MEET “CHARLIE,” A ROBOT FISH DESIGNED TO TAKE WATER SAMPLES NEAR POWER PLANTS AND FACTORIES. HE’S JUST ONE OF THE GADGETS ON VIEW AT SPY: THE SECRET WORLD OF ESPIONAGE THIS FALL.
In pop culture these days, we only hear about spies if they’re starring in a movie, or if their leader is sleeping with his biographer. Which is maybe not surprising, given the sensitive nature of the job--but still, whence comes the fake-mustache-and-secret-recorder spy culture of yore?
Thanks largely to the ubiquity of digital devices, those classic, Bond-style gadgets we associate with spies have long been outmoded. But some of the most amazing can be seen this fall at Discovery Times Square (I guess that’s a thing?), where a show called Spy: The Secret World of Espionage is on view until next spring.
In trying to describe some of the objects on view in Spy, It’s tempting to play a game of “real spy gadget or made-up joke.” For example, the keystone of the exhibit is a robot fish named "Charlie,” built to swim in a fairly realistic impersonation of a live catfish. Amazingly, Charlie is only 12 years old--the CIA won’t reveal why he was built, but some speculate he’s intended to collect water samples around nuclear power plants and factories. Salon has already christened him with a nickname: James Pond.
The CIA won’t reveal why this robotic fish was built, but some speculate he’s intended to collect water samples around nuclear power plants and factories (Click Image To Enlarge)
Other objects in Spy hearken from World War II, like the Enigma code-making machine that encrypted Allied messages. There are plenty of secret disguise aids, like a reversible cape, and recording devices abound, from the shoe-borne variety to a super-sensitive recorder, developed by Swiss scientists, that can be worn under your clothes. The show is surprisingly topical, including several fairly recent objet d’espionnage, such as the ice pick that is said to have served as a murder weapon for Trosky in Mexico, in the 1940s, and a Chanel purse belonging to “sexy spy” Anna Chapman, who was arrested in the U.S. and returned to Russia just a few years ago.
The Enigma cipher machine used by the German military and intelligence services during WWII to create what they thought were unbreakable messages (Click Image To Enlarge)
A precision miniature audio tape recorder was built in Switzerland to the highest possible standards. As a very slim device, it could be worn inconspicuously under normal clothing (Click Image To Enlarge)
The icepick that was--allegedly--used to murder Leon Trotsky in Mexico City (Click Image To Enlarge)
Amidst the clutter of outmoded gadgets, what comes through clearly is the sense that information was a precious physical commodity up until a decade ago or so. Today, we walk around with whole gigabytes of data on our person--but for decades, transporting a piece of text or audio was a matter of life and death. Go check out Spy until March of next year.
K.G.B. model of the umbrella that injected a poison ricin pellet into the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in 1978.
Handmade pair of shoes made for a United States ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s that Czech intelligence officers bugged with a listening device in the heel.
Stasi kit (see below) created molar that was hollowed out to allow microdots to be safely stored in a spy’s mouth.
Well-preserved rat with a Velcroed body cavity that was used by Americans in Moscow for exchanges of information without agents’ actually meeting. The rodent, treated with hot pepper sauce to discourage scavenging cats, was easily tossed from a passing car for these “dead drops.”
The Stasi Kit, a kit of tools used by East German members of the Stasi secret police, concealed in a leather case, for spying and surveillance purposes (Click Image To Enlarge)
The gadgets here are full of concealments and misdirection; nothing is what it seems. And much of it is almost quaintly old-fashioned. There are some hints of technological experimentation: a Stasi attaché case fitted with an infrared flash camera that could take pictures in the dark, or the C.I.A. bug that was built inside a cinder block in the visitors’ area of a Soviet embassy and could drill its own listening hole.
A special-purpose small key cutting kit designed for use in a motel room to allow an MI6 agent to duplicate keys for a covert entry (Click Image To Enlarge)
But most of these objects, tools of the trade over a half-century, are not the stuff of the “Mission Impossible” franchise; they are almost all deliberately mundane. They are not meant to startle; they are meant to fade into the background. They work like tricks sold in a magic shop. And they must be used with similar skill.
Something else is similar: once explained, the magic is gone. The objects used in espionage can almost seem silly. Really! Grown people sprinkling dust (nitrophenylpentadienal) on objects to track the movements of whoever touched them? Using a hat, glasses and a fake mustache as a disguise? Employing a hollowed-out nickel to hide top-secret microfilm? All of espionage can easily seem like a kid’s game, except for the trails of blood and insight that are invariably left in its wake.
And this show, produced by Base Entertainment, contains more than enough to make it resemble a child’s game: interactive screens on which you can disguise a photo of yourself; kiosks where your voice can be distorted and filtered; a mist-filled dark room with shifting laser beams that challenge you to make your way across, without breaking the circuit. (A password-oriented interactive game is too lame for its climactic position in the exhibition.)
There are also larger objects here that reveal, more dramatically, that technological sophistication is not a requirement, nor is it something that necessarily increases over time. Next to a collapsible motor scooter with which Allied spies parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II is a saddle, draped with an Afghan blanket, that was used by a C.I.A. officer riding across the forbidding terrain during the first months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
If you are a history or nostalgia buff, and just happen to be in New York City between now and the end of spring, visiting the "Spy: The Secret World of Espionage" exhibit in Times Square could be a very worthwhile experience. Tickets are as follows:
Adults - $27.00
Kids (4-12) - $19.50
Seniors (65+) - $23.50
Group discounts are available
Courtesy of an article dated November 16, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design
Three recently discovered statues were found in a complex of tombs, including one of pharaonic princess Shert Nebti, in the Abusir region, south of Cairo, Egypt. (Click Image To Enlarge)
Mohammed El-Bialy, who heads the Egyptian and Greco-Roman Antiquities department at the Antiquities Ministry, said that Princess Shert Nebti's burial site is surrounded by the tombs of four high officials from the Fifth Dynasty dating to around 2,500 BC in the Abu Sir complex near the famed step pyramid of Saqqara.
The tomb of Princess Shert Nebti was discovered hidden in bedrock in the Abu Sir region, a mile from the tombs of the rest of her family in the heart of the necropolis (Click Image To Enlarge)
One of the titles describes her as “the daughter of the king Men Salbo and his lover venerated before God the all-powerful.” The list of known pharaohs of the 5th Dynasty is small and “Men Salbo” is not among them, although it could be an alternate name. By 2000 B.C. pharaohs regularly went by five names: the Horus name, the Nebti name, the Gold Horus name, the Throne name and the Birth name. It’s rare even for pharaohs of later, better documented dynasties to have all five names included in one inscription, so when a new name crops up it doesn’t necessarily mean a new pharaoh has been added to the timeline.Princess Shert Nebti’s tomb is significant not just in and of itself, but also because it appears to have been a hub connected to other tombs in the necropolis. An opening in the southeast of the antechamber was excavated to reveal a corridor leading to four tombs. Four limestone sarcophagi were found in the hallway, each containing several figurines, among them statuettes of a man, another man with his son, and two men with a woman.
