Did you Know This?


  • Ostriches do not hide their heads in the sand when faced with enemies.
  • Bananas do not grow on trees. Banana plants are flowering herbs. 
  • The word theory, as in the Theory of Evolution, does not imply doubt, as the scientific use of the word theory is different to theory used in ordinary usage.
  • Human adults have 206, but children have 300 bones because as they grow some of the bones fuse together. 
  • In the Bible, the forbidden fruit mentioned in the Book of Genesis is commonly believed to be an apple, and yet, the Bible does not say what type of fruit it is.
  • The final drafts of the United States Constitution, the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights were written on vellum, which is treated animal skin.
  • One online poll found that 34% of psilocybin mushroom ("shrooms," or "magic mushrooms,") users had homosexual thoughts after using the drug. Many psilocybin mushroom users report seeing penises in their hallucinations.
  • Italians did not invent pasta, it was introduced by Arabs from Libya, during their conquest of Sicily in the late 7th century.

Books To Read

 Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them, by Joshua Greene - the modern world has pushed disparate tribes of people into a shared space, resulting in the clash of values along with unprecedented opportunities.

Religion, Spirituality and the Brain

Studies of damaged brains have allowed scientists to gain incredible amounts of knowledge about the human brain. Damage to, removal and atrophy of, certain brain structures, has shown certain behavioural correlations. Damage and atrophy to certain parts of the right brain show correlations with patients being “hyper-religious.”
Other research has found that those claiming to be "born again", whether Protestant or Catholic, have significantly greater hippocampal atrophy than those who are non-religious.
Flickr wonderlane
University of California in San Diego neuroscientist VS Ramachandran, has concluded that "there is a neuronal basis for religious experiences", by studying patients suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. Those who have seizures situated near the left ear have more spiritual experiences.

Other research has found that there is a connection between the level of religiosity and a lack of 5HT-1A receptors in the brain. Theses serotonin receptors were correlated with people self-reporting as religious, or spiritual, using brain imaging techniques. People with less 5HT-1A receptors are also more likely to experience more anxiety and depression, and so, may use religious beliefs and practices as a comfort mechanism.

Magic mushrooms, which contain Psilocybin, induce intense spiritual experiences and are being studied (see here). Magic mushrooms are used in many indigenous cultures with the belief that they provide access to the sacred world. Psilocin has a high affinity for the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor in the brain and it increases the concentration of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the basal ganglia by indirect means.

However, scientists believe that a number of structures in the brain need to work together to help us experience spirituality and religion. The majority of people tend to follow the religion which they were raised, but there also appears to be a significant genetic component is your level of religious intensity.



Radio Lab  Has a segment about spirituality and magic mushrooms.



Books To Read
Beyond the Body: An Investigation of Out-of-the-Body Experiences, Susan Blackmore

Why Do I Get Crazy When I Fancy Someone?

Your eyes meet, you notice that sexy smile, and suddenly, your heart starts beating fast and your cheeks feel hot and flushed and your hands feel sweaty.
Flickr CourtyCarmody
Lust is driven by testosterone and estrogen. These sex hormones cause us to be looking about and noticing those we fancy. But lust, when it happens, kind of makes us crazy and once our brain's pleasure centres get all fired up by that sexy beast or babe in front of us, a whole load of things start buzzing in the brain and body.
The main neurotransmitters released up by lust are:

Dopamine- which brings a pleasure rush and less need for sleep and food. Dopamine is also released by cocaine and nicotine.

Adrenalin- Lust activates the stress response, making your heart race and your hands sweat when faced with your object of lust. Your mouth may also go dry, making it hard to speak.

Serotonin- Serotonin is low, while dopamine is high. This causes the obsessive tendency to keep thinking about the person you lust after.

If you develop an attachment with your love interest then other body chemicals come into play.

Oxytocin- Is called the cuddle hormone, as it is released by cuddling, having sex and giving birth. Oxytocin increases attachment.

