Free Republic

<p>Investigators plan to dig up an Oakland County field Monday in hopes of discovering the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, an FBI spokesperson confirms to FOX 2.</p> <p>Monday's dig comes after aging mobster Tony Zerilli said earlier this year that Hoffa's body was buried in the northern Oakland Township field, about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen in July 1975.</p>

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) A rolling stone gathers no moss – but on Mars it can nevertheless cloak itself in mystery. This NASA image shows the track of a boulder that rolled across the Nili Fossae region of Mars. For now it is anyone's guess what set the rock in motion. This false-colour picture (click on it for higher resolution) was posted on 7 June to the Beautiful Mars Tumblr feed, a collection of high-resolution shots from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows dark, jagged tracks left in the soil by a lumpy boulder, probably...

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Whatever Tuesday's Redstone radar blob was, it was unlike anything most professional radar watchers have ever seen. Speculation has centered on secret defense testing at Redstone Arsenal, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville has said it has found feathery pieces of fiberglass near the area. All this has led Huntsville scientists to be discreet in their public speculation so far in deference to national security. But they are shedding more light on an event that exploded on radar like a thunderstorm, spread nearly 10 miles wide and a mile high, and lasted for nine hours -...

The parents of a U.S. engineer found dead in Singapore last year said on Wednesday they will not take part in the rest of a coroner’s inquiry into his death, which they say was linked to a project involving the transfer of sensitive technology to China. In a statement issued through their lawyers, Rick and Mary Todd said they had lost confidence in the system investigating the death of their 31-year-old son, Shane, who was found hanging in his Singapore apartment last June. The Todds did not appear in court on Wednesday, the day after a U.S. medical examiner they...

QUINCY (CBS) – A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen: Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so? “It’s frightening, not just weird, but frightening,” said one resident of the Wollaston section. Every night for nearly the last two weeks, residents have spotted a low-flying aircraft doing loops over the city. WBZ has learned the FAA knows what’s going on, but the agency isn’t telling. “I mean it is strange. I don’t know if they’re looking for somebody, I have no idea,” one resident told WBZ. It’s not the state or...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has broken its silence on the most popular file in its digital vault. The one-page memo, dated March 22, 1950, was addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, then head of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office. It relayed some information from an informant. The subject: FLYING SAUCERS INFORMATION CONCERNING "An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico," Hottel writes. "They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three...

Origin of Theiler hepatitis was a century-old puzzle. For almost 100 years, veterinarians have puzzled over the cause of Theiler disease, a mysterious type of equine hepatitis that is linked to blood products and causes liver failure in up to 90% of afflicted animals. A team of US scientists has now discovered that the disease is caused by a virus that shares just 35% of its amino acid sequences with its closest-known relative. The team named it Theiler disease-associated virus (TDAV), and published the discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. Led by Amy Kistler at the...

Today's feature is Gary Cooper's final film, an underrated, British suspense thriller directed by Michael Anderson("Around The World In 80 Days", "Logan's Run") and scripted by Joseph Stefano("Psycho").

(CNS/Paul Haring) By Francis X. RoccaCatholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's historic decision to resign at the end of February has astonished and perplexed the world in many ways, not least because of what might be called the mystery of the missing encyclical. In December, the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said that Pope Benedict's fourth encyclical would be released in the first half of 2013. Treating the subject of faith, the encyclical would complete a trilogy on the three "theological virtues," following "Deus Caritas Est" (2005) on charity, and "Spe Salvi" (2007) on...

This is an excerpt to wet your desire for an interesting book. “They had no idea what was coming. They thought it would all go on as it always had, as if it would never change. They had no idea what was about to happen or what it was all leading to. Everything they had ever known, up to that point, their entire world, would vanish.” “Who?” “An ancient people…an ancient kingdom. Israel, the northern kingdom, eighth century B.C. They should have known. It was all there from the beginning, but they forgot.” “Forgot what?” “Their purpose, their foundation, that...

