Did Ancient Lizard Cult Hide Gold Tablets in Tunnels Under L.A.? Jan. 29, 1934

Gold Hunters Dig for Lost Underground Empire of the Lizard People!

Secret Caves of the Lizard People

Google Map of area, (Streets no longer cross as indicated on 1934 map)

 

 It's Yog Sothoth? It's a Klingon Bird-of-Prey uncloaking?

What is it?

By Gunther Hamm Wed Oct 4, 4:56 PM ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican archeologists have made the most significant Aztec find in decades, unearthing a 15th century altar and a huge stone slab at a ruined temple in the throbbing heart of Mexico City.

The works were uncovered last weekend at the Aztec empire's main Templo Mayor temple, near the central Zocalo square, which was used for worship and human sacrifice.

It was the most meaningful find since electricity workers stumbled upon an eight-tonne carving of an Aztec goddess at the same site in 1978.

"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.

The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.

Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.

At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.

"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.

The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.

Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.

TALE OF THREE CITIES

The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.

The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.

Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.

Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.

 

The Polish navy says it is almost certain that it has located the wreck of Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin.

 

A Rare German Prosthetic Hand, circa 1580

Read the rest of story (new link)

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

"They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.

It could still be decades before the technology is advanced enough to treat neurological disorders or create living computers, the researchers say, but in the nearer term, the chips could provide an advanced method of screening drugs for the pharmaceutical industry.

"Pharmaceutical companies could use the chip to test the effect of drugs on neurons, to quickly discover promising avenues of research," Vassanelli said.

The researchers are now working on ways to avoid damaging the neurons during stimulation. The team is also exploring the possibility of using a neuron's genetic instructions to control the neuro-chip.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/27/D8G1GT980.html

By OMAR SINAN
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt

Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday.

The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis _ the center of pharaonic sun worship _ was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.

Among the artifacts was a pink granite statue weighing 4 to 5 tons whose features "resemble those of Ramses II," said Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Also found was a 5-foot-high statue of a seated figure with hieroglyphics that include three tablets with the name of Ramses II _ and a 3-ton head of royal statue, the council said in a statement.

The green pavement stones of the temple's floor were also uncovered.

An Egyptian team working in cooperation with the German Archaeological Mission in Egypt discovered the site under the Souq al-Khamis, a popular market in eastern Cairo, Hawass said.

"The market has to be removed" as archeologists excavate the entire site, Hawas said.

King Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for 66 years from 1270 to 1213 B.C., had erected monuments up and down the Nile with records of his achievements, as well as building temples _ including Abu Simbel, erected near what is now Egypt's southern border.

Numerous temples to Egypt's sun gods _ particularly the chief god Ra _ were built in ancient Heliopolis. But little remains of what was one the ancient Egyptians' most sacred cities, since much of the stone used in the temples was later plundered.

The area is now covered with residential neighborhoods, close to a modern district called Heliopolis, in Egypt's packed capital.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/02/09/egypt.mummies.reut/index.html

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- An American team has found what appears to be an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first found in the valley since that of Tutankhamun in 1922, one of the archaeologists said on Thursday.

The tomb contains five or six mummies in intact sarcophagi from the late 18th dynasty, about the same period as Tutankhamun, but the archaeologists have not yet had the time or the access to identify them, the archaeologist added.

The shaft leading to the tomb was discovered last autumn.

The 18th dynasty ruled Egypt from 1567 BC to 1320 BC, a period during which the country's power reached a peak.

The Valley of the Kings in southern Egypt contains the tombs of most of the pharaohs of the time but the archaeologist said the mummies in the newly found tomb need not be royal.

"There are lots of non-royal tombs in the valley. It wouldn't be the only one by any means," said the archaeologist, who asked not to be named because the Egyptian authorities are planning a media event at the site on Friday.

"The archaeologists haven't been inside properly yet. It's very small and cramped but it is late 18th dynasty," she added.

A statement from the government's Supreme Council of Antiquities said the tomb was found by a team from the University of Memphis in the United States.

