Free Republic

A $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV. It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant. Resource Adequacy Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels. The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of...

An elderly substitute teacher at a Texas middle school was left with a bloody face after a student threw a chair at him - and then retaliated by throwing two chairs back at the teenager. A video circulating on social media from last week showed the fight in a classroom at DeSoto West Middle School, between the student and Larry Brumfield, 73, who was struck in the head, in front of a group of students. It is said to have erupted after the boy, who hasn't been named, refused to leave a classroom that he should not have been in....

For centuries, a legend has persisted across the Ozarks. Lore holds marauding Spaniards once discovered a rich silver deposit within a cave somewhere in the hills, and then sealed it shut for future mining. Several variations of the tale are told, but one notion is constant, the treasure is said to still remain hidden. Many people in South-Central Missouri have searched for this fabled lost silver mine. Some went empty-handed to their graves after a lifetime of digging. Others got so far as thinking they found the site, and even had their ore tested at Missouri S&T. However, no great...

FORT WORTH -- A 51-year-old Navy veteran whose body was found in a DeSoto apartment had been dead for about three years. A cause of death for Rodney Wayne White is pending toxicology reports and other tests, according to the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office. White was found dead last week on the kitchen floor of his apartment at DeSoto Town Center. DeSoto police found no evidence of foul play, according to Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV. His mother, Doris Stevens, told WFAA-TV she didn't know how her son could have been dead in the apartment for so long and nobody...

Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate. There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here — just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes. Yet there’s always been something — something just below the surface.

<p>A man with an AK-47 who robbed customers at a Waffle House in Texas is on life support after being shot by a customer with a licensed handgun.</p> <p>According to the DeSoto Police Department, Antione Cooper, 26, entered the restaurant in the 1500 block of North Beckley Avenue at 2:30 a.m. Thursday. Patrons at the Waffle House told police Cooper robbed several customers before leaving the restaurant and entering the parking lot.</p>

Remote-sensing techniques have unearthed clues to the fate of settlers who mysteriously disappeared. It's a mystery that has intrigued Americans for centuries: What happened to the lost colonists of North Carolina's Roanoke Island? (See "America's Lost Colony.") The settlers, who arrived in 1587, disappeared in 1590, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" carved into a fort's gatepost and "Cro" etched into a tree.Theories about the disappearance have ranged from an annihilating disease to a violent rampage by local Native American tribes. Previous digs have turned up some information and artifacts from the original colonists but very little about...

Domesticated swine and Western Civilization go back a long way together. The domestic pig was being raised in Europe by about 1500 BC. Rome improved pig breeding and spread them throughout their empire. The early Christians increasingly abandoned the Jewish ban on the eating of pork by about 50 AD and it’s been the celebrated ‘other white meat’ ever since. Pigs and the discovery of the New World went hand in hand. Christopher Columbus took eight pigs on his voyage to Cuba in 1493 at Queen Isabella’s insistence. Hernando de Soto brought America’s first thirteen pigs to Tampa Bay, Fla.,...

The sixteenth century Spaniard, Hernando de Soto, is remembered by historians for his exploration of the southeastern United States, which began in Florida. A former mercenary soldier in the conquest of Central and South America, he hoped to increase his notoriety and fortune by leading an expedition through parts of North America. In the end, De Soto’s army spent over four years and covered 4,000 miles in its quest for gold and new territory to colonize. Neither resulted from his efforts. With approval from the Spanish Crown, De Soto assembled his expedition. He financed the endeavor himself with the understanding...

Europeans named the southern mountains after the Apalchen or Apalachen tribe of natives. How did the name progress from "Apalchen" to "Appalachia" and "Appalachian Mountains?" By the whims of cartographers and geographers, it seems. The steps from "Apalchen" to "Appalachian" can be traced by referring to vintage maps which provide names for the mountains of the East.

The Lost City of Cahokia Ancient Tribes of the Mississippi Brought to Life By Emmett Berg The city of Cahokia, in modern-day Illinois, had a population of twenty thousand at its pinnacle in the 1300s. With pyramids, mounds, and several large ceremonial areas, Cahokia was the hub of a way of life for millions of Native Americans before the society's decline and devastation by foreign diseases. Representatives from eleven tribes are working alongside archaeologists and anthropologists to assist the Art Institute of Chicago in developing an exhibition that explores artistic and cultural themes of a major branch of pre-Columbian civilization--the...