(CNSNews.com) – The White House isn’t saying where President Barack Obama was, what he did or whom he spoke to between 5:30 p.m. Sept. 11, 2012—when he finished a meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, which took place while the Benghazi terrorist attacks were unfolding—and 11:26 p.m. that night, which is approximately the time former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed in the attacks.

While working on a highway-widening project in the middle of South America's Atacama Desert, Chilean workers unearthed an eerie scene that had no business being more than a kilometer away from the ocean: a mass fossil graveyard containing more than 75 ancient whales, reports MSNBC. Finding whale bones in the middle of the desert is strange enough, but scientists were quick to notice a deeper mystery. The fossils ended up right next to one another — some mere meters apart — as if to suggest that the whales all died at once, possibly during some cataclysmic tragedy. What could have...

images courtesy Yoji Ookata and NHKIntroduced to life under the sea in high school through snorkeling, Yoji Ookata obtained his scuba license at the age of 21. At the same time, he went out and bought a brand new NIKONOS, a 35mm film camera specifically designed for underwater photography. He devoted all his spare time – aside from his day job – to perfecting his art of underwater photography. Then, at age 39, he finally made the transition. He quit his office job and became a freelance underwater photographer.But even for a man who spent the last 50 years immersed...

One of the more intriguing narratives for election 2012 was proposed by political scientist Brendan Nyhan fairly early on: that it was "Bizarro 2004." ~ SNIP ~ The Election Day returns actually continued the similarities. George W. Bush won by 2.4 percent of the popular vote, which is probably about what Obama’s victory margin will be once all the ballots are counted. ~ SNIP ~ But most importantly, the 2012 elections actually weren’t about a demographic explosion with non-white voters. Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up. ~ SNIP ~ In other words, if...

Ship with 700 tons of gold ore disappears off Russia MOSCOW – A vessel with a nine-person crew and 700 tons of gold ore onboard has disappeared in stormy seas off Russia's Pacific Coast. The ship sent a distress call on Sunday as it was sailing from the coastal town of Neran to Feklistov Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. The vessel, hired by mining company Polymetal, was carrying 700 tons of gold ore from one deposit to another where it was to be processed. Gold ore is the material from which gold is extracted and contains only a small...

Charles Callaghan is a registered voter and resident of Florida. He was born in the US and has always been a US citizen. So you can imagine his surprise when a received a letter, purportedly from his county's election office, questioning his citizenship status and, subsequently, his eligibility to vote this November. The letter did not, in fact, come from the election office. It is completely fraudulent and was even mailed from Washington state. A copy of the letter is at the bottom of this post. The letter states that it is coming from Vicky Oakes, the Supervisor of Elections...

Huge eyeball from unknown creature washes ashore on Florida beach By David Fleshler, Sun SentinelOctober 11, 2012 A giant eyeball from a mysterious sea creature washed ashore Wednesday in Pompano Beach. No one knows what species the huge eyeball came from, but whatever it is, it has blue eyes and has to be big enough to have eyeballs bigger than softballs. Among the possibilities being discussed are a giant squid, some other large fish or a whale or other large marine mammal. A man spotted the eyeball Wednesday and reported it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "He...

Huge eyeball turns up in Pompano Beach Taking his usual morning stroll along the surf in Pompano Beach, Gino Covacci noticed a strange ball-like object at the high tide line. He kicked it over and found himself staring at the biggest eyeball he had ever seen. The blue, softball-sized orb he found Wednesday was a departure from the shells, cigarette butts and seaweed he usually sees. He put it in a plastic bag and put that in the refrigerator. "It was very, very fresh," he said Thursday. "It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag." He...

Ok so yesterday as I'm driving along I look up and I see a face in the clouds. It's very defined. You can see eyes, a nose, cheeks, etc. First I'll post a picture below without the face circled to see if you can spot it. Next here's a link with it circled for those not able to see. Click here to see the face circled.

Author John Sandford takes questions from his fans on Facebook, discussing the books, the characters, and writing... (more at link) Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4

Just mentioned on Fox News Channel. There will be a "mystery speaker" on Thursday night at the RNC convention.

