and in it, to love him more and more." The...

‘Mysteries of the Middle Ages’ By THOMAS CAHILL Published: December 24, 2006The Cult of the Virgin and Its Consequences In the first decade of the twelfth century, a little girl from the Rhineland town of Bermersheim, near Mainz, was offered by her parents as a sacrifice to God. Her name was Hildegard; her parents were Hildebert and Mechthild, a pious knight and his pious, well-born wife. Hildegard was eight years old when she was left for life with an anchorite named Jutta von Sponheim, who lived alone in a cell attached to the abbey church of Saint Disibod. (Disibod was...

Catholics don’t just go to church on Sunday, like other Christians.  They go to Mass.  Christmas, New Years, weddings, funerals.  It seems that we just can’t seem to do anything important without this ceremony which some regard as a sacrifice and others as a fellowship meal and still others as “the real presence.” So which is it–sacrifice, supper, or “real presence” and why the fixation upon it? Like most things in the New Testament, it is really impossible to understand this fully without some serious knowledge of what we now call the Old Testament. When I first read the account of Moses asking...

MCRD/ERR PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. (Feb. 1, 2006) -- To many, it is just another piece of the uniform. Each morning, Marines slip shiny identification tags over their heads and tuck them beneath their olive-drab undershirts without giving them a second thought. But, every now and then, these iconic military symbols come up in conversation, along with all the myths and rumors that accompany them. So what really is the story behind dog tags and the myths that accompany them? The first recorded use of such tags came from the battlefields of the Civil War. Many soldiers feared if they were...

We stand today at an unprecedented turning point in human history. In recent years two versions of ancient history have formed. One, we shall call ‘alternative’ history, the other we shall refer to as ‘official’ history. The former ponders over a variety of anomalies and tries to make sense out of the corpus of evidence, i.e., the pyramids and timelines, why they were built, by whom and when. The latter conducts digs, catalogues pottery shards, and tries to defend its proposal there are no enigmas, and virtually everything is explained. At one point perhaps as late as fifteen years ago...

Mysteries of the Xiaohe Tombs in Xinjiang, China The Epoch Times Jun 10, 2005 A bird's-eye view of the Xiaohe Tombs. (Zhang Hongchi) On April 17, 2004, the Xiaohe ("Small River") Tombs in Xinjiang Province, discovered in 1939 by Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman, were said to be among China's top 10 archaeological discoveries. According to a Guangming Daily report from April 23, public interest in the tombs was first sparked when Bergman published a detailed introduction to the Xiaohe basin archaeology called the Archaeological Researches in Xinjiang in Stockholm in 1939. However, when the tombs' landmark Xiaohe River dried up,...

Dear Ms Mystery Writer, I'm not going to mention the title of your book,because I stopped reading it about halfway through.(Fortunately, I had only borrowed it from the library .) Okay:You started out fairly well. I was able to wade through the relationship between the heroine (Is it still all right to use that word ?) and her demandingly pregnant sister (Pregzilla),because,after a while,our heroine (Dr.Smuglisexi) was called to the scene of a probable suicide. Once on the scene,she made some VERY sharp observations: correctly identifying the victim's condition as the result of a fall,instead of the apparent sexual assault...

Exploring the mysteries of Xi'an's imperial tombs By David Fullbrook (That's Beijing) Updated: 2004-09-03 13:49 Dynasties and empires rose and fell along the Wei He River valley, where Xi'an lies. While the emperors are gone, their legacy awaits the spades and brushes of archaeologists exploring this crucible of Chinese history and culture. Terra-Cotta Warriors in the surburb of Xi'an [file photo] The terracotta warriors, one of archaeology's greatest accidental finds, hint at what else could lie under the barely scratched fields where emperors and aristocrats lie interred beneath 500 burial mounds. These tombs rise out of a fertile plain where...

Ancient vessel retraces voyages of the past By Stefanos Evripidou IT LOOKS like a tree house stuck on a bamboo banana. In reality it's the incarnation of a pre-Pharaonic reed boat, designed and built to unravel the mysteries of prehistoric navigation. The Abora II drifted in to Larnaca marina yesterday. Weighing in at six- tonnes, the vessel is a totra-reed boat. It is 11.5 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. The man responsible for building the huge boat is Dominique Goerlitz, a biology teacher at a school in Germany. As a student, Goerlitz was fascinated by the...

It's been five months since I stopped reviewing mysteries and crime fiction for the Boston Globe, and still my stomach clenches whenever a UPS or FedEx truck approaches my front door. I dread the thought that the driver will hop out and deliver yet another big shipment of books, all demanding immediate attention, few displaying the craft and precision required to create a vibrant novel and at least one or two gems readers might prize forever. Writing that monthly column for the Globe was easily the worse job I've ever had, and this coming from a man once responsible for...