Of the four tombs the corridor leads to, two of them are new discoveries, while the other two, belonging not to royal family members but to court officers described in inscriptions as a “grand upholder of the law” and an “inspector of the servants of the palace,” had been found in earlier excavations. They date to the reign of 5th Dynasty Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi (2414–2375 B.C.).
Antichamber of Princess Shert Nebti tomb (Click Image To Enlarge)
The two newly discovered tombs are currently being excavated. In one of them, a false door and three limestone statues have already been unearthed. In inscriptions, the tomb’s occupant, Nefer, is described as the “supervisor of scribes,” and indeed the statues found are depictions of scribes. This would have been a high ranking official with an administrative role at the pharaonic court. For instance, Ptahhotep, a scribe from the reign of Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi, was that pharaoh’s prime minister and is the traditional author of a book of maximsthat is among the earliest philosophical works surviving. We have no way of knowing if the maxims were actually written by the historical Ptahhotep, but they are attributed to him in the oldest extant manuscripts from the Middle Kingdom and his authorship, even if more legendary than factual, underscores the importance, even fame, of scribes in pharaonic Egypt.
Underground complex: The Czech team also excavated a corridor in the southeast of the antechamber, which leads off to four other tombs, two of which had already been discovered separately (Click Image To Enlarge)
According to Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, the discovery of Princess Shert Nebti’s tomb and the links it establishes to other tombs in the necropolis “marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the sepulchres at Abu Sir and Saqqara.” Abu Sir and Saqqara were both used as burial grounds by the pharaohs and nobles of the 5th Dynasty after Giza ran out of space thanks to the huge monuments of the 4th Dynasty pharaohs, namely the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx. There are 14 pyramids at Abu Sir, all of them step pyramids, all of them relatively small (the largest, the pyramid of Neferirkare Kakai, was 240 feet high when first built, contrasted with the Great Pyramid of Khufu’s original height of 481 feet) and all made out of cheaper local stone instead of the rich limestone used in the Great Pyramid.
A researcher dusts off statues at the dig: The Czech mission is currently continuing investigation of the site and expect further surprising discoveries (Click Image To Enlarge)
The Czech Institute of Egyptology, part of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, has been excavating at Abu Sir each digging season since 1976. The team’s website doesn’t appear to have been updated for a while so there’s no news on the princess’ tomb, but it does have an excellent overview of the history of Abu Sir, of theroyal pyramid complexes, and of the necropolis of non-royal officials.
El-Bialy said "Discoveries are ongoing" at Abu Sir, , adding that the excavation was in a "very early stage" and that the site was closed to the public.
Inscriptions on the four limestone pillars of the Princess' tomb indicate that she is the daughter of King Men Salbo.
El-Bialy of the Czech Institute of Egyptology said.
"She is the daughter of the king, but only her tomb is there, surrounded by the four officials, so the question is, are we going to discover other tombs around hers in the near future? We don't know anything about her father, the king, or her mother, but hope that future discoveries will answer these questions."
Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said that the antechamber to the princess' tomb includes four limestone columns and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The current excavation has also unearthed an antechamber containing the sarcophagi of the four officials and statues of men, women, and a child, he said in a statement.
The four limestone pillars within the court of the tomb, on which the name of the princess and her titles were inscribed in hieroglyphics (Click Image To Enlarge)
The Czech team's discovery marks the "start of a new chapter" in the history of the burial sites of Abu Sir and Saqqara, Ibrahim added.
The archaeologists working at the site are from the Czech Institute of Egyptology, which is funded by the Charles University of Prague. Their excavation began this month.
The discovery comes weeks after the Egyptian government reopened a pyramid and a complex of tombs that had been closed for restoration work for a decade.
Egypt's vital tourism industry has suffered from the country's internal unrest in the wake of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak. A delegation from the International Monetary Fund is currently in Egypt for negotiations over a $4.8 billion loan aimed at bolstering the country's ailing economy.
COMMENTARY: The excavation to the archaeological burial site of Princess Shert Nebti is still very early and still ongoing. Excavation is a slow process requiring extra care so as to not damage or destroy any items dugup. This is very exciting, and I look forward to providing a followup as new treasures are dugup. All of this conjures up numerous questions: How did Princess Shert Nebti die? How old was she when she died? What did the Princess look like? Will a tomb of her father Men Salbo be found nearby? Will we find any evidence of ancient aliens as we enter Princess Shert Nebti's burial chamber and the other connecting chambers?
Courtesy of an article dated November 3, 2012 appearing in USAToday and an article dated November 8, 2012 appearing in MAILOnline and an article dated Noember 3, 2012 appearing in The History Blog
Enzo Anselmo Ferrari (1898-1988), race car driver, entrepreneur and founder of Ferrari Motors
ENZO FERRARI’S CLASSIC CARS GET THE ULTIMATE GARAGE—A MUSEUM IN MODENA DESIGNED BY FUTURE SYSTEMS.
There was a time when Enzo Ferrari’s last name didn’t conjure up visions of the ultimate sleek-and-sexy sports car. The man came of age at the turn of the last century just as autos started to rev their engines, and competed as a driver and racing team manager for Alfa Romeo before starting his own manufacturing company and forever shaping the industry he adored. Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari, a new museum in his hometown of Modena, Italy, pays tribute to Ferrari’s fame with two complementary structures that nod to his humble past and impressive legacy.
Click Images To Enlarge
London-based architectural firm Future Systems won an international competition to design the new building in 2004 with a curvaceous, swooping structure consistent with the studio’s signature style. After principal Jan Kaplický’s passing in 2009, the commission went to Future Systems alum Amanda Morgante and Shiro Studio, who completed the project according to Kaplický’s original plans. The striking “Modena yellow” aluminum roof sweeps across the red brick dotted skyline like a hood, or “bonnet,” complete with incisions that evoke auto air intake vents. Here, those allow natural light into the 56,000-square-foot museum, which showcases classic models in an expansive, crisp-white setting. Just adjacent is a complete refurbishment of Ferrari’s early home and workshop, built by his father in the 1830s, where visitors can learn about the man behind the brand.
Click Images To Enlarge
COMMENTARY: Enzo Anselmo Ferrari (February 18, 1898 – August 14, 1988) was an Italian race car driver and entrepreneur, the founder of the Scuderia FerrariGrand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari car manufacturer. He was often referred to as "il Commendatore".
Ferrari grew up in Modena where his father was a manufacturer. He decided he wanted to become a racing driver at a young age, after going to the races in Bologna with his family.
Ferrari grew up in Modena where his father was a manufacturer. He decided he wanted to become a racing driver at a young age, after going to the races in Bologna with his family.Enzo Ferrari was born on 18 February 1898 in Modena and grew up with little formal education but he always knew he wanted to be a racing driver.
The First World War killed both his father and brother in 1916. Enzo was enlisted in the third Alpine Artillery of the Italian army until he contracted the deadly flu at the end of the war. He survived.
The jobs that he took immediately after the war were all related to cars. He worked for CMN and Vespa as a test driver, and then got a position at Alfa Romeo. At the same time, he was developing as a driver, taking part in the first post-war sporting event of 1919.