EL DORADO COUNTY (CBS13) – People from all over El Dorado County say they’re hearing loud booms several times a week, but there are many theories on what is causing them. “I thought it was thunder,” said one person. “It’s definitely not thunder; too consistent. I thought it was just mining,” said another person. “I always considered them to be sonic booms from flying aircrafts for years,” said Loring Brunius, owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry. People who live near Pleasant Valley say their days have been interrupted by loud booms, shaking the floor beneath them. “You can feel it...

Sixty-five years after a UFO allegedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, a retired Air Force official has spoken out to say that not only did the shocking incident really happen – but it happened twice. an unusual object fell from the sky and crashed to the ground in Roswell. Military authorities issued a press release after the shocking incident, saying: ‘The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc.’ But, just...

Conspiracy theorists have worked themselves up into a lather over a mysterious blotch visible in the first black and white photographs taken from NASA's new Curiosity rover as it landed on Mars. The faint but distinctive dot which can be seen on the horizon of the Red Planet was taken by a device on the $2.5 billion robot called its Hazcam and relayed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back to Earth. However, two hours later when the satellite made another pass over Curiosity, the rover sent another batch of images that revealed that the blotch had eerily disappeared.

Dubbed the 'Manhattan monster', a horrifying mystery creature with a mutilated face, snarling snout and five toes on each foot has washed up under the Brooklyn Bridge, perplexing New Yorkers. Amateur photographer Denise Ginley snapped the ghoulish pink carcass while walking along the East River on Sunday and the grisly images, first published by The Gothamist on Monday, have sparked an array of conspiracy theories as to whether it is a giant water-logged rodent, a cooked pig that a family couldn't fit in, a ballooned dog or some other, more sinister, being. 'We were horrified by it and we took...

It’s Time To Stop Looking For Amelia Earhart On July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart's attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world came to an abrupt end over the Pacific Ocean. She lost radio contact with Itasca, the Coast Guard ship that was serving as her radio contact, and the plane supposedly went down near the tiny atoll of Howland Island. Now, 75 years and uncounted millions of dollars later, we haven't found a trace of Earhart, her plane, or Fred Noonan, her navigator. Today is Earhart's 115th birthday, and it's time for us as a society...

An autopsy for an Obama for America campaign staffer who died after collapsing in the Chicago headquarters was inconclusive Saturday. -snip- The autopsy requires further studies before a cause of death can be determined, according to the medical examiner’s office.

David Maraniss has no use for "birthers." In a recent interview, he dismissed their beliefs as "preposterous" and wonders why they cling to them, since "every fact and document leads in another direction." Yet the one core belief that has united the birther community -- if there be such a thing -- is that Obama dissembled when he talked at both the 2004 and 2008 Democratic Conventions about his parents' "improbable love" and "abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation." Birthers have known for years that there was no Obama family, that the couple never lived together, that Obama...

In a recorded message to mark the end of the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI said that some members of the religious orders in Ireland had "abused people and undermined the credibility of the Church's message." Reflecting upon the sins committed by priests and consecrated religious, the Holy Father asked, "How are we to explain the fact that people who regularly received the Lord's Body and confessed their sins in the Sacrament of Penance have offended in this way?...It remains a mystery." See here. It is a mystery and at the same time it isn't. The sexual...

Swedish scientists plan to explore a mystery ripped straight from the “The X-Files.” Rather than Mulder and Scully, this adventure features Swedish researchers Peter Lindberg and Dennis Asberg. They too know the truth is out there -- and in mere days plan to visit what they call the “Baltic Anomaly.” Last summer, while on a treasure hunt between Sweden and Finland, the pair and their research associates made headlines worldwide with the discovery of a 200-foot wide unidentified object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Now a team of oceanographers, engineers and deep sea divers will return to the...

Back in the mid-1990s, I lived in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. My wife was a medical student at the University of Chicago and I worked as a newspaper reporter. I didn't know it, but also living in Hyde Park a few blocks away was a fellow just a couple years older than me named Barack Obama. At the time, he was a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and I'm sure that at one time or another we crossed paths. I had no idea who he was, and unless he was a regular reader of the Chicago...

