Secret HistoryS


Cloud Precipitation

Hail world records: the biggest, heaviest, and deadliest hail


Severe Weather Europe
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 19:04 UTC
NWS Aberdeen staff measuring the diameter and circumference of the record-setting hailstone. Note that the ruler is in inches!
© NWS Aberdeen.NWS Aberdeen staff measuring the diameter and circumference of the record-setting hailstone. Note that the ruler is in inches!
Imagine a melon-sized chunk of ice falling out of the sky? Punching a hole in your car windshield? Your roof? Breaking bone?

Hail is one of the biggest hazards with severe thunderstorms - while it is usually small, and relatively harmless, it may grow to tennis ball sized or even larger. It may cause severe damage, injuries and in extreme cases even death.

It forms as super cooled water droplets within a thunderstorm updraft begin freezing onto a condensation nucleus. The super cooled droplets are colder than 0 °C, but still in liquid state. As they come into contact with the growing hailstone they freeze onto it, making it grow. The growing hailstone is kept in the air by the storm's updraft until it grows too big and heavy for the upward wind to keep it aloft. The hailstone may make a single journey within the updraft, or it may make several journeys, each forming a new layer, producing a concentric onion-like structure.

Comment: More examples here: Baseball-sized hail: How severe hailstorms have caused devastation and killed people

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Boat

Pre-1400 African coin found in Australia may change history of trade in the region

Kylie Stevenson
Guardian
Sat, 11 May 2019 21:00 UTC
coin australia
© Michael Franchi/The GuardianDarwin local historian Mike Owen with a VOC coin that was manufactured in West Friesland in 1790, and found on the English Company Islands in the Northern Territory.

It's Anzac Day and the usually busy I-Med radiology clinic in Darwin is shiny and quiet, the public holiday giving the machines and their operators a break from the usual broken bones, brain scans and ultrasounds.

But then an archaeologist and a historian turn up, bringing with them a curious patient whose identity is unknown, but who may be 1,000 years old and could rewrite Australian history.

The "patient" is a small copper coin found by archaeologist Mike Hermes on a field trip to the Wessel Islands, off north-east Arnhem Land, last year. He believes it to be a coin from Kilwa, more than 10,000km away in what is now known as Tanzania, dating from before the 15th century. Its surface is eroded, obscuring identifying features, but Hermes is confident.

Comment: It wouldn't be the first discovery that threw the mainstream view of history of travel and trade into disarray:

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Palette

VIDEO from inside sunken ship where paintings of iconic Russian artist suspected to lie


RT
Sun, 12 May 2019 05:17 UTC
Artist
© Sputnik / Sergey MalgavkoA postage stamp with special cancellation issued ahead of the celebration of 200 years since painter Ivan Aivazovsky's birth.
A 19th-century shipwreck found near Crimea is believed to hold treasures: paintings by renowned marine artist Ivan Aivazovsky. He was one of Russia's most famous painters, with works now selling for over $1 million.

The steamship General Kotzebue sank after colliding with another vessel near Cape Tarkhankut on April 16, 1895. It was discovered 120 years later, lying at a depth of 40 meters at the bottom of the Black Sea. Divers from Russia's Neptune underwater expedition studied its remains and found 10 fragments of paintings among what remained of the vessel's expensive décor.

Underwater video released by the expedition shows artworks covered by a layer of silt that hides what's on them, but scientists have a theory.

"The General Kotzebue was one of the first ships to sail through the Suez Canal [in 1869] and Aivazovsky was invited aboard to [depict] the historic moment," Roman Dunaev, the head of the Neptune expedition, told Govorit Moskva.
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Bulb

Huge growth in use of quartz for tools shows sophistication of ancient communities


Phys Org
Fri, 10 May 2019 00:00 UTC
Quartz crystal
A growth in the use of crystal quartz to make tools thousands of years ago shows the sophistication of ancient communities, according to new research.

The mineral was chosen because of its powerful symbolism, even though it involved painstaking work and other materials that would have been easier to use were available to prehistoric toolmakers, archaeologists argue.

Archaeologists have found there was a sudden spike in the number of tiny hand-made tools of less than 1cm made of crystal quartz in southern Africa around 14,000 years ago.

People could have used chert, which was more durable and found locally, but they may have chosen crystal quartz because it has several unique properties including as a source of light when it is struck and as a source of sharp cutting edges. Communities may have engaged with crystal quartz because they saw material as "alive" and believed they were able to harness the power from the mineral to see into the future.
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Book 2

Book review - Preventing Palestine: A Political History From Camp David to Oslo

Jim Miles
The Palestine Chronicle
Wed, 24 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
Preventing Palestine: A Political History From Camp David to Oslo
Preventing Palestine: A Political History From Camp David to Oslo, by Seth Anziska.
(Preventing Palestine - A Political History From Camp David to Oslo. Seth Anziska. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2018.)

In all my recent readings of history and current events, Preventing Palestine stands out as being one of the best written - if