Vasopressin- Is also released by sex and it increases long-term commitment. (more info)


The Brain On Love

Scientists have also found the neurological difference between love and lust. Lust and love activate part of the brain called the striatum, but lust activates the area of the brain that responds to pleasure; while the part of the striatum involved in processing love, is involved in attaching value to the things that give us pleasure. This brain area is also involved in drug addiction.

Our eye gaze may also differentiate feelings of love from feelings of desire according to research in the journal Psychological Science, as research has shown that people tend to visually fixate on the face when images elicit feelings of romantic love; but when images stimulated sexual desire, the subjects’ eyes moved from the face to fixate on the rest of the body.


Books To Read

The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, by Norman Doidge -a book on neuroplasticity by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge.

An Experiment With a Live Severed Head

After a head is severed from the body, its function continues for a few minutes more. A Russian scientist, Doctor Sergei S. Bryukhonenko, in some controversial experiments attempted to keep a dog's head alive for an extended amount of time after it had been lopped off and was clinically dead.

You can watch the film that was made of the experiment and see the head with four tubes connected.

Lungs, which sit in a tray, are oxygenated by bellows. A primitive heart-lung machine called the autojektor supplies the canine head with oxygenated blood.

The film is disturbing and freaky, watch it if you dare.                      

Is the Universe a Hologram?

The study of black holes by scientists suggests that our universe is perhaps a hologram -a mere representation of another universe.

All An Illusion?

Leonard Susskind and Nobel Prize winner, Gerard ‘t Hooft, say that the information from black holes suggests that our universe and everyday experiences might be something like the holograms on credit cards, which are 2D but become 3D due to the light reflection. ( "Our world may be a giant hologram", New Scientist).

So perhaps our lives and our perception of the universe is all an illusion?

In one striking example of a holographic universe, Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study constructed a mathematical model of a “soup can” universe; where what happened inside the can, including gravity, is encoded in the label on the outside of the can, where there was no gravity, as well as one less spatial dimension. If dimensions don’t matter and gravity doesn’t matter, how real can they be? New York Times

So, what we think of as a three-dimensional universe, maybe only a holographic projection coming from the particle horizon around 13.7 billion light-years away.

Theoretical physicists from the University of Southampton believe they have found signs that our Universe is an illusion by studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – radiation left over from the Big Bang. The latest study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, contains the first proof, the researchers say, that the universe is actually an illusion, or a hologram.

Chickens Are Pretty Clever, Actually


Chickens are smarter than you think. Australian researchers from Macquarie University have found that chickens actually have a sophisticated communication system and can "talk" to each other.

Roosters tend to vocalise about food in order to attract hens. However, if another rooster is nearby, they keep quiet and use gestures and body language to attract the hens' to the food; showing evidence of high-level decision making. Chickens have around 30 different vocalisations, which they use in order to communicate such things as warning calls, summoning their young and announcing the presence of food. Their vocalisations also differentiate between different types of predators. 

Chickens are Related to Dinosaurs

 Humble Chickens are also the closest living relative to the extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, modern chickens were domesticated from Asian jungle fowl around 6000 years ago. By using DNA data from archaeological chicken bones combined with statistical modelling, scientists have found that important genetic changes occurred in the domestic chicken during the Middle Ages; notably, THSR gene variants that helped the chickens to cope with living in close quarters to one another and also, for faster egg laying and a reduced fear of humans. 

The driving factor behind these changes was probably Christianity, as religious dictates of the times enforced fasting and excluded the eating of four-legged animals. Eating chickens and eggs were permitted during fasts and this drove up demand and the resulting genetic changes.

Books To read

Fairy Tales, Fairly Told, Barbara Mervine. It is the second critical thinking/skeptic children’s book.

