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Pope Francis weighed in on a thorny topic in California history Saturday when he spoke at length at a Rome Mass about Father Junipero Serra, the controversial California mission founder set to become America's first Latino saint later this year. Addressing an audience that included many American priests, including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, the pope referred to the 18th century Franciscan priest as “one of the founding fathers of the United States” and praised his willingness to abandon the comforts and privileges of his native Spain to spread the Christian message in the New World. I wonder if...

Though the past winter was the hottest on record, it was chilly enough on the East Coast to send seasonal sheets of ice creeping across the Great Lakes. Now that that ice has cleared with spring, Lake Michigan is clear enough that shipwrecks lying on the lake bottom can be seen from the air. The U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Traverse City noted the crystal clear water conditions and the lost ships during a routine patrol. Last week, they posted a handful of pictures to their Facebook page. The images come from the area near Sleeping Bear Point known...

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal. No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them. What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast...

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal. No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them. What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast...

Scientists have discovered that a particular type of enzyme can cut away antigens in blood types A and B, to make them more like Type O -- considered the 'universal' blood type, because it's the only type that can be donated to anyone without the risk of provoking a life-threatening immune response. The team, from the University of British Columbia of Canada, worked with a family of enzymes called 98 glycoside hydrolase, extracted from a strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Over many generations, they were able to engineer a super high-powered enzyme strain that can very effectively snip away blood antigens...

“Wolf Hall,” the Man Booker Prize-winning historical novel about the court of Henry VIII — and most dramatically, the conflict between Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More — is now a TV series (presented on PBS). It is maddeningly good. Maddening because its history is tendentiously distorted, yet the drama is so brilliantly conceived and executed that you almost don’t care. Faced with an imaginative creation of such brooding, gripping, mordant intensity, you find yourself ready to pay for it in historical inaccuracy. And “Wolf Hall’s” revisionism is breathtaking. It inverts the conventional view of the saintly More being undone...

The data obtained by Teresa Fernández-Crespo in seven megalithic graves in La Rioja and Araba-Álava suggest that certain individuals were excluded from burial on the basis of age and sex. The research Demographic evidence of selective burial in megalithic graves of northern Spain by Teresa Fernández-Crespo and Concepción de la Rúa of the Department of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country challenges the widely-held view that societies were egalitarian during the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic ages. This work, published in the leading Journal of Archaeological Science, comes from Fernández-Crespo’s PhD thesis entitled Antropología...

Chapter 3: EARLY CIVILIZATION, A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST FROM 3000 TO 1000 B.C. PART I The first civilizations after Babel were founded in the Tigris, Euphrates and Nile River valleys. Civilization also occurred at a very early date in the Indus and Yellow River valleys, but they are beyond the scope of this work. In this chapter we will concentrate on the two main civilizations of the "Fertile Crescent," Egypt and Mesopotamia, and conclude with a look at the smaller nations nearby, like the Phoenicians and Minoans. Map 4: The Middle East, about 2300 B.C. Shown here...

Nine hundred kilometers off the east coast of Madagascar lies the tiny island paradise of Mauritius. The waters are pristine, the beaches bright white, and the average temperature hovers between 22°C and 28°C (72°F to 82°F) year-round. But conditions there may not have always been so idyllic. A new study suggests that about 4000 years ago, a prolonged drought on the island left many of the native species, such as dodo birds and giant tortoises, dead in a soup of poisonous algae and their own feces. The die-off happened in an area known as Mare aux Songes, which once held...

A dinosaur with bat-like wings once soared through the skies of what is now China, The Jurassic dinosaur, named Yi qi, has the shortest name ever given to a dino: Yi qi, pronounced "ee chee," means "strange wing." It also appears to be the earliest known flying non-avian dinosaur. At 160 million years old, it is older than the first known birds, such as Archaeopteryx. ... He and his colleagues unearthed the remains for Yi qi at Hebei Province in China. At first, the scientists puzzled over rod-like bones that extended from each wrist of the tiny dinosaur that weighed...