His success in racing got him promoted to full factory driver for Alfa Romeo and he started taking part in higher profile events. He was awarded by the new leader, Mussolini, for his ability.
In 1932, he married Laura with whom he had a son called Alfredo in the same year. He was brought up to be Enzo's successor but he died from muscular dystrophy in 1956.
His interest in the technical dimension of cars meant that he was not content to be a driver. During the next war he was involved in manufacturing for the war effort.
Ferrari's mistress Lina Lardi gave birth to his son Piero in 1945, who was named as his successor after Laura's death in 1978. He is now vice-president of the firm.
In 1946, Ferrari produced the first car to take his name. The Ferrari company flourished in the post-war economy of the 1950s. He raced in the Formula One Championships when they were first established in 1950 but he did not get his first victory until the British Grand Prix in 1951.
His team won their first F1 Championship in the 1952-53 season. His decision to continue racing in the dangerous and grueling long-distance competition Mille Miglia brought his company new victories and public recognition.
In 1957, a Ferrari car driven by Alfonso de Portago blew a tyre and crashed into the roadside crash at the Mille Miglia. The driver, co-driver and nine spectator including five children were killed. In response, Ferrari and tyre manufacturer Englebert were charged with manslaughter as they chose to let the car continue for an extra stage rather than stop for a tyre change. It was dismissed in 1961.
The firm's greatest victories were enjoyed at Le Mans rather than in F1 despite a number of victories during the 1960s in Grand Prix.
The man himself remained dedicated to the company for the rest of his life; many considered him a workaholic. After his death, his management was called into question as seven Ferrari drivers were killed while racing between the late 1950s and through the 1960s - a high toll even for that period.
Even though it was responsible for making some of the most stylish models of car of that era, the company's fortunes declined in the 1960s, and 90 per cent of it was bought by Fiat in 1969.
Ferrari stood down as company president in 1971, although he remained closely involved until his death in 1988. He died at the start of the Honda-McLaren dominance of F1 but the Ferrari team has enjoyed success in recent years with the brand winning the world championship in 2004 with Michael Schumacher and in 2007 with Kimi Raikkonen.
Ferrari Motors dedicated the Ferrari Enzo to Mr. Ferrari.
The Ferrari Enzo is dedicated to Enzo Ferrari, founder of Ferrari Motors (Click Images To Enlarge)
For wallpaper images of all Ferrari cars click HERE.
Courtesy of an article dated April 12, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design
Next Media Animation takes a look back and the life and career of Apple co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs, who resigned that position late on Wednesday.
Our tale begins with Steve Jobs dabbling in LSD and spiritual enlightenment, which Jobs describes as the "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life". Man, look at all the colors. Hey, that gives me an idea for a company logo.
Jobs would then found Apple with Steve Wozniak and a third guy who cashed out his shares way too early, so we didn't bother to animate him. In 1984, Jobs unveiled the Macintosh and forever revolutionized personal computing.
But the good times wouldn't last. John Sculley, the executive Jobs hired away from Pepsi, bounced Jobs from the company he founded.
Jobs would get his revenge by starting another company, Pixar. He produced 'Toy Story' and sold the animation company to Disney for a fat profit.
Jobs finally returned to Apple and defeated arch nemesis Bill Gates to become the baddest mofo in tech. Jobs was then diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and required a live-saving liver transplant.
Apple now faces a threat from Google Android. Thankfully, Jobs passed the baton to chief operating officer Tim Cook.
COMMENTARY: I must admit that I don't like Steve Jobs for personal reasons, many of which I have expressed in previous blog posts. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for Steve Jobs because he is a brilliant entrepreneur, visionary and eminent technology icon of his era. His "1984" TV commercial for the Mac portrayed IBM as "Big Brother," and was simply brilliant. I actually rallied around Apple because I loved the Mac, but the company where I worked was deeply rooted in IBM hardware and mainframes. The iPod became the first "spoke" in the Digital Hub Strategy, which I have always considered the driving vision and master plan behind Apple. Since Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1995, the company has become the largest and most valuable (by market value) consumer electronics company in the World. Hope you enjoyed this post.
Courtesy of an article dated August 26, 2011 appearing in Mashable
Yutyrannus, a giant tyrannosaur with feathers (Click Image To Enlarge)
Meet the largest feathered animal in history – an early version of Tyrannosaurus rex, clad in long, fuzzy filaments. This newly discovered beast has been named Yutyrannus huali, a mix of Mandarin and Latin that means “beautiful feathered tyrant”. And its existence re-opens a debate about whether the iconic T.rex might have been covered in feathers.
“This is a tremendously important fossil. Paleontologists have been waiting for a gigantic feathered theropod to turn up for some time."
Larry Witmer from Ohio University, agrees. He says.
"The big thing is the one-two punch of being huge AND feathered.”
Yutyrannus was discovered Chinese palaeontologist Xing Xu, who is no stranger to feathered dinosaurs. Xu is somewhat of a rock star among dinosaur-hunters. Despite having no initial interest in palaeontology, he has discovered more than 30 species. These include the four-winged Microraptor, and little tyrants Dilongand Guanlong – early tyrannosaurs covered in simple fuzz. Like most other feathered dinosaurs, these animals were small. Dilong was the size of a large dog, and Microraptor the size of a chicken.
Yutyrannus breaks that rule. It weighed in at 1,400 kilograms (3,100 pounds), and was at least 7 or 8 metres in length. That’s 40 times bigger than Beipiaosaurus, the previous record-holder for largest feathered dinosaur (and another Xu discovery).
Xu found three skeletons of the new creature in China’s Liaoning Province. Judging by the size and the state of their bones, one of them was an adult, and the others were a decade or so younger. Except for one missing tail, they are almost complete, and in very good condition. That alone is cause for celebration. Dinosaur-hunters are often forced to describe new species based on tantalising fragments from a single skeleton; three complete ones is a jackpot.
All three specimens had long 15-centimetre feathers. Each is unevenly covered, but between the three skeletons, it’s likely that Yutyrannus was feathered from head to toe. These aren’t the flattened vanes that help most modern birds to fly. At this stage of their evolution, feathers were simply long filaments, better suited for insulation or displaying to peers, and similar to the plumes of today’s flightless emus and cassowaries.
Fossilized skull of a feathered Yutyrannus dinosaur discovered by Chinese palaeontologist Xing Xuin China’s Liaoning Province. The Yutyrannus measured 7 to 8 meters in length and weighed an estimated 1,400 kilograms (3,100 pounds) (Click Image To Enlarge)
When the tyrannosaurs first appeared on the scene in the middle of the Jurassic period, they were small animals, just over a metre in length and covered in dino-fuzz. Tom Holtz Jr from the University of Maryland says.
“The evidence has been mounting that the big tyrant dinosaurs were descendants of fuzzy dinosaurs, and quite possibly fuzzy themselves.”
