Have you read…?

From the #1 New York Timesbestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds” and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship–the fastest then in service–could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game.

A really great book that sheds light on the USA entering the First World War and the sinking of the Lusitania is written by Erik Larson in Dead Wake.  This is a great read. You get to travel with the passengers on the Lusitania in 1915. It sheds light on how the Germans did not care if they sunk passenger liners with women and children, whether there was indeed ammunition on the Lusitania as claimed, and the clever code breaking done in secret. Also about Woodrow Wilson’s romance!

And a funny true little story –when the war broke out in 1904…

In Paris, the big fascination was the trial of Henriette Caillaux, wife of former prime minister Joseph Caillaux, arrested for killing the editor of the Paris newspaper LeFigaro after the newspaper had published an intimate letter that the prime minister had written to her before their marriage, when they were having an adulterous affair.

 

Enraged, Mrs. Caillaux bought a gun, practiced with it at the gunsmith’s shop, then went to the editor’s office and fired six times. In her testimony, offering an unintended metaphor for what was soon to befall Europe, she said, “These pistols are terrible things. They go off by themselves.” She was acquitted, after persuading the court that the murder was a crime of passion.

The Boy who did not come back from Heaven

http://newsfeed.gawker.com/little-boy-who-claimed-to-die-and-visit-heaven-admits-h-1679811262?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

‘I did not go to heaven’: Paralyzed boy admits he made up best-selling book about how he ascended to paradise and met Jesus after car wreck.

Alex co-wrote the book with his father, pictured. He is now divorced from his mother and lives separately from his son

His story was made into the best-selling book The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, which was co-authored with his father Kevin and first published in 2010.
The mother adds that Alex previously told a pastor that the book was made up, but was told the publication was ‘blessing’ people and to stay quiet.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2913259/Man-wrote-best-selling-book-saw-heaven-near-death-experience-six-year-old-admits-thing-up.html#ixzz3P3Ua9IhU
Some of the comments in the Dailymail are really very funny!

Was there not a similar case of a surgeon that also wrote a book about going to heaven but it was debunked by the doctors who attended to him?

So by the way near death experiences do have a neurological explanation about what happens when the brain is starved from oxygen. I am just saying. https://justfletcher.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/proof-of-heaven/

Do you believe in ghosts?

Watched a ghost story on DSTV travel last night.

Elva Zona Heaster, the murder victim, was born in Greenbrier County sometime around 1873

The story goes that 3 months after they got married the bride fell down the stairs and died. The husband was so overwhelmed with grief that he did not want to leave his departed wife alone for a single moment; the coroner could not even perform a proper autopsy. He even dressed her in her best outfit (unusual for that was the task of the women of the church) and put a beautiful scarf round her neck.

Not long after her death her ghost appeared to her mother showing her that she was strangled  by her abusive and cruel husband and had marks around her neck to prove it. This happened three times after which mother went to the police and insisted on having her daughter’s body exhumed and a proper autopsy be performed.

So indeed she was strangled, her windpipe broken and to cut a long story short husband was found guilty and sent to prison.

Fact or Fiction? Well I do not believe in ghosts and think the mother suspected the husband of murder but had to convince the public prosecutor in some way. It still makes for a nice story though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbrier_Ghost

Spider- Lizard

 

One has to wonder whether this lizard’s spider-senses are tingling. For the reptile bears more than a passing resemblance to the Marvel comic superhero Spiderman.

The lizard’s amazing red and blue markings are strikingly similar to the suit worn by the crime-fighting, web-weaving daredevil.

And – as the reptile was captured crawling around on his rock – he appeared to strike an identical pose to Spidey’s favoured crouching pose.

The lizard is a Mwanza Flat Headed Agama, which are native to Africa and usually live in groups with one dominant male – usually the most colourful.

Read more here

A few interesting concidences.

 

 

So by the way coincidence comes from the latin cum- (“with”, “together”) and incidere (a composed verb from “in” and “cadere“: “to fall on”, “to happen”).

Often in religion people cannot accept coincidence and therefore believe it is so arranged or a miracle or whatever. Then the definition of coincidence no longer applies of course.

 

Mark Twain was born on the day of the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835, and died on the day of its next appearance in 1910. He himself predicted this in 1909, when he said: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”

Oregon’s Columbian newspaper announced the winning Pick 4 lottery numbers for June 28, 2000 in advance. The newspaper had intended to print the previous set of winning numbers but erroneously printed those for the state of Virginia, namely 6-8-5-5. In the next Oregon lottery, those same numbers were drawn.

In 1979, the German magazine – Das Besteran – ran a writing competition. Readers sent in unusual stories, but they had to be based on true incidents. The winner, Walter Kellner of Munich, had his story published . He wrote about a time when he was flying a Cessna 421 between Sardinia and Sicily. He encountered engine trouble at sea, landed in the water, spent some time in an emergency dinghy and was then rescued. This story was spotted by an Austrian, also named Walter Kellner, who said that the German Kellner had plagiarized the story. The Austrian Kellner said that he had flown a Cessna 421 over the same sea, experienced engine trouble and was forced to land in Sardinia. It was essentially the same story, with a slightly different ending. The magazine checked both stories, and both turned out to be true, even though they were nearly identical.

Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella Futility had many parallels with the RMS Titanic disaster; the book concerned a fictional state-of-the-art ocean liner called Titan, which (like the Titanic) eventually collides with an iceberg on a calm April night whilst en route to New York, with many dying because of the lack of lifeboats. Various other details in the book coincide with the Titanic disaster. Later, she wrote a book, Beyond the Spectrum, that described a future war fought with aircraft that carried “sun bombs”. Incredibly powerful, one bomb could destroy a city, erupting in a flash of light that blinds all who look at it. The war begins in December, started by the Japanese with a sneak attack on Hawaii.

 

 

Death calls 2x

On July 28th 1900, the King of Italy Umberto I was having dinner in a restaurant in the city of Monza. It turned out later that the restaurant’s owner looked identical to the king. The restaurant owner’s name was Umberto, his wife’s name was the same as the queen’s and the restaurant was opened on the same date as the king’s inauguration. The Restaurant-owner Umberto was shot dead the next day. So was King Umberto.

 

Claude Volbonne killed Baron Rodemire de Tarazone of France in 1872. 21 years earlier, the Baron’s father had been murdered by somebody else called Claude Volbonne.

On February 13, 1746, a Frenchman, Jean Marie Dubarry, was executed for the murder of his father. Precisely 100 years later, on February 13, 1846, another Frenchman, also named Jean Marie Dubarry, was executed – for the murder of his father.

On the 26th November, 1911, three men were hanged at Greenberry Hill in London after being convicted of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry. Their names were Green, Berry and Hill.

 

I found this on the internet – where else?