---The new season of "Sherlock" - like the last one, a collection of three 90-minute stories, this time loosely adapting "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Final Problem" - finds Holmes at a professional peak and an existential low point………

He was hundreds of miles from civilisation, lost in the burning heat of the desert. Second World War Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping took what little he could from the RAF Kittyhawk he had just crash-landed, then wandered into the emptiness. From that day in June 1942 the mystery of what happened to the dentist’s son from Southend was lost, in every sense, in the sands of time.

A new look at a 425-year-old map has yielded a tantalising clue about the fate of the Lost Colony, the settlers who disappeared from Britain's Roanoke Island in the late 16th century. Experts from the First Colony Foundation and the British Museum in London discussed their findings Thursday at a scholarly meeting on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their focus: the "Virginia Pars" map of Virginia and North Carolina created by explorer John White in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since 1866. "We believe that this evidence provides conclusive proof that...

NEWPORT BEACH (AP) — A yacht involved in a race off the coast of California and Mexico apparently collided at night with a much larger vessel, leaving three crew members dead and one missing, a sailing organization said early Sunday. It was the state’s second ocean racing tragedy this month. The 37-foot Aegean carrying a crew of four was reported missing Saturday during a 125-mile Newport Beach, Calif. to Ensenada, Mexico yacht race, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The Newport Ocean Sailing Association, the race organizer, said the accident occurred late Friday or early Saturday several miles off the coast...

Why were 10 dead bodies found in Benjamin Franklin’s basement? In 1998, a group called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House began renovations on Franklin's London residence, No. 36 Craven Street, and discovered a nasty surprise: 1,200 pieces of bone from 10 bodies, six of which were children. And the bodies were buried in the basement around the time Franklin was living in the house. No, Franklin didn't engage in a murder spree in between penning Poor Richard's Almanack and flying kites in lightning storms. In fact, it's unlikely that the bodies were murder victims at all. The bones were...

“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...

PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- A piece of debris came crashing through the roof of a building in Plymouth. Investigators are not sure where the piece of debris came from or what it came from. However, they do know it came from far up because the force of the object falling tore a hole through the roof of a building. Luckily, the object fell into an empty room and no one was hurt. Andrew McWilliams, an employee at Michael’s Warehouse, was shocked when he opened a door in his office to see the debris on the floor. “And that was the first...

D.B. Cooper: 40 years later November 24th, 2011, marks the 40th anniversary of the legendary Cooper case, an unsolved crime that has baffled agents, detectives and amateur sleuths, and spurned one of the greatest manhunts in law enforcement history. The FBI’s case file on D.B. Cooper runs some forty feet long. It is located in the basement archives of the Bureau’s field office in Seattle, where for four decades agents have hunted for the man who ransomed a passenger jet for a small fortune and parachutes, then jumped out the back over the rural Northwest, during the middle of a...

The saga of the U.S. Army’s Operation Klondike is a highly strange one. It’s one that has its beginnings in the Second World War, has a major connection to a secure location famous for its truly huge gold-reserves, is linked to a priceless ancient treasure, and even has a tie-in with UFOs. It’s a weird story that has at its core the Holy Crown of Hungary, or as it is more famously referred: the Crown of Saint Stephen, the coronation crown used by the Kingdom of Hungary, and which is believed to have been fashioned at some point during the...

The parents of a missing 10-month-old Missouri girl planned to make a public statement Friday after police announced that the couple had stopped talking with detectives investigating the baby's disappearance. Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley didn't speak to the media Thursday night after a police news conference accusing them of no longer cooperating, but relatives read a statement insisting they never had stopped. The family said the couple would have more to say Friday.

A man who burned to death in his home died as a result of spontaneous combustion, an Irish coroner has ruled. West Galway coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin said it was the first time in 25 years of investigating deaths that he had recorded such a verdict. Michael Faherty, 76, died at his home at Clareview Park, Ballybane, Galway on 22 December 2010.... Deaths attributed by some to "spontaneous combustion" occur when a living human body is burned without an apparent external source of ignition. Typically police or fire investigators find burned corpses but no burned furniture. An inquest in Galway...

