Free Republic

Matthew Hodgson seemed perfect when he was born, but his parents knew there was a problem...Essentially, Matthew’s skull was growing into the shape of a football...

HOUSTON -- Police have charged three suspects accused of using the skull of a corpse buried in a Kingwood cemetery to make a bong. Kevin Wade Jones, 17, Matthew Richard Gonzalez, 17, and a 16-year-old boy were all charged with one count of desecrating a corpse. The suspects are accused of digging up the skull of an 11-year-old boy buried in a cemetery for African American war veterans and using it to smoke marijuana.

Incan skull surgery By Bruce BowerApril 25th, 2008 Holes in ancient skulls reflect skilled medical careHealing Hole in the HeadANCIENT SURGERY A new analysis of ancient skulls reveals skills of Incan healers in cranial cutting.Valerie AndrushkoWhen Incan healers scraped or cut a hunk of bone out of a person’s head, they meant business. Practitioners of this technique, known as trepanation, demonstrated great skill more than 500 years ago in treating warriors’ head wounds and possibly other medical problems, rarely causing infections or killing their patients, two anthropologists find. Trepanation emerged as a promising but dangerous medical procedure by about 1,000...

Skull returns to final rest place The skull is believed to be that of a woman in her 50s A rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996. Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made. The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s. It was stored at Sheffield University for carbon-dating and recently returned to the cave, which has...

Skull Changes Show Time of Human-Neandertal Split Scott Norris for National Geographic NewsMarch 17, 2008 Gradual changes in human skull size and shape suggest a split between humans and Neandertals (often spelled Neanderthals) about 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, according to a new study. The work provides the first estimate a divergence date for modern humans and Neandertals based on the rate of change of physical characteristics. Genetic Drift Just as DNA changes accumulate over time and provide a kind of "molecular clock" by which the separation of closely related species can be dated, evolved differences in physical form can...

Does skull prove that the first Americans came from Europe? By Steve Connor Science Editor 03 December 2002 Scientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World. The skeleton's perfectly preserved skull belonged to a 26-year-old woman who died during the last ice age on the edge of a giant prehistoric lake which once formed around an area now occupied by the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City. Scientists from Liverpool's John Moores University and...

Bob Woodruff Talks to an Army Sergeant With an Amazing Story of Survival Of all the injuries in the war in Iraq, the one Sgt. Dan Powers sustained was among the most unusual. Powers, a member of the Army's 118th MP Company Airborne, was in eastern Baghdad investigating an explosion when suddenly an Iraqi walked up to him and stabbed him in the right side of his head. He didn't know what hit him. "It felt like someone kind of clothesline tackled me and a thump on the side of the head, like a bang," he said. An Iraqi teenager...

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Chinese doctors have removed a three-centimetre-long bullet from a woman's skull - 64 years after she was shot by Japanese Imperial Army troops, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Jin Guangying, 77, left hospital on May 3 and is reportedly in good condition following the four-hour operation, the Shanghai Daily said. "It's a miracle," Zhou Hong, the head of surgery at Renci Hospital in Jin's native province of Jiangsu, was quoted as saying.

Posted on Fri, Apr. 13, 2007 4600-year-old skulls from Iraq to get CT scanRon Todt The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA - A pair of 4,600-year-old skulls from Iraq will be given a CT scan that promises to reveal the faces of two of the dozens of sacrificial victims found decades ago in the remains of an ancient Sumerian city. The procedure will be done Sunday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania on the skulls of a young woman adorned with gold ornaments and a man wearing a copper helmet, both found in the southern Iraq city of Ur in...

(03-20) 04:42 PDT Mundelein, Ill. (AP) -- Golf course workers uncovering the tees for the season discovered a human skull at a suburban Chicago club and found bones nearby in the fairway, authorities said. The skull was spotted Monday near the 14th tee of the Prairie Course, one of two 18-hole courses at the Countryside Golf Club in Mundelein, according to Lake County Forest Preserve Police Chief John Galford. "It was laying there, right in the middle of the fairway," Galford said. He said the identity and gender of the person had not been determined, but the skull had some...