The tyrants we know and love only appeared at the very end of the Cretaceous. By that time, they had developed many special traits including teeth like “knife-edged bananas”, huge hips, running feet,tiny forearms, and massive bone-crushing skulls. And they had lost their feathers, or so we thought. Witmer says.
“The assumption has been that T. rex and its gigantic kin were scaly, not feathery, and there is some (rather sketchy) fossil evidence that this might be true.”
The idea also made sense because large mammals, like elephants and rhinos, are virtually hairless. Their huge bodies lose heat very slowly, and they don’t need the insulation that their smaller cousins do. If super-sized mammals lost their fur, it stands to reason that super-sized tyrannosaurs lost their feathers. Yutyrannus shows that this isn’t necessarily true.
Xu speculates that Yutyrannus’s feathers might have been a winter coat. Most giant tyrannosaurs enjoyed warm climates during the late Cretaceous, Yutyrannus lived at a time when the average yearly temperature was a nippy 10 degrees Celsius. Maybe it was the tyrannosaur equivalent of woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos, whose shaggy coats protected them during the Ice Age.Witmer says.
“The idea of woolly tyrannosaurs stalking colder climates in the Cretaceous is kinda mind-blowing.”
So could T.rex also have been covered in feathers? Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago thinks so. He says.
“In my lab, I have a T. rex fossil that shows the beast did not have scales. But it’s only in China that we have the opportunity to see evidence of what replaced scales – feathers! The report is a red flag to Hollywood and some scientists who get wobbly legs thinking something as ferocious as T. rex might have been packaged with a soft downy overcoat. You’ll now be able to date any Hollywood film that does not give these brutes their feathery due!”
Admittedly, there’s no direct evidence for a feathery T.rex yet. Zanno says.
“[Yutyrannus] doesn’t put the nail in the coffin on the debate over the body covering of T.rex, but it definitely weakens the argument that the tyrant-king couldn’t have had feathers.”
The problem is that none of the large tyrants was found in the right conditions. Holtz says.
“Most T. rexskeletons were found buried in sandstone or siltstone. Both sand and silt are too coarse to record the presence of feathers even when they are there. But Yutyrannus was found in extremely fine sediments derived from volcanic ash and deposited in very still water: the perfect condition for preserving feathers.”
Perhaps somewhere, there’s a fuzzy T.rex that died in just the right conditions and is waiting to be found.
COMMENTARY: This proves once again that some dinosaurs evolved from prehistoric birds. They apparently lost their ability to fly due to their huge size, but they retained their feathers to insulate them from the cold. This all makes sense to me.
Click Image to view the first-ever views of the complete remains of the ship in full profile appearing in the April 2012 edition of National Geographic Magazine
At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic disappeared beneath the waves, taking with her 1,500 souls. One hundred years later, new technologies have revealed the most complete—and most intimate—images of the famous wreck.
The wreck sleeps in darkness, a puzzlement of corroded steel strewn across a thousand acres of the North Atlantic seabed. Fungi feed on it. Weird colorless life-forms, unfazed by the crushing pressure, prowl its jagged ramparts. From time to time, beginning with the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel, a robot or a manned submersible has swept over Titanic’s gloomy facets, pinged a sonar beam in its direction, taken some images—and left.
In recent years explorers like James Cameron and Paul-Henry Nargeolet have brought back increasingly vivid pictures of the wreck. Yet we’ve mainly glimpsed the site as though through a keyhole, our view limited by the dreck suspended in the water and the ambit of a submersible’s lights. Never have we been able to grasp the relationships between all the disparate pieces of wreckage. Never have we taken the full measure of what’s down there.
Until now. In a tricked-out trailer on a back lot of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), William Lange stands over a blown-up sonar survey map of theTitanic site—a meticulously stitched-together mosaic that has taken months to construct. At first look the ghostly image resembles the surface of the moon, with innumerable striations in the seabed, as well as craters caused by boulders dropped over millennia from melting icebergs.
Sonar images of the forward (bow) and rear sections (stern) of the RMS Titanic and the entire debris field of the Titanic lying at the bottom of the Northern Atlantic Ocean (Click Images To Enlarge)
On closer inspection, though, the site appears to be littered with man-made detritus—a Jackson Pollock-like scattering of lines and spheres, scraps and shards. Lange turns to his computer and points to a portion of the map that has been brought to life by layering optical data onto the sonar image. He zooms in, and in, and in again. Now we can see the Titanic’s bow in gritty clarity, a gaping black hole where its forward funnel once sprouted, an ejected hatch cover resting in the mud a few hundred feet to the north. The image is rich in detail: In one frame we can even make out a white crab clawing at a railing.
Here, in the sweep of a computer mouse, is the entire wreck of the Titanic—every bollard, every davit, every boiler. What was once a largely indecipherable mess has become a high-resolution crash scene photograph, with clear patterns emerging from the murk. Lange says.
“Now we know where everything is. After a hundred years, the lights are finally on.”
Bill Lange is the head of WHOI’s Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory, a kind of high-tech photographic studio of the deep. A few blocks from Woods Hole’s picturesque harbor, on the southwestern elbow of Cape Cod, the laboratory is an acoustic-tiled cave crammed with high-definition television monitors and banks of humming computers. Lange was part of the original Ballard expedition that found the wreck, and he’s been training ever more sophisticated cameras on the site ever since.
Sonar images of the forward half of the RMS Titanic at the bottom of the Northern Atlantic Ocean and image of the ship showing the application forward section (Click Image To Enlarge)
This imagery, the result of an ambitious multi-million-dollar expedition undertaken in August-September 2010, was captured by three state-of-the-art robotic vehicles that flew at various altitudes above the abyssal plain in long, preprogrammed swaths. Bristling with side-scan and multibeam sonar as well as high-definition optical cameras snapping hundreds of images a second, the robots systematically “mowed the lawn,” as the technique is called, working back and forth across a three-by-five-mile target area of the ocean floor. These ribbons of data have now been digitally stitched together to assemble a massive high-definition picture in which everything has been precisely gridded and geo-referenced.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) archaeologist James Delgado, the expedition’s chief scientist said.
“This is a game-changer. In the past, trying to understand Titanic was like trying to understand Manhattan at midnight in a rainstorm—with a flashlight. Now we have a site that can be understood and measured, with definite things to tell us. In years to come this historic map may give voice to those people who were silenced, seemingly forever, when the cold water closed over them.”
What is it about the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic? Why, a century later, do people still lavish so much brainpower and technological ingenuity upon this graveyard of metal more than two miles beneath the ocean surface? Why, like Pearl Harbor, ground zero, and only a few other hallowed disaster zones, does it exert such a magnetic pull on our imagination?
These new photos, shot using state-of-the-are technology by independent research group Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, provide viewers with a greater understanding of what happened on that fateful April 15, 1912.
