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Watch full metal jousting tonight at 10 est on history channel. My son in law is Josh Knowles. He is made fun of on "The Soup" last week. have you ever been made fun of on "The soup"? Pretty kewl!

When opium was cheaper than whiskey – and Great Britain waged a "wicked" drug war When Opium Was Cheaper Than Whiskey - and Great Britain waged a "wicked" drug war The bottles have a beautiful aqua color to them. If you hold them up to the light, rainbows fire across the delicate patina. But their beauty belies the deadly reality behind the delicate hues. The bottles once held opium based "elixirs," such as Dr. McMunn's Elixir of Opium, most claiming to be a cure for a host of ailments, including the relief of "convulsions and spasmodic action," as well as...

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It seems a mystery worthy of Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's fictional Belgian detective: A lord goes missing from his chateau, leaving behind a spent cartridge and a trail of blood. His body is discovered 15 days later, buried in a forest. Belgian newspapers Saturday were chewing over what's being called the "Murder at the Castle" -- the case of 34-year-old Stijn Saelens, the lord of Wingene Castle. And the speculation, fueled by police arrests and questioning, has run rampant. Was he done in by his in-laws, who opposed his plan to move to Australia with his wife and four children...

This was sent to me via email. A good read. 1899 A Message to Garcia By Elbert Hubbard In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly. What to do! Some one said to the President,...

Now we know why Hollywood & Broadway liberals love Communism. Lots of job opportunities in "all singing , all dancing musical extravaganzas"! "http://www.wimp.com/ceausescuvisit/"

"Many Americans, particularly many Southerners, observe academia's agenda-motivated analysis and respond with a collective yawn. This infuriates and frustrates the "professionals." Academic historians then fume, pout, and spout forth even more of what caused the yawn to begin with. While not providing much real value, the whole spectacle does, nonetheless, make for some great entertainment."

As much as Foley likes discovering shipwrecks -- he's found or helped find 26 in the past 14 years -- he doesn't much like spending time looking for them, at least not in the conventional ways. Rather than sending dive teams down to survey 1,000-foot transects one fin kick at a time, Foley prefers to use autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to survey huge tracts of seafloor. Where the robots don't work well, Foley sends down divers armed with closed-circuit rebreathers and thrusters, allowing them to cover more ground. He wants to go faster, he says, because he needs a lot...

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Winning The Future. Greater Together. We Don't Quit. They may not be official but those are all phrases that could in one form or another be candidates to become President Barack Obama's re-election slogan. Advisers say a fresh slogan to replace the winning "Change we can believe in" mantra of 2008, is unlikely to appear before Obama knows who his Republican opponent will be and starts big campaign travel swings, likely in the spring or summer. His campaign posters now say simply, "Obama 2012."

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“If you could even guess the nature of this castle’s secret,” said Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore, “you would get down on your knees and thank God it was not yours.” That awful secret was once the talk of Europe. From perhaps the 1840s until 1905, the Earl’s ancestral seat at Glamis Castle, in the Scottish lowlands, was home to a “mystery of mysteries”—an enigma that involved a hidden room, a secret passage, solemn initiations, scandal, and shadowy figures glimpsed by night on castle battlements. The conundrum engaged two generations of high society until, soon after 1900, the secret...

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Sean Penn Should Return His Malibu Estate To The Mexicans By Tim Stanley February 15th, 2012 Ignore the hippie visuals: Sean Penn is an imperialist lackey I’d like to make a statement about the growing crisis in the Americas. It’s time for justice. It’s time for liberty. It’s time to end the ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology. It’s time Sean Penn handed his Malibu estate back to the Mexicans. Sean Penn pretends to be a friend of the developing world, but really he is not. To be fair, his recent call for the Falkland Islands to be returned...

California is in the middle of a far-reaching demographic shift: Hispanics, who already constitute a majority of the state’s schoolchildren, will be a majority of its workforce and of its population in a few decades. This is an even more momentous development than it seems. Unless Hispanics’ upward mobility improves, the state risks becoming more polarized economically and more reliant on a large government safety net. And as California goes, so goes the nation, whose own Hispanic population shift is just a generation or two behind. The scale and speed of the Golden State’s ethnic transformation are unprecedented. In the...

Twelve times the guy ran for President - twelve times he failed. Maybe they could dig him up! Just kidding. An Eisenhower would be fine with me, however. Isn't there anybody out there? Anybody?

NIAGARA FALLS — A bi-national opinion poll measuring attitudes of the War of 1812 shows that Canadians consider the war vital to identifying their nationhood but Americans are more likely to commemorate the 200-year anniversary. At a cursory glance of the budgets on both sides of the border to mark the bicentennial, it’s hard to imagine the Americans can match the Canadians in observing the milestone. While the majority of those surveyed agreed the war significantly affected their national identities, more Canadians identified outcomes of the war (77 percent) than Americans (64 percent.)

