Historic UFO audio archive dating back to the 40s recovered

"A historic UFO audio archive documenting the beginning of the modern UFO era has been made available online. The archive was compiled by Wendy Connors and Roderick Dyke, and re-discovered and made available online by Isaac Koi and Giuliano Marinkovic.

"You can find the Faded Disk archive at Archive.org."

Source: Open Minds.

Bra Company Made Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Possible

"No one knows what Columbus was wearing when he set foot in the New World, but on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his “one giant leap” onto the Moon, he was clad in this custom-made spacesuit, model A7L, serial number 056. Its cost, estimated at the time as $100,000 (more than $670,000 today), sounds high only if you think of it as couture. In reality, once helmet, gloves and an oxygen-supplying backpack were added, it was a wearable spacecraft. Cocooned within 21 layers of synthetics, neoprene rubber and metalized polyester films, Armstrong was protected from the airless Moon’s extremes of heat and cold (plus 240 Fahrenheit degrees in sunlight to minus 280 in shadow), deadly solar ultraviolet radiation and even the potential hazard of micrometeorites hurtling through the void at 10 miles per second.

"For the suit’s creator, the International Latex Corporation in Dover, Delaware, the toughest challenge was to contain the pressure necessary to support life (about 3.75 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen), while maintaining enough flexibility to afford freedom of motion. A division of the company that manufactured Playtex bras and girdles, ILC had engineers who understood a thing or two about rubber garments. They invented a bellowslike joint called a convolute out of neoprene reinforced with nylon tricot that allowed an astronaut to bend at the shoulders, elbows, knees, hips and ankles with relatively little effort. Steel aircraft cables were used throughout the suit to absorb tension forces and help maintain its shape under pressure."

Via Smithsonian.com

Dark Countess' grave dug up, body exhumed, then reburied

Exhumed, October 15:

The grave of a "Dark Countess" some believe was the eldest daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI was exhumed on Tuesday in Germany in the hope of resolving the 200-year-old mystery.

Local authorities in Hildburghausen, Thuringia, central Germany agreed to open the tomb to conduct DNA tests on an elusive aristocrat who resided in the town from 1807 until her death in 1837 with a mysterious "count". Very little was known about the woman, as she only ventured out in a carriage or with a veil covering her face.

Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France was the only member of her immediate family to survive the French Revolution. Officially, Marie-Thérèse, also known as Madame Royale, survived the Reign of Terror, fled to Vienna...

Despite this official account of her life, rumours persisted that the real Marie Thérèse was so traumatised by the Revolution that she secretly changed places with Ernestine Lambriquet, believed to be her half sister, and lived in hiding in Hildburghausen.

Reburied, November 7:

In a solemn and dignified ceremony, the remains of the Dark Countess were reburied... They had been temporarily taken from the grave in Hildburghausen for a scientific investigation. Speeches of the town Hildburghausen, the German TV-channel MDR and the "Madame Royale" Historical Society admired the special fate of the mysterious lady. Priests of the Protestant and Catholic Church of Hildburghausen gave their Christian blessing. 
In a symbolic gesture, the "Heimatverein Eishausen" transferred earth from the grave of the Dark Count (the long-time companion of the Dark Countess) into the grave of the lady and fulfilled his wish to be buried beside his companion. After the reburial visitors commemorated in front of the grave which had been restored in recent weeks and equipped with a burial chamber.

Philadelphia elects first Whig in 157 years

Shades of Millard Fillmore!

Robert Bucholz, who Rhawnhurst voters chose as Judge of Election for the 5th Division in the 56th Ward, became the first Whig elected in Philadelphia in 157 years. He beat out Democratic candidate Loretta Probasco, who received 24 votes to Bucholz's 36.

"As neither a Republican nor Democrat, in a city with a reputation for electoral dishonesty, I am an honest broker in administering elections," Bucholz said Wednesday in an email.

Bucholz, an engineer who spends most of his time working for defense contractors, said he first began identifying himself as a Modern Whig three years ago.