The five sarcophagi, which are carved to human form, have colored funerary masks and the tomb contains a large number of big storage jars, the statement said.

"For an unknown reason they were buried rapidly in the small tomb," it added.

The tomb was covered with the rubble of workmen's huts dating from the latter part of the 19th dynasty, more than 100 years after the tomb was sealed, it said.

 

Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams

By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 31 January 2006
10:17 pm ET

After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.

On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:

"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."

The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. Email could be counted as the final nail in the coffin.

Western Union has not failed. It long ago refocused its main business to make money transfers for consumers and businesses. Revenues are now $3 billion annually. It's now called Western Union Financial Services, Inc. and is a subsidiary of First Data Corp.

The world's first telegram was sent on May 24, 1844 by inventor Samuel Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought," was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. In a crude way, the telegraph was a precursor to the Internet in that it allowed rapid communication, for the first time, across great distances.

Western Union goes back to 1851 as the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. In 1856 it became the Western Union Telegraph Company after acquisition of competing telegraph systems. By 1861, during the Civil War, it had created a coast-to-coast network of lines.

Other company highlights:

• 1866: Introduced the first stock ticker.
• 1871: Introduced money transfers.
• 1884: Became one of the original 11 stocks tracked by the Dow Jones Average.
• 1914: Introduced the first consumer charge card.
• 1964: Began using a transcontinental microwave beam to replace land lines.
• 1974: Launched Westar I, the first U.S. dedicated communications satellite.

On Jan. 26, the last day you could send a telegram, First Data announced it would spin Western Union off as an independent, publicly traded company.

Created: 26.01.2006 09:11 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:27 MSK

MosNews

A professor from the department of quantum and optical electronics of the Ulyanovsk State University in western Russia has patented a method of making things invisible, Interfax news agency reported.

The so-called invisibility cloak, created by Oleg Gadomsky, is called “The method of conversion of optical radiation” in the patent.

Gadomsky had been long experimenting on nanoparticles of gold. He now claims to have invented a sub-micron stratum of microscopical colloid golden particles that makes an object placed behind it invisible to an observer.

“Only static objects can be made invisible for the time being, as during motion the radiation frequency changes. But soon it will be possible to create a cap of darkness and a magic cloak like Harry Potter’s,” the scientist believes.

 

http://english.people.com.cn/200601/23/eng20060123_237626.html

The legendary "Sphinx" eventually found its counterpart version in archeological fossil. Chinese and American paleontologists found two distinct kinds of bone characteristics in the fossil of a sharp-mouthed mammal excavated in China's Liaoning province. The mammal's upper part makes people believe it was viviparous while its lower part looks like oviparous, reports Wen Hui Daily.

The latest issue of the British magazine Nature reports the unprecedented discovery. The magazine editor as well as paleontologists marveled at the discovery and believed it might change the traditional theory on mammals evolution.

Li Gang, one of the coauthors of the paper, said the existing mammals are classified into two groups - the viviparous therian which have fully evolved bones such as kangaroos and elephants, and the oviparous monotreme which have comparatively primitive bones. The newly discovered fossil possesses the characteristics of both bones, a fact which won it the title "world No.1".

Analysis of the fossil revealed that the mammal was 12 centimeters long and weighed about 15 to 20 grams. It lived about 120 million years ago in early Cretaceous period.

Further examination also found many evolutionary discrepancies. For example, it had the teeth of therians but also retained the lumbar ribs found only in primitive mammals.

So what is the explanation for this peculiar phenomenon of "lion body and human head"? Li Gang reasoned that the mammal finished synchronized evolution for both its upper part and lower part a long time ago. However, for some special survival need it had to let its evolved lower part to "retrogress" into a more primitive state.

By People's Daily Online

 

A NESSIE hunt using a team of dolphins was planned by the Tory government, according to declassified secret documents.

Within days of the 1979 election, officials in Margaret Thatcher's regime proposed importing the mammals from America and fitting them with hi-tech equipment to scour Loch Ness.