Social Conservatives Won't Like It

Social conservatives won't like it as it appears that homosexuality is fairly common and natural in many animals. Male black swans will often bring up baby swans together and grey whales have "slip-and-slide" orgies which involve lots of belly rubbing.
Females are not left out of the fun. About one-third of Hawaiian albatross pairs are both female. These birds can live for up to 70 years, forming strong monogamous pair bonds. Female koalas, also, form same-sex liaisons and may try to mate with up to five other female koalas at a time. And then what about the female Kobus kob, a kind of antelope, which engage in a bit of oral and stroking action together.
There are published claims that 94% of male giraffe sexual activity is same-sex, which is incredible! And, nearly all bonobo monkeys are bisexual. Bonobos also share about 98.7% of their DNA with humans.

In sheep (Ovis aries), around 8–10% of rams are exclusively homosexual and around a further 18–22% of rams are bisexual.


Books To Read

The Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson is about the U.S. Army's exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal.

The Amazing Technology of the Ancient Greeks. Opa!


We tend to think that we are a clever lot today, with our mobile phones and assorted technologies. We may dismiss ancient cultures as primitive, but is this really true? Let's have a look at some of the technologies that those canny ancient Greeks were working on. Many of these can be viewed at the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, a museum in Katakolo, Elis, Greece.

Plato (428 B.C.E), the famous philosopher, appears to have invented the first wake-up mechanism in history. Water clocks were commonly in use in Plato's lifetime, to control the passage of time. Plato's clock, however, had an added feature, it was set to chime once in the early evening and once at dawn.

Heron of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician and engineer, invented a means to automatically open the temple gates after a sacrifice on its altar. The heat from a fire, lit by the city's temple priest, allowed atmospheric pressure to build up in a brass vessel and this caused water to pump out into holding containers. These holding containers acted as weights for a series of ropes and pulleys, which would open the temple's doors.

Also invented by Heron of Alexander was an entirely mechanical theatre, "puppet show", which was almost ten minutes in length. This automatic theatre was powered by a binary-like system of ropes, knots, and simple machines operated by a rotating cylindrical cogwheel. The sound of thunder was produced by the mechanically-timed dropping of metal balls onto a hidden drum.

In the 3rd century BCE, Philon of Byzantium invented what was probably the first working robot in history. Made in the form of a life-size woman, this complex device automatically poured wine and then water, when a cup was placed in the robot's left hand. The water and wine were stored in metal jugs suspended inside the figure.
First robot
On Your Mark

Another wonderful innovation was the hysplex, which was a starting gate which was used in ancient Greek horse and foot races. Each racer stood behind his own hysplex and all of the strings which were centrally connected behind the runner were held by a referee. At the start of the race, the referee released all the strings, which allowed the starting gates to fall at the same time, releasing the runners.
Hysplex, 4th century BC, Greece


Books To Read


The inventions of the ancient Greeks, by Kostas Kotsanas.

The Crap Life of a Drone


A male honey bee is called a drone, which is an apt name for a creature which exists for one purpose and that is to have sex with the queen. These drones then compete with each other, as the queen flies out in search of mates.

One drone amongst a competing swam, will make a move and latch on to the queen and insert his penis. Ejaculation is immediate and explosive, so much so, that the drone's penis ruptures, separating from the drone's body. The drone crashes to the ground to die and the penis stays embedded in the queen.

During this flight in search of sex partners, the queen mates with many drones, leaving a trail of dead bees behind her. Any drone who does not mate with the queen will be hounded from the hive, as drones exist only as sperm carriers and once the queen's mating is over, drones are not needed.


Books To Read


California is a novel by American author Edan Lepucki - characters Frida and Cal flee Los Angeles to live in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic California.

A Strange 600 Year Old Manuscript

Described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", the The Voynich manuscript is indeed an enigma. Comprising about 240 vellum (made from calf skin) pages, mostly of illustrations, with some pages missing. This work is written in a script and language which is unknown and unreadable. As can be imagined, this manuscript has been the subject of many theories and much speculation.
Scientific analysis has found that the text and figure outlines, were written with a quill pen and iron gall ink; the painting may have been added later.

