Free Republic

Five human heads wrapped in plastic were found gruesomely stashed in a freezer at a Russian medical center — with the troubling discovery reportedly tied to a body parts operation on the black-market. The severed remains were allegedly stolen from hospital morgues before turning up tightly wrapped in polyethylene in a grim underground room at a Moscow anatomy training center on Suzdalskaya Street Friday, the US Sun reported. Harrowing footage captured officers peeling back the plastic wrapping to shockingly uncover the heads. Authorities said the body parts were snatched from area morgues before being used as medical training specimens to...

The Iranian and Egyptian soccer federations have urged FIFA to strip any “Pride Match” displays and rainbow symbols from Friday’s World Cup match in Seattle. The contest, slated for June 26 at Lumen Field, is scheduled during the city’s Pride weekend and has been referred to as the “Pride Match.” While FIFA confirmed to the New York Times that rainbow flags remain permitted at all World Cup matches this summer, its president, Gianni Infantino, has previously distanced the governing body from the event’s promotional themes. He insisted there would be no official “Pride Match” at the tournament in an interview...

Explanation: In a cosmic vista you can never see, the Milky Way arcs through the night above Seoul, South Korea. Remarkably, this urban night skyscape reveals our galaxy's faintly luminous central region and dark obscuring dust clouds in spite of the brilliant city lights. To overcome the extreme light pollution of the metropolitan area and record faint cosmic details, an infrared filter was used to capture the night scene in a single exposure. While the filter transmits predominately infrared light, it still passes some visible light to give the scene a natural appearance. The view is from Seoul's Ttukseom Hangang...

In Part 1 (link below), I argued that the House of Representatives was designed to grow. For most of American history, it did. Then, in 1929, Congress froze the House at 435 seats. It has remained there ever since. Part 2 asks a different question: If the House is supposed to grow, how large should it be? At first, I thought the answer might have something to do with human nature. Maybe there was something buried deep in our DNA — some limit on how many people we can know, trust, manage, or represent. I was wrong. The deeper I...

80 years before Lexington and Concord, before the founding fathers were even children, Americans used events in the mother country to engineer a little remembered revolution that transformed the colonies and helped to define the nation we know today. Forgotten Revolution: The 1689 Boston Revolt | 16:32 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered 1.64M subscribers | 4,480 views | June 26, 2026

For more than 500 years, historians have debated the mysteries hidden within this famous Renaissance painting. A remarkable glass rhombicuboctahedron, an unidentified young man, and a strange inscription have led some researchers to question whether Leonardo da Vinci may have played a role in its creation. One of Leonardo da Vinci's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries | 8:34 Secessio | 11.9K subscribers | 79,939 views | June 12, 2026

The algae in the Reflecting Pool has been almost completely removed despite liberal activists' best efforts to impede the removal of algae and destroy the pool's renovations. Greenwater Services was contracted in April by the Department of the Interior for the "procurement and installation of a fully integrated Nano Bubble Filtration System designed to replace the existing, failing filtration infrastructure at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool." But the company has come under fire from left-wing media outlets, who claim a conflict of interest because a part-owner of the company is a GOP donor, and that the company has a lack...

Zombie-esque squirrels covered in oozing, wart-like tumors have been invading backyards across the United States and the reason behind the deformities is likely caused by the species’ version of herpes, according to experts. The grotesque-looking gray squirrels have been increasingly photographed this summer in US states, including Florida, North Carolina, and Michigan, the Daily Mail reported, citing a flurry of social media posts reporting the bizarre sightings. “What is going on with the squirrels lately?! This is the third one I’ve seen looking like this, and it’s honestly freaking me out,” one user posted on Facebook on June 9, alongside...

[I]t appears these two quakes may have occurred on two separate faults. Several faults intersect in this tectonically complex region. Historically, when experts evaluate earthquake risk, they haven't necessarily accounted for this multifault scenario, says Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at Oregon State University. "We always tend to kind of assume that earthquakes will just be on one fault and only on one fault," he says. In 2016, a multifault event — the Kaikōura earthquake in New Zealand — took people by surprise, says Goldfinger, and changed scientists' understanding of how interconnected faults can trigger multiple ruptures. Assuming the Venezuelan quakes...

Explanation: The Sun has just set... in the opposite side of the sky. Pictured here are anticrepuscular rays apparently converging in the east in this image of the limestone plateau in the heart of the Hyblaean Mountains of southeastern Sicily, in Italy. How were these anticrepuscular rays formed, if the Sun wasn't there? After the Sun set (in the west, as usual) its light still illuminated a cloud higher up in the sky. Partially blocked by the cloud, the sunlight produced patterns of light and shadow, crossing the sky in parallel lines. Perspective makes it look like they converge in...