February 06, 2007 Hobbit Skeptics Split on What a Second Skull Would Mean Advocates of a human Hobbit reveal what--if anything--would make them soften their stance By JR Minkel Image: COURTESY OF KIRK E. SMITH/Electronic Radiology Laboratory, Mallinckrodt Institute of RadiologyDOUBLE TROUBLE? A second small Hobbit skull similar to the first [right] would convince some skeptics—but not all of them—that they are dealing with a new species, as opposed to a dwarf or a diseased human [left]. For three years researchers have feuded over the rightful classification of the Hobbit, a diminutive, 18,000-year-old specimen unearthed from the Indonesian island of...

Trophy Skull Sheds Light on Ancient Wari Empire Earthwatch volunteers working with Dr. Mary Glowacki (Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research) in Peru unearthed a previously unknown cemetery and found a trophy skull from the Wari civilization. The finds give researchers further insight into the rise and fall of the Wari Empire that lived high in the Andes 1,500 to 1,000 years ago. Courtesy of Mary Glowacki Earthwatch-supported archaeologist Dr. Mary Glowacki (Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research) holds a vessel excavated from an elite cemetary at the ancient Wari site of Cotocotuyoc. Spectacular finds include the "trophy" skull of a warrior...

WASHINGTON - A skull found in a cave in Romania includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago. Neanderthals were replaced by early modern humans. Researchers have long debated whether the two groups mixed together, though most doubt it. The last evidence for Neanderthals dates from at least 24,000 years ago. The skull bearing both older and modern characteristics is discussed in a paper by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. The report appears in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The...

<p>BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called photos of German soldiers in Afghanistan playing with a skull "shocking and disgusting," and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said those involved will be dealt with harshly.</p> <p>One image was published on the cover of the national tabloid Bild, under the words "Schock Fotos."</p>

Drudge put these photos next to each other. Way to go, Matt. MIDI - THE WAY WE WERE Memories before Brolin went insane He could just not take it any more Oh, such mental pain When it's bedtime and he's turning off the light He was next to something hideous I feel for his plight He could have really made a better choice Perhaps a putrid old rotting skull If only he had listened to my voice Yes, he could have...should have Memories...running naked down the street He was screaming as the neighbors watched The loss of his mind's complete...

At this moment, for two different stories, Drudge is showing the following pics side by side.

LONGUEUIL, Que. — A distraught family is offering $10,000 for clues to help solve a gruesome mystery involving a 68-year-old woman whose body was decapitated in a funeral home last July. “Every morning we wake up and we say `Where is the head?’ ” said 63-year-old Ghyslaine Lemay, a sister of Cecile Lemay whose family has lived in torment ever since the bizarre incident. Several of Lemay’s relatives held a news conference Wednesday to appeal for help after police admitted their investigation is no further advanced than it was last summer when the funeral home was vandalized. While the family...

Surgeons have used stem cells from fat to help repair skull damage in a 7-year-old girl in Germany, in what's apparently the first time such fat-derived cells have been exploited to grow bone in a human. The girl had been injured two years before in a fall, which destroyed several areas of her skull totaling nearly 19 square inches, the German researchers reported. Other surgeons had failed to correct the defects, and the girl wore a protective helmet. Her brain could sometimes be seen pulsating through the missing areas of her skull. But several weeks after the stem-cell surgery, she...

Topless waitress refuses to say where she got hand nicknamed ‘Freddy’ NEW YORK - A stripper from New Jersey faced criminal charges Wednesday after police found a severed hand and six human skulls in her home. Linda Kay, 31, was due to be arraigned Wednesday for improper disposition of human remains. Police said she was arrested Friday. Officers responded to a report of a man wanting to kill himself with a hammer, but instead discovered a hand inside a jar filled with formaldehyde on a dresser in a bedroom. Six human skulls were found in an upstairs bedroom, South Plainfield...

SOUTH PLAINFIELD, N.J. - A severed hand was found at the home of an exotic dancer who decorated her home with skulls, and she was charged with improper disposition of human remains, authorities said. Friends said the hand had been given to the woman by a medical student. Police responding to a report of a suicidal person at the home of 31-year-old Linda Kay discovered the large, roughly severed hand in a jar of formaldehyde on a bedroom dresser, according to the police report. The subject of the suicidal person report was not located, authorities said. Six skulls were found...