Written from right to left, there seems to be some evidence of some kind of phonological laws used in the text, with certain characters appearing in each word in a way similar to vowels in English. Statistical analysis also shows patterns similar to those used in natural languages. However mostly, the manuscript is unlike that of European languages in many ways. For example, a certain common word may appear up to three times in a row.

There are six sections of the manuscript, which according to the illustrations contain different subject matter. In the Astronomical section there is drawings of moons and stars, as well as the symbols of conventional zodiacal constellations e.g. a bull for Taurus. Another section has text, interspersed with figures of small naked women, with some wearing crowns and bathing in pools which are connected by a complicated network of pipes, which have a look of body organs.
There are many theories about the origin and purpose of this manuscript. Some propose that the text is a cipher, others speculate that it is a kind of hybrid language and yet others put forward the idea of an elaborate hoax.Yet maybe, the author was simply under the sway of a mental delusion.Who really knows?

The latest evidence supports the idea that this manuscript was written by an Italian Jew.

The Hammer of the Witches

Written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman, Malleus Maleficarum, meaning "Hammer of the Witches", in Latin, was a handbook used by legal courts throughout Renaissance Europe.

Kramer had been thrown out of the Tyrol region in 1484 and dismissed by the local bishop as a "senile old man", for attempting to systematically persecute people who he believed were witches. Soon, however, the malevolent fellow received full papal approval for such Inquisitions to proceed "correcting, imprisoning, punishing and chastising" those accused of witchcraft and heresy.

The Existence of Witches

Church approval for the existence of witches was a strange about-face, as previously, the church had associated belief in witches with pagan superstition. However, with the publication of Malleus Maleficarum, persecution of so-called witches was officially sanctioned and recognised as a real threat.

Section 1. of the book rants on about how the devil exists and how loose women had sex with the devil and so became witches. Section 2. of this licensed twaddle spoke of how these insatiable nympho witches would find young and pure maidens to introduce to the devil. The third part of this book of buffoonery laid out a guide for conducting a witch trial (including torture) and ways to recognise witches. Women who did not cry during their trial were automatically believed to be witches. (thoughts of the trial of Lindy Chamberlain come to mind).

This witch-hunting manual was a work of inspired misogyny (most witches were women). Female witches were also accused of having the power to steal penises, cause harm with their evil eyes and perform diabolical carnal acts with incubus and succubus demons.

Mass Panic

Midwife witches would kill unborn children in the womb, drink the blood of others and present some to the 'ole devil himself. Women who had been abandoned by their men, however, routinely sought out the devil, not only in pursuit of revenge but to indulge in carnal pleasures. Once a woman had the devil's favour, then she had the ability to fly about the place, perform magic and appear in animal form.

The result of this church supported nonsense, was hysteria, mass panic and the death of millions of innocent people (mostly women).

One popular way of testing a witch was to throw the suspected witch into water with her left hand or thumb tied to her right foot, and her right hand tied to her left foot. The guilty would float, the innocent would sink. You couldn't win.
Ordeal by water was associated with the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. The accused witch who sank was considered innocent while floating indicated witchcraft.


"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18) 

Malleus Maleficarum


Books To read


50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True, by
Guy P. Harrison

The Strange American Vampire Panics

According to an article by the Smithsonian Institution, a little over 100 years ago, people who lived in  Rhode Island, New England, USA, dug up the dead bodies of relatives they suspected of being vampires. The dead were then desecrated in various ways and hearts were cut from the decaying bodies in the mistaken belief that they were safeguarding the living.

According to this article, "vampire panics" historically, mostly coincided with contagious diseases and in New England at this time, this was tuberculosis (TB). People in this period did not know about bacteria and so, jumped to supernatural entities as being the root cause of the death and sickness plaguing the area and its people. 

