Free Republic

In an exclusive interview with Sun Online on the 55th anniversary of the assassination today, Clint, 86, reveals how he will never be able to forget the shocking and gruesome image of the president's last moments. And, tragically, even now Clint still believes “he should have been faster” - and blames himself for the president’s death.

Scientists recently detected two previously unknown species of microbes in a Canadian dirt sample, and the specimens were so unusual that the researchers had to reorganize the tree of life to make room for them. The microbes, also known as protists, belong to a group with the tongue-twisting name hemimastigotes, and the first-ever genetic analysis of these peculiar microorganisms revealed that they were even stranger than anyone suspected. Hemimastigotes, first observed in the 1800s, were previously classified as a phylum within a much larger group known as a super-kingdom, though it was unclear where exactly they belonged. But new DNA...

Russian fisherman Roman Fedortsov has a habit of pulling ghoulish and bizarre creatures from the deep sea. And his recent trawl did not disappoint: Fedortsov recently captured an eerily "smiling" sea worm. In a video Fedortsov posted on Twitter last week, the creature's clown-smile turns creepy as it seemingly morphs inside out in time with an uncanny, high-pitched noise added by the fisherman. (This is not a noise the creature is making.) "If the creature could scream, it would scream like this," Fedortsov wrote in the post. ..." Bristle worms are so named because they have small bristles called chaetae...

Viking sagas describe the ritual execution of blood eagle, in which victims were kept alive while their backs were sliced open so that their ribs, lungs, and intestines could be pulled out into the shape of bloody wings. PinterestA blood eagle execution. The Vikings didn’t come into towns walking on moonbeams and rainbows. If their sagas are to be believed, the Vikings cruelly tortured their enemies in the name of their god Odin as they conquered territory. If the suggestion of a blood eagle was even uttered, one left town and never looked back. Viking sagas define blood eagle as...

This week, word began to spread around some corners of the web that a new piece of the legendary ancient Greek computer known as the Antikythera Mechanism may have been found. But the claims, which surfaced following a Haaretz feature on the ongoing archaeological work in the area where the device was first uncovered, are misleading at best... ...in 2017... marine archaeologists from the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and Lund University in Sweden uncovered more treasures including pieces of a bronze statue and an encrusted bronze disk with four tabs on it that appeared almost like a cog wheel....

New fossils and sites are helping make sense of the mysterious flowering of animal life half a billion years ago The drumming of the jackhammer deepens. Then, a block of shale butterflies open, exposing to crisp mountain air a surface that hasn't seen sunlight in half a billion years. “Woo!” says paleontologist Cédric Aria of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, bracing the top slab of rock upright.Its underside bears charcoal-colored smudges that look vaguely like horseshoe crabs or the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. “It's a spaceship landing area here,” says expedition leader Jean-Bernard Caron, curator...

Catalogue of planetary maps, past and present, highlights our evolving view of our Solar System September 21, 2018 Catalogue of planetary maps, past and present, highlights our evolving view of our Solar System A catalogue that provides an overview of over 2,200 planetary maps produced worldwide between 1600 and 2018 was presented today at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2018 in Berlin. The catalogue has been produced by Henrik Hargitai, from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (Hungary), and Mateusz Pitura, from the University of Wroclaw (Poland).“Production of planetary maps started in Europe in the 1600s. It expanded to the...

Experts appointed by President Emmanuel Macron will advise him on Friday to allow the return of thousands of African artworks held in French museums, a radical shift in policy which could put pressure on other former colonial powers. Calls have been growing in Africa for the restitution of their cultural treasures, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging. But in a speech in Burkina Faso in November last year, Macron said "Africa's heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums." He later asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy...

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists has a new theory for why all human civilization abruptly ended on the banks of the Dead Sea some 3,700 years ago. According to analyzed archaeological evidence, the disaster of biblical proportions can be explained by a massive explosion, similar to one recorded over 100 years ago in Russia. […] As reported in Science News, at the recently concluded Denver-based ASOR Annual Meeting, director of scientific analysis at Jordan’s Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project Phillip J. Silvia presented a paper, “The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event: Catastrophic Termination of a Bronze Age Civilization” during a session on...

Written in coconut DNA are two origins of cultivation, several ancient trade routes, and the history of the colonization of the AmericasThe coconut (the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera) is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom; in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. What’s more, until it is needed for some other purpose it serves as a handy flotation device. No wonder people from ancient Austronesians to Captain Bligh pitched a few coconuts aboard before setting...

