Secret HistoryS


Heart

New Princess Diana documentary reveals Queen tried to shield William and Harry from public hysteria after Diana's death


RT
Wed, 23 Aug 2017 17:50 UTC
princess diana
© Ian Waldie / Reuters
The Queen hid newspapers at Balmoral after Princess Diana died to stop her grandsons William and Harry from seeing the hysteria that swept Britain, a new documentary has revealed.

The BBC's 'Diana, 7 Days,' details the week of the death of the Princess of Wales and the outpouring of grief that followed. It includes interviews with her sons and siblings, as well as former members of the royal household and ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The Queen was criticized for not returning from Balmoral to London quickly enough to acknowledge the national outpouring of grief. But Prince William appears to defend her decision, saying they were kept away from public view, knowing nothing of the extraordinary response throughout the country.

"At the time, you know, my grandmother wanted to protect her two grandsons and my father as well," William said.

"Our grandmother deliberately removed the newspapers and things like that, so there was nothing in the house at all, so we didn't know what was going on. We had the privacy to mourn and kind of collect our thoughts and to try and have that space away from everybody."
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Bad Guys

70th Anniversary of India-Pakistan Partition: Tragic Lessons for Humanity

Shane LaChance
Sott.net
Wed, 23 Aug 2017 14:34 UTC
India Pakistan Partition
© ROYSTON LEONARD / MEDIADRUMWORLD
India and Pakistan recently marked the 70th anniversary of their independence from Great Britain, an event also known as the Great Partition, when the British empire withdrew from southern Asia. At midnight on August 15th, 1947, India gained independence after 200 years under the British Raj. Instead of marking a time of celebration, the event is scarred with one of modern history's bloodiest upheavals.

WWII's atrocities are recognized and studied across the Western world. However, what isn't highlighted is that fallout from that war continued to ravage south Asia as the British Empire declined. We know that Ghandi's non-violent civil disobedience was the seed that freed India from British imperialism, but the outcome of this revolution is barely a footnote in Westernized history.

War, political discord, economic depression and calamitous weather brought famine to British India and Gandhi's 'Quit India Movement' to break free from British rule. After fighting two world wars trying to sustain the British Empire, the Anglos were finally broke and unable to sustain control over their vast empire. Decolonization began in India, but not without the British firing 'a parting shot':
In the middle of World War II, with the United States pressuring Britain to loosen its colonial grip on India, Winston Churchill issued a bitter prophecy. "Take India if that was what you want! Take it, by all means!" the British prime minister raged to a U.S. diplomat in Washington. But, he argued, only British rule kept the subcontinent's Hindus and Muslims from each other's throats: "I warn you that if I open the door a crack, there will be the greatest bloodbath in all history; yes, bloodbath in all history."
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Magnify

The Lincoln Myth: Ideological cornerstone of the America Empire

Thomas DiLorenzo
Institute for Political Economy
Mon, 21 Aug 2017 17:06 UTC
Abraham Lincoln
© Wikimedia Commons
"Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom . . . are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him . . . with rare exceptions, you can't believe what any major Lincoln scholar tells you about Abraham Lincoln and race."
-Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory, p. 114
The author of the above quotation, Lerone Bennett, Jr., was the executive editor of Ebony magazine for several decades, beginning in 1958. He is a distinguished African-American author of numerous books, including a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. He spent twenty years researching and writing his book, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, from which he drew the above conclusion about the so-called Lincoln scholars and how they have lied about Lincoln for generations. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bennett is incensed over how so many lies have been told about Lincoln and race.
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Rose

Secret tape of Princess Diana's close friendship with George Michael during troubled marriage

Laura Armstong
The Sun
Sun, 20 Aug 2017 15:53 UTC
Princess Diana George Michael
© All ActionPrincess Diana and her confidant George Michael
Princess Diana shared the agony of her 'grim' divorce from Prince Charles with George Michael - and blasted the royals as 'not very loving' in secret phone chat. A recording made in 1996 reveals for the first time how the pop icon was Diana's closest confidante during bitter split

Princess Diana shared the agony of her marr­iage split in a secret tape of a call with George Michael. She told the pop superstar the break-up was "grim" and the Royal Family was "not very loving".The phone chat was recorded during her divorce battle with Prince Charles but has only now emerged. Listen here.