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of people are thronging a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to see a patient holding a piece of his own skull that fell off. Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy's skull came away Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood. "When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burned and within months it came off exposing the skull," Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy told Reuters Wednesday. "Later, we noticed that the part of his skull was loosening due to...

Piece of man's skull falls off, draws crowds By Bappa Majumdar 1 hour, 46 minutes ago KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of people are thronging a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to see a patient holding a piece of his own skull that fell off. Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy's skull came away Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood. "When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burned and within months it came off exposing the skull," Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy...

Friends Say Buckalew Told Them He Did It Out Of Boredom POSTED: 12:52 pm EDT June 29, 2006 ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. -- A Vermont teenager has been sentenced to prison for breaking into a tomb and cutting the head off a corpse. Nickolas Buckalew, 18, of Morrisville, Vt., pleaded guilty two charges. One was a felony count of intentionally removing or injuring a tombstone. The other was a felony charge of intentionally disinterring and carrying away the remains of a human body. Buckalew was sentenced to between one and seven years in prison and was given credit for serving 14...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The earliest known hominid fossil, which dates to about 7 million years ago, is actually some kind of ape, according to an international team of researchers led by the University of Michigan. The finding, they say, suggests scientists should rethink whether we actually descended from apes resembling chimpanzees, which are considered our closest relatives. U-M anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues examined images and the original paper published on the discovery of the Toumaï cranium (TM 266) or Sahelanthropus tchadensis, as well as a computer reconstruction of the skull. Two other colleagues were actually able to examine the skull,...

IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) - A mysterious skull discovered on the edge of the Arctic Circle has sparked interest in what creatures roamed Baffin Island in the distant past, and what life a warming climate may support in the future. Andrew Dialla, a resident of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, says he found the skull protruding from the frozen tundra during a walk near the shore with his daughter about a month ago. The horned skull is about the size of a man's fist. It resembles a baby caribou skull, except at that age, a caribou wouldn't have antlers, researchers and elders have pointed...

should I do? We live out in the country and the dog brought it home a few weeks ago. She says she wants to keep it for decoration and it is now stuck on her fence post. When I take her the paper every day, it creeps me out. Her dog is always leaving deer horns in my yard also, so it must be out there killing deer and breaking their horns off.

Britney Spears and husband Kevin Federline are being investigated after their baby son suffered a fractured skull and blood clot in a high-chair fall. The new mother-of-one, whose pop career had slowly declined since her split with super-star Justin Timberlake, rushed her son to hospital after he fell from his highchair in their kitchen, the Sun reported. The tiny tot - Sean Preston - just seven months old is said to have been in the care of a nanny when he hit the floor hard in the shock fall. After being given the all clear by a GP immediately after...

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Doctors reattached a piece of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's skull on Wednesday, a day after the surgery was delayed because of a respiratory infection, hospital officials said. The operation was the eighth for Sharon since he suffered a debilitating stroke on January 4. Doctors had removed the piece of skull during a previous operation on his brain. "The surgery that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was supposed to have yesterday took place today and ended successfully a short while ago," Hadassah Hospital said in a statement. Sharon was taken back to his room in the intensive care unit,...

Indian policeman stand gaurd outside of the Durgiana Temple in Amritsar. Indian police shot dead an Islamic militant suspected of links to a triple bombing that killed 23 people in Hinduism's holy city of Varanasi and sparked a nationwide alert.(AFP/Marinder Nanu)

Skull Fashion: Drop-Dead Gorgeous? Wednesday, March 01, 2006 By Samantha Jonas-Hain Skinny celebrities like Lindsay Lohan are finding new ways to flaunt their bones as grim reaper fashion statements breathe life into this season's hottest trends. Taking their cue from bottles of arsenic, fashion designers around the world are going gaga for Mr. Skull and Crossbones, adorning everything from jeans to jewelry with his bony image. "We shipped the first skull jacket out in October and it blew out of the stores," said Melissa Hodgson, president of Anoname, a company that sells denim embroidered jackets and jeans to Macy's stores...