A new species of sauropod dinosaur that stretched 39 feet (12 m) from head to tail has been unearthed in Patagonia, ArgentinaDubbed Lavocatisaurus agrioensis, the new dinosaur is thought to have lived approximately 110 million years ago (Cretaceous period).The creature was a type of sauropod, a group of huge plant-eating dinosaurs that includes the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.One adult and two immature specimens of Lavocatisaurus agrioensis were recovered near the locality of Agrio del Medio, a small town in the central part of the province of Neuquén, Patagonia.“We found most of the skull bones of Lavocatisaurus agrioensis:...

THE lost city of Atlantis may have finally been uncovered after a structure was spotted poking through the ice of Antartica on Google Earth.Conspiracy theorists have long searched for the mythical city, which was first written about by philosopher Plato. Some believe it was a real place and was once the ruling power of the world before a natural disaster sank the entire island into the sea. But one man – Graham Maple, who runs YouTube channel Conspiracy Depot – may have brought an end to all the speculation after his amazing spot on the web mapping site. He believes...

A 2,100-year-old pit discovered in China was found to contain not only chariots and miniature statues of cavalry, horses, watchtowers, infantry, civil officials and musicians, but at its center was a scaled down version of the famous "Terracotta Army." ..Based on "the date, size and location of the pit," archaeologists believe it might been built for Liu Hong, a prince of Qi (a part of China), who was the son of Emperor Wu (reign 141–87 BC)." Based in Linzi, near the pit, Hong died in 110 BC without any heir, archaeologists wrote in their journal article. The scientists also wrote...

The world has been hearing about the Nazi gold train for weeks, and we may finally be getting closer to a confirmation or denial. The Polish army has converged upon the southwestern Poland site where the train could be located, with explosives, chemical, and radiation experts making sure there's no danger, especially since the train was rumored to have been booby-trapped, the AP reports. "Our goal is to check whether there's any hazardous material," a Polish colonel leading the search tells AFP. The military personnel are using ground-penetrating radar and mine detectors in their probe near Walbrzych, and the governor...

University of Oregon scientists have found the first confirmed dinosaur bone in Oregon, Fox 12 Oregon reports. The toe bone belonged to a plant-eating, bipedal dinosaur known as an ornithopod and is estimated to date back 103 million years to a geological period that also gave rise to Tyrannosaurus Rex, the university said. “This bone was sitting out there with all the rocks. It was pretty surprising,” University of Oregon scientist Greg Retallack told the Eugene Register-Guard. “No excavation was needed. It was just sitting among the ammonites and coil fossils.”Retallack found it in eastern Oregon near the tiny town of...

in the town of Gettysburg, PA. President Lincoln delivers a short speech dedicating the new National Cemetery there.

Do you see the Pilgrims as folksy people in funny hats? The true story of the Pilgrims’ great journey to America was one of courageous faith, daring escape, and tenuous survival. Theirs is the story of refugees who fled intense religious persecution. Bible Gateway interviewed Jay Milbrandt (@JayMilbrandt) about his book, They Came for Freedom: The Forgotten, Epic Adventure of the Pilgrims (Thomas Nelson, 2017).As a lawyer and historian, how have you joined those two elements in writing this book?Jay Milbrandt: A lawyer is a storyteller. It’s our job to understand and explain the facts. I see my role as...

The Battle of Alesia took place in September, 52 BC around the Gallic oppidum of Alesia, a major town centre and hill fort of the Mandubii tribe... To guarantee a perfect blockade, Caesar ordered the construction of an encircling set of fortifications, called a circumvallation, around Alesia. The details are known from Caesar's Commentaries. About 18 kilometres of 4 metre high fortifications were constructed in about three weeks (Wikipedia). This line was followed inwards by two four-and-a-half metre wide ditches, also four-and-a-half metres deep. The farthest from the fortification was filled with water from the surrounding rivers. These fortifications were...

The true story of Count Laszlo Almasy, the Hungarian explorer and hero of the film The English Patient, is told in MI5 files released to the National Archives today. In the film, Almasy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a disfigured patient in an Italian hospital who had been the handsome young lover of an Englishwoman (Kristin Scott Thomas) in pre-war Cairo. The truth is more prosaic. Although Almasy was a Hungarian explorer and airman who mapped the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and was prominent in pre-war Cairo society, he was no hero. He was a bungling Nazi intelligence officer who,...

While some of the anatomical regions of these extinct humans are well known, others, such as the vertebral column and the ribs, are less well known because these elements are more fragile and not well preserved in the fossil record. In 1983 a partial Neanderthal skeleton (known officially as Kebara 2, and nicknamed "Moshe") belonging to a young male Neanderthal individual who died some 60,000 years ago was found in the Kebara site (Mount Carmel, Israel). While this skeleton does not preserve the cranium because some time after burial the cranium was removed, probably as a consequence of a funerary...