RMS Titanic bucked as it blowed nose-first into the seabed, leaving the forward hull buried deep in mud--obscuring, possibly forever, the damage inflicted by the iceberg (Click Image To Enlarge)
RMS Titanic's battered stern is captured overhead here. Making sense of this tangle of metal presents endless challenges to experts. (Click Image To Enlarge)
RMS Titanic's battered stern, captured here in profile, bears witness to the extreme trauma inflicted upon it as it corkscrewed to the bottom (Click Image To Enlarge)
Ethereal views of Titanic's bow (modeled) offer a comprehensiveness of detail never seen before (Click Image To Enlarge)
Researchers Kirk Wolfinger, top left, Rushmore DeNooyer, and Tony Bacon put together the 100,000 sonar images of the RMS Titanic for a History Channel documentary (Click Image To Enlarge)
For some the sheer extravagance of Titanic’s demise lies at the heart of its attraction. This has always been a story of superlatives: A ship so strong and so grand, sinking in water so cold and so deep. For others the Titanic’s fascination begins and ends with the people on board. It took two hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink, just long enough for 2,208 tragic-epic performances to unfold, with the ship’s lights blazing. One coward is said to have made for the lifeboats dressed in women’s clothing, but most people were honorable, many heroic. The captain stayed at the bridge, the band played on, the Marconi wireless radio operators continued sending their distress signals until the very end. The passengers, for the most part, kept to their Edwardian stations. How they lived their final moments is the stuff of universal interest, a danse macabre that never ends.
But something else, beyond human lives, went down with the Titanic: An illusion of orderliness, a faith in technological progress, a yearning for the future that, as Europe drifted toward full-scale war, was soon replaced by fears and dreads all too familiar to our modern world. James Cameron told me.
“The Titanic disaster was the bursting of a bubble. There was such a sense of bounty in the first decade of the 20th century. Elevators! Automobiles! Airplanes! Wireless radio! Everything seemed so wondrous, on an endless upward spiral. Then it all came crashing down.”
A portion of RMS Titanic's steel hull that broke off when she sunk. Shows several portals and hundreds of rivets (Click Image To Enlarge)
The mother of all shipwrecks has many homes—literal, legal, and metaphorical—but none more surreal than the Las Vegas Strip. At the Luxor Hotel, in an upstairs entertainment court situated next to a striptease show and a production of Menopause the Musical, is a semipermanent exhibition of Titanic artifacts brought up from the ocean depths by RMS Titanic, Inc., the wreck’s legal salvager since 1994. More than 25 million people have seen this exhibit and similar RMST shows that have been staged in 20 countries around the world.
I spent a day at the Luxor in mid-October, wandering among the Titanic relics: A chef’s toque, a razor, lumps of coal, a set of perfectly preserved serving dishes, innumerable pairs of shoes, bottles of perfume, a leather gladstone bag, a champagne bottle with the cork still in it. They are mostly ordinary objects made extraordinary for the long, terrible journey that brought them to these clean Plexiglas cases.
I passed through a darkened chamber kept as cold as a meat locker, with a Freon-fed “iceberg” that visitors can go up to and touch. Piped-in sighs and groans of rending metal contributed to the sensation of being trapped in the belly of a fatally wounded beast. The exhibit’s centerpiece, however, was a gargantuan slab of Titanic’s hull, known as the “big piece,” that weighs 15 tons and was, after several mishaps, hoisted by crane from the seabed in 1998. Studded with rivets, ribbed with steel, this monstrosity of black metal reminded me of a T. rex at a natural history museum: impossibly huge, pinned and braced at great expense—an extinct species hauled back from a lost world.
The RMST exhibit is well-done, but over the years many marine archaeologists have had harsh words for the company and its executives, calling them grave robbers, treasure hunters, carnival barkers—and worse. Robert Ballard, who has long argued that the wreck and all its contents should be preserved in situ, has been particularly caustic in his criticism of RMST’s methodologies. Ballard told me.
“You don’t go to the Louvre and stick your finger on the Mona Lisa. You don’t visit Gettysburg with a shovel. These guys are driven by greed—just look at their sordid history.”
In recent years, however, RMST has come under new management and has taken a different course, shifting its focus away from pure salvage toward a long-term plan for approaching the wreck as an archaeological site—while working in concert with scientific and governmental organizations most concerned with the Titanic. In fact, the 2010 expedition that captured the first view of the entire wreck site was organized, led, and paid for by RMST. In a reversal from years past, the company now supports calls for legislation creating a protected Titanic maritime memorial. Late in 2011 RMST announced plans to auction off its entire $189 million collection of artifacts and related intellectual property in time for the disaster’s hundredth anniversary—but only if it can find a bidder willing to abide by the stringent conditions imposed by a federal court, including that the collection be kept intact.
I met RMST’s president, Chris Davino, at the company’s artifacts warehouse, tucked next to a dog grooming parlor in a nondescript block on the edge of Atlanta’s Buckhead district. Deep inside the climate-controlled brick building, a forklift trundled down the long aisles of industrial shelving stacked with meticulously labeled crates containing relics—dishes, clothing, letters, bottles, plumbing pieces, portholes—that were retrieved from the site over the past three decades. Here Davino, a dapper, Jersey shore-raised “turnaround professional” who has led RMST since 2009, explained the company’s new tack. Davino said.
“For years, the only thing that all the voices in the Titanic community could agree on was their disdain of us. So it was time to reassess everything. We had to do something beyond artifact recovery. We had to stop fighting with the experts and start collaborating with them.”
Which is exactly what’s happened. Government agencies such as NOAA that were formerly embroiled in lawsuits against RMST and its parent company, Premier Exhibitions, Inc., are now working directly with RMST on various long-range scientific projects as part of a new consortium dedicated to protecting the wreck site. Dave Conlin, chief marine archaeologist at the National Park Service, another agency that had been vehemently critical of the company says.
“It’s not easy to thread the needle between preservation and profit. RMST deserved the flak they got in years past, but they also deserve credit for taking this new leap of faith.”
Scholars praise RMST for recently hiring one of the world’s preeminent Titanic experts to analyze the 2010 images and begin to identify the many unsorted puzzle pieces on the ocean floor. Bill Sauder is a gnome-like man with thick glasses and a great shaggy beard that flexes and snags on itself when he laughs. His business card identifies him as a “director of Titanic research,” but that doesn’t begin to hint at his encyclopedic mastery of the Titanic’s class of ocean liners. (Sauder himself prefers to say that he is RMST’s “keeper of odd knowledge.”)
When I met him in Atlanta, he was parked at his computer, attempting to make head or tail of a heap of rubbish photographed in 2010 near the Titanic’s stern. Most Titanic expeditions have focused on the more photogenic bow section, which lies over a third of a mile to the north of most of the wreckage, but Sauder thinks that the area in the vicinity of the stern is where the real action will likely be concentrated in years to come—especially with the new RMST images providing a clearer guide. Sauder said.
“The bow’s very sexy, but we’ve been to it hundreds of times. All this wreckage here to the south is what I’m interested in.”
In essence Sauder was hunting for anything recognizable, any pattern amid the chaos around the stern. He told me.
“We like to picture shipwrecks as Greek temples on a hill—you know, very picturesque. But they’re not. They’re ruined industrial sites: piles of plates and rivets and stiffeners. If you’re going to interpret this stuff, you gotta love Picasso.”
