Free Republic

This week we try and solve the Mystery that surrounds King Alfred's most important battle at Edington? The Battle of Ethundon or Edington is argued to set the formation of England and its wheels in motion. BUT... we can't seem to find its location. Lets uncover why! The Most Important Moment in England's History | 12:42 Paul Whitewick | 246K subscribers | 150,853 views | February 1, 2026

The most striking feature of “The Story of Everything,” the science documentary that will appear in theaters on April 30, is the sheer nerve of the thing. First it claims that modern science has reality all wrong—and then that we know this because of science itself. By the end of the film’s 97 minutes, you’ll likely find yourself concluding those claims aren’t wrong. The film opens with 19th-century figures who gave science a purely materialist view of reality. Clips of contemporary scientists show this view remains dominant today. “Science,” biologist Richard Dawkins says, “has now achieved an emancipation” from the...

The island of Delos is the most spectacular archaeological site in the Aegean. Scenic Routes to the Past explores the archaeological ruins of Delos, once a thriving Hellenistic commercial hub and sacred site. This tour examines the island's transition from a religious sanctuary to a tax-free Mediterranean marketplace, highlighting the remaining architecture of its ancient harbors, residential quarters, and temples dedicated to diverse deities. The Spectacular Ruins of Delos | 13:56 Scenic Routes to the Past | 58.5K subscribers | 1,692 views | April 17, 2026

Explanation: Have you ever had stars in your eyes? It appears that the eye on the left does, and moreover, it appears to be gazing at even more stars. The featured 27-frame mosaic was taken in 2019 from Ojas de Salar in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The eye is actually a small lagoon captured reflecting the dark night sky as the Milky Way Galaxy arched overhead. The seemingly smooth band of the Milky Way is really composed of billions of stars, but decorated with filaments of light-absorbing dust and red-glowing nebulas. Additionally, both Jupiter (slightly left the galactic arch)...

A new Roman adventure begins! Join Miss Detectorist UK as coins fall from the earth along an ancient Roman road—now a quiet Wiltshire farm field. What starts as a routine dig turns into an extraordinary metal detecting day: a haul of 25 Roman coins and two incredible artefacts, including a beautiful bronze snake ring that hasn’t seen the light of day for nearly 2,000 years. Step into the past with Miss Detectorist and her detecting buddy as they trace the footsteps of Roman Britain, uncovering stories buried beneath the soil. From the first signal to the last astonishing find, this...

Jeff Bezos just posted on Twitter/X that Blue Origin has successfully landed a booster and posted a video of the landing. The first person to congratulate him was Elon Musk.... https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/2045874068763632017 Kind of amazing that two US private companies have successfully landed boosters, but no other space agency or country has duplicated the feat, not Russia, China, EU, etc.

Minor Prophets Scroll from the Cave of Horrors | 13:40Daily Dose of Septuagint | 3.49K subscribers | 862 views | April 18, 2026

The sound you can’t hear might just save your house. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi blockbuster, but firefighters in California are firing up a fascinating new way to fight flames — with sound waves. The San Bernardino County Fire Department recently showed off a futuristic system that detects and extinguishes flames without water or chemicals. Instead, it uses powerful — but completely silent — sound vibrations to snuff out the fire itself. The red-hot technology, inspired by NASA experiments and developed by Sonic Fire Tech, works by first spotting flames with infrared sensors and AI. Once a...

Being told you have high cholesterol can feel like a verdict: start taking a statin or risk a heart attack or stroke. Recent studies, however, suggest that high cholesterol is not as uniformly harmful as once thought. However, the message has swung hard in the other direction on social media, where claims range from “high cholesterol might save your life” to “high cholesterol is the secret to living to 100-plus.” So, is high cholesterol really “good” or “bad”? The reality is more nuanced than either extreme suggests. The more useful question may not be whether high cholesterol is harmful, but...

Explanation: Near the eastern horizon before sunrise, Comet C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS is getting brighter. Readily visible in binoculars and small telescopes, the comet may be just on the verge of naked-eye visibility from dark sky sites. Though it was not quite apparent to the eye, PanSTARRS is still easy to spot in this camera image taken on April 16. In the view from a volcanic peak overlooking France's Reunion Island, planet Earth, the comet shares eastern predawn skies with naked-eye planets Mars and Mercury and fainter Neptune. Saturn is hiding behind the low cloudbank that doesn't quite hide an old...