Despite opposition from animal rights groups, it was argued that finding the monster would benefit local tourism.

A letter from Environment Department civil servant David Waymouth to Stewart Walker at the Scottish Home and Health Department, showed the Government wanted a licence to initiate the plan.

It stated: "This department is presently considering the issue of a licence to import two bottle-nosed dolphins from America for the purpose of exploring Loch Ness.

"Inquiries have been made with the mammal experts on the Scientific Authority for Animals and their advice is that there are no conservation or welfare reasons for refusing a licence.

"Clearly, however, there are other factors, mainly political, that you might wish to consider before the licence is issued."

The National Archive of Scotland contains no record of a response to the letter, which was released under the Freedom of Information Act.

However, Adrian Shine, a naturalist who has been investigating the Loch Ness mystery for several decades, said he believed the dolphin plan was the brainchild of veteran monster hunter Dr Robert Rines.

Dr Rines was the founder of the American-based Academy of Applied Science who took a now-famous underwater photograph in 1972, which appeared to show a large flipper in the loch.

The Academy of Applied Science in New Hampshire confirmed that dolphins were being trained with mini cameras and strobe lights that would have been activated if they encountered any large objects.

Last week, it was revealed that civil servants made plans to give Nessie legal protection from poachers and bounty hunters in the early 80s.

The plan was instigated when the Swedish government asked for help to preserve their equivalent, the Storsjo monster.

UK officials then realised there was nothing to stop a trophy hunter from tracking down the beast and killing her.

It was eventually decided that Nessie should be protected as part of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, rather than specific legislation.

Under the provisions of the Act it is illegal to snare, shoot or blow up the monster.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA012206.01A.Bigfoot.356ab92.html

Roy Bragg, Express-News National Writer

SILSBEE — It's so quiet in the Big Thicket National Preserve on this cold January night, you can hear a leaf drop.

Scattered throughout this section of the woods, sitting silently and bundled against the near-freezing temperatures, are a dozen or so maverick researchers looking for the large, hairy, elusive embodiment of fringe science — Bigfoot.

Also known as Sasquatch or the Yeti, Bigfoot is a topic that draws its own line in the sandy loam.

Either you believe a highly intelligent, feral ape-like creature roams the rural woods, or you don't.

The members of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center — teachers, bankers, public safety personnel and men and women from other walks of life and from across Texas and Louisiana — have bought into it.

So they've descended on a desolate corner of Southeast Texas where strange sounds have been heard in the woods recently.

To track those strange sounds, the researchers brought their own.

At the top of every hour, expedition leader Daryl Colyer stood up to aim a dim red-beamed flashlight into an olive drab ice chest, where he's mounted a CD player, a sound booster, and a boat battery to power them. Wires snake out to speakers that hang from tree limbs.

With the flick of a switch, a deafening roar spilled forth from the speakers, rolling across the woods.

Part animal growl, part pained howl and entirely creepy, the "Ohio Howl" is purported to be the only authentic recording of Bigfoot. For Colyer's group, it's being used tonight as a digital shout-out intended to elicit a response. He played it several times.

Five teams have been deployed in the woods alongside a logging road on the northern end of the Big Thicket. They're equipped with listening devices, night vision goggles, video recorders and even throwaway one-shot cameras.

Seconds later, there's a series of howls coming from the direction of a nearby creek.

"Coyotes," whispers David Peddy, a college math instructor and part-time police officer, nodding knowingly.

More silence. Then comes a noise, from the other direction, that sounds like chimps impersonating coyotes.

"Barred owls," says Colyer in a barely audible breathless voice.

And so it goes for hours.

Something 'out there'

Throughout history and around the world, there has been something "out there."

Because so many people view it as a myth, a definitive history of Bigfoot is hard to find. There have been sporadic reports for 250 years in North America, dating to Spanish explorers and even earlier to Native American culture.

It's been immortalized in book and film, the most memorable being "The Legend Of Boggy Creek." For many Bigfoot enthusiasts, that film is the Sasquatch equivalent of the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan or the Netscape IPO — a milestone that impacted a generation.