It's believed to be the largest battle between Europeans and Native Americans north of the Rio Grande, but the city of Mabila remains lost... A team of historians, archeologists and geologists have come to the University of Alabama for three days to study the battle.. Their aim, though, isn't to find the city, but to compile everything known, for possible future excavations, said Jim Knight, a UA anthropology professor who helped organize the conference... Finding Mabila means addressing a host of problems ranging from suspect accounts of De Soto's expedition to the possibility that modern dams may have flooded the...

Hernando De Soto's route through Florida is as elusive to modern archaeologists as the gold the famed Spanish explorer sought throughout the southeastern United States. Ever since De Soto's 600 men set foot on the shores of Tampa Bay, arriving from Cuba almost 500 years ago, historians have debated the exact direction of his failed treasure-hunting expeditions as far north as Tennessee and North Carolina. But in north Marion County, an archaeologist has found what his contemporaries deem rarer than the gold De Soto was seeking — physical evidence of the explorer's precise journey through Marion County and enough information...

Under a former Native American village in Georgia, deep inside what's now the U.S., archaeologists say they've found 16th-century jewelry and other Spanish artifacts. The discovery suggests an expedition led by conquistador Hernando de Soto ventured far off its presumed course—which took the men from Florida to Missouri—and engaged in ceremonies in a thatched, pyramid-like temple. The discovery could redraw the map of de Soto's 1539-41 march into North America, where he hoped to replicate Spain's overthrow of the Inca Empire in South America. There, the conquistador had served at the side of leader Francisco Pizarro...

It is an honor for me to receive a response from Mr. Jesus Huerta de Soto regarding my opinion article concerning his vision about gold as the only world currency in the future. I am posting his response in full below: Dear Ellie, Just two points on your “comments” on my proposal: a) Printing the money necessary to consolidate current demand deposits and equivalents is not inflationary, as the new bank notes would be entirely “sterilized” as 100 per cent collateral to existing demand deposits. b) In a sense you are right that my plan (as any other “practical” to...

The United Nations says it can end poverty, stop global warming, and end the threat of contagious disease while also unlocking $7 trillion of hidden wealth from developing nations in the process. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. In a new book launched with great fanfare at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) claims to offer “innovative financial mechanisms that could dramatically reduce the cost of managing global risks can now be implemented by governments across the world.”...

An archaeologist says excavations in southern Georgia have turned up beads, metal tools and other artifacts that may pinpoint part of the elusive trail of the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta was scheduled to present his findings Thursday to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Mobile, Ala. Excavations since 2006 in rural Telfair County uncovered remains of an Indian settlement along with nine pea-sized glass beads and six metal objects, including three iron tools and a silver pendant. Blanton says the artifacts are consistent with items Spanish explorers traded...

Cofitachequi: We can’t pronounce it, we don’t know exactly where it is, but the importance of this Native American mound city is clear. North Carolina has the Lost Colony, a 16th-century legend that draws the curious to the longest running outdoor theater production in North America. The desert Southwest has the Anasazi, the native culture that vanished in the 14th century and is celebrated at a dozen National Park Service sites. South Carolina has a combination of the two — Cofitachequi. Ever heard of it? Cofitachequi is mentioned in third-grade S.C. history books, and there’s a diorama about it at...

What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans' earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago. Archaeologist Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History considers the finds, which he could easily slip in his pocket, "world history in the making."Blanton, the...

Archaeologists continue debate, search for battle site lost for centuries in Alabama It's out there. Somewhere underneath cat claw briars or mud flats or even modern subdivision tracts, there are shards of Spanish metal, burned clay and a palisaded wall waiting to be found, answering one of the South's famous mysteries: Where is Mauvilla? Historians gleaning descriptions from written accounts of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's expedition across the South say the earliest and bloodiest battle between Europeans and Indians happened at Mauvilla, a fortified village that researchers spell a variety of other ways, including Mabila and Mavila. It sat...