Retired Rear Admiral George Worthington, former commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, told The Daily Caller that there are many people more worthy of a ship bearing their name. “Here is the issue. There are a lot of dead Marines out there whose names could go on anything that appears to be an amphibious ship,” he said, explaining that a past recipient of the Medal of Honor, Dakota Meyer, might be a good candidate. Worthington added his email “inbox” has been filled with messages from military friends who are “shocked and angered” by the decision. “We think fallen Marines...

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MOUNT VERNON, Va., Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, celebrates our first president's birthday with three days of special events including an outdoor cooking demonstration by celebrated chefs, a new food exhibition with more than 125 objects from the Washingtons' kitchen, a surprise birthday celebration for "George Washington", book signing with PBS's A Taste of History host Chef Walter Staib, and much more! Saturday and Sunday events are included in Estate admission, and admission to all events on Monday, February 20, events are FREE in honor of George Washington's birthday! Saturday, February 18All events...

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But for the glow from the campfire, it is impenetrably dark. Never are there stars, as if that would be too much to hope for. Instead, beyond the rock overhang, it's pouring, waves of water relentlessly slapping the giant fronds of the jungle. It always seems to rain at night here in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. This is why Lidia and what's left of her people, the Meakambut, seek refuge in rock shelters -- they're dry. Located high in the cliffs, sometimes requiring a treacherous climb up vines, caves are also natural fortresses that once protected the Meakambut...

Crammed uncomfortably in the front seat of a van, forced to sit at a 45-degree angle to avoid a head-on collision between my knees and the gear box, I'm surprised and relieved when my seatmate notices my pained grimace and graciously offers to share his legroom. "Stretch your legs out, there's room here," says Rabbi Yitzchok Meyer Landau, the spiritual leader of the famed Khal Veretzky (fondly known as "Rav Landau's") at the corner of Avenue L and East 9th Street in Midwod, Brooklyn. Sharing tight quarters is part of the Landau heritage, as I would soon see for myself....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U73xKgbXh68&feature=channel_video_title

Extremely rare and striking photos of the days leading up to and after the historic D-Day invasion have been put on display, nearly 70 years after World War II's dramatic turning point. The full-colour images, taken by photographer Frank Scherschel, display anxious American soldiers as they prepared for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy.

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A city in ruins: Stunning photo taken from kite that captures devastation from 1906 earthquake in San Francisco This rarely seen image of the city of San Fransisco lying in ruins after the devastating earthquake of 1906 was captured by an ingenious photographer using a camera attached kites. The panoramic shot, which is of outstanding quality considering the basic equipment available, shows the full scale of the disaster which claimed the lives of over 3,000, injured 225,000 and caused $400,000,000 worth of property damage. Commercial photographer George Lawrence, who used home-made large format cameras, was well known at the time...

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Theme from the Last of the Mohegans - Full Instrumental Also known as The Gael

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmqoCHR14n8

The Vikings are both famous and notorious for their liking of beer and mead and archaeologists have discussed for years whether Eric the Red (ca 950-1010) and his followers had to make do without the golden drink when they settled in Greenland around the year 1,000: The climate was mild when they landed, but was it warm enough for growing barley? Researchers from the National Museum in Copenhagen say the answer to the question is 'yes'. In a unique find, they uncovered tiny fragments of charred barley grains in a Viking midden on Greenland. The find is final proof that...

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Abbreviated title: The 'Pompeii' of the Western Front: Archaeologists find the bodies of 21 tragic World War One German soldiers in perfectly preserved trenches where they were buried alive by an Allied shell The bodies of 21 German soldiers entombed in a perfectly preserved World War One shelter have been discovered 94 years after they were killed. The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when a huge Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918, causing it to cave in. Thirteen bodies were recovered from the underground shelter, but the remaining men had...

Washington, gazing upon his companion with that strange look of dignity which he alone commanded, related the event that occurred that day. "This afternoon, as I was sitting at this table engaged in preparing a dispatch, something seemed to disturb me. Looking up, I beheld standing opposite me a singularly beautiful female. So astonished was I, for I had given strict orders not to be disturbed, that it was some moments before I found language to inquire the cause of her presence. A second, a third and even a fourth time did I repeat my question, but received no answer...

Pupils at St Mary’s RC Primary School were treated to a special performance from The Highlanders army pipe band on Thursday before many received lessons in how to play the instruments. Drum Major (Sergeant) Danny Brown introduced four pipers and three drummers from The 4th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland to the children to help promote the music and instruments to the next generation. Drum Major Brown works with the community engagement project run by the army in Scotland called The Pipers Trail. The army works with the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association, National Piping Centre and local...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLt05sN7vK0&feature=player_embedded

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Restored, rare document will go on public display later this month. Starting next week, anyone visiting the U.S. National Archives can gaze at the only original Magna Carta in the United States, thanks, in part, to the work of Iowans. Nestled perfectly beneath the 700-year-old legal document is a sheet of pure white cotton paper, specially made by the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book. “Anyone from the state of Iowa can now go to the National Archives rotunda, get in line, wait your turn, and you can literally lean down your face a foot away from [the documents],”...