Sauder zoomed in on the image at hand, and within a few minutes had solved at least a small part of the mystery near the stern: Lying atop the wreckage was the crumpled brass frame of a revolving door, probably from a first-class lounge. It is the kind of painstaking work that only someone who knows every inch of the ship could perform—a tiny part of an enormous Where’s Waldo? sleuthing project that could keep Bill Sauder busy for years.
In late October I found myself in Manhattan Beach, California, inside a hangar-size film studio where James Cameron, surrounded by dazzling props and models from his 1997 movie, Titanic, had assembled a roundtable of some of the world’s foremost nautical authorities—quite possibly the most illustrious conclave of Titanic experts ever gathered. Along with Cameron, Bill Sauder, and RMST explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, the roundtable boasted Titanic historian Don Lynch and famed Titanic artist Ken Marschall, along with a naval engineer, a Woods Hole oceanographer, and two U.S. Navy architects.
Cameron could more than hold his own in this select company. A self-described “rivet-counting Titanic geek,” the filmmaker has led three expeditions to the site. He developed and piloted a new class of nimble, fiber-spooling robots that brought back never before seen images of the ship’s interior, including tantalizing glimpses of the Turkish bath and some of the opulent staterooms.
Cameron has white hair and a close-clipped white goatee, and when he’s wound up on Titanic matters, a certain Melvillean intensity weighs on his brow. Cameron has also filmed the wreck of the Bismarck and is now building a submarine to take him and his cameras to the Mariana Trench. But the Titanic still holds him; he keeps swearing off the subject, only to return. He told me at his Malibu compound.
“There’s this very strange mixture of biology and architecture down there—this sort of biomechanoid quality. I think it’s gorgeous and otherworldly. You really feel like this is something that’s gone to Tartarus—to the underworld.”
At Cameron’s request, the two-day roundtable would concentrate entirely on forensics: Why did the Titanic break up the way she did? Precisely where did the hull fail? At what angle did the myriad components smash into the seabed? It was to be a kind of inquest, in other words, nearly a hundred years after the fact.
Cameron said.
“What you’re looking at is a crime scene. Once you understand that, you really get sucked into the minutiae. You want to know: How’d it get like that? How’d the knife wind up over here and the gun over there?”
Perhaps inevitably, the roundtable took off in esoteric directions—with discussion of glide ratios, shearing forces, turbidity studies. Listeners lacking an engineering sensibility would have extracted one indelible impression from the seminar: Titanic’s final moments were hideously, horrifically violent. Many accounts depict the ship as “slipping beneath the ocean waves,” as though she drifted tranquilly off to sleep, but nothing could be further from the truth. Building on many years of close analysis of the wreck, and employing state-of-the-art flooding models and “finite element” simulations used in the modern shipping industry, the experts painted a gruesome portrait of Titanic’s death throes.
The ship sideswiped the iceberg at 11:40 p.m., buckling portions of the starboard hull along a 300-foot span and exposing the six forward watertight compartments to the sea. From this moment onward, sinking was a certainty. The demise may have been hastened, however, when crewmen pushed open a gangway door on the port side in an aborted attempt to load lifeboats from a lower level. Since the ship had begun listing to port, they could not reclose the massive door against gravity, and by 1:50 a.m., the bow had settled enough to allow seawater to rush in through the gangway.
By 2:18, with the last lifeboat having departed 13 minutes earlier, the bow had filled with water and the stern had risen high enough into the air to expose the propellers and create catastrophic stresses on the middle of the ship. Then the Titanic cracked in half.
Cameron stood up and demonstrated how it happened. He grabbed a banana and began to wrench it in his hands:
“Watch how it flexes and pooches in the middle before it breaks—see that?”
The banana skin at the bottom, which was supposed to represent the doubly reinforced bottom of the hull, was the last part to snap.
Once released from the stern section, the bow shot for the bottom at a fairly steep angle. Gaining velocity as it dropped, parts began to shear away: Funnels snapped. The wheelhouse crumbled. Finally, after five minutes of relentless descent, the bow nosed into the mud with such massive force that its ejecta patterns are still visible on the seafloor today.
The stern, lacking a hydrodynamic leading edge like the bow, descended even more traumatically, tumbling and corkscrewing as it fell. A large forward section, already weakened by the fracture at the surface, completely disintegrated, spitting its contents into the abyss. Compartments exploded. Decks pancaked. Hull plates ripped out. The poop deck twisted back over itself. Heavier pieces such as the boilers dropped straight down, while other pieces were flung off “like Frisbees.” For more than two miles, the stern made its tortured descent—rupturing, buckling, warping, compressing, and gradually disintegrating. By the time it hit the ocean floor, it was unrecognizable.
Sitting back down, Cameron popped a pinched piece of banana in his mouth and ate it. He said.
“We didn’t want the Titanic to have broken up like this. We wanted her to have gone down in some kind of ghostly perfection.”
Listening to this learned disquisition on the Titanic’s death, I kept wondering: What happened to the people still on board as she sank? Most of the 1,496 victims died of hypothermia at the surface, bobbing in a patch of cork life preservers. But hundreds of people may still have been alive inside, most of them immigrant families in steerage class, looking forward to a new life in America. How did they, during their last moments, experience these colossal wrenchings and shudderings of metal? What would they have heard and felt? It was, even a hundred years later, too awful to contemplate.
St. John’s, Newfoundland, is another of Titanic’s homes. On June 8, 1912, a rescue ship returned to St. John’s bearing the last recovered Titanic corpse. For months, deck chairs, pieces of wood paneling, and other relics were reported to have washed up on the Newfoundland coast.
I had hoped to pay my respects to the people who literally went down with the ship by flying to the wreck site from St. John’s with the International Ice Patrol, the agency created in the disaster’s aftermath to keep watch for icebergs in the North Atlantic sea lanes. When a nor’easter canceled all flights, I found my way instead to a tavern in the George Street district, where I was treated to a locally made vodka distilled with iceberg water. To complete the effect, the bartender plopped into my glass an angular nub of ice chipped from an iceberg, supposedly calved from the same Greenlandic glacier that birthed the berg that sank Titanic. The ice ticked and fizzed in my glass—the exhalations, I was told, of ancient atmospheres trapped inside.
I could still get a little closer, physically and figuratively, to those who rest forever with the ship. A few years before the disaster, Guglielmo Marconi built a permanent wireless station on a desolate, wind-battered spit south of St. John’s, called Cape Race. Locals claim that the first person to receive the distress signal from the sinking ship was Jim Myrick, a 14-year-old wireless apprentice at the station who went on to a career with the Marconi Company. Initially, the transmission came in as a standard emergency code, CQD. But then Cape Race received a new signal, seldom used before: SOS.
One morning at Cape Race, amid the carcasses of old Marconi machines and crystal receivers, I met David Myrick, Jim’s great-nephew, a marine radio operator and the last of a proud line of antique communicators. David said his uncle never spoke about the night the Titanic sank until he was a frail old man. By that point, Jim had lost his hearing so completely that the only way the family could converse with him was through Morse code—manipulating a smoke detector to produce high-pitched dots and dashes. David said.