When the overwrought New Englanders would dig up their dead, they would be met with corpses bloated and leaking blood, these natural signs of decay would, however, be interpreted as confirming their vampire suspicions. And so, there would follow, burning at the stake, beheading and other such horrors.


Books To Read

 The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber -an English pastor is sent to the planet of Oasis to teach its reclusive native inhabitants about Christianity.


Read here

This Fish Has a Strange Way to Do It!


The anglerfish has a really strange way of doing the deed, i.e. reproducing. At first, scientists who studied anglerfish were puzzled as to why most of the specimens that they found were females; soon, however, a gruesome story was revealed after it was noted that many female anglerfish had what looked like parasites attached to them.

Male anglerfish have one aim in life and that is to use their olfactory senses to find a female anglerfish to attach to, as they are much smaller and have problems finding food. If that is not enough to deal with, the male anglerfish often, also, has a severely stunted gut (alimentary canal) and so can't eat anyway.

When the male anglerfish finally locates a female, he bites into her skin which releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body. The romantic pair then, become fused together, down to the blood vessel level. The male then slowly wastes away (atrophy) leaving only a pair of gonads ( testes).

When the female anglerfish is ready to reproduce she releases a hormone and sperm is released. Multiple males can attach and be incorporated into a single female.
Flickr Gary Robson 


Books To Read


Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, by Anthony A. Long.  

Read Random Strange Facts

Nazi Ufos and Other Crazy Claims

It sounds too crazy for words, but there is actually a collection of claims and anecdotes connecting Hitler and the Nazi's with successfully developing super-advanced spacecraft during World War II.

Early claims relate to the many reports by allied aircraft pilots about mysterious aerial phenomena from around the world. These reports came to be known as "foo fighter" phenomena; although initially, this term applied to a specific UFO reported and named by the U.S, as 415th Night Fighter Squadron. Foo fighters were assumed, by most witnesses to be secret weaponry used by their enemies.

Flying Saucers

After 1947, there were a series of flying saucer reports and in 1950, Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian scientist asserted that "types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden also remarked that the Germans were working on a number of very unusual aeronautical projects and that if the war had gone on only months longer, there would have been some very "deadly developments".

Later in 1960, Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels alleged the existence of a secret society called the Vril-Society, which was supposedly searching for the energy force called, Vril, an “all-permeating fluid” of limitless power. In their book, The Morning of the Magicians, Bergier and Pauwels claimed that the Nazi Party, together with the Vril society, had actually developed a series of flying disc prototypes. When the Nazi's were defeated, the Vril society allegedly retreated to a base in Antarctica and vanished into hollow Earth, to meet up with the leaders of an advanced race inhabiting the inner Earth.

Bulgarian engineer, Vladimir Terziski, has also made a few startling claims, such as alleging that the Nazi's had the ability to land on the moon in 1942 and that, "there is atmosphere, water and vegetation on the Moon," which is concealed by NASA to exclude the third world from moon exploration.

Tin-Foil Territory

German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel claimed that flying saucers were Nazi secret weapons, launched from an underground base in Antarctica, from which the Nazis hoped to conquer the world and possibly the planets. But would you believe the ideas a chap who advertised an expedition to Antarctica to find these bases and wanted to charge $9,999 for an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to the hollow earth?

The final piece of UFO/Nazi craziness relates to  Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat who claimed that Adolf Hitler was an Avatar of the popular Hindu god Vishnu who was communing with Hyperborean gods of  Greek mythology, in an underground Antarctic base in New Swabia. Serrano also predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich. Ahhhhhhh crazy!!!


Books To Read

 Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, by James Randi -ESP, psychokinesis, psychic detectives, levitation, psychic surgery, UFOs and more.

Going Bananas and Smoking Bananas

Most people have heard the claim that you can get high from smoking banana peel. The Anarchist Cookbook also believing this to be possible, published information about bananadine, the supposed psychoactive substance in bananas, in their 1970's book.

