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ROME — Long before the industrial revolution and fossil fuels, “climate change” was wreaking havoc on the health of ancient Romans, Smithsonian magazine contends. Citing a study published in the journal Science Advances, Smithsonian underscores a correlation between cold, dry periods in ancient Rome and “devastating bouts of fatal illness” between 200 BC and 600 AD. Whereas Rome enjoyed stable weather from 200 to 100 BC, it later suffered “three very cold periods,” all of which “line up with documented plagues,” states Smithsonian writer Sarah Kuta.

The Bible In Paintings ~ Encouragement for Applying and Appreciating God's Word ~ •Drawings•Engravings•Facades•Frescoes•Illuminations•Miniatures•Mosaics•Photographs•Reliefs•Statues•Tapestries•Windows• !BIBLE QUIZ! TODAY’S QUESTIONS: 21. “GOD STRUCK EGYPT WITH TEN PLAGUES. HOW MANY CAN YOU NAME?” 22. “A MOBILE PILLAR PROTECTED AND GUIDED THE ISRAELITES ON THEIR WAY OUT OF EGYPT AND DURING THEIR WANDERINGS IN THE WILDERNESS. WHAT TWO FORMS DID IT TAKE?” 23. “WHILE MOSES WAS UP ON MT. SINAI RECEIVING THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, DOWN BELOW SOMEONE MADE A GOLDEN CALF. WHO WAS THE CALF-MAKER?” 24. “GOD HAD TO MAKE A SECOND PAIR OF TABLETS FOR THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE...

LEE'S SUMMIT, MO — In an effort to escape the wrath of a weaponized federal government, supporters of former president Donald Trump are placing Biden signs in their yards with the hope that it will cause the FBI to pass over their houses. "Of all the different catastrophes plaguing the country these days, we expect these FBI raids to be the worst," said Josh Wears as he hammered the post bearing the Biden sign into his front yard. "If we make it look like we're devoted Biden followers, maybe the regime will have mercy on us and we'll be spared."...

Mysterious new outbreaks of disease are erupting all over the planet. Should we be alarmed? Over the past few years, we have all seen how rapidly an outbreak can spread. A few confirmed cases in one part of the world can become a true global pandemic in just a matter of weeks. And once a pandemic begins, it can be with us indefinitely. After more than two years of fighting COVID, our health authorities are now admitting that it is going to be with us for many years to come. Despite all of our advanced technology, the truth is that...

Everywhere you look, things are getting weird, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Throughout all of our ups and downs over the decades, one thing that our society could always count on for a certain degree of consistency was nature. But now nature is going haywire at the same time that the very fabric of our society seems to be unraveling all around us. In this article, I am going to share with you a number of items that have been brought to my attention over the past month. On their own, each one of these items...

Things are starting to get really crazy out there. In recent interviews, I have used the term "stability" to describe the current state of affairs, and some people may think that is quite strange. But I stand by that assessment. In the short-term, we have experienced a period of relative stability over the last couple of months, but of course that will soon change. I believe that global events will soon greatly accelerate, and much chaos is on the horizon. However, that certainly doesn't mean that nothing of importance is happening at the moment. In fact, the following are 7...

Former United Nations ambassador Susan Rice, slated to become the Domestic Policy Council chief if Joe Biden assumes the White House next month, is warning that COVID-19 outbreak “is not the big one” and that a future pandemic could be worse. “In the Obama administration, as I said, we had the 2009 swine flu; we had the Ebola epidemic that could have been a global pandemic; we had the Zika virus, as you'll remember, so we were very prime to this risk. We knew that we hadn't had the big one,” Rice said during a virtual event organized by Stevenson...

The best case for a right to party is in the right of assembly, placed in the Bill of Rights as many deadly diseases threatened the American population.In Alexander Pushkin’s “Feast in a Time of Plague,” an old priest returning from a mass funeral of plague victims catches young people partying, and unleashes a 19th-century rant: “A godless banquet, godless madmen all … Go back now to your homes!” “Be off, old man!” The partygoers yell back in a period version of “OK, Boomer.” Another tells the priest: “Our homes are sad. And youth is fond of joyousness.”Human nature remains...

When archaeologists discovered thousands of medieval skeletons in a mass burial pit in east London in the 1990s, they assumed they were 14th-century victims of the Black Death or the Great Famine of 1315-17. Now they have been astonished by a more explosive explanation – a cataclysmic volcano that had erupted a century earlier, thousands of miles away in the tropics, and wrought havoc on medieval Britons. Scientific evidence – including radiocarbon dating of the bones and geological data from across the globe – shows for the first time that mass fatalities in the 13th century were caused by one...