As well as complaining about the pain of her bitter divorce battle with Prince Charles, she joined George in taking the mickey out of flamboyant pop idol Sir Elton John. The Princess of Wales took a potshot at the royals and swapped cheeky gossip during an intimate phone chat with George Michael.

A previously unheard tape of the call reveals her joking about the Careless Whisper singer "playing gooseberry" during a visit to Elton and his partner David Furnish. And she is heard likening pal Sir Elton's enormous shoe collection to that of footwear-mad former Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos after it was featured on a TV show.

Diana spoke with George in July 1996 after he rang to wish her happy birthday.
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Boat

Wreckage of WWII warship USS Indianapolis found in the Philippine Sea

Lisa Rein
Washington Post
Sat, 19 Aug 2017 15:10 UTC
USS Indianapolis
© APThis is cruiser USS Indianapolis which was sunk month before end of World War II.
Naval researchers announced Saturday that they have found the wreckage of the lost World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 72 years after the vessel sank in minutes after it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

The ship was found almost 3 1/2 miles below the surface of the Philippine Sea, said a tweet from Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, who led a team of civilian researchers that made the discovery.

Historians and architects from the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, District of Columbia, had joined forces with Allen last year to revisit the tragedy.

The ship sank in 15 minutes on July 30, 1945, in the war's final days, and it took the Navy four days to realize that the vessel was missing.
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Sun

A demon ate the sun: Myths and superstitions inspired by solar eclipses

Mindy Weisburger
LiveScience
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 19:17 UTC
Thailand statue demon Rahu
© Chaiyapak MankannanA temple statue in Thailand of the demon Rahu, believed to cause eclipses by eating the sun or moon.
The first and only total solar eclipse of 2016 will roll across the sky this week. Total solar eclipses - when the moon's shadow blocks the sun entirely - are spectacular events, highly anticipated by astronomers, astrophotographers and casual spectators alike.

But it wasn't always that way.

The gradual darkening of the sun was once cause for alarm, linked to evil auguries or the activity of the gods. Throughout history, cultures around the world sought to provide context and explanation for eclipses, and like the eclipses themselves, the legends attached to the events were dramatic.
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Archaeology

Oldest examples depicting 'tree of life' motifs unearthed in Domuztepe Mound, Turkey

Theodoros Karasavvas
Ancient Origins
Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
A tree of life motif vases and jars on the mound #Domuztepe
Tree of life motif found on vases and jars at the Domuztepe Mound, Turkey
Archaeologists have unearthed vessels portraying "tree of life" motifs during excavation works in the Domuztepe Mound in the southern province of Kahramanmaraş, which is considered to be the biggest settlement in the region since the usage of the term "Near East."

"Tree of Life" Unearthed

Directed by Hacettepe University Archaeology Department academic Dr. Halil Tekin under the allocation of the Kahramanmaraş Museum Directorate, the excavations were launched in 2013 as Hurriyet reports.

Culture and Tourism Ministry officials and university students have participated in the work, which originally started in 1996 as part of a British-American joint project and has been continued by Turkish academics since 2013. The investigation has covered some very significant artifacts. Dr. Halil Tekin stated that the most fascinating find in the Domuztepe Mound is undoubtedly the early examples of a tree motif, known as the "tree of life" in ancient Near East archaeology, with cumulative motifs. "The origin of this tree, which has become used as a Christmas tree in the Christian world throughout time, is here, namely in Mesopotamia. The earliest known example of it is in Domuztepe," Tekin said as Hurriyet reports , pointing out the cultural significance of the tree of life motifs. "It is not an ordinary tree. It is related to a faith system, a burial tradition," he added.
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Wolf

Why Eclipses Frightened Ancient Civilizations And How They Responded To Them

Tom Metcalfe
Live Science
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 12:18 UTC
The wolves Skroll and Hati
© Hélène Adeline GuerberThe wolves Skroll and Hati pursuing the sun and moon in Norse legend. An eclipse was said to occur if they got close enough to their prey.
Total solar eclipses have inspired wonder and awe throughout history, with the first known reference to an eclipse dating back about 5,000 years. But when the moon passes between Earth and the sun and darkens skies across the United States on Aug. 21, there will be one major difference between modern-day skywatchers and ancient cultures that witnessed the same celestial phenomenon: We'll have much less fear.


