Free Republic

100 years ago today, the most iconic baseball player who ever lived made his Major League debut. The 19-year-old pitcher got the win for Boston, giving up three runs — two earned — over six-plus innings against Cleveland. In that first game, he failed to display the sort of power at the plate for which he would become famous, going 0-for-2. The rest of the season was equally unremarkable — he appeared in just three more games with the Red Sox before being sent back to the minors. But it didn't take long for Babe Ruth to become a sensation....

DNA analysis has debunked the longstanding theory that the Minoans, who some 5,000 years ago established Europe's first advanced Bronze Age culture, were from Africa. The Minoan civilisation arose on the Mediterranean island of Crete in approximately the 27th century BC and flourished for 12 centuries until the 15th century BC. But the culture was lost until British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed its remains on Crete in 1900, where he found vestiges of a civilisation he believed was formed by refugees from northern Egypt. Modern archaeologists have cast doubt on that version of events, and now DNA tests of...

If I could choose to have my readers learn one and only one thing from what I write, it would be that America's problems are not the result of blind, much less inevitable, forces, but are the consequences of deliberate political action by motivated individuals and groups. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of our ongoing immigration crisis. Let's trace the lines of influence in the open-borders conspiracy, a word I use despite its connotations of grassy knollology because in this case it is factually appropriate. Given who has been pushing mass immigration in America and how open...

“…the American revolution was violent and it was illegal.” - Bill Ayers, Co-Founder of Weather Underground. Radicals compare themselves to America’s Founding Fathers. However, it’s hard to envision George Washington cowering behind a bush while pressing a detonator. In battle, Washington rode on horseback, completely exposed, leading his army of citizen soldiers into leaden clouds of heavy musket balls fired from sneering, massed English troops bent on dealing death and mayhem. But, Washington was no stranger to valor. Prior to the War for Independence, Washington displayed the heroism which was to become his hallmark when, during the Battle of Monongahela,...

It was the largest and fiercest warship in the world, named the Mars for the Roman god of war, but it went up in a ball of flames in a brutal naval battle in 1564, consigning 800 to 900 Swedish and German sailors and a fortune in gold and silver coins to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Now, a few years after the ship's discovery, researchers have concluded that the one-of-a-kind ship is also the best preserved ship of its kind, representing the first generation of Europe's big, three-masted warships. Naval historians know a lot about 17th-century ships, but...

Naval archaeologists think they’ve found the only example of armor from Carthage to survive the destruction of the city-state by Rome in 146BC. The helmet, recovered from the site of the Battle of the Egadi Islands, northwest of Sicily, is dramatically different from the Celtic style worn across Europe, popularly known as a Roman helmet. It appears to have a nose guard, a broad brim protecting the back of the neck from ear to ear, and a high, narrow crest, said Dr Jeff Royal, director of archaeology at the RPM Nautical Foundation in Florida. Roman helmets, called montefortinos, are easily...

Archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology (IAE) in Szczecin, Poland, have discovered a meteorite fragment inside the remains of a hut dating back more than 9,000 years at Bolków by Lake Świdwie in Western Pomerania... The archaeologists also excavated a rich assemblage of objects with a spiritual association: an amulet, a bone spear tip with engraved decoration and so-called magic wand made of antler, decorated with geometric motifs. In addition to the remains of the hut, which contained the meteorite, archaeologists discovered a second, almost identical structure. In both of them, within the peat layer, were the preserved...

Someone put elk bones in a bog several thousand years ago -- but archaeologists have no clue who it was... when the bones of several elks were excavated from Lundby bog in south Zealand in 1999, the archaeologists dated some of the animal remains back to sometime between 9,400 and 9,300 BC. Recently, however, the archaeologists did a new carbon 14 dating on some of the bones which revealed that they dated back to between 9,873 and 9,676 BC. These elk bones were clearly not buried in the bog over a short period, as originally thought, but were placed there...

