Secret HistoryS


Bomb

Two weeks of terror: 20 years ago, Russians went to bed fearing their home was next to be bombed

Bombing
© AFPAftermath of the September 8, 1999 bombing in Moscow.
September 1999 was one of the most terrifying months in Russia's modern history. In a span of less than two weeks, four separate bomb attacks rocked the country, and there seemed to be no end to this wave of random violence.

September 13, exactly 20 years ago, was the bloodiest day in a month that was full of grief and fear for Russians. Early in the morning, a powerful blast in the basement of an eight-story apartment building in Moscow leveled it to the ground, killing 124 people. Only seven survived. The explosion was later estimated to be the equivalent of 300kg of TNT.

The deaths and how they occurred was almost a carbon copy of what happened days prior, just six kilometers away. Explosives disguised as bags of sugar were smuggled into a rented apartment, and the detonation was timed for late night to maximize its lethality. Some 106 people were killed and almost 700 injured. In a macabre twist of fate, Russia was supposed to have national day of mourning for victims of that attack on September 13.

And that one was not even the first in the series. The initial attack happened in the city of Buynaksk in Russia's southern Republic of Dagestan on September 4. A truck loaded with homemade explosives was parked near a house where families of Russian soldiers lived, and was set to blow up in the evening. Another truck bomb was found next to a hospital and was supposed to target survivors, but luckily that part of the plan was thwarted, preventing the death toll of 64 from escalating further.

Igloo

Explorers discover huge 'lost' ice cave with 3 floors, walkways and giant hall in Antarctica

Ice cave
© Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine
Polar explorers have discovered a monumental "lost" ice cave with three floors, a giant hall, 200 meters of walkways, several lakes and a river hidden in Antarctica.

The mysterious cave was found on Galindez Island, where explorers from the Ukranian Antarctic Expedition (UAE) are based. There was a known entrance to the cave opposite the island's shore station, however several years ago the opening was blocked when a glacier shifted into the ocean.
Ice cave in Antartica
© Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine
The team searched tirelessly to find another entrance into the cave. After several unsuccessful attempts, they found an opening at an old British base - only to discover that the cave is actually three times larger than the team previously thought.

Dig

Ruins suggest Britons had bathhouses before Roman occupation

bath house
© University of ReadingBathing may not have been a strictly Roman introduction to Britain, according to archaeologists. Pictured, the researchers potential trench locations
Bathing may not have been a strictly Roman introduction to Britain, according to archaeologists.

Baths and bathhouses have long been top-of-the-list of what the Romans did for us.

But an excavation near Reading has found evidence of a bathhouse which may have existed before the Empire invaded in AD43.

In fact, ruins suggest ancient Britons may have already had saunas in the Iron Age, decades before the Romans arrived.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar!


Dig

Neanderthal footprints found in France offer snapshot of their lives

neanderthal
© Dominique Cliquet/AFP/Getty ImagesThe excavation site of the footprint layer in Le Rozel, France.
Scientists have found hundreds of perfectly preserved footprints, providing evidence that Neanderthals walked the Normandy coast in France.

The prints suggest a group of 10-13 individuals, mostly children and adolescents, were on the shoreline 80,000 years ago.

Neanderthals, the closest evolutionary cousins to present-day humans and primates, have long been thought to have lived in social groups, but details have been hard to establish.

Comment: See also:


Dig

Large '1,400-year-old Pictish cemetery' uncovered in Scotland's Highlands

Pictish
© Andy HickieThe possible Pictish cemetery is being excavated in a field in the Black Isle
What could turn out to be one of Scotland's largest Pictish burial grounds is being excavated on the Black Isle in the Highlands.

Archaeologists have confirmed the presence of a number of barrows, or burial mounds, near Muir of Ord.

Enclosures ranging in size from about 8m (26ft) to more than 40m (131ft) across have also been uncovered.

Archaeologists said the possible Pictish barrow cemetery could be about 1,400 years old.

Comment: See also:


Eye 2

Best of the Web: How the murder of a top scientist exposed the CIA's barbaric mind control experiments

cia experiments
© Guardian Design/Chris ClarkeFrank Olson died in 1953, but, because of clandestine US government experiments, it took decades for his family to get closer to the truth.
Glass shattered high above Seventh Avenue in Manhattan before dawn on a cold November morning in 1953. Seconds later, a body hit the sidewalk. Jimmy, the doorman at the Statler hotel, was momentarily stunned. Then he turned and ran into the hotel lobby. "We got a jumper!" he shouted. "We got a jumper!"

The night manager peered up through the darkness at his hulking hotel. After a few moments, he picked out a curtain flapping through an open window. It turned out to be room 1018A. Two names were on the registration card: Frank Olson and Robert Lashbrook.