The hoax recipe was lifted from the Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper from California, founded by Max Scherr in 1965. Scherr had a mischievous sense of humour and had the rascally idea that he could get the authorities to ban bananas. So the magazine went ahead and printed a story detailing how bananas contained a substance called "bananadine", which could induce a psychedelic high similar to opium and psilocybin.

Amazingly, this tall-tale was widely believed and not only did it inspire a generation of teens to get into smoking banana skins, but the absurd manufactured anecdote was mentioned in a New York Times article on illicit drugs by Donald Louria.

Despite New York University's finding, that bananas contain no intoxicating chemicals, the bananadine idea was reinforced by such songs as Mellow Yellow by Donovan (who was actually thinking about ladies' vibrators), and the punk rock band The Dead Milkmen, who sang a song about "Smokin' Banana Peels".

Sorry guys, but the only effect you will get is a placebo.


Books To Read

The Spider Network, by David Enrich - about con artists and fraud cases.


How the Eyes can Trick the Brain

We can't always trust what we think we see. Remember, our brain is stuck in the enclosed darkness of our skull and it must try to interpret the messages that come via the eyes. The information that our eyes gather can, due to such reasons as competing stimuli as excessive colour, movement, tilt or brightness, create a visual picture which differs from the objective, measurable reality.

How we see things often depends on our perspective, or, how we see things as a whole. For example, what do you see below? A duck or a rabbit?


And is the dancer below, spinning clock-wise or anti-clockwise?


Our brain has to make sense of the incoming visual perceptions by organising them in certain ways, putting information together like a jigsaw and filling in missing parts. Notice how your brain creates an impression of triangles, that are not really there?

With some things our brain completely fails. For example, the impossible 2 dimensional drawings which are interpreted by our brains as being 3 dimensional, even though viewing the object for a few minutes makes us realise that it is impossible for the object to exist.


The the Dutch artist M. C. Escher used many impossible paradox illusions in his art works.

Ascending and Descending by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher
 


Books To read


The Ultimate Book of Optical Illusions, by Al Seckel. Wonderful trickery!

Seeing the Face of Jesus on a Piece of Toast

Most people have heard of cases where people supposedly, see the face of Jesus on a piece of toast; this kind of perception is called Pareidolia. The human brain is a pattern maker and humans are especially inclined to see faces in random patterns, especially, anything that appears to have 2 dots and a line. : D
Despite not bearing much resemblance to a real face, most people will identify the above picture as a face.

Seeing religious figures on toast and other food items has spawned a bit of an industry, with few stopping to even consider that they don't know what Jesus may have actually looked like. It is highly unlikely that he would have looked like an Italian youth with blonde hair and blue eyes, as many Italian painters of the Renaissance seemed to think. And it is equally unlikely that a picture of him would appear on a piece of factory-produced bread.
A rock that appears like a face 
The word pareidolia comes from Greek and essentially, it describes the human tendency to see pictures in random patterns.

Carl Sagan saw pareidolia as providing an evolutionary advantage related to differentiating a friend from enemy. Psychology has made use of pareidolia with the Rorschach inkblot test, where the patient is asked to interpret "ambiguous designs" and the psychologist accesses the personality of the patient based on what the patient claims to see. Thankfully, this flunky practice is dying out.

Some extremely wacky and embarrassing things have also resulted from paradolia. For example, Chonosuke Okamura, a twentieth-century Japanese palaeontologist claimed that he had discovered ancient fossils showing "mini-species" of animals ranging from humans to dinosaurs, which were each less than 0.25 mm in length. He then claimed that: "There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period ... except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm."[6][7]. Okamura had looked at his fossil specimens under the microscope and also seen, "Two totally naked homos, facing each other, are moving their hands and feet harmoniously. We can only think of dancing in a present-day style."

Oh my! Some people will simply believe anything!


Books To Read


The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan - learn critical and skeptical thinking.