Comment: According to some contemporary astrologists this particular eclipse will have some rather interesting ramifications however:

Massive change in the US - What astrologers see in eclipses that most don't


For many ancient peoples, solar eclipses were a reason to be afraid - very afraid.

"We have ample historic and ethnographic information from a variety of cultures that give[s] us a pretty good idea of how people responded to these things worldwide," said astronomer E.C. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. [Christopher Columbus to Thailand's Kings: 11 Curious Stories About Eclipses]

Ancient peoples depended heavily on the seasonal changes reflected in the annual movements of the sun, Krupp told Live Science. They would have seen a solar eclipse as a major disturbance of the cosmic order, at the very least, and quite possibly as the end of the world, he said.

Comment: Perhaps we're not so different from our ancestors after all...

Authorities advise on possible "Lizard Man" and "Bigfoot" sightings during solar eclipse

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Pharoah

Discovery: Three ancient tombs in Egypt


BBC
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
Sarcophagus
© AFPA sarcophagus from one of the three tombs found at burial grounds south of Cairo.
Archaeologists have discovered three tombs that date back around 2,000 years in southern Egypt. They were found in burial grounds in the Al-Kamin al-Sahrawi area in Minya province, south of Cairo.

The tombs contained a collection of different sarcophagi, or stone coffins, as well as clay fragments.

Egypt's antiquities ministry said the discovery "suggests that the area was a great cemetery for a long span of time". One of the tombs, which was reached through a shaft carved in rock, contained four sarcophagi that had been sculpted to depict a human face. In another, excavators found six burial holes, including one for the burial of a small child.

Clay fragments found at the site date the tombs between the 27th Dynasty, founded in 525BC, and the Greco-Roman era, which lasted between 332BC and the 4th Century.

Ali al-Bakry, head of the mission, said one of the tombs contained bones believed to be the remains of "men, women and children of different ages". "These tombs were part of a large cemetery for a large city and not a military garrison as some suggest," he said.

In a statement, the antiquities ministry said that "works are under way in order to reveal more secrets". This work follows previous excavation at the site, which began in 2015.
cemetery tomb
© AFPSarcophagi which were discovered in a cemetery dating back about 2,000 years.
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Archaeology

Archaeoacoustics: How the science of sound helps us understand ancient cultures

Gary Evans
Ancient Origins
Sun, 13 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
Theater at Aspendos Turkey
© CC BY SA 3.0The theatre at Aspendos, Turkey is famous for its magnificent acoustics. Even the slightest sound made at the center of the orchestra can be easily heard as far as the upper most galleries. It is the best preserved and most complete example of a Roman theatre.
In this article, I will introduce the subject of archaeoacoustics and ancient "musical instruments". As we will see, these can be used in conjunction with a number of ancient sites from around the world.

The Archaeoacoustics Field of Study

Archaeoacoustics is the use of acoustical study within the wider scientific field of archaeology. This includes the study of the acoustics at archaeological sites, and the study of acoustics in archaeological artifacts. Over the last 40 years it has become increasingly obvious that studying the sonic nature of certain areas of archaeology can help us understand ancient cultures. Archaeoacoustics is an interdisciplinary field, it includes various fields of research including: archaeology, ethnomusicology, acoustics and digital modelling. These form the larger field of music archaeology.

One of the leading research groups publishing new papers on archaeoacoustics is SB Research Group (SBRG). SBRG is a multidisciplinary university project supported by University of Trieste, Italy "that aims to study from 2010 the architecture, geometry, shape and materials of ancient structures in Europe".

Comment: See also:

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