Archaeologists in Finland are celebrating the discovery of a number of artefacts in Lapland, northern Finland. A series of surveys by the forestry watchdog Metsähallitus has unearthed hundreds of hunting pits, several prehistoric habitations, pottery shards and a stone spearhead. The most exceptional part of the archaeological find was a stone spear tip or a possible prehistoric knife, which was discovered close to the Norwegian border. The stone implement has been uncovered by high winds as it lay in a sand pit. Experts estimate that the rough blade had been used during the Stone Age or the early metal age,...

Articles of Impeachment adopted by House Judiciary Committee on July 27-30, 1974 RESOLVED, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanours, and that the following articles of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate: ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST RICHARD M. NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS. Article...

Carson and his colleagues wanted to explore the question of whether early Amazonians had a major impact on the forest. They focused on the Amazon of northeastern Bolivia, where they had sediment cores from two lakes nearby major earthworks sites. These sediment cores hold ancient pollen grains and charcoal from long-ago fires, and can hint at the climate and ecosystem that existed when the sediment was laid down as far back as 6,000 years ago. An examination of the two cores — one from the large lake, Laguna Oricore, and one from the smaller lake, Laguna Granja — revealed a...

Any thoughts why?

Our forefathers knew the feeling. One minute there you are, like Brazil’s football team on Tuesday, settling down to start a long campaign. The next minute, bewilderingly, it is all over: Germany is master of the field, counting prisoners or — in this case — an unprecedented 7-1 triumph in the World Cup semi-final, executed with chilling discipline and precision. What is it about the Germans? Yes, yes, I know we are not meant to mention the war, or rather wars. But how can we not do so, when for centuries the world paid tribute to Germany’s prowess on the...

. July 7, 2014 Newt Gingrich : President Obama's Border Absurdity ===================================================== President Barack Obama is in Texas today. Texas is the center of the current crisis at the border. From Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, thousands upon thousands of children are pouring into the United States. This flood of foreign children is not a problem of border security. They are not sneaking across the border illegally. Under the Feinstein Amendment of 2008, unaccompanied minors from these countries can present themselves at a legal border crossing, claim to be political refugees and seek asylum. The argument on the left is...

ok Carter is still a commie

Controversial Kinabatangan MP Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin has found himself in the firing line again, this time for linking the German football team to Adolf Hitler. After Germany humiliated Brazil 7-1in the semi-finals of the World Cup on Wednesday morning, Bung tweeted “WELL DONE..BRAVO...LONG LIVE HITLER”. His tweet went viral and netizens condemned Bung for being “insensitive” and “brainless” among other things. In his subsequent tweets, Bung, however, seemed unrepentant and defended himself from the derision on Twitter. He told Twitter user @Aisehman that he didn’t know what was going on while he told @syazwanrahimy that he was making a...

The Origin of the Little League Baseball® World Series Since its inception, Little League® has shown to be a microcosm of society, reflecting cultural and historical trends. In 75 years, the “idea” of Little League, devised in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, by Founder Carl E. Stotz in 1938, with its first season in 1939; has rewarded players, families, volunteers and communities with impactful life lessons centered around the games of baseball and softball. Understandably, the idea took some time to resonate. By 1946, there were only 12 leagues patterned after Mr. Stotz’s model. In 1947, Mr. Stotz and the first local Little...

Former U.S. president George W. Bush recently opened the doors to his gorgeous Texas ranch to reveal rooms where he once hosted world leaders and where he now bides his time painting them. Bush gave a tour of the Crawford home he completed just after becoming the nation's 43rd president in 2001 to Architectural Digest for the magazine's August cover story. It's a rare glimpse at the sprawling property where Vladimir Putin once rode shotgun in Bush's pickup and where the younger of W.'s twins, Jenna, held her intimate 2008 wedding. George and Laura Bush have retired to Dallas, Texas...

A fossil found in South Carolina has revealed a gigantic bird that apparently snatched fish while soaring over the ocean some 25 million to 28 million years ago. Its estimated wingspan of around 21 feet is bigger than the height of a giraffe. …

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