Across the oceans, there's the abominable snowman, or Yeti, that lives in the snows of the Himalayas.

Critics and cynics abound, and David Daegling is foremost among them. The University of Florida anthropologist wrote "Bigfoot Exposed," a scholarly vivisection of the Bigfoot story from cultural, scientific and historical perspectives.

"I think we have to be careful not to paint the Bigfoot community with too broad of a brush," he said. "There are, within that community, people who are more skeptically inclined. And then there are true believers, and there's nothing that can change their mind about it."

Daegling said the presence of Bigfoot hoaxes hurt serious attempts to prove the existence of the creature.

"One of the historical failings of the Bigfoot community has been that even though they'll (investigate and) rule out some report as a hoax, they don't pursue that question vigorously enough," he said.

There was, for example, the classic grainy 1967 film of Sasquatch traipsing along a tree line in the northern California woods, and footprints found in the same region 10 years earlier. Both were seminal pieces in the growth of the Bigfoot movement. Both were debunked as fakes years later. Neither revelation changed the minds of Bigfoot believers.

Beyond debunked publicity stunts, Daegling said, Bigfoot numbers don't add up.

Bigfoot is spotted all over the country. Bigfoot prints range from three-toed to nine-toed. Bigfoot's height ranges from man-size to black bear-size.

"Bigfoot descriptions are all over the map," Daegling said. "The only thing they have in common is that they're big and scary."

Human nature and culture, Daegling said, explains a lot of the Bigfoot myth.

In Tibet and Nepal, Yeti is a meddlesome troublemaker that raids villages and gets drunk off stolen beer. It destroys crops and impregnates local women.

"Our Bigfoot is different," he said. "Our Bigfoot is quiet, and it's not scared of people. The encounters in North America are much more mundane. But people who see Bigfoot are affected, and it's life-changing."

Daegling said Bigfoot fills in a blank for some people burdened by modern society — it is wild, it is solitary, it can disappear at will, and it can outsmart everyone.

And the legend continues due, in large part, to eyewitness accounts, perhaps the most unscientific of all observational techniques.

"I don't think these people are lying," Daegling said. "They remember seeing Bigfoot, but there's a difference between remembering it and actually seeing it. That's because memories are fallible."

Typically, there is a sighting in an area. Then other people, who've heard the report, see or hear something they can't explain. Their subconscious fills in the blank, Daegling said, with Bigfoot.

"The only thing to do, at this point, is collect a specimen," Daegling said. "That's what you've got to be after. There are thousands of footprints that have been found, hairs that are inconclusive. Thousands of people have seen it, but we haven't solved it.

"I'm not suggesting they go out and shoot them," he said. "But, by dumb luck, someone sometime has got to find a carcass. Just once in 50 years, you'd think one of these thousands of people would've come across it. You've got these great big creatures out there all the place, and we can't find just one of them?"

No simple task

Daegling's request sounds simple, but it's not.

"Sasquatch has the stealth of a cougar, has at least the intelligence of the chimpanzee and is as rare as a jaguarondi," Colyer said. "When you put that in one package, it explains the difficulty trying to track them down."

Bigfoot is nocturnal, nomadic and stays in remote areas where few people live.

In Texas, 80 percent of the sightings in the Lone Star State came from East Texas, Colyer said, where most of the land is densely forested, receives lots of rain and is sparsely populated. Of those interactions, hunters, who as a practice go out of their way to find remote places, report most of the sightings.

The Texas Bigfoot Research Center, one of dozens of groups nationally that conduct self-funded forays into the woods, was created to take an orderly scientific approach to investigating the reports.

"We get eyewitness accounts all of the time," he said, "and I'll bet that only two or three of 10 are possibly legitimate. If you're not familiar with the woods, it's easy to misinterpret sounds."

The center's protocol is based on the principle used by birders and hunters, who employ animal calls to lure the critter being sought. A day team follows up and searches areas where suspicious noises emanate. Many times, the group comes out of the woods empty-handed.