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a newly emerged disease going around under the name Covid-19. While much of the world’s attention is currently placed squarely on this new pathogenic threat, it isn’t the only disease that’s emerging (or re-emerging) and looming over the fate of humanity. In a bid to highlight these risks, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has produced a map that shows the newly emerging diseases and re-emerging diseases that the world is currently facing, and where. The map shows some well known old enemies that are currently resurging in some parts...

2020 has been an incredibly bizarre year up to this point, and this has many people wondering if the hand of God is at work. And the worse things get, the more this sort of speculation will heat up. When things get crazy, people search for answers, and that can be a good thing. Because the truth is that during normal times most of us are way too self-absorbed and most of us spend far too little time thinking about the things that really matter. 2020 has really shaken up a large portion of the U.S. population, and we should...

Scientists have discovered extinct strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons - proving for the first time that the killer disease plagued humanity for at least 1400 years. Smallpox spread from person to person via infectious droplets, killed around a third of sufferers and left another third permanently scarred or blind. Around 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone before it was officially eradicated in 1980 through a global vaccination effort - the first human disease to be wiped out... He said: "We discovered new strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons...

As many as one in five Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s during the late 18th century, according to a detailed new study on the sexually transmitted infection (STI) and its spread in the capital of the United Kingdom. Researchers used data from hospital admissions and workhouse infirmaries to reach their figures, making allowances for duplicate records, private treatments, and the possibility of syphilis numbers getting mixed in with other diseases like gonorrhea or chlamydia. The findings show a much higher incidence in London than elsewhere in the country at the time – other studies show 'the pox' was half...

[Catholic Caucus] Did You Know the Sacred Heart Devotion Was Established as a Plague Raged? Exactly 300 years ago a devastating pestilence in France ceased following what was likely the first public consecration and worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This year marks the tercentenary of the consecration of the diocese and city of Marseille to Our Lord’s Sacred Heart and the beginning of the city’s deliverance from the final outbreak of the Bubonic plague in Western Europe. Through a humble nun’s apparitions of Jesus and her bishop’s obedience to the Lord’s instructions to her, the plague, which killed...

...Prof. Haak will also try to detect more plague DNA in hundreds of skeletons from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. So far, DNA evidence from a dozen skeletons points to little variability between the strains of Yersinia pestis in such remains, suggesting that the pestilence spread rapidly across the continent. The speed may owe to another human advance at this time -- the domestication of wild horses, which may literally have carried the disease into Europe. "We see the change from wild local horses to domesticated horses, which happened rapidly at the beginning of the Bronze Age," said...

Nearly 5000 years ago, a 20-year-old woman was buried in a tomb in Sweden... Now, researchers have discovered what killed her -- Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. The sample is one of the oldest ever found, and it belongs to a previously unknown branch of the Y. pestis evolutionary tree. This newly discovered strain of plague could have caused the collapse of large Stone Age settlements across Europe in what might be the world's first pandemic, researchers on the project say. But other scientists contend there isn't yet enough evidence to prove the case. The newly discovered Neolithic...

On a hastily built stage before the busy horse market of Strasbourg, scores of people dance to pipes, drums, and horns. The July sun beats down upon them as they hop from leg to leg, spin in circles and whoop loudly. From a distance they might be carnival revellers. But closer inspection reveals a more disquieting scene. Their arms are flailing and their bodies are convulsing spasmodically. Ragged clothes and pinched faces are saturated in sweat. Their eyes are glassy, distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and wooden clogs. These are not revellers but “choreomaniacs”, entirely possessed...

One way to stop countries from polluting the air with lead is to bring back the plague. Research suggests while the infectious and deadly illness known as the Black Death rampaged through Europe and slowed industry, among other side effects, lead disappeared from the air. Scientists analyzed ice samples from a glacier in the Alps along the Swiss-Italian border, looking specifically for lead that would have been deposited from the atmosphere. The study in the journal GeoHealth found between 1349 and 1353 — when the plague was at its peak — “atmospheric lead dropped to undetectable levels.” The Black Death...

In the 14th century, a microbe called Yersinia pestis caused an epidemic of plague known as the Black Death that killed off a third or more of the population of Europe. The long-term shortage of workers that followed helped bring about the end of feudalism. Historians and microbiologists alike have searched for decades for the origins of plague. Until now, the first clear evidence of Yersinia pestis infection was the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, which severely weakened the Byzantine Empire. But in a new study, published on Thursday in the journal Cell, researchers report that the bacterium...

Y. pestis was the notorious culprit behind the sixth century's Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, which killed 30%-50% of the European population in the mid-1300s, and the Third Pandemic, which emerged in China in the 1850s. Earlier putative plagues, such as the Plague of Athens nearly 2,500 years ago and the second century's Antonine Plague, have been linked to the decline of Classical Greece and the undermining of the Roman army. However, it has been unclear whether Y. pestis could have been responsible for these early epidemics because direct molecular evidence for this bacterium has not been obtained from...