WASHINGTON – The most dramatic moment in a historic case before the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage Tuesday morning came after the first attorney had wrapped up her argument. “Gay marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God,” suddenly screamed a protester in the courtroom.After continuing his protest, the man was escorted from the court room. Justice Antonin Scalia quipped, “That was refreshing, actually,” causing loud laughter to ripple through the courtroom. Scalia’s approval of ancient wisdom echoed his previous referral to the ancient Greeks and Romans to argue against government sanctioning of same-sex marriage....

The 5-foot-long chart below has an ambitious goal: To record 4,000 years of history in a single graphic. Drawn by John B. Sparks of Rand McNally and Company in 1931, the chart traces world history from the Egyptian Empire through the Assyrians, Persians, Romans and Huns through the early 20th Century. It’s clearly a Eurocentric and dated view of the world’s history: The colors represent different racial groupings, as they were perceived in the 1930s – “Mediterranean People,” “Alpine People,” and “Mongolian People.” The width ostensibly shows the rise and fall of these groupings, though that metric seems far from...

A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50...

Posted in: Odd News Posted: February 6, 2015 Watch Bigfoot Stalk Bison At Yellowstone National Park  Four “Bigfoot” creatures have been captured on camera apparently stalking bison near the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The footage, from the streaming webcam of the U.S. National Parks Service, has sparked an online debate between Bigfoot believers and skeptics. Mary Greeley posted to her YouTube channel on Dec. 29, a National Park Service footage from the Old Faithful Geyser Streaming Webcam. The footage was only supposed to show bison arriving at the Yellowstone National Park’s Old Faithful geyser....

MessageToEagle.com - A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury,' according to Reuters' report. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the...

A rare, tiny "pocket shark" found about 190 miles off the Louisiana coast is only the second of its kind ever discovered, according to Tulane University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists. The fish was caught five years ago during a Gulf of Mexico research expedition, frozen and then sent to Tulane researchers in 2013. They ultimately identified the species and compiled a study that was published this week in Zootaxa, the international journal of taxonomy. The 5 ½-inch male juvenile is unique because of the twin pockets next to its front fins. Those pockets are believed to...

Biochemist Phillipe Jeandet.... who has analyzed the early 19-century bubbly, says there were surprising amounts of copper and iron in the wine. The copper most likely came from copper sulfate, which vintners used to kill mildew and fungus on growing grape vines, the report said. The nails used to hold the wooden storage barrels together probably account for the liquid’s high iron content, he said. Even after 170 years lying some 165 feet deep in the ancient sunken cargo vessel, the champagne corks had not deteriorated because, scientists say, there was liquid both inside and out. And, according to Andrew...

Archaeologist Kristján Ahronson has concluded that Kverkarhellir, a manmade cave between waterfall Seljalandsfoss and farm Seljaland in South Iceland, was partly created around 800 AD, before the settlement of Iceland, which, according to sources, began in 874... “Kverkahellir, along with Seljalandshellir, is remarkable as it is part of a number of cave sites in southern Iceland, manngerðir hellar [‘manmade caves’], that are marked by cross sculpture.” ... Ahronson would not state that theories that the crosses may have been made by papar, monks from the British Isles who were said to have lived in Iceland before the Norse settlers, may...

Columbus Day is again upon us. A parade. Balloons. Cops. Violence. Recrimination. Pseudo-historical ranting. You know - fun for the kids. A few Native Americans and the usual suspects in the Coalition of Progressives Against All Western Culture will again attempt to intimidate local Italian-Americans as they celebrate the legacy of an important, if somewhat imprecise, explorer. Christopher Columbus is often compared to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. The Genoese explorer doesn't belong in any conversation that includes genocidal dictators. Quite the opposite. But Vernon Bellecourt, the principal spokesman for the American Indian Movement, has fought against Columbus Day for...