Beyond that, team members realize the public's skepticism about Bigfoot. Two state workers, for example, asked not to be identified in this story for fear of repercussions from co-workers and skittish supervisors.

Scott Kessler, a Pineville, La. firefighter, said his co-workers tease him about his Bigfoot work, but they're always attentive to his stories from the wild when he returns from field research.

"The majority of the people don't want to know what's out there," he said. "If there is something, the innocence of the wild is gone."

Nor do scientific organizations want Bigfoot to be discovered, Colyer said, because it would undermine a lot of what's assumed to be fact about nature.

Mike Hall, a Palestine contractor, said he saw something suspicious in the Sam Houston National Forest during a research trip last January.

He was driving back to the base when a humanoid figure appeared at the edge of the range of his headlights.

When Hall stopped his truck, the creature ran into the woods. It hid behind a tree briefly, then disappeared into the brush.

Kessler said he shot video that seems to show blinking non-human eyes in the dark brush.

And in a September incident, after a night of back-and-forth vocalizations, Colyer said, the group's base camp possibly was approached by an unknown entity.

He awoke to a fecund animal smell permeating the camp. At the same time, another member's dog began barking aggressively, and there was movement in the darkened woods outside of the group's sight. And there was a voice.

"It sounded," Colyer said, "like moans, groans and wailing."

But that was months ago.

Just a boot print

This night yielded only some suspicious knocks — something hitting a tree to the south — before Colyer radioed the other teams at 4 a.m. with orders to pack it up for the night.

Two days later, the teams would see a shadowy figure in the woods and hear it growl, though they couldn't capture the image or the sound for proof. At least three members saw the shadowy figure and several more heard the growl.

Colyer suspects it was Sasquatch, but he's not always convinced when the team encounters evidence.

As the team ended its vigil on the second night of a five-day excursion here, for example, a team member reported a suspicious footprint.

It was suspicious, but not in a Sasquatch way. It resembled a human boot print in roadside mud. Colyer told them so.

The members who found it argued that it didn't have the pattern marks that a boot's sole would make. Colyer then pointed out that the print had no toe marks. They countered that the creature may have dug its toes in the mud as it walked, thus masking the toes.

Colyer finally dropped to his knees and stuck his face close to the boot print, which was illuminated by four or five flashlights.

"There are square marks right there," he said with an exasperated sigh. "It was a boot."

Back in the truck, as the group headed back to its base camp, Colyer shook his head.

"You've got to see these things with your mind, not your heart."

Bigfoot fever erupted last month when some fish farm workers claimed to have spotted three of the beasts - two adults and a youngster, on the edge of a forest reserve in southern Johor state.

Their improbable tale was lent some authority soon after when an Orang Asli - an indigenous ethnic group known for their expertise in the jungle, also said he had stumbled across one of the legendary ape-men.

"He saw the creature which was hairy and brownish in colour, it was about 12 feet [four metres] tall," Johor National Parks director Hashim Yusoff said.

"It was not aggressive, but the Orang Asli was startled by the creature and ran away.

"My personal feeling is that there is a possibility it could be what we call in Malaysia the 'mawas' ... more of a primate.

"But we don't deny the sightings," he said, insisting that the Orang Asli "do not lie".

"We've got to prove it and we've got to do it scientifically."

Quest

Wildlife authorities have embarked on a quest to verify the claims, and are considering mounting camera traps to capture images of anything roaming the jungles.

After a month of fruitless searching and interviews with people living near the forests, a telephone hotline has now been set up for members of the public who claim to have seen the beast to relate their stories, Mr Hashim said.

"Our main aim is to identify the information source, whether it is credible or not," he told AFP.

The Malaysian press has given prominent coverage to reports of sightings, including some which date back decades, and printed photographs of supposed footprints - vague impressions in the mud and leaves on the jungle floor.

Johor is home to large tracts of jungle, including its famed Endau-Rompin National Park, and unconfirmed sightings of large creatures surface periodically there.