The Virgin Priestesses of Ancient Rome

Vestal Virgins were priestesses of ancient Rome dedicated to the goddess Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the holy fire of Rome and the Vestal Virgins were selected by casting of lots. This process was believed to be a form of divination but resembled random chance. The Vestal Virgins were very influential and powerful and charged with the important job of tending the sacred fire, which was considered integral to the security and survival of Rome.

Originally there were two Vestal Virgins, but over time the number grew to six women, who would take vows of chastity. The Virgins were considered important to Rome; their major duty was to ensure that the sacred fire never went out and this was considered a life purpose, so these women could never marry or have children.

Unlike many major religions, the Vestal Virgins had respect, privileges and powers. For example, when on their way to public ceremonies in their covered two-wheeled carriage, they had right of way on the road. And when at various public ceremonies, they sat in reserved places of honour. Unlike most women of Rome, they could own property, make a will and vote. They also had the power to free condemned prisoners, simply by touching them.

There was a College of Vestals but the Christian Emperor Theodosius, ordered the college discontinued and the sacred fire extinguished in 394. Interestingly, the Roman Empire did indeed fall into decline after this and finally dissolved on September 4, 476, when  the last Emperor, Romulus Augustus was deposed by a Germanic chieftain.
 
Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton Wikipedia

Theoretically, We Can Look Back in Time

Hypothetically, if you were able to get out into deep space, maybe by teleporting there, and you  possessed a massively powerful optical telescope, you should be able to look back in time, into our past.

Imagine, we could establish if certain historical events were true, or, at least, if they happened in the way claimed. We could investigate some of the worlds great mysteries and beliefs for factual evidence.

The reason, at least in theory, that we may be able to see the Earth back in time from somewhere in deep space, is because light travels at the incredible speed of 186,000 miles a second. Astronauts on the moon, for example, as they look back, see the Earth as it was 2 seconds before, as that is how long it takes for light to travel from there to their eyes. And the light from the sun takes 8 minutes to make its journey to us.

If we were able to perhaps, teleport out in the deep uncharted areas of space, what historical events would see? We can, however, look out into space with the aid of mega-strong telescopes and see past events in space. For example, we might say that Supernova 1987a occurred in 1987, but the event actually happened 190,000 years before! It just took that long for the light explosion to reach Earth.

The furthest astronomers are currently able to see is about 18,000,000,000 light-years away, which is like looking back in time 18 billion years ago. And, believe it or not, scientists claim that if an alien was located 65 million light-years away and they could see Earth through a powerful telescope, they would see the dinosaurs.
The Ant planetary nebula. Ejecting gas from the dying central star shows symmetrical patterns unlike the chaotic patterns of ordinary explosions.



Books To read


How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, by Michael Shermer

Abandoned Tragic Beautiful Buildings

Abandoned buildings, especially those displaying beautiful craftsmanship and capturing a previous period of history, often have a tragic beauty about them. These buildings not only perfectly capture the death of the past, but also a lost time of elegance, or period of profound privilege for some and oppression for others.

Former mental hospitals are especially creepy, evoking thoughts of horrors that must have existed in times before the current psychotropic medications. And a time, when people could be put into these institutions against their will. Some people never got out and were probably sane; left to rot slowly, cut off from their former life.

And yet, there is an undoubted mystery about these buildings, which evokes curiosity and stirs the imagination.
An abandoned castle in Belgium Flickr Bert Kaufmann
      Sutton Scarsdale Hall , Derbyshire Flickr Philandthehounds              

Renwick Smallpox Hospital Flickr Doug Letterman
Nocton Hall Hospital Flickr Lplatebigcheese
Abandoned house, New Brunswick, Canada
Abandoned barn in Wisconsin, USA
The Henry River Mill Village, North Carolina, USA, of The Hunger Games
Front of a decaying Italianate house located at 6396 State Route 78 at Reinersville in Manchester Township, Morgan County, Ohio, United States. It was built in 1870.
Abandoned house in Mouscron, Belgium.
Abandoned Teutonic castle tower in Kurortnoe (Gross-Wonsdorf) in Kaliningrad oblas.
Castell Dinas Brân, Wales
Abandoned Fireplace, Pravda Castle


 Books To Read

 The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins - is a dystopian novel. A fight to the death on live TV.


