Free Republic

Not so long ago, casually throwing the Knights Templar into polite conversation was a litmus test of mental health. One of Umberto Eco’s characters in Foucault’s Pendulum summed it up perfectly. He declared that you could recognise a lunatic "by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars". But all good things come to an end. The enigmatic medieval monk-knights are no longer a fringe interest for obsessives. They are now squarely mainstream. And as 18 March 2014 draws closer, Templarmania is going...

Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Spies By Tracy R. Twyman Originally written for Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine, Copyright 1998 (Does not necessarily represent author’s current viewpoint.) In the years preceding World War II, four young Englishmen known as “the Cambridge Spies” were used by the KGB to infiltrate British intelligence. They had been recruited from the university’s Trinity College, chosen for their keen minds and their Marxist sensibilities. Their names: Donald Maclean, Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby, Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess, and Anthony F. Blunt, the man this article is concerned with. All but one of them – Philby –...

Cultural anthropology and genetic studies shed light on the etiology of the association of blood and rebirth or resurrection. The anthropological, linguistic and genetic evidence indicates that Abraham's ancestors were Proto-Saharan, probably Nubians. Nubians have their own genetic marker which indicates migration from the sub-Sahara to the Nile and there has been virtually no immigration into the lower Nubia area from Asia according to the Y chromosome study done by Lucotte. Among the Nubians the sun was a central symbol of life and often shown as a red orb. This lent the additional association with the red eye of Horus....

Biblical-giants book soars up charts 'The Nephilim' explains ancient pyramids, future events Posted: February 1, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com A unique book that purports to explain the past existence of giant beings referred to in the Bible as the Nephilim is skyrocketing up online best-sellers lists, now appearing in the top 10 at Amazon.com. Published by Xulon Press, "The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse" presents an explanation for an unusual verse in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 6:4, which reads: "There were giants (Nephilim) in the Earth in those days, and also after...

'A new exhibition in Germany about archaeology under the Nazis shows how the regime launched a 'Last Crusade' expedition in wartime to find the Holy Grail from the Last Supper of Christ. In the 1989 Last Crusade movie, Indiana Jones played by Harrison Ford was on the quest for the grail - and he was in competition with the Nazis. Now truth turns out to be stranger than fiction in the exhibition 'Dig for Germania. Archaeology under the Swastika' in Bremen. It tells how S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler allegedly visited Spain during the war because he believed the grail was...

Ancient mega-catastrophe paved way for the dinosaurs, spawned Australian continent. Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land...

U.S. Denies “Spectacular Ruins” in Antarctica Captured on Video WASHINGTON, D.C. (AMP) – The U.S. government said it will seek to block the airing of a video found by Navy rescuers in Antarctica that purportedly reveals that a massive archeological dig is underway two miles beneath the ice. The @lantisTV production crew that shot the video is still missing. Attorneys for Beverly Hills-based @lantisTV stressed that the company’s primary concern is for the safety and welfare of its crew. But they stated they will “vigorously oppose” any attempts to “censor material that is clearly in the public interest and...

Doomsday? No way. Ancient Maya said we’ll be around another 7,000 years or so.This December, not everyone is concerned with making plans for the New Year—especially not the people who think doomsday will get here first. Instead of planning parties, they're stockpiling food, refining escape routes, and honing survival skills ahead of the alleged date on which the Maya calendar "ends"—December 21, 2012. So should we all be preparing for imminent apocalypse? According to the scholars, no. The ancient Maya are usually cited as the predictors of the world coming to an end this month: One of their "great cycles"...

Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them. The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm. In America Ron...

A genetic researcher is saying that Bigfoot DNA tests prove that the hairy creature really does exist. Dr. Melba S. Ketchum says she and her team sequenced three complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes and concluded the species is a human hybrid -- a mosaic of human and novel non-human elements. Their findings have yet to pass peer review. A Texas veterinarian says she and fellow genetic researchers have confirmed the existence of "Bigfoot," though their findings have yet to pass peer review. Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, founder of DNA Diagnostics Inc. in the eastern Texas town of Timpson, said...

Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) -- Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668). The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392). Jo Hui Sung, director of the Institute, told KCNA: "Korea's history books deal with the unicorn, considered to...

The great Moon Hoax of 1835 April 4, 2011 By Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today "Say the words “Moon Hoax” these days, and everyone thinks you are talking about the people who don’t believe the Apollo astronauts ever went to the Moon. But back in 1835 there was the original Moon hoax that thousands of people fell for, despite the tall tale being complete fiction. A series of articles were published in the New York Sun newspaper reporting incredible new astronomical observations of the Moon supposedly made by astronomer Sir John Herschel during an observing run at the Cape of Good...

A small piece of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently fallen off into the Red Planet dirt, scientists announced today (Oct. 9). Curiosity team members spotted the odd bright object on Sunday (Oct. 7) while studying photos of the rover's first Martian soil-scooping activity. Curiosity then spent much of Monday photographing the scrap further, allowing researchers to determine that it likely came off the 1-ton rover — though they're still not sure what exactly it is, or if its absence will affect Curiosity's mission appreciably.

Instead, he maintains better era will start Dec. 21When the current Mayan calendar cycle ends Dec. 21, the world will not cease to exist, says a Mayan elder. "There is a lot of information of what is going to happen on that date. The scholars say that the Mayan calendar ends, the world ends. But we, as Mayans, don't know anything about that," Elder Miguel Angel Chiquin said speaking through a Spanish translator Monday night at Colorado State University-Pueblo. "The great teachings that our ancestors have left us over the centuries, the 21st of December, we will be moving over...

Great Riddles in ArchaeologyWednesday Evenings, October 2011 through June 2012 From the knights of King Arthur’s roundtable to the deepest depths of Atlantis, some of the world’s greatest archaeological riddles have eluded us for centuries. Discover and explore these mind-boggling riddles in the next season of the Penn Museum’s popular monthly lecture series presented by current archaeologists and scholars. Mark your calendars for Great Riddles in Archaeology, offered the first Wednesday of every month, October 2011 through June 2012. General Admission is $5 per event in advance or $10 at the door. Subscriptions to all nine events are available for...

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...

Is Peruvian Mummy a Giant Toddler? by Brian Thomas, M.S. | Feb. 10, 2012 Some say that giant humans are too incredible to have been real and that the Bible's references to them are fiction. However, many extra-biblical records corroborate the existence of giants, including sober accounts from early explorers like Magellan and ancient texts like the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Book of Enoch, and the Book of Giants. Now, a mummy skeleton found in Peru looks like a giant toddler. If that is indeed what it is, then it adds more weight to the idea that giants...

They found the Ark of the Covenant where Moses placed the 10 Commandments, in a cave under Golgotha. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. Who would have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. 1 Tim 2:3-6 Rom 3:28-30 Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes of the...

Lake Vostok, which has been sealed off from the world for 14 million years, is about to be penetrated by a Russian drill bit. The lake, which lies four kilometres below the icy surface of Antarctica, is unique in that it's been completely isolated from the other 150 subglacial lakes on the continent for such a long time. It's also oligotropic, meaning that it's supersaturated with oxygen -- levels of the element are 50 times higher than those found in most typical freshwater lakes. Since 1990, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersberg in Russia has been drilling...

A TEAM of Russian scientists has gone quiet as they race against winter to uncover an ancient Antarctic lake. The group from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks in an effort to reach isolated Lake Vostok, a vast, dark body of water hidden 4000m below the surface of the continent. Lake Vostok has not been exposed to air in more than 20 million years. The team's last contact with colleagues in the outside world was six days ago, and scientists from around the globe are unsure of the fate of the mission - and...