Proof elusive

Former zoologist Amlir Ayat said this week that he had come close to finding proof of the existence of Bigfoot five years ago after villagers claimed to have shot a huge hairy creature in the jungles of neighbouring Pahang state.

"The creature fell to the ground with a great thud and the villagers took to their heels. Later, when they returned to check if it was dead, they found the body still lying there," he was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.

Dr Amlir said he was only told of the shooting a year later. He and the villagers mounted a search for the remains of the creature but found none.

"The evidence was gone."

"There's a lot of excitement, a lot of people are coming in with their own stories," he said.

Sightings of mythical ape-like creatures have been reported in wilderness areas all over the world.

They are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the United States and Canada, and yetis in the Himalayas.

- AFP

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4609074.stm

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418.

If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival.

The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts.

Chinese characters written beside the map say it was drawn by Mo Yi Tong and copied from a map made in the 16th year of the Emperor Yongle, or 1418.

It clearly shows Africa and Australia.

The British Isles, however, are not marked.

Controversial claim

The map was bought for about $500 from a Shanghai dealer in 2001 by a Chinese lawyer and collector, Liu Gang.

According to the Economist magazine, Mr Liu only became aware of the map's potential significance after he read a book by British author Gavin Menzies.

The book, 1421: The Year China discovered the World, made the controversial claim that a Chinese admiral and eunuch, Zheng He, sailed around the world and discovered America on the way.

Zheng He, a Muslim mariner and explorer, is widely thought to have sailed around South East Asia and India, but the claim he visited America is hotly disputed.

The map is now being tested to check the age of its paper and ink, with the results due to be known in February.

Even if it does prove to have been drawn in 1763, sceptics will point out that we still only have the mapmaker's word that he copied if from a 1418 map, rather than from a more recent one.

African Pterodactyls

M.D.W. Jeffreys, M.A., Ph.D.

In September, 1939, the West African Review contained an article "Living Monster or Fabulous.Animal?" Readers will recollect that some years earlier there had been a type of "Challenger Expedition" into Central Africa to search the Iruwuni forests of the Belgian Congo for a huge, mysterious, antedeluvian monster. "Is the Brontosauros still alive in the morasses of the Congo?" were the headlines in some of the London papers. No report of the traces of any such monsters ever appeared, and I was not surprised. I had been right through the Belgian Congo in 1923, and had come into intimate contact with a number of what would be called Native Commissioners or District Officers in British territory, as well as with noted big-game hunters. None of these men, who were in positions to know before anyone else of the existence of such monsters, ever alluded to the possible existence of them. Yet stories do circulate among natives of animals never listed in any Museum.

On the Gambia River lingers a native tradition of an enormous monster that comes out at night from the ooze and slime of the mangrove marshes and devours whatever it meets. To those who gain the confidence of the older fishermen, terrifying stories are still told of the "Ninki Nanka", as the reptile is locally called.

Two very serious defects are immediately apparent in such stories. Animals of the size of the Brontosauros and of the Ninki Nanka are heavy, and would leave in the damp earth of the river bank or on the margin of the mangrove marshes pug marks that would persist for years. I have seen on the banks of the Rufigi River in East Africa elephant tracks two years old. Yet the tracks of any such monsters have never been reported, either by the natives or by any European hunter.

The second defect in the probability of the existence of such creatures is that these huge animals are usually herbivorous and would inevitably invade cultivated riverine lands. Yet no reports of ravaged farms are ever received from natives. On circumstantial evidence one may rule out the existence on land of any huge monster, leaving the "Sea-serpent" to its watery domain.

The creatures of the air are in a different category, they fly and do not necessarily leave traces behind them. It is unlikely that any direct descendants of Pteranodon - the great eighteen-footers of the British and Kansa chalk deposits - are alive to-day, but of Rhamphorynchus, with a wingspread of twenty-five inches, things may be different. Mr. Melland, a Native Commissioner in Northern Rhodesia, recorded a conversation he had with some local natives:

"'What is the "Kongamato"?'