Police officers entered room 1018A with guns drawn. They saw no one. The window was open. They pushed open the door to the bathroom and found Lashbrook sitting on the toilet, head in hands. He had been sleeping, he said, and "I heard a noise and then I woke up."

"The man that went out the window, what is his name?" one officer asked.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: SOTT Podcast: Mind Control, HAARP, and the Coming Catastrophe


Document

Demythologizing the roots of the New Cold War

coldwarposter
© cleveland.com
When Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev received his peace prize in 1990, the Nobel Prize committee declared that "the two mighty power blocs, have managed to abandon their life-threatening confrontation" and confidently expressed that "It is our hope that we are now celebrating the end of the Cold War." Recently, U.N. General Secretary António Guterres funereally closed the celebrations with the realization that "The Cold War is back."

In a very short span of history, the window that had finally opened for Russia and the United States to build a new international system in which they work cooperatively to address areas of common interest had slammed back closed. How was that historic opportunity wasted? Why was the road from the Nobel committee's hope to the UN's eulogy such a short one?

The doctrinal narrative that is told in the U.S. is the narrative of a very short road whose every turn was signposted by Russian lies, betrayal, deception and aggression. The American telling of history is a tale in which every blow to the new peace was a Russian blow. The fact checked version offers a demythologized history that is unrecognizably different. The demythologized version is also a history of lies, betrayal, deception and aggression, but the liar, the aggressor, is not primarily Russia, but America. It is the history of a promise so historically broken that it laid the foundation of a new cold war.

But it was not the first promise the United States broke: it was not even the first promise they broke in the new cold war.

Info

Earliest direct evidence of milk consumption found in prehistoric British farmers

Researchers have found the earliest direct evidence of milk consumption anywhere in the world in the teeth of prehistoric British farmers.
Researcher
© University of YorkThe study represents the earliest identification of the milk whey protein BLG so far.
The research team, led by archaeologists at the University of York, identified a milk protein called beta lactoglobulin (BLG) entombed in the mineralised dental plaque of seven individuals who lived in the Neolithic period around 6,000 years-ago.

The human dental plaque samples in the study are the oldest to be analysed for ancient proteins to date globally and the study represents the earliest identification of the milk whey protein BLG so far.

Binoculars

Russia, WWII and the forgotten liberation of Majdanek concentration camp

concentration camp
On July 22, the world should have remembered the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Majdanek, the first of Hitler's infamous extermination camps to be captured and shut down. But of course the brave Russian - and Ukrainian, Kazakh and other Soviet nationalities - soldiers of the Red Army got no credit across the West for doing so.

It was one of the most important liberations of World War II. On that day in 1944, troops of the Soviet Second Tank Army liberated the notorious death camp near Lublin in Poland.

What happened at Majdanek dwarfed the future discoveries of at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and the other well-publicized German concentration camps uncovered by the Western allies. Probably close to a quarter of a million people were killed there. First estimates at the time put the figure as high as 1.5 million. (Current conventional estimates of 78,000 victims are simply ludicrously low, as respected Polish historian Czeslaw Rajca has rightly pointed out)

The horrific facts of Majdanek were reported around the world almost immediately. Alexander Werth of the British Broadcasting Corporation, one of the greatest of Western war correspondents sent graphic reports which ran on BBC News. But they were virtually totally ignored in the West as (supposedly) communist propaganda.

Fire

Burned buildings reveal sacking of ancient Turkish city 3,500 years ago

Zincirli
© Henrik BraheTurkish student Menekşe Türkkan, at left, and Assistant Director of the Chicago-Tübingen Expedition to Zincirli and OI postdoctoral fellow Kathryn Morgan, at right, work on the excavation of an ancient city called Sam'al. Photo by
More than 3,500 years ago, a rising kingdom called the Hittite Empire was expanding, testing the limits of its strength. It would soon destroy Babylon, but first, its army sacked and burned a city nestled in the mountains of modern-day Turkey called Sam'al — located on a major route of trade between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Sea.

The charred ruins from that fateful day were uncovered for the first time in millennia during an excavation by the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The excavation is part of the OI's mission to understand the ancient Middle East, which has helped shape our picture of Western civilization.

"It's an incredibly lucky find. Every archaeologist hopes for an intact destruction layer because it gives you a snapshot of a day in the life of this town," said David Schloen, a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a leading scholar of the ancient Middle Eastern world who co-directs the excavation. "Pottery is still sitting inside the buildings where the inhabitants left it in 1650 B.C. You know that everything is where it would be on a typical day, which is really valuable cultural knowledge."

Comment: See also: