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.