“A Marconi man to the end. He thought in Morse code—hell, he dreamed in it.”
We went out by the lighthouse and looked over the cold sea, which crashed into the cliffs below. An oil tanker cruised in the distance. Farther out, on the Grand Banks, new icebergs had been reported. Farther out still, somewhere beyond the bulge of the horizon, lay the most famous shipwreck in the world. My mind raced with thoughts of signals bouncing in the ionosphere—the propagation of radio waves, the cry of ages submerged in time. And I imagined I could hear the voice of the Titanic herself: A vessel with too much pride in her name, sprinting smartly toward a new world, only to be mortally nicked by something as old and slow as ice.
COMMENTARY: Everytime I watch the movie "Titanic," I get goosebumps. It's such an incredible love story emersed with the grandeur of the RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage that would end so tragically. Let's hope we never have to experience another tragedy like the Titanic.
Director/Producer John Cameron did an incredible job filming the events of that terrible night in the original film "Titanic." Cameron is bringing back "Titanic" in all her glory in 3D this time, and the film will be shown for a limited engagement beginning in April 2012. Hope to see you there. Now the Titanic 3D Official Trailer.
For an authentic history of the RMS Titanic, check out the Titanic Stories , RMS Titanic, Inc and Titanic Historical Society websites. These sites are the best of several and include some incredible content including images and videos of the ship, her passengers, the survivors and many other interesting facts about Titanic.
Courtesy in an article of the April 2012 issue of National Geographic Magazine and an article dated March 9, 2012 appearing in the Daily Mail and an article dated March 21, 2012 appearing in the Daily Mail
The New World Order, Ruling Class or Illuminati, as it is commonly referred IS real. They go back to the Middle Ages. They have been associated with the occult even belief in Lucifer or The Devil. They are at the top of the food chain and control EVERYTHING. Everybody thinks that the Big Corporations, Politicians and Military Industrial Complex are the rulers, but they are just merely the tools to concentrate power at the top.
The Politicians are controlled by the Illuminati through their financial support, favors and even bribery. Washington lobby groups dominate Washington, D.C. The Big Corporations, through their global business activities provide the capital to acquire and control the vast majority of global worth. The Top 137 corporations control 40% of the world's wealth.
The Politicians and The Big Corporations both report to the Military Industrial Complex which is where the "muscle" of the Illuminati resides. The Illuminati are the equivalent of the Boss of Bosses or top Don of a Sicilian family. The Military Industrial Complex are equivalent to the Bosses of La Familia or Mafia. The various branches of the military are the Under Bosses, and then there are the soldiers.
The Military Industrial Complex consists of the U.S. military and heads of the CIA, NSA and FBI and "The Greys." YES, extra-terrestrials are involved indirectly, and they take great pleasure in watching over everything. They are the ultimate beneficiaries. They have unlimited power, and their technology is millions of years ahead of us, and they could destroy the Earth if they wanted, but they need us, so they don't care if there is a power struggle for supremacy among us humans.
Image of a Grey Alien, circa 1955
The Greys are a dying species of extra-terrestrials who travelled to Earth and colonized it thousands of years ago, and through genetic experimentations of human DNA developed Modern Man. Trust me, it was not Divine intervention like it says in the Holy Bible.
In the 1950's, The Greys entered into a secret pact with the Eisenhower administration. According to that Pact, the U.S. government would provide The Greys with access to a certain number of humans so they could conduct DNA experiments to replicate their species by combining both Grey and Human DNA. In exchange, The Greys were to provide us with certain advanced technologies.
A few unscrupulous Illuminati individuals within the U.S. government saw an opportunity to exploit the alien technology to consolidate power, wealth and control over the masses on Earth. The Greys really don't care. We are their form of entertainment. In fact, they love harvesting our souls. They get off in capturing the soul as it leaves the human body upon death, and use it like an aphrodisiac. In effect, they get off on US.
The Big Corporations controls the Corporate Media and Global Banking. It is the job of the Corporate Media to spread disinformation and propaganda that has divided the masses. I am sure that you will agree that this has worked perfectly.
Global Banking provides the financial resources so that the Big Corporations can successfully carry out their evil commercial activities throughout the world and create more wealth for the Illuminati.
The Politicans control the Government and Courts. The Government creates the laws and regulations to control the masses. The Courts are the enforcers for the politicians. They punish the masses if they don't stay in line.
Below is a simplified organizational chart showing the Ruling Class or Illuminati at the top with the other organizations and entities just described below them:
The Illuminati has the following pecking order or power rank which is illustrated in the graphic below:
British Monarchy a.k.a." The Royals" which is headed by Her Highness Queen Elizabeth II.
Israel who control most of the banking industry and Wall Street.
Welf Relations.
The Freemasonry a.k.a. The Masons.
Catholic Church.
The Illuminati or Ruling Class
I know some "British Subjects" are going to scream blasphemy for mentioning Queen Elizabeth at the head of the Illuminati, but the decision was an obvious one. The Illuminati needed natural succession at the top, and The Royals fit that description perfectly. They are of royal blood, respected worldwide and there is logical order of succession. Next in line in order of succession is Prince Charles. Even President Barack Obama and the First Lady bow to Queen Elizabeth.
Israel is next in line in the Illuminati pecking order. They are the business leaders, power brokers and bankers of the world. They also control the media (from newspapers to the Internet). Facebook is a front for the CIA, FBI and NSA. I warned you about this in a previous blog post. Do you notice that every American presidential candidate goes before the prominent Jewish Organizations like the National Jewish Democratic Council to make sure the next president will support Israel? That's not a coincidence.
Next is the Welf Relations which stems from the House of Welf. The House of Welf (historically rendered in English, Guelf or Guelph) is a European dynasty that has included many German and British monarchs from the 11th to 20th century. The original House of Welf Family Tree is below:
In its modern context, Welf Relations now includes the hundreds of descendants of the House of Welf who live today. They consider their membership in the Illuminati a blood right.
The Freemasonry are next in the pecking order. Freemasonry is a fraternal organization that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. You can recognize a Freemason by the symbol of a square and compass and letter "G" in the middle. Some say the "G" stands for God or Guild. Some say its the symbol for the human penis.
Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million. Very few Freemasons are in the Illuminati, but the top guys probably are. The fraternity is administratively organized into independent Grand Lodges, each of which governs its own jurisdiction. There are over a quarter of a million under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of England and just under two million in the United States.
The heads of the Roman Catholic Church is the last in the pecking order of the Illuminati. This includes Pope Benedict XVI and the College of Cardinals. The Cardinals are princes of the Church appointed by the Pope, who are ordained senior bishops. As a whole, the College of Cardinals advises the Pope, and those cardinals under the age of 80 at the death of a Pope elect his successor. There are now a total of 193 Cardinals, of whom 112 are aged under 80. Of the voting-age cardinals, 64 were appointed by Pope John Paul II, and 28 by Pope Benedict XVI.
