Free Republic

Police are hunting for four thugs wearing Yankees baseball caps who attacked a veteran Boston Fire Department commander outside a Charlestown firehouse, leaving him with a broken eye socket and 14 stitches across his forehead. But the deepest wound Lt. Christopher Corwin suffered in the assault was that his injuries forced him to miss a fellow firefighter’s funeral yesterday. Corwin, 42, was helping a tractor-trailer driver turn around, using the apron of Ladder 9/Engine 32’s lot in Sullivan Square around 11:30 p.m. Sunday night, when a dark-colored sedan allegedly tried to race around the truck, almost hitting another firefighter.

Sights of Silence By RICHARD RAGAN as told to JAMES BROOKE Published: May 23, 2004 North Korea is a whisker smaller than my home state, Mississippi. But when I heard about the explosion last month at Ryongchon train station, I knew I was in for a long, hard drive. As the crow flies, it was 300 miles. But I was in the northeast corner of the country, near the Russian border, when I heard the news on the BBC. With North Korea's bumpy dirt roads and circuitous routes, our convoy of white Toyota Land Cruisers faced a three-day, 800-mile road...

Archaeology / Judging by these remains, the Tanakhic description is anchored in reality By Ran Shapira Unlike other cities from the biblical period, Bethsaida has been well preserved. Buildings discovered there indicate an organized and stable society from the 10th century B.C.E. A road paved with basalt stones, four meters in width, leads to the gate of the city of Bethsaida, which overlooks Lake Kinneret from the northeast. About 50 meters of the road were exposed during the most recent digging seasons at the site. Dr. Rami Arav says that an investigation with ground-penetrating radar revealed that the paved road...

THE GREAT HERESIESby Hilaire BellocIntroduction: HeresyWhat is a heresy, and what is the historical importance of such a thing? Like most modern words, "Heresy" is used both vaguely and diversely. It is used vaguely because the modern mind is as averse to precision in ideas as it is enamored of precision in measurement. It is used diversely because, according to the man who uses it, it may represent any one of fifty things. Today, with most people (of those who use the English language), the word "Heresy" connotes bygone and forgotten quarrels, an old prejudice against rational examination. Heresy is...

It would be a great help if more FReepers would fill out their profile page. Come on now; some of you have been here for years and have not so much as a state flag flying. You don't need to tell your life story, but at least a state or national flag would help. For instance, I know there's more Wisconsin FReepers out there than are on the WI location page. How can anyone alert you to the upcoming (state) FReeper event UNLESS your screen name is on the (state) page?