Oldest hominid skull in Australia found near Bega Friday, 13 January 2006 THE endocast of a primitive hominid-like skull was recovered from among the rubble of a volcanic plug in the Bega district in May 2005 The find could suggest that a race of ancestral hominids had evolved in Australia from tree-dwelling primate ancestors by seven million years ago. This is well before our primate ancestors supposedly left the trees for a terrestrial existence in Africa around six million years ago! The fossil was discovered by noted prehistory researcher Rex Gilroy of Katoomba NSW, where he operates the 'Australian-Pacific Archaeological...

By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer Thu Nov 17,10:30 PM ETTests: Skull Fragments May Be Beethoven's SAN FRANCISCO - A California businessman said Thursday that skull fragments that once belonged to his great-great-uncle in 19th century Europe very likely came from German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Paul Kaufmann made the announcement at the Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University, which helped coordinate forensic testing aimed at authenticating the fragments and determining what killed Beethoven at age 56. The center already has a lock of the composer's hair, which showed he suffered from lead poisoning among other ailments...

Alien Skull Mystery Continues Last Updated: 10/27/2004 8:03:47 AM. Early in 1999, a misshapen skull was presented to Lloyd Pye, who thought it would take six months to interest U.S. scientists in testing it to determine it's biological heritage. Six months turned into six years as Lloyd tried to interest scientists to have a serious go at a skull given the unfortunate name of "Starchild." Scientists would have nothing to do with something even casually suggestive of alien heritage. Fortunately, in early 2004, Lloyd was invited to London to have a series of bone chemistry tests run at the...

ELKHART -- Police believe a 13-month-old girl who suffered a fractured skull Thursday may be the victim of child abuse. The baby was taken to Elkhart General Hospital late Thursday night, police said, but because of the severity of her injury, she was then taken to Memorial Hospital in South Bend. She remained there Friday in stable condition, according to police. Her mother's 17-year-old live-in boyfriend has been arrested in connection with the injury and remains in the Elkhart County Juvenile Detention Center, police said. He is not the biological father of the infant, according to police. "I think it's...

Skull Fragment Suggests Evidence of Surgery From Colonial Days Associated Press Jun 17, 2004 JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) - Archaeologists combing through a dig at historic Jamestown said they have unearthed a human skull fragment that shows markings that could bear evidence of the earliest known attempts at surgery in Colonial North America. Two marks from a saw run along the curved top edge of the 4-by-6 inch fragment, which appears to be from bone at the back and base of the skull. Three small circular markings also seem to suggest attempts were made to drill through the bone. "It's definitely...

Write-In's Not Just for MLB All-Star Voting AnymoreFor Bush or Against Bush... A Kerry in office would come back to bite the Demo's hard in a 2008 election. Someone even less charasmatic than Bush & with no solid plan on how to make for a better US is certainly no way for a party to gain ground with the American public -though it'd be hard to lose any more popularity points overseas. And either way, it's a no-win for the American public for either of these two to win the November vote. On paper, Bush & Kerry are essentially the...

MIDVALE, Utah - After a lot of red tape, Briana Lane has her skull back in one piece. The 22-year-old woman was injured in an auto accident in January, and doctors temporarily removed nearly half her skull to save her life. But for nearly four months afterward, the piece of bone lay in a hospital freezer across town - and Lane had to wear a plastic street hockey helmet - because of a standoff with Medicaid and the hospital over who would cover the surgery to make her whole again. The surgery finally came through after an excruciating wait, during...

LOS ANGELES – A man who had six nails driven into his head by a nail gun in a construction accident said Wednesday that he is lucky to be alive. Doctors said he should make a full recovery. Isidro Mejia, 39, made his first public appearance since he was taken to the hospital on April 19. Sitting in a wheelchair, the Lancaster man said in Spanish that he didn't remember much about the accident. "He says that he's very happy to be alive," said Dr. Rafael Quinonez, a neurosurgeon who removed the nails at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center...

The 'Counselor'...and the WAN DON?

BOSTON (AP) - For years, futurists have dreamed of machines that can read minds, then act on instructions as they are thought. Now, human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants. Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients. If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send. It's a small, early step in a mission to improve the...