Mystery surrounds the ritzy Florida home linked to 9/11 terrorists - and why the FBI didn't tell Congressional committee about it The sudden disappearance of the home’s Saudi residents before September 11 prompted calls to authorities, who found links to those who orchestrated the horrific attacks of that morning. The Miami Herald reported the home was owned at the time by Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, and his wife Deborah. Also living at the opulent house was Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, Ghazzawi’s daughter. The home was sold in 2003. Days before September 11, 2001, the Saudi...

Mystery of DB Cooper air stewardess who was sent to a Nunnery... but was it part of a witness protection programme? It is America's most notorious unsolved criminal case which, over the past four decades, has had enough twists and turns to match any film script. So it is not entirely surprising that the latest revelation is one straight out of Hollywood. The stewardess who famously dealt with the elusive DB Cooper during the Northwest Airlines hijacking and robbery of 1971 spent more than a decade in a Nunnery, in what experts believe was part of a witness protection programme....

Most murders aren’t that difficult to solve. The husband did it. The wife did it. The boyfriend did it, or the ex-boyfriend did. The crimes fit a pattern, the motives are generally clear.Of course, there are always a handful of cases that don’t fit the template, where the killer is a stranger or the reason for the killing is bizarre. It’s fair to say, however, that nowadays the authorities usually have something to go on. Thanks in part to advances such as DNA technology, the police are seldom baffled anymore.Mortuary photo of the unknown man found dead on Somerton Beach,...

<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Authorities say The Olympian and one of the newspaper’s photographers were targets of vandalism that included anarchist graffiti and an acidic substance.</p> <p>Police said Friday graffiti was painted at the Tumwater, Wash., home of photographer Tony Overman. The words “Overman snitch” were painted on a newspaper delivery truck and an apparently acidic substance was thrown on the exterior of The Olympian’s building.</p>

Tuesday evening, residents across Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Suffolk, Va., dialed 911 to report what sounded what a large explosion. Today, a NASA scientist explained that it might have been a meteor. The area is home to several military bases, so residents are accustomed to loud sounds. This was out of the ordinary, though; several 911 callers reported a loud noise that rattled their screen doors and windows. One woman told the local television station, WAVY, that it felt like an earthquake. That's not uncharacteristic for a sonic boom created by a meteor, said Joe Zawodny, a senior research scientist...

As the story of the death of Osama bin Laden grows more curious by the day, it's time we call in that legendary Honolulu police detective of yesteryear, Charlie Chan, to visit the scene. With his Number One Son, Jimmy, Chan arrives at the former hideout of the deceased mass murderer, where a small crowd of on-lookers still lingers. This conversation ensues: Jimmy: Gee, Pop, this doesn't look like a mansion. It looks more like a three-story police headquarters in a provincial capital in Guatemala. Chan: True, but look around, Jimmy. Few houses are nearby, and none is bigger. Nor...

For as long as I can remember scientists have been trying to put together a Theory of Everything which would explain and connect all the knowledge we have of physical phenomena. So far they haven't been successful, but they keep trying. I wondered if it would be possible to explain the many contradictions of Obama and the mystery of his origins and incomprehensible nature of his domestic and foreign policies to better understand him and predict why he seems to be steering the ship of state onto the shoals. I think I've finally got it, though a night of watching...

  Throughout the history of popular fiction, the New York Times Book Review and the literati have done their best to focus public attention on writers of the Left. Nevertheless, readers have confounded them by tending to choose heroes with a more traditional, pro-American outlook and a decidedly un-nuanced view of good guys and bad guys. So while Fletcher Knebel was cranking out critically acclaimed hardcover political thrillers like Seven Days in May from the Left, he and his ilk were being vastly outsold by paperback writers such as Donald Hamilton, Mikey Spillane, and Edward S. Aarons. In other words, by...