...Although the researchers found traces of ancient human DNA in one pigmented calcite crust sampled in Escoural Cave (Portugal), to their surprise they also found ancient human DNA in several nonpigmented parts of the cave wall in Escoural as well as in Covarón Cave (northern Spain), which had initially been sampled as negative controls.The study shows that human DNA can be preserved on cave walls long after the populations that visited the cave have disappeared...Of the 54 samples collected, only five yielded authentic ancient human mitochondrial DNA...two of these samples showed no detectable faunal mitochondrial DNA, a rare finding that...

At a hilltop site in northern Albania, archaeologists have uncovered remains of what researchers believe is the region's first identified Illyrian temple, a find that may help resolve the mystery of the lost city of Bassania.According to Arkeonews, researchers from the University of Warsaw and the University of Tirana made the discovery at Bushat, roughly 10 kilometers south of Shkodra. There, on the acropolis of a settlement rediscovered in 2018, they exposed the full stone foundations of a large rectangular building at a site that may be the long-sought Bassania.Measuring 13.6 meters by 9.6 meters, the building has proportions similar...

The Trump administration intends to ask Congress to allow E15, an ethanol-gas blend, to be sold at the pumps year-round, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told CBS News. The 15% ethanol blend is usually only available part of the year under a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency as temperatures rise to help ease high gas prices. The administration plans to make the request when it submits a supplemental funding request to lawmakers, the official said. Several requests on budget matters and non-budgetary matters were scheduled to be sent to the Hill on Wednesday. A lower 10% ethanol...

Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold was arrested and booked on four counts of kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery on Wednesday, and is now facing up to life in prison if convicted. Arnold, 23, turned himself in to authorities on a warrant at the Orient Road jail in Tampa, Fla., the Detroit Free Press reported. He remained in custody as of 10:46 p.m. In a statement released through Arnold’s representative, Arnold “categorically denies any involvement in the matters underlying the allegations made against him and maintains his innocence.” The Lions released a statement that said they are aware of the...

Heidelberg University researchers have deciphered the inscription on an ancient curse tablet, which was once used to invoke deities and demons in order to harm an enemy. The "magical" artifact from the Roman province of Lower Germania was discovered during excavations carried out in the Dutch municipality of Heerlen. The lead tablet, which dates to the 2nd century A.D., is distinctive...Heerlen, the site of the former Roman military settlement of Coriovallum... artifact, which measures 9.3 by 4.8 centimeters (3.7 by 1.9 inches), contains three distinct groups of characters, as revealed by an analysis conducted at the Institute for Papyrology using...

This image will help us discover countless new exoplanets. The full Euclid image. Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay) Pointing the telescope to look at the central region of the galaxy wasn't just because it’s pretty or because Euclid can. The research team will use this incredible image and the data behind it to discover and characterize planets. This is possible thanks to a technique known as microlensing. Any object with mass warps spacetime. Galaxies, clusters, and black holes can create a strong gravitational lensing effect: space-time warps so much that...

Explanation: Why does the Sun throw stuff at us? The Sun’s surface is a churning soup of energetic electrons and ions called plasma. The motion of those charged particles creates magnetic field loops that are larger than the Earth. These loops twist, turn, and trap plasma. The featured time-lapse, taken over 2 hours on April 24th, 2026 by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows what happens when those magnetic fields become too stressed: they snap and expel billions of tons (trillions of kilograms) of plasma into space at millions of miles (or kilometers) per hour in what is called a coronal...

The language is being studied through bilingual inscriptions unearthed during excavations. Research led by Feriştah Alanyalı, together with linguists Michaela Zinko and Alfredo Rizza, has expanded the known Sidetic alphabet from 26 to 31 letters...According to Alanyalı, the discovery of both bilingual inscriptions and longer texts containing between 30 and 40 lines has provided fresh opportunities for linguistic analysis.Researchers increasingly agree that the words "Siruawn" and "Siruawan," which appear in Sidetic inscriptions, refer to Side itself...Alanyalı said Sidetic belonged to the Luwian branch of Anatolian languages, alongside languages such as Lycian and Carian...Alanyalı also pointed to archaeological evidence indicating close...

The oval-set stone, deep blue in colour, was framed by exquisite filigree: thin gold wires twisted and soldered into spirals, accented with tiny granulated beads.Although the blue "stone" is likely coloured glass rather than sapphire, such materials were prized for their symbolic power -- believed to cool inner heat, preserve chastity, and confer divine protection.With its rich decoration and small size, experts believe the ring once belonged to a woman of high status.The discovery was made during extensive excavations in the Norwegian city of Tønsberg, specifically in Prestegaten and its surrounding streets, where archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural...

The US military fired several high-energy laser and high-power microwave weapons for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday. The US Defense Department demonstrated several high-energy laser and high-power microwave weapons for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, Laser Wars has learned, the first publicly known instance of a sitting US defense secretary personally observing a live directed energy weapon firing. The demonstration, which occurred at the US Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, was attended by Hegseth and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael. “We have dramatically increased investment in scaling directed energy technologies, signaling...