Free Republic

The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history. As reported by Curtis Killman in the Tulsa World on Thursday, the ruling grants the United States, the Osage Nation, and Osage Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief via “ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass.” The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer...

Poke and Sniff: A Lesson from 1906In 1906, Upton Sinclair came out with his book The Jungle, and it shocked the nation by documenting the horror of the meat-packing industry. People were being boiled in vats and sent to larders. Rat waste was mixed with meat. And so on.As a result, the Federal Meat Inspection Act passed Congress, and consumers were saved from ghastly diseases. The lesson is that government is essential to stop enterprise from poisoning us with its food.To some extent, this mythology accounts for the wide support for government’s involvement in stopping disease spread today, including Covid...

New Version of footage San Francisco 1906, A Trip Down Market Street, Shot on April 14, 1906, four days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire. From the front of a cable car, a motion picture camera records a trip down Market Street, San Francisco, California, from a point between 8th & 9th Streets, Eastward to the cable car turnaround at the Ferry Building,

Saturday marks 114 years since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the Bay Area and beyond. The 7.9-magnitude earthquake killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed 28,000 buildings. The earthquake was felt just after 5 a.m. throughout the Bay Area. The earthquake broke loose less than 30 seconds later, with an epicenter near San Francisco. Strong shocks lasted from 45 to 60 seconds. The great earthquake was felt from southern Oregon to south of Los Angeles and even as far as central Nevada. The earthquake marks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time.

Some movie goers may still be reeling after seeing some very rare footage of San Francisco around the time of the 1906 earthquake. A small crowd of people turned up at the Edison Theater in Fremont Saturday to view the premiere of a nine-minute film of the devastation. The footage from the San Francisco-based Miles Brothers film studio was discovered at the Alemany Flea Market last summer after being missing for more than a century. Anniversary of the quake, which destroyed much of Santa Rosa too, is Wednesday.

A newspaper says a long-lost film reel with nine minutes of footage capturing San Francisco two weeks after the deadly 1906 earthquake surfaced at a flea market in the city. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday that the rare find portrays the city's post-quake devastation, including City Hall with its dome nearly destroyed. The so called "great quake" and ensuing fire on April 18, 1906 killed thousands. The newspaper says the nitrate film reel was shot by early filmmakers the Miles Brothers. The footage is a bookend to their most famous work ``A Trip Down Market Street,'' a 13-minute silent...

Jordan River Water Was Shipped to the U.S. in 1906 and May Have Flushed an Anti-Semitic U.S. Diplomat Out of His Job PhotoThe International River Jordan Water Company was launched by Col. Clifford E. Naudaud of Covington, Kentucky, in 1906. He secured "the sole right of shipping the water of the Jordan River from the banks of the stream in Palestine to all parts of the world for baptismal and other purposes," according to a Kentucky newspaper, The Bee, published in Earlington, KY. The water was "shipped in casks bearing the seals of the Turkish Government and the American Consul,"...

Only one known survivor remains: 109-year-old William Del Monte, who was 3 months old when the quake hitRuth Newman, one of only two known remaining survivors of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 that shook the city and the surrounding area, has died. She was 113. Family members say Newman passed away July 29 at her home in Pebble Beach, California, the coastal town where she and her late husband moved to after living in Pacific Grove. Newman was 5 years old when the quake struck, shaking her home in a Healdsburg ranch about 70 miles north of...

Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa’s career was cut short when he died at only 34 years old. But the illustrator left behind a small science-fiction legacy thanks to his 1906 artworks detailing the Martian invasion of London in H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. Wells’ tale preyed upon turn-of-the-century fears about the apocalypse and other Victorian superstitions (and social prejudices) about the unknown. Corrêa’s fantastical, murky style is fitting of Wells’ dark themes. The Martian fighting machines resemble frightening legions of massive spiders. There were only 500 copies of the Belgian edition of Wells’ story with Corrêa’s...

People will gather in San Francisco this weekend to mark the 109th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. SNIP The only survivors are believed to be 113-year-old Ruth Newman and 109-year-old William Del Monte. It was not known Friday if they would attend the early-morning ceremony Saturday. Mayor Ed Lee, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White will attend.

Every year around this time, I write a little tribute to an event that took place on a Christmas Eve many, many years ago. Although I never knew of it until a few years ago when I did a little research, the event impacted my life. It also impacted the lives of countless people all over the world since then. Therefore....let's raise a glass to Professor Reginald Fessenden! "Who?", you say? Read on.... It's Christmas Eve, 1906. in a small building by the shores of the Atlantic in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, Prof. Fessenden is doing some last-minute tweaking to make...

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...

"They'll slit your throat on Jolo," people told Col. Jim Linder, head of a U.S. military task force in the Philippines. He recalled the prediction as we buzzed toward Jolo Island in a helicopter. Linder, a 45-year-old South Carolina native who has the remnants of a Southern drawl, has led Special Forces operations in the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe and Africa for the past 20 years. His latest assignment is the remote 345-square-mile island at the southernmost edge of the vast Philippines archipelago. Jolo is a known haven for Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups, including Abu Sayyaf,...

Evoking the city's can-do spirit, Mayor Gavin Newsom called San Francisco a city of dreamers and doers, as he and an estimated 5,000 onlookers marked the 100th anniversary of the Great Quake just at the break of dawn today. Sending a national message, as network television cameras captured the event, Newsom said San Francisco's rebuilding efforts 100 years ago are ``a shining light and example'' for hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. Added Newsom, ``Don't tell me we can't rebuild.'' ``It's like New York on New Year's Eve,'' said Sonia Picone of San Francisco, as a big spotlight lit up Lotta's Fountain, the...

Overview To better understand the distribution of shaking and damage that accompanied the great 1906 earthquake, seismologists have constructed new computer models to recreate the ground motions. The simulations show how ground moved on the two sides of the San Andreas fault and how seismic waves radiated away from the fault to produce the shaking. The earthquake, which began 2 miles offshore from the City of San Francisco, ultimately grew to cause shaking and damage along more than 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault. The movies and snapshots available here portray the shaking over a 155 mile by 70...

99 years apart, disasters that devastated both cities share strange similarities. The old New Orleans is dead, drowned in the worst natural disaster in an American city since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. There is an eerie sense of parallel between the two catastrophes 99 years apart. Both cities were destroyed. Both cities had to face an uncertain future. San Francisco recovered and became the city it is today. The story of New Orleans is yet to be written. New Orleans in 2005 was about the same size as San Francisco in 1906 -- 484,000 people lived in...