"'A bird.'

"'What kind of bird?'

"'Oh! well it isn't a bird really; it is more like a lizard with membranous wings like a bat.'

"Further inquiries disclosed the facts that the wing-spread was from four to seven feet across, that the general colour was red. It was believed to have no feathers but only skin on its body, and was believed to have teeth on its back.

"I sent for two books, containing pictures of pterodactyls, and every native present immediately and unhesitatingly picked out and identified it as a 'Kongamato'. The natives assert that this flying reptile still exists." (1)

From the Gold Coast comes a similar story. The "Susabonsam" is a mysterious flying creature, described by the natives as being about the size of a man, with thin tenebrous wings, like a bat. These two accounts favour Pteranodon rather than Rhamphorynchus. However, the obvious answer is that the natives have exaggerated the description of a very large bat.

The trouble with this explanation is that the natives have names for each kind of bat and neither of the above described creatures is regarded as a bat. Also, there are no known bats in Africa comparable in size with, say, the flying-foxes of Java with wing-spreads of five feet, with and to which such creatures might be confused or traceable. The largest bats of Africa are the fruit-bats and their wing-span seldom exceeds three feet. Nevertheless let us see how the bats fare under native reports.

Among the Ibibio bats are associated with witchcraft, and for any bat to fly into a house and touch a person is a sure sign that that person is thereafter bewitched and will perish by having his heart eaten at night while he sleeps, or his shadow captured and taken away.

Among the pagans of the Nilotic Sudan, "Witchcraft is usually performed at night, and thus owls and bats are associated with it." (2)

Among the Bongo of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan much the same superstition lurks - "Spirits, devils and witches have their general appellation of 'Bitaboh', wood-goblins being specially called 'Ronga'. Comprehended under the same term are all the bats (especially the Megaderma frons, which flutters about from tree to tree in broad daylight)." (3)

In the Cameroons the superstition of the vampire is attached to bats. "Bats, owls, and bush-cats are said to be witch shapes (among the people of Ndop); should a bat or owl come near a man's house or a bush-cat defacate in his compound, the man must go at once to the diviner and discover what remedies he must take to ward off the evil. A witch-shape is said to be capable of sucking out the life of a sleeping man or woman." (4)

From Sierra Leone comes an account of the gruesome habits of the large fruit bat. "One of the most uncanny superstitions is that of the 'Boman' in which Anthropologists will recognise the vampire of European superstition. This creature is said to suck the blood of sleeping children until they die; it can turn into a stone or snake at will. The 'Boman' is in reality the hammer-headed bat: (Hypsignathus monstrosus), the largest fruit bat found in Africa; its dull and monotonous cry at the time when fruit is ripening has struck terror into many a village, whose inhabitants will sally forth from their houses and beat tins to drive it away, cursing its father and mother and all its ancestors the while." (5)

It is curious that in two such widely separated areas as Sierra Leone and the Cameroons blood-sucking should be attributed to bats when no such type of bats are found in Africa. The only place where such bats exist is in South America, and not further north than southern Mexico. (6) These bats are quite small, and were of course not known to Europeans until long after the discovery of the Americas. They were called vampire-bats after the belief in Europe of this mysterious being, a vampire. It however was not bat-like and could not be associated with flying monsters. At one time in Europe the vampire was regarded as a blood-sucking ghost, at another as a witch, at another as a corpse that destroyed the living by sucking their blood from them.

The idea of a vampire in the form of a huge bat-like figure was the foundation of the gruesome story of Dracula.

To return to mysterious flying creatures that haunt the stories of the natives there is among the Hausa the "Buraka". It was winged and had the head of a man with the legs and feet of a horse. (7) As this story is found among the Hausa it may be an Arab version of the Grecian Centaur.

Nevertheless, in these accounts of mysterious flying creatures, is one dealing with fact or fancy? Is it a case of race-memory, a carry-over from the times when the human race hid from the terror that flew by day, or is it another instance of culture-contacts?