Jan. 27, 2004 ? In a prehistoric battle for survival, Neanderthals had to compete against modern humans and were wiped off the face of the Earth, according to a new study on life in Europe from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago. The findings, compiled by 30 scientists, were based on extensive data from sediment cores, archaeological artifacts such as fossils and tools, radiometric dating, and climate models. The collected information was part of a project known as Stage 3, which refers to the time period analyzed. he number three also seems significant in terms of why the Neanderthals became extinct....

MAN DRILLS THROUGH SKULLA Californian man is lucky to be alive after an accident on a construction site. Ron Hunt was drilling into a wall when the ladder he was standing on slipped. His head was impaled on the drill bit. Surgeons had to literally unscrew the tool from his skull. Mr Hunt lost the sight in his right eye but still considers himself to be a very lucky man.

To the Editor: "The Beginning of Modern Humans" (editorial, June 15) states that a newly discovered Ethiopian skull more than 150,000 years old is "recognizably modern to paleoanthropologists but not to most of the rest of us." It does not look recognizably modern to this paleoanthropologist, and it is a much less probable candidate for being the ancestor of the modern European human than the European Neanderthal is. I have superimposed the outlines of the crania being compared. Statistical analysis of a battery of measurements shows that the European Neanderthal is more closely related to modern Europeans than to anyone...

New Age For Mungo Man, New Human HistoryA University of Melbourne-led study has finally got scientists to agree on the age of Mungo Man, Australia's oldest human remains, and the consensus is he is 22,000 years younger. A University of Melbourne-led team say Mungo Man's new age is 40,000 years, reigniting the debate for the 'Out of Africa' theory. The research also boosted the age of Mungo Lady, the world's first recorded cremation, by 10,000 years putting her at the same age as Mungo Man. It is the first time scientists have reached a broad agreement on the ages of...

Documentary Redraws Humans' Family Tree Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News January 21, 2003 By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago. Modern humans, he contends, didn't start their spread across the globe until after that time. Most archaeologists would say the exodus began 100,000 years ago—a 40,000-year discrepancy. Wells's take on the origins of modern humans and how they came to populate the rest of the planet is bound to be...

    Four-winged dinosaur makes feathers fly   19:00 22 January 03 Jeff Hecht   Long flight feathers adorn the hind legs of Microraptor gui (Image: Xing Xu) A stunning set of six fossils discovered in China could rewrite our understanding of how and why birds first took to the sky. The fossils clearly show a small dinosaur that had flight feathers covering its legs, as well as tail and arms, forming an extra pair of wings never before seen by palaeontologists. News of the find comes just days after scientists published work showing that baby partridges flap their tiny wings to...

Not an article but a request for information. What are the names of the World Order Groups and what is the "goal" of each (other than world domination). What I am trying to do is get them all seperated somehow and categorize them in some kind of sensible order. Who's communist, fascist, religious, etc.? things like Carter, Castro, Trilateral Commission, communist??, except the Rockerfellers are in there, Brezinski is a central figure. I used to know all this but a small stroke wiped out a chunk of my memory.

The old lignite skull ANOTHER MYSTERY SKULL... THIS TIME AN ANCIENT EUROPEAN WHICH, SAY FRANCOIS DE SARRE AND MICHEL GRANGER, COULD CHALLENGE THE OFFICIAL VIEW OF HUMAN ORIGINS. 0fficially, the origin of the first true Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) dates back 2.5 million years. Before this time lived other hominids whose bones cannot be confused with those of Homo's lineage. Against this background, we have the 2oo-year old enigma of an 'impossibly' ancient humanoid skull from the mining town of Freiberg, in Saxony, Germany, which, if verified, could be more than 10 million years old - far older than...

Chinese Roots: Skull may complicate human-origins debate Bruce Bower In 1958, farm workers digging in a cave in southern China's Liujiang County discovered several human bones including a skull. Relying on its resemblance to securely dated human fossils in Japan, scientists assigned this Homo sapiens skull an age of 20,000 to 30,000 years. ASIAN CONNECTION. If southern China's Liujiang skull is really more than 100,000 years old, this modern Homo sapiens fossil will shake up theories of human evolution. W. Wang However, the Liujiang finds may be much older than that, according to a report in the December Journal of...