The Messinian Salinity Crisis / Zanclean Flood. Scientists Found Evidence Of The Biggest Event In Earth's History | 17:28 Thoughty2 | 25.68M subscribers | 971,176 views | November 17, 2025

According to a report in The Slovak Spectator, the site of an ammunition depot dating to World War II has been identified outside of the city of Bratislava in the Little Carpathian Mountains. "Based on the composition of the finds, the terrain, and their distribution, we were able to determine that this was an ammunition depot used by German forces defending Bratislava at the end of the war," said archaeologist Matúš Sládok of the Regional Monuments Board Trnava. The depot, built in 1944 by forced laborers, was part of a defensive system that began in Slovenia and ran through northern...

An intact mortar shell has been discovered at Scotland's Culloden Battlefield by a team of researchers led by Derek Alexander of the National Trust for Scotland and Tony Pollard of the University of Glasgow, according to a Scottish Field report. Fought on April 16, 1746, the battle marked the English government's defeat of Jacobite forces, who supported the return of the exiled Stuart king to the English throne after the Glorious Revolution in 1688. The undetonated shell is thought to have been fired by government troops from a Coehorn mortar and then to have landed on boggy ground, where its...

Explanation: Messier 82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy's central regions is clear in the sharp telescopic portrait. The composite image includes 33 hours of narrowband data, highlighting emission from long outflow filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues. Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space. Triggered by a close encounter with nearby...

Human remains discovered during an excavation near Burden Lake Road in Sand Lake have been determined to be historical, according to New York State Police.On April 15, 2026, a property was being excavated in the area of Burden Lake Road when remains were discovered and reported, according to State Police.The site has been turned over to the New York State Museum's Department of Anthropology.According to the NYS Museum, museum's archaeologists were alerted in accordance with the New York State Unmarked Burial Site Protection Act of 2023.We're told the NYS Museum crew at the scene can confirm the remains are believed...

Paul Whitewick explores the incredible journey of Pytheas, an ancient Greek geographer who first mapped Britain and ventured into the Arctic Circle. Despite being largely forgotten and doubted by contemporaries, this explorer's detailed observations of the North and tidal patterns were ultimately proven accurate. The Greatest Explorer - You've NOT Heard of - Just VANISHED | 15:59 Paul Whitewick | 246K subscribers | 91,617 views | November 30, 2025

Explanation: If you live in the northern hemisphere, you may have learned how to locate the North Star, Polaris, in the night sky. It can be used to find north, and it approximately marks the northern celestial pole. If you live in the southern hemisphere, there is no bright star marking the southern celestial pole, but the Southern Cross can be used to find south. The featured image was taken in Padre Bernardo (GO), Brazil. It shows the apparent motion of the stars around the apparently empty southern celestial pole over 2 hours, on August 20, 2018. Each star takes...

Stanford researchers and their European colleagues drew on ancient DNA to construct the first genetic history of Rome...Those genetic data reveal at least two major migrations into Rome, as well as several smaller but significant population shifts over just the last few thousand years...Notably, DNA analysis revealed that as the Roman Empire expanded around the Mediterranean Sea, immigrants from the Near East, Europe and North Africa pulled up their roots and moved to Rome...An analysis of some of the earliest samples more or less comports with what has been found around Europe -- they represent an influx of farmers primarily...

According to a Greek Reporter article, archaeologists led by Panayiota Galiatsatou of Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities have investigated a submerged harbor complex off the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. The platform had been built in shallow water in order to take advantage of the natural harbor and nearby defensive hill. Pottery recovered from within the platform suggests that it dates to the Roman period. This year, the research team examined structures that had been built on top of the platform. These features have roughly square shapes and are made of stones. The team members now think that the stones...

The Barbegal Roman Mill was a flour mill complex powered by 16 waterwheels, fed by two aqueducts bring water to Arles. The mill was located on a hillside near the village of Fontvieille, and was considered "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world"...operated for a couple of hundred years, from the end of the 1st century until the end of the second century. The mills had a capacity to produce 4.5 tons of flour a day, enough to provide bread for all 12,500 inhabitants of Arles (Arelate) at the time...The Barbegal mill complex was built in...