Secret HistoryS


Roses

Melting Swiss glacier reveals bodies of couple who disappeared 75 years ago

Matthew Diebel
USA Today
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:24 UTC
Remains of Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin
© Getty Images
The bodies of a Swiss couple who disappeared 75 years ago in the Alps have been found at the edge of a melting glacier, local media reported.

Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin, the parents of seven children, went to milk their cows in a meadow in the Valais canton on Aug. 15, 1942, then vanished without a trace.

"We spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day," their youngest daughter, Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, 79, told Le Matin, a newspaper in Lausanne.

"For the funeral, I won't wear black," she added. "I think that white would be more appropriate. It represents hope, which I never lost."
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Red Flag

Unsuspecting residents of San Francisco were part of one of the largest human experiments in history

Kevin Loria
Business Insider
Tue, 04 Aug 2015 14:54 UTC
San Fran fog
© cognitive libertyThe north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge is seen surrounded by fog
San Francisco's fog is famous, especially in the summer, when weather conditions combine to create the characteristic cooling blanket that sits over the Bay Area.

This was just the start of many such tests around the country that would go on in secret for years. But one fact many may not know about San Francisco's fog is that in 1950, the US military conducted a test to see whether it could be used to help spread a biological weapon in a "simulated germ-warfare attack." This was just the start of many such tests around the country that would go on in secret for years.

Comment: Read more about the "simulated germ-warfare attacks" in Kevin Loria's article: Clouds of secrecy: Over and over again, the military has conducted dangerous biowarfare experiments on Americans, without their knowledge

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Archaeology

Perfectly preserved mummies cocooned in copper, fabric and birch bark unearthed in Russia's far north


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 15:54 UTC
Copper-covered mummies unearthed in Russia’s Far North
© Alexander Gusev
A perfectly-preserved mummy of an adult bound in copper plates from head to toe has been dug up in Russia's Far North, alongside the mummy of a "tiny" baby. The discoveries could shed unique light on medieval burial and medical practices.

The remains were found near Zeleny Yar archeological site in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, which was discovered in 1997, and has since been the source of dozens of rare finds.

"This year's field season has been highly successful. We've opened 10 graves, five of which were never looted in ancient times. For a memorial like Zeleny Yar this is unusual,"said Aleksandr Gusev, a researcher from the Scientific Center for the Study of the Arctic (SCSA), who led the expedition.
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Info

Declassified Russian documents reveal Polish gratitude for WWII liberation


RT
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:07 UTC
Poland Red Army Nazi Russia Soviet Union Memorial
© Alexey Vitvitsky / SputnikMemorial to Red Army soldiers re-unveiled in Poland
The Russian Defense Ministry has declassified documents on the war in Poland in 1944-45, which describe Nazi atrocities and the positive attitude of the Polish people toward their liberators.
"The historical documents declassified in July 2017 have never been published in open sources and were only available to a limited circle of specialists," read a statement by the Defense Ministry's press service.
It also noted that all documents, such as field reports, certificates and telegrams show that the Poles' attitude toward Soviet military servicemen was good. For example, a telegram from the Polish Patriots' Union states that Polish citizens fighting on the Soviet side - in the so-called Armia Ludowa, or People's Army - "have created a bridge that unites two brotherly nations."

Comment: Further reading: 'Never again': Western amnesia on WWII as NATO replicates Nazi Germany

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Dig

Cypriot farmer unearths 2,000-year-old Roman mosaic

Holly Kellum & Colin Fredericson
Epoch Times
Mon, 26 Jun 2017 16:17 UTC
mosaic tile
Thanks to a farmer in the Cyprus village of Akaki, about 14 miles from the capital Nicosia, archeologists know a lot more about the island's history and horse races in ancient Rome.

The farmer uncovered a 36-foot by 14-foot mosaic floor piece that researchers believe dates back to the A.D. 4th century, and likely came from the villa of a rich country man.

The mosaic shows four chariots with their charioteers and horses, likely a depiction of the horse races in the Roman hippodrome, an open-air stadium for horse racing. There are also inscriptions near the charioteers, which the archeologists working on the site believe could be their names.