Towering Mysteries Who built them and why? An amateur archaeologist tries to get to the bottom of some astonishing structures in Tibet and Sichuan Province, China Martine "Frederique" Darragon set out from New York City for the hinterlands of western China and Tibet in 1998 to pursue an interest in the endangered snow leopard when she fell under the spell of another elusive phenomenon: old stone towers, some vaguely star-shaped and some more than 100 feet tall, scattered across the foothills of the Himalayas. Yet when she asked local residents about the towers—Who built them? When? Why?—nobody seemed to have...

Mysteries of bog butter uncoveredWax found in Celtic bogs is the remains of ancient meat and milk. 17 March 2004 PHILIP BALL Peat cutters often stumble on chunks of butter in the bogs. © Stockbyte Chemical detectives have traced deposits of fat in Scottish peat bogs to foodstuffs buried by people hundreds of years ago. The 'bog butter' is the remains of both dairy products and meat encased in the peat, say Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol and colleagues. Those who live in the countryside of Ireland and Scotland and dig up chunks of peat for fuel have...

At NASA's Thursday JPL briefing on the Mars rovers, the issue of an unusual object in one of the photos from the microscopic imager at the Opportunity landing site was discussed. On SOL 19, several images taken with the microscopic imager of the soil and the "mars berries" appear to show a hair-like object. Steve Squires with NASA has speculated that the airbags bouncing around that crater may have shed a whole lot of fabric and this could simply be a stray thread. Squires also suggested that as they move away from the bounce-down sites they will continue to look...

Source: University At Buffalo Date: 2004-01-05 Professor Works To Unravel Mysteries Of Khipu: Colored, Knotted Strings Used By The Ancient Incas BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Although the ancient Inca are renowned for their highly organized society and extraordinary skill in working with gold, stone and pottery, few are familiar with the khipu -- an elaborate system of colored, knotted strings that many researchers believe to be primarily mnemonic in nature, like a rosary -- that was used by the ancient conquerors to record census, tribute, genealogies and calendrical information. Because the Inca didn't employ a recognizable system of writing, researchers like...

Video Captures Canine Seeking Shelter Inside Family CarMembers of the Leroy family in Washington thought they were the target of a prankster when they kept finding a stray dog inside their parked car. Intent on catching the culprit, they set up a video camera to record the vehicle. However, they were surprised at what they caught on film. The video captured the dog as she opened the car door on her own and climbed inside. The family is now circulating posters of the dog and has contacted the local Humane Society. So far, no one has claimed the canine.

MITHRAISM The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras by David Ulansey Author of THE ORIGINS OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES (Oxford University Press, 1991) The following essay is adapted from my article,"Solving the Mithraic Mysteries" Biblical Archaeology Review (vol. 20, #5 [September/October 1994] pp. 40-53) This article is a summary of my book on Mithraism, THE ORIGINS OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES(Oxford University Press, revised paperback, 1991) [To order this book (for $13.95), click here.]   The Encyclopedia Britannica has given this page its "Web's Best Sites" award. The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras (Note: complete documentation for the following essay can be found...

In the old times there were two suns above the Earth. Unfortunately one got broken to pieces; the pieces dropped into the ocean that now casts bits of "the solar stone" ashore. People call these pieces amber. It is a nice legend about amber; it slightly reminds of the story of creation, loss and restoration of the famous amber chamber in Tsarskoye Selo. One woman from the Russian city of Rostov was one of the first people who believed that the amber chamber could be restored. What is more, she made first considerable contribution into the reconstruction process. In 1976,...

<p>LOS ANGELES — Robert Stack, whose granite-eyed stare and menacing baritone spelled trouble for television's fictional criminals in The Untouchables and real ones in Unsolved Mysteries, died at his home. He was 84.</p> <p>Stack's wife Rosemarie found him slumped over at about 5 p.m. Wednesday. He died of heart failure, she said. The actor had undergone radiation treatment for prostate cancer in October.</p>

The Middle-earth MysteriesPart of the joy of reading about Middle-earth is finding out more about some obscure dude or tribe long after they show up somewhere else in the "canon". Take the Druedain, the Woses as they are called in The Lord of the Rings. When you read the book for the first time, they just sort of show up and lead the Rohirrim around an army of Orcs and Easterlings.Do they have a point other than to move the story forward? Yes and no. They are there to give the Rohirrim a viable passage around the blocking force, and...