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

Native American's Came from Russia!

DNA research has revealed that the Native (indigenous) American people came from a place called Altai in southern Siberia, Russia. Genetic markers, such as a specific and unique mutation on the Y chromosome (coming from the father), are shared by Native Americans and the people from the small mountainous region of Altai in Siberia. Mitochondrial DNA which is passed only by the mother also showed links between the two groups. The groups also show physical similarities.

The findings, which have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, estimate that groups of people migrated from Siberia to America around 13-14,000 years ago, when the Beringia land bridge existed.

The scientists took DNA samples of 2,500 Native Americans from the United States, Canada, and Mexico and DNA from almost 500 people who lived in remote areas of Altai.

Altai people in Siberia and a traditional dwelling

A teepee of the Native American people, 1891

Books To Read


Into The Winderness, by Sara Donati. Historical romance on a grand scale.

Australia's Incredible Extinct Giant Animals

When the indigenous people of Australia first set their feet on the continent of Australia 45,000 years ago, after leaving Africa, travelling via Asia, they entered a land, in which there lived, around 55 giant animal species called mega-fauna. Wombats the size of small cars, 2-metre tall carnivorous kangaroos and 5-metre long snakes, were just a few of the inhabitants.

There is also fossil evidence of giant penguins, which were about 1.35 metres tall and 90 kilograms in weight. In New Zealand, wing-bone fossils have been found of similar penguin-like birds, which indicate that they may have been as tall as a man.

A Giant Bird!

Whole skeletons of huge flightless birds, which were over 3 meters tall, have been found in the Northern Territory. Called Stirton's Thunder Bird, these birds weighed up to 500kg. The birds, however, died out before any humans laid eyes on them.

Stirton's Thunder Bird

A wombat-like animal which shares ancestors with the modern wombat was the largest marsupial that has ever lived. Scientists recently found a mass-grave of 50 skeletons, of these animals, who weighed up to 2.8 tonnes. Also found at the Queensland site, was the fossils of a venomous six-metre lizard called Megalania.

Many specimens of carnivorous marsupial lions have been found in Australia. They were about the size of today's female lions and tigers, but they were actually related to marsupial mammals, like kangaroos, wallabies and possums.

It is believed that mega-fauna evolved as an adaptation to food scarcity and the hostile climate of Australia.


Books To Read


Europe: A Natural History, by Tim Flannery. The first modern humans arrived in Europe 40000 years ago.

Yes daddy, You Can Breast-Feed The Baby

Men have the equipment which enables them to breast-feed, as males like females have breast tissue and milk ducts. Men also produce the hormones oxytocin and prolactin, which are important to breastfeeding and as with women, the size of the breast really has very little to do with milk production.

You don't need to be pregnant to produce breast milk, women who adopt babies sometimes, simply allow the baby to nurse and soon the milk is stimulated and produced. Fathers can do the same thing if they really want to breast-feed their child.

A resourceful Sri Lankan man named Mr B. Wijeratne, in 2002, breastfed his daughter after his wife's death. Exasperated by his attempts to calm and feed the baby, he finally put the child to his breast and soon the baby was happily feeding.

The Bible also makes mention of breastfeeding fathers in Numbers 11:12:
 Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?

The actor Dustin  has expressed his regret about not breastfeeding, in this quote:
“I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed”. 

The breastfeeding part at least, is possible.

Laughter: A Natural Opioid For Our Brain

Interestingly, laughter seems to be generated in the brain stem, which is part of the very old brain systems. The brain stem is also where lust, fear and rage are located.

If you tickle a rat, it can laugh, by making a chirping kind of sound. Rats, however, don't seem to be social gigglers like humans are. Humans are most likely to laugh when with other people and unlikely to laugh when alone.

Laughter is not all about humour though; laughter has a very dark side. Aristotle and Plato both commented on laughter as being an attempt to assert superiority. And psychological research also shows that socially dominant children are more likely to laugh more often. Also consider that the kids who perpetrated the Columbine School massacre were laughing as they engaged in their repugnant shooting spree.

Babies begin to laugh at around 2-3 months of age and playing with a young baby can soon develop into joyful laughter for all concerned and the release of oxytocin, a brain chemical that increases feelings of attachment. Laughter in this way can be a serious form of social and emotional bonding and connectedness. It's pretty hard to fake genuine laughter, though, in the same way, that it's hard to fake a "genuine" Duchenne smile.