Dr. Fryni Hadjichristofi, the chief archaeological officer in charge of the site, said there are only nine other mosaics that depict this theme in the Roman world.
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Boat

Eight ancient shipwrecks found off of Greece's Fourni Islands


RT
Sun, 16 Jul 2017 14:03 UTC
divers
© Sotonpressarchive / YouTube
Underwater archeologists have discovered eight shipwrecks dating back thousands of years while exploring waters around the Greek islands of Fourni.

The Fourni Underwater Survey, a joint US-Greek expedition to uncover archeological sites around the archipelago, has so far uncovered a total of 53 shipwrecks and countless invaluable artefacts over the last three diving seasons.

Peter Campbell of the RPM Nautical Foundation (RPMNF), one of the leaders of the project, believes the area was a popular among ancient boatmen as it provided good anchorage points for vessels crossing the Aegean sea. At Fourni, they were protected from the hazardous northwest winds - although the occasional southern storm sometimes caught them unawares.
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Info

You can't understand ISIS if you don't know the history of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia

Alastair Crooke
HuffPost
Wed, 27 Aug 2014 20:19 UTC
Wahhabism
© Getty
The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed — and horrified — by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?"

It appears — even now — that Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is divided. Some applaud that ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite "fire" with Sunni "fire"; that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by Da'ish's strict Salafist ideology.

Other Saudis are more fearful, and recall the history of the revolt against Abd-al Aziz by the Wahhabist Ikhwan (Disclaimer: this Ikhwan has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan — please note, all further references hereafter are to the Wahhabist Ikhwan, and not to the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan), but which nearly imploded Wahhabism and the al-Saud in the late 1920s.

Many Saudis are deeply disturbed by the radical doctrines of Da'ish (ISIS) — and are beginning to question some aspects of Saudi Arabia's direction and discourse.
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Archaeology

Secret Stone Age engravings can only be seen at night, archaeologists find


RT
Sat, 15 Jul 2017 21:00 UTC
Hendraburnick Quoit
© Kieran Doherty / Reuters
Markings that are only visible in moonlight have been discovered on an ancient stone formation in Britain, leading archaeologists to believe there could be more messages hidden amongst the world's stone memorials.

A new study of the Stone Age-engraved panel 'Hendraburnick Quoit' in Cornwall, southwest England, revealed that 10 times the amount of markings were visible when the stone was viewed under moonlight or very low sunlight from the southeast.
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Info

1863 was the 'other time' Russia meddled with American democracy


Russia Insider
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 16:58 UTC
Russians during US civil war
The Russian navy arrived to help dissuade Europeans from siding against the Union, and ended up saving San Francisco from a fire.

In 1863 Russia sailed a fleet of ships to New York and San Francisco. Russia was the European power the most friendly to the United States — which it valued as a rising power independent of Britain — and dispatched the fleet to US harbors in sign of friendship and support, and more significantly to help dissuade Britain and France from siding with the Confederacy.

The Russian ships stayed for several months, and during their stay a great fire broke out in San Francisco. Russian officers and sailors rushed to help put out the fire, suffering three injured, and winning the gratitude and affections of San Franciscans. (A popular story told locally says they lost six dead but historians find that unlikely.)
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Arrow Down

A short history of the 'humane' guillotine


The Connexion
Sat, 15 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
the guillotine
Cheers as Marie-Antoinette's head is displayed after her execution in Place de la Concorde on October 16, 1793
BASTILLE Day on July 14 has come to symbolise the French Revolution but its real symbol is the guillotine, which ended the lives of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and thousands of others linked with the aristocracy in the Reign of Terror.

It was used for capital punishment in France well into the 20th century, with the last public beheading in 1939 and its last use in 1977 for the execution of convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi. Capital punishment was not abolished until September 1981.

Always regarded as an instrument of terror, the guillotine was invented as a more humane and more egalitarian form of punishment to echo the motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

Emmanuelle Broux-Foucaud, the curator of the Préfecture de Police Museum in Paris, said that until the Revolution it was thought anyone who was being punished should suffer, often horribly, to deter anyone else from committing a similar crime.

Comment: Funny how the machinery of death - however 'humane' - usually falls into the hands of those who most want to dole out death.

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