"The political tone turned nastier and I didn't identify with either Republicans or Democrats," he said. "The time for a third party that can broker consensus is long overdue. There have been many attempts since the beginning of our country, but the two major parties control the election laws, the ballot and the conversation."

First founded in America in 1833, the Whig Party promoted consensus and compromise over partisan politics. Though the party counted among its ranks many prominent figures, including four U.S. presidents, it was virtually disbanded by 1856 after the issue of slavery exposed deep fissures within its membership.

But the movement was revived about five years ago after a group of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans began meeting in response to what they saw as the divisive nature of the county's partisan political system. They went on to found the Modern Whig Party, which Time Magazine in 2010 named one of America's "Top Ten Alternative Political Movements." The party now has a Washington, D.C. headquarters and counts 25,000 to 30,000 members across the nation, according to statistics from The Modern Whig Party of America's website.

Was Britain’s great flood of 1607 a tsunami?

A one-off tsunami unleashing an irresistible force that left 2,000 dead or a powerful storm surge that caused a trail of devastating destruction around a coastline left vulnerable by inadequate defences?

That’s the question which has surrounded recent research on the Great Flood that was described as moving 'faster than a greyhound can run' when it hit Stuart Britain in 1607. Author Mike Hall revisits the conundrum in his new book The Severn Tsunami? The Story of Britain’s Greatest Natural Disaster. The book recounts how the brutal wave, over seven metres high, swept up the River Severn and flooded the lowland areas of South Wales, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and north Devon, killing thousands.

For centuries, those who survived called it an act of God, before modern scientific research began to delve into whether it was Britain’s first recorded tsunami. In order for a tsunami to occur, an earthquake has to happen below the seabed.

But if it was a tsunami, places including Brittany, Spain, Portugal and the west of Ireland should also have been affected, says Mr Hall. And though the evidence is not conclusive, Mr Hall believes the 1607 event was “probably” a storm surge...

But Mr Hall, from Redwick, Monmouthshire, admits that evidence that continues to support those who believe it was a tsunami comes from the 17th century chronicles and other written sources that tell of a “bright, sunny, cloudless day”. Conditions very far removed from those we would associate with a storm...

Professor Simon Haslett, of the University of Wales...believes the damage was caused by a tsunami, rather than high tides and severe storms.

The professor of physical geography has said descriptions in 17th century pamphlets of “huge and mighty hills of water” are more in keeping with a tsunami. He maintains there is evidence salt marshes were torn out of the Severn estuary in the early 17th century and only a tsunami would have the power to erode the coastline in this way. 

Source: Wales Online

Nazi Gestapo chief buried in mass grave in Jewish cemetery? (Video)

EuroNews transcript:

Could a Jewish memorial site in Berlin be the burial place for the head of the Gestapo who disappeared after World War II?

There are claims from a German historian in a tabloid newspaper that Heinrich Mueller, who ran the Nazis' secret police, did not escape the fall of the Third Reich as was rumoured.

Professor Johannes Tuchel, head of the German Resistance Memorial Centre, says Mueller died in Berlin where he ended up in a mass grave in what had been a Jewish cemetery in Grosse Hamburger Strasse.

Destroyed by the Nazis during the war, it is now a memorial site.

"He (Mueller) was responsible with Himmler, Hitler and Heydrich up to 1942 for a lot of mass crimes. He was deeply involved in the Holocaust, he was a member of the Wannsee Conference in 1942 and he was also responsible for the mass killings of Soviet prisoners of war," Tuchel said.

Senior Nazis used the Wannsee Conference to plan the implementation of the extermination of the Jews.

After the war, various reports said the Gestapo chief had either died in Berlin, or that he had escaped to ex-Czechoslovakia or South America.

The historian says he found new identity documents showing the Gestapo chief did indeed perish in the German capital during the final days of the war in 1945.

He also re-examined evidence from a grave-digger after the war who remembered burying a man in a general's uniform.

A prominent Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, has said that only DNA evidence will provide proof of what happened to Mueller.

Germany's main Jewish federation, the Central Council of Jews, issued a statement saying that a "brutal Nazi" buried in a Jewish cemetery was "an insult to the memory of the victims".