Laughter is often contagious, you seem to catch it from others. To some extent, this is because we tend to mirror or mimic, the behaviour and gestures of others who we interact with. We also release feel-good natural brain opioids, called endorphins, when we have a laugh and this makes us feel good and little bit "high" too.

Books To Read

Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari - a brief history of mankind. 

Death by Hat and Cloak

You may know of Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter books, but the original Draco, who lived 600 years before Christ, also had something to do with cloaks.

Draconian is a word used to describe laws or rules, which are deemed to be harsh or severe. The word Draconian comes from an Ancient Greek lawmaker named Draco, who was responsible for the first written constitution of Athens. His laws were outrageously harsh, including the death penalty for even minor offences.

 Strangely, the Athenians thought Draco was a great fellow and so when he visited a theatre not far from Athens, they paid him tribute by throwing their caps and cloaks on to him. But so many hats and coats were thrown onto him that he suffocated and died.

It out-herods Herod

Herod, who is mentioned by Shakespeare also appears in the Bible. He was born 73 or 74 BCE and he was the king of the small Jewish state of Judea, appointed by the Romans. Herod is famous for many things, including the killing of his wife and two of his sons. However, there is a Bible story featuring Herod, called The Massacre of the Innocents, where Herod orders the death of every male infant in Bethlehem, to kill off a future messiah. The problem is that there no real evidence that this happened.

As Herod got older, he seemed to become crazier and more paranoid, perhaps as a result of some illness or disorder. The historian Josephus writes that Herod's last illness and death called, "Herod's Evil", involved convulsions, fevers, itching, tumours of the feet; the putrefaction of his genitals and being eaten by worms. Oh dear!

Archaeological excavations of Herod's palace

Books To Read


Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I and II, is the script for the West End stage play written by Jack Thorne.

One Scary Goddess of War, Death and Destruction

Her name is Chamunda. Originally she was worshipped by the Munda peoples of central India, later she joined the teeming throngs of Hindu goddesses. Chamunda, the name, comes from the combined names of two monsters called Chanda and Munda, who were killed by this mystical femme fatal when they tried to capture her. The goddess changed form and became ghastly and ferocious, she killed and swallowed whatever and whoever came into her path, soldiers, elephants and even weapons.

Found in Jajpur dated 8th Century AD 

She Drinks Blood

She was robed in a tiger skin and adorned in a necklace of human heads. The story goes that Chamunda was created by Shiva, to help him destroy the demon Andhakasura. She drinks blood, her skin turns blood red and then it is time to perform a dance of destruction.

In times past, the tribal people offered human and animal sacrifices to Chamunda, to placate this goddess who is depicted as having up to 12 arms. Often she is described as drinking from a skull cup and standing on a corpse.  She is frequently adorned in ornaments featuring bones, skulls, serpents and scorpions and symbols of disease and death.

Chamunda is first mentioned in writing, in the work of a Sanskrit poet, where flames shoot from her eyes. She is covered in snakes as she dances maniacally, surrounded by goblins. But there is another description of her with a jackal at her feet crunching on a corpse, as she looks about with her third eye. She associated with war, death and destruction and if you want to find her, Chamunda is said to be found haunting such places as cremation grounds.

Welcome to the Wacky, Yet Totally Wonderful, Winchester House

Why did Sarah Winchester build a strange, convoluted house, which is nothing short of a Hogwarts,  Queen Anne Style, Victorian mansion (but with a twist), in San Jose, California? The stories vary. Sarah was the widow of William Wirt Winchester, he of the famous Winchester gun empire.

Supposedly, after her husband's death, Sarah visited a medium who said that Sarah was living under a curse and so she must begin building a house, she must never stop, or she would die. Sarah also seems to have believed, that she was being haunted by the spirits of those who died, by Winchester guns and so the house is full of her efforts to confound and confuse the numberless spirits, gliding about the 160 rooms, secret passages and stairs and doors that go nowhere.

Sarah Winchester in 1920

Crazy Construction

Sarah began building and the frenzied, unplanned and often downright crazy construction process went on for 38 years, until her death. The house became odd, often illogical, kind of deranged and yet utterly fantastic. Originally, the home began as a simple six-room farmhouse. The dwelling, however, ballooned, evolved and constantly changed shape, as the relentless building process went on, year after year.

