Free Republic

Scientists have recreated the face of a 16th-century woman with a brick jammed into her mouth, an object apparently wedged there to stop her from eating the dead — as Italian locals believed she was a vampire. The spooky story begins at a mass grave discovered on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, a location used as a bubonic plague quarantine in the late 1500s and 1600s. In 2006, archeological studies found some bodies that were buried centuries ago. “When they supposedly identified a vampire, one of those responsible for the plague according to popular myth at the time, they...

“Centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of value,” Winston Smith discovers in George Orwell’s 1984. “One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Streets, inscriptions memorial stones, the names of streets – anything that might throw light on the past had been systematically altered.” In other words, “history has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” For all but the willfully blind, the parallels are apparent on every hand. For the Biden Junta, America is nothing more than a bastion of racist...

The site was the burial ground for some of Roman London’s first denizens.Archaeologists digging in London’s financial district have discovered what they think to be the first complete Roman funerary bed ever to be uncovered in Britain. The site, which holds remains of 2,000 years of the history of London, has turned up no fewer than five rare Roman oak coffins. The new finds, uncovered near the Holborn Viaduct, a 19th-century road bridge, date from about 43-410 C.E. The earth below London has only ever yielded three well-preserved Roman timber coffins, say the experts at the Museum of London Archaeology...

Jan. 25 (UPI) -- A statue that went missing from Louisville, Ky., nearly 30 years ago has been returned to the city by a man who had it in his back yard. David Greer said his father worked on a renovation project in 1996 at the Belvedere, an elevated event space in downtown Louisville, when he brought the statue home. "Dad said they tossed it to the side and he asked if he could have it, and they said, sure. That's where it began its life at [our] house," Greer told WLKY-TV. The statue depicts the Greek god Pan playing...

Composers count themselves lucky when musicians continue to perform their music after their death. But the American avant-garde composer John Cage, who died in 1992, never would have guessed that a single performance of his music would begin in 2001 and still be playing. In fact, it isn’t due to conclude for another 616 years. In a marathon performance like this, any little change becomes big news. On Feb. 5, 2011, for instance, one of the first three notes stopped sounding – after being sustained for eight years. On Feb. 5, 2023, another note is going to begin playing –...

Dense fog wreaked havoc on travelers inside both Chicago international airports - O'Hare and Midway - early Christmas Eve, as over 50 flights were grounded, leaving travelers stuck for the holidays. On Sunday, the National Weather Service issued a dense fog advisory for the entire Chicago area that initially expired at 9 a.m., but was later extended to 12 p.m. as heavy fog lingered. At Midway alone, there have been around 50 cancelations so far, with increasing delays as the FAA issued a ground stop until 10:30 a.m., after travel was put on hold late Saturday night. Meanwhile, O'Hare airport...

America’s recent troubles in the Red Sea have ramifications that go beyond backtracked cargo and skirmishes with Islamic militias. At stake is global dominance of maritime trade — and the consequent dominance of global politics. As The New American has documented, U.S. naval forces are embroiled in conflict with Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea in order to prevent this Yemeni militia from targeting Western commercial vessels. Attacks from the Houthi have set back supply chains and prompted big firms such as CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, and BP to avoid the Suez Canal over safety concerns.But while the United States and...

Today marks the beginning of the largest battle that America n soldiers ever fought in, as well as, writes Antony Beevor, the greatest battle of World War II in western Europe. When I was a kid in Brussels, my elderly teacher was from the town of Bastogne, and had lived as a little girl through the encirclement of the town during the freezing Christmas with the troops of General "Nuts!" McAuliffe to whom the inhabitants handed out their sheets to serve as winter camouflage. Madame Cop loved my mother and often invited my parents to her home for dinner and...

More than 100 Hamas terrorists reportedly surrendered on Saturday in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Maybe "strip" was also the right word, since the IDF was making them strip to make sure that they didn't have any weapons or bombs on their person. We reported on this before, but now even more terrorists surrendered Saturday, and what those people who raised the white flag are revealing is helping the IDF.N12 News shared the clip of the men standing in line across a rubble-strewn street in Jabaliya as IDF soldiers trained automatic weapons on them and ordered them to...

Abu Obeida, the masked spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, threatened on Sunday to kill all the remaining hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attacks unless Israel cedes to demands for more aid and prisoner exchanges. Speaking on a recorded broadcast reviewed by the Times of Israel, Obeida called Israel "fascist" and "arrogant":Neither the fascist enemy and its arrogant leadership… nor its supporters… can take their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance.Despite the fact that Israel Defense Forces is rapidly gaining ground in Gaza and large numbers of Hamas fighters have been surrendering,...