BTW, the Roman Catholic Church, was duped by The Greys. Jesus was never born of a Virgin Mary and he never rose from the dead. He was "invented" by those evil Greys, and the rest is history. The Roman Catholic Church provides the people something the Illuminati cannot or won't: HOPE. It's perfect, the Greys get a great kick out of it. But, the Church is now worried that they maybe exposed and be out of the religion business. I mentioned this to you in a previous blog post when The scientists from Vatican met with the scientists from NASA and 20 or so top-level scientists because they want to know if ET is for real. Ha, ha, ha. I got a kick out of that one. Naturally, they've been given assurances that ET does not exist.
The Royals and The Committee of 300 make the important decisions for the Illuminati. They represent the wealthiest, most powerful and influential individuals in the World, not necessarily the most well known or even wealthy. None of them would ever admit they are a member of The Committee of 300 or Illuminati. The Committe of 300 include a Who's Who of Americans, British and Europeans. Famous Americans who are members of The Comittee of 300 include Senator John Kerry, Senator Joe Lieberman, former Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Al Gore (consolation prize for losing the Presidency to that idiot son George W Bush), investor Warren Buffet, former President Bill Clinton, Former President George H.W. Bush, Microsoft executives Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, The Rockefeller's, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner and others. Political affiliations do not matter within the Illuminati. Everybody is pals, some of them even swop their wives to seal a deal, then they laugh and do high-fives afterwards.
The ultimate goal of the Illuminati is to own everything, and judging from the concentration of wealth among developed nations throughout the world, it's working. Eventually they will have total control of the working class. Their ultimate plan is to keep the poor as poor as possible, eliminate the middle class, and increase their numbers at the top so they own quite literally everything.
I know what you are thinking: The Illuminati does not exist and this is all bullshit. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I may even be a member of the Illuminati, and you would never know it, because I would never admit it.
I thought it would be interesting to review the events leading up to and after England's King George VI's famous radio broadcast "Speech" declaring war on Germany on September 3, 1939 and the movie trailer of the movie "The King's Speech".
On September 1, 1939 Germany invades Poland, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany:
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's radio broadcast announcing that England was at war with Germany:
Audio and a picture of King George VI's famous speech of September 3, 1939 to his British subjects announcing that England was at war with Germany:
"The King's Speech" official movie poster and trailer. Starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. The film has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards:
England's Prime Minister Winston Churchill's famous "We Shall Never Surrender" speech following the Dunkirk disaster:
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1949 and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famous speech declaring war on Japan:
Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States (3-parts). Man that punkass could talk up a storm:
COMMENTARY: I think "The King's Speech" will win it all. Enjoy and learn something.
When I saw this article I knew I had to post the pics for you. You can view the rest of the photos HERE. Marilyn Monroe was so hot looking, and there will never another like her.
Could the 70 little ancient books with lead pages containing crytic engravings and bound in wire be the biggest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls?
For scholars of faith and history, it is a treasure trove too precious for price.
This ancient collection of 70 tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.
Lines of inquiry: The metal tablets could change our understanding of the Bible. The metal books contain pages with images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion
Academics are divided as to their authenticity but say that if verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
Groundbreaking find: A section of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were unearthed in 1947
On pages not much bigger than a credit card, are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are actually the lost collection of codices mentioned in the Bible’s Book Of Revelation.
The books were discovered five years ago in a cave in a remote part of Jordan to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Important documents from the same period have previously been found there.
Initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books could date from the first century AD.
Revelation: Experts speculate that the tablets could be the lost collection of codices referred to in the Bible's Book Of Revelation.
Hidden meaning: Scrolls, tablets and other artifacts, including an incense bowl, were also found at the same site as the tablets.
This estimate is based on the form of corrosion which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially.
If the dating is verified, the books would be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul.
The prospect that they could contain contemporary accounts of the final years of Jesus’s life has excited scholars – although their enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that experts have previously been fooled by sophisticated fakes.
David Elkington, a British scholar of ancient religious history and archeology, and one of the few to have examined the books, says they could be ‘the major discovery of Christian history’.
‘It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church,’ he said.
But the mysteries between their ancient pages are not the books’ only riddle. Today, their whereabouts are also something of a mystery. After their discovery by a Jordanian Bedouin, the hoard was subsequently acquired by an Israeli Bedouin, who is said to have illegally smuggled them across the border into Israel, where they remain.
However, the Jordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection. Philip Davies, emeritus professor of biblical studies at Sheffield University, said there was powerful evidence that the books have a Christian origin in plates cast into a picture map of the holy city of Jerusalem.
‘As soon as I saw that, I was dumbstruck,’ he said. ‘That struck me as so obviously a Christian image. There is a cross in the foreground, and behind it is what has to be the tomb [of Jesus], a small building with an opening, and behind that the walls of the city.
‘There are walls depicted on other pages of these books too and they almost certainly refer to Jerusalem. It is a Christian crucifixion taking place outside the city walls.’
The British team leading the work on the discovery fears that the present Israeli ‘keeper’ may be looking to sell some of the books on to the black market, or worse – destroy them.
But the man who holds the books denies the charge and claims they have been in his family for 100 years.
Dr Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study, said: ‘The Book of Revelation tells of a sealed book that was opened only by the Messiah.
‘Other texts from the period tell of sealed books of wisdom and of a secret tradition passed on by Jesus to his closest disciples. That is the context for this discovery.’
Professor Davies said: ‘The possibility of a Hebrew-Christian origin is certainly suggested by the imagery and, if so, these codices are likely to bring dramatic new light to our understanding of a very significant but so far little understood period of history.’
Mr Elkington, who is leading British efforts to have the books returned to Jordan, said: ‘It is vital that the collection can be recovered intact and secured in the best possible circumstances, both for the benefit of its owners and for a potentially fascinated international audience.’
*British scientists have uncovered up to eight million mummified dogs, thought to have been sacrificed to Anubis, the god of the dead, 2500 years ago after excavating tunnels in the ancient Eygptian city of Saqqara.
COMMENTARY: I just hope these 70 lead books, like so many ancient painting's and clay vase's discovered in modern times, that were later carbon tested and analyized, are not frauds. An ill conceived practical joke inflicted on historians by a prankster.
I can just see the mass panic and traumatic shock experienced by Christians around the world should these little lead books reveal the real truth about Jesus and Christianity. Maybe Jesus was hung, and not cruxified. Maybe he was just buried, but there was no resurrection. Maybe he was married and had children. Maybe he was just plain crazy. Maybe these 70 little lead books turn out to be Hebrew COOK BOOKS!! Kosher cooking is healthy eating.
You don't suppose that Christian religions around the world would try suppress these shocking truths would you? You bet they would. If something else other than what we now accept as gospel were revealed in these little lead books, all Christianity would be out-of-business literally over night. The Roman Catholic Church would be the laughing stock of Islam. The Pope would be evicted from The Vatican; cardinals, bishops and priests would be ridiculed and disrobed and thrown into the street; all the buildings, rectories, churches, including the Sisteen Chapel would be plundered and razed to the ground, and the property turned into luxury condo's.
Oh my God, what have I said. Lord, please forgive me. (Gulp)
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