Sarah had a seance room and every night she would make her way to that room to confer with the spirits about the building process. Sometimes, however, highly expensive rooms would be built and then torn down a month later. Eventually, the building reached seven stories; later the upper levels collapsed during an earthquake.  

Some other haunting aspects of the house are the strange emphasis placed on the number 13 and the spider web motifs, which perhaps held an esoteric significance to Sarah. Sarah also had only two mirrors in this gargantuan house, as she believed that ghosts were afraid of mirrors.

Books To Read

Moura, by Virginia Coffman - an atmospheric gothic novel set in a decaying castle in France, featuring a brooding, master, who is both handsome and dangerous.

A Nonsense Song of Pure Gibberish

The song Prisencolinensinainciusol, composed by Adriano Celentano, was first released in 1972. The song which is basically spoken in what sounds like an American accent, is actually pure gibberish, except for the words  "all right".

Celentano, before the release of this song, had made music with a message about ecology and social issues. In writing Prisencolinensinainciusol, he said he wanted to make something that "meant nothing". However, he also said that the word Prisencolinensinainciusol, stood for "universal love" and the song was about incommunicability in the modern age. Go figure.

The song actually, sounds like you should understand what the singer is saying; however, as hard as you try, you just can't. Celentano was influenced, by his music hero, Elvis, and that hilarious comedian and actor, Jerry Lewis, which is obvious in the comic 1950's elements of Prisencolinensinainciusol.

As a little aside, Celentano's daughter Rosalinda Celentano played a very androgynous-looking Satan in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. And Ian Dury and the Blockheads referenced Celentano, in their 1979 song "Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3".

Books To Read

Finnegans Wake, By James Joyce - the book is written using idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words.

When Animals went to Court and Were Put on Trial

During the Middle Ages, it was a quite common practice to put animals on trial, in a court of law, for their part in alleged crimes. A book called The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, published first in 1906, outlined many such cases. In that same year of 1906, a murder was committed by a man, Scherrer and his son, with the cooperation of their dog. Scherrer and son received life sentences and the dog was sentenced to death.

Even insects were not immune to the forces of the law, as a caterpillar or fly could be charged with a variety of crimes. Even murder.

Pigs, however, seemed to be of the most marauding variety in the dark ages, as there are many cases of pigs at the centre of elaborate trials and being hung at the gallows, same as any human felon. Animals were also served with the same pre-trial rights, charged the same fees and given their daily bread ration.

Have Mercy, Your Honour!

In 1494, a menacing pig of the French variety was charged with having “strangled and defaced a child in its cradle”. Witnesses testified against the pig and it was duly sentenced to death by the judge, to be strangled on a gibbet of wood.

Also, in France, a donkey went to trial, when a man was charged with having.....let us say romantic relations with this donkey. The man was hanged, but the donkey was given a reprieve , as it was decided that the donkey was not a willing victim.

The level of craziness must have been pretty high during the Middle Ages, as many alleged werewolves went on trial, as did animals deemed to be harbouring evil spirits and Satan himself.

Trial of a sow and pigs at Lavegny 

Books To Read

Animal Farm, by George Orwell - an allegorical novella and political satire, in the guise of an animal fable.

Where One Person Appears in Multiple Forms

The strange delusional syndrome called Fregoli delusion is also called the delusion of doubles. This syndrome is rare, and generally, it results from a brain injury, causing the sufferer to believe that a single person can change appearance, so as to appear in multiple forms. The delusional sufferer, also believes that the person who shifts into multiple forms and disguises is persecuting them.

This disorder was first recognised in 1927, when a case described a young English woman who believed that two actors she had seen at the theatre, were pursuing and persecuting her, by following her around London, taking the form of other people, including people she knew.

This disorder may sound strange and irrational and people suffering this syndrome may sound crazy, but generally, they are only crazy in this particular way. Brain injury to the right frontal and left temporoparietal region, has been shown to cause Fregoli syndrome, resulting in impaired brain executive functions, such as self-monitoring, mental flexibility and social reasoning. Hyperactivity of the neurotransmitter dopamine is also evident in this syndrome, which is why antipsychotic medications are used as a treatment.

Books To Read

Drood, by Dan Simmons is a novel which features Victorian author Wilkie Collins as the narrator.