Perhaps some such racial consciousness would explain the occurrence of stories of winged creatures in so many places. The dragon is another form of the beast. Are St. George and the Dragon, Andromeda and the Dragon and the Dragon of Wales but local tribal variants of the "Kongomato" and of the "Susabonsam"?

Or is one dealing with a case of rationalizing a culture-contact superstition common to both Africa and Europe by projecting a belief in witchcraft, vampires, ghosts on to the harmless, little "fly-by-nights" and then exaggerating their size? Perhaps.

Others who read may be able to add to these stories, and I would welcome accounts of mysterious winged creatures in Africa. Yet ex Africa aliquid semper novi, and the suspicion lingers that perhaps in some hidden corner of Africa a few, shy pterodactyls still lurk.

Yes, there are still hidden corners in Africa. Only a few months ago I was the first Britisher to peer over the rim, at 6,000 feet, of a lovely little crater lake, scramble down its precipitous walls, and drink from its pure, pellucid waters.

---

2. Seligman, C. G. and B. Z. The Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan, p. 523. London, 1932.

3. Schweinfurth, G. The Heart of Africa, Vol. I, p. 144. London, 1878.

4. Drummond-Hay, J.C. Unpublished Govt. MSS. Ndop Assessment Report, 1925.

5. Goddard, T. N. The Handbook of Sierra Leone, p. 56. London, 1925.

6. Encyclopedia Brit., 14th Ed., Vol. 5, p. 600.

7. Bargery, G. P. A Hausa-English Dictionary. Oxford, 1934.

From: Jeffreys, M.D.W. 1944. African Pterodactyls. Journal of the Royal African Society (pp. 72-74).

(yeah, Im about 6 months late on this one)

MEXICO CITY, June 17 (UPI) -- The murder weapon that was buried in the forehead of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky may have turned up after 65 years.
   
A relative of the secret policeman who investigated Trotsky's death says she has the ice-pick -- and it's still stained with Trotsky's blood, Infobae reported.

Trotsky was killed in August 1940 by Spanish Soviet agent Ramon Mercader,while living in exile in Mexico City.

The Russian revolutionary had played an instrumental role in helping overthrow Russia's czar and creating the Soviet Union.

However, Trotsky was forced into exile after loosing a power struggle to eventual Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Seva Volkov, Trotsky's grandson, said he was willing to have the blood on the ice-pick tested to see if it was his grandfather's but would not pay for the murder weapon.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

other links of note:
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/06/16/trotsky.shtml
http://web.mit.edu/fjk/Public/King/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4103306.stm

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Jokes aside, the United States does indeed have a bold war plan for attacking Canada -- only thing is, it`s almost 76 years old.

The Washington Post says the plan is a 94-page document that was approved by the War Department in 1930, a blueprint for battle that includes a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex The United States` neighbor to the north.

First, according to the plan, the U.S. military sends a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies. Then forces would seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so the Canadians would 'freeze in the dark,' as the Post`s version said.

Then the Army invades on three fronts -- from Vermont, North Dakota and the Midwest -- while the Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada`s Atlantic and Pacific ports.

The invasion plan was declassified in 1974, the word 'SECRET' crossed out with a heavy pencil and now sits in a little gray box in the National Archives the Post said.

WEB REPRINT of article in INVENTION & TECHNOLOGY Magazine - Winter 1993

 
The Snow Cruiser - Antarctic Expedition Research Foundation of Armour Institute of Technology Project No. 1-69

Super-troopers: Stalin wanted Planet of the Apes-like troops, insensitive to pain and hardship.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005

CHRIS STEPHEN AND ALLAN HALL
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."
In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created.

The Soviet authorities were struggling to rebuild the Red Army after bruising wars.

And there was intense pressure to find a new labour force, particularly one that would not complain, with Russia about to embark on its first Five-Year Plan for fast-track industrialisation.

Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses.

Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.

Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.

A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar.

Mr Ivanov was now in disgrace. His were not the only experiments going wrong: the plan to collectivise farms ended in the 1932 famine in which at least four million died.

For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.