Nearly 200 years after Jane Austen‘s untimely death, crime novelist Lindsay Ashford has come up with a new explanation: arsenic poisoning. Austen, the English author of such classic novels as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility,” died in 1817 at age 41. Her death has been attributed to everything from cancer to Addison’s disease. But Ashford, who moved to Austen’s village of Chawton three years ago and started writing her new crime novel in the former home of Austen’s brother, stumbled across another possibility — that Austen died of arsenic poisoning. ... Ashford recognized that Austen’s symptoms could be...

As my colleague David M. Herszenhorn reports, scientists are poised to take some highly anticipated samples from a deep subglacial lake in Antarctica, saying on Wednesday that they had succeeded in boring through more than two miles of ice. The state-financed broadcaster Russia Today posted video of the researchers at the frigid Antarctic outpost, including clips of them snowmobiling around the endless expanse of ice and snow and watching supply planes land. What evolutionary secrets Lake Vostok — named after the Russian research station above it — may hold after being sealed under ice for millions of years has tantalized...

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Freepers Everywhere! Will you be at CPAC? If so, I hope to meet you! Look for Pamela Geller table and Marinka Peschmann's table in the Exhibit Hall space on the lower level of the Marriott. I will be there and hope to meet you! Pamela Geller's MUST READ book, "Stop The Islamization Of America will be available. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/atlas-articles/ Marinks Peschmann's MUST READ book, "The Whistleblower" (How the Clinton White HouseStayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House and on the World Stage) will be available too! http://www.marinkapeschmann.com/2012/02/08/in-the-dc-area-come-to-my-book-signing-at-cpac/ Also look for the events on Friday that you won't want...

In tribute to the brave men of Culpeper, Orange, and Fauquier counties who helped establish our lasting heritage of Freedom and the identity we all share today The Minute Battalion of Culpeper County, Virginia 1775 - 1776 Left to Right: Private Man, Officer in Captain Taliaferro's Company, Private Man, Officer in Captain Wm. Pickett's Company Military Uniforms in America Plate No. 259 Copyright 1973 by Company of Military Historians Provided to Culpepper Connections! by Chip Culpepper who received it from Gene Norris Culpepper. At the Virginia convention held May 1775, in Richmond, Patrick Henry and the Committee of Safety ordered...

Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, commemorated by the Atlantic in a special issue, now available online. Although photography was still in its infancy, Civil War photographers produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of war to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. As brother fought brother and the future of the United States was uncertain, the public appetite for information was fed by these images from the trenches, rivers, farms and cities that became fields of battle. Today's collection is part 1 of 3, covering the places of...

America and Eurasia will crash into each other over the north pole in 50-200 million years time, according to scientists at Yale University. They predict Africa and Australia will join the new "supercontinent" too, which will mark the next coming together of the Earth's land masses. The continents are last thought to have come together 300 million years ago into a supercontinent called Pangaea. Details are published in the journal Nature. The land masses of the Earth are constantly moving as the Earth's as tectonic activity occurs. This generates areas such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where Iceland has formed, and...

The scattered islands of the vast Pacific Ocean were settled by seafarers who set out from the eastern coasts and islands of Asia and traveled thousands of kilometers by boat. Meanwhile pre-Columbian South America was populated by people who crossed a now-vanished land bridge far to the north. Did these two groups ever meet in the New World? There's a good chance of that, according to a new study, which finds evidence that Easter Islanders may have reached South America and mixed with the Native Americans already there. University of Oslo immunologist Erik Thorsby first began analyzing the people of...

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ore than 5,400 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March. The number of dead in Homs alone is now over over 200 and climbing. The Assad regime says terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the country are behind the uprising, not people seeking to transform the authoritarian regime. He’s right, it was Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood that claimed responsibility in December 2011 for two suicide bombings in Damascus that killed 44 people. Yet, you have Israeli politicians like Moshe (Boge) Ya’alon telling Army Radio that the end of Assad’s regime could bring ‘relatively moderate’...

According to Michael Walsh, almost 20% of both Republicans and Indepedents along with 30% of Democrats have vowed that they will not vote for a Mormon for president. Yet the Republican establishment naively and foolishly believes this a non-issue. By November, chances are that many Americans will be given a first class education on the history of Mormonism, which will be very difficult to overcome at the ballot box ...

Nice google script for Charles Dickens' 200th birthday. Happy Birthday Boz!