She Became a Mother at 5 Years of Age!

It is hard to believe that it would even be possible for a 5 years old girl to get pregnant and give birth. However, the case of Lina Medina, who was born in 1933 in Peru, was confirmed by Dr. Edmundo Escomel and published in the medical journal La Presse Médicale. 

The young girl, Lina, when originally taken to the hospital, was believed to be suffering from a tumour or other health problem. Soon it became apparent that the child who had experienced menstruation since the age of 3 and had already developed breasts, was pregnant.

When a caesarean birth was performed on May 14, 1939, it was found that Lina had mature sexual organs. Dr Escomel hypothesised that Lina may have experienced precocious puberty, due to a pituitary gland dysfunction as the usual age for commencing periods is 12 and half years. Lina's son, however, was perfectly healthy and he went on to live until 1979, dying at the age of 40.
Lina Medina, seven and a half months into pregnancy 
Lina who was one of nine children was unable to tell authorities who the father of her child was, though her own father was suspected and even jailed for a period. Later, at the age of 33, Lina married Raul Jurado and lived in a poor neighbourhood. Shockingly during the 1980s, her house was demolished to make way for a new highway and she received no compensation.

In 2002, Reuters news service asked for an interview with Lina, but she consistently refuses all requests.

Enter My Secret Room

The Egyptian pyramids often had secret rooms, hidden passages and false burial chambers built into them, in an attempt to foil grave robbers. Secret rooms, however, have been built for a wide variety of reasons, some benign, and some with foul and loathsome intent.

In the prohibition era of the 1920s, secret rooms, attics and hidden basements would be turned into speakeasies. Huge stores of illegal alcohol were often kept in these hideaways, which were fitted with peep-holes so that visitors could be vetted before entering the premises. Many speakeasies, like Manhattan's "21" club also had complicated systems involving drop-shelves, where bottles of alcohol could fall into secret compartments as a security measure. "21" also had an invisible wine cellar, disguised behind a shelf of canned foods and hanging smoked hams, which slid back to reveal the liquor cache.
New York's 21 Club was a Prohibition-era speakeasy.
Mobsters and Murderers

If you were interested to buy a house with a whole suite of secret rooms, enclosed behind a bank vault door, set in a guard-gated community in Las Vegas, there was recently a house on the market owned by a former mobster. Featuring hidden gun compartments and sump pumps to keep the water out of the deep basement rooms, the décor is, however, decidingly 1970s. There is also a soundproof concrete and steel room, with no inside doorknob! A film was made about the owners of this property called Casino, starring Robert De Niro.

Dr. Henry Howard Holmes (alias) was America's first serial killer who purposely built a horror hotel, to suit his evil intentions. Known as the "Murder Castle", the imposing structure occupied a whole block and was three-stories tall. Like a maze, the hotel had more than 100 windowless rooms, false floors, secret passages, doors which opened into brick walls and various trap doors. Greased shafts opened into a glass-lined room, where poisonousness gas could be released. A basement room which sat not far under the outside foot path, also contained instruments of torture and a kiln.
The "Murder Castle"
New York Newspaper The World showing floor plan of Holmes "Murder Castle"
Abuse of Power

Terrible atrocities and horrors were experienced by vulnerable orphans in the underground rooms of the Haut de la Garenne Orphanage, on the British island of Jersey. After allegations of abuse, authorities found appalling evidence that the underground chambers were the sites of beatings, sexual abuse, enforced drug taking and extreme isolation of victims. Ankle shackles, stocks and canes were also found at the site. A victim of the crimes said that what happened in these secret rooms was "indescribable". A child's skull was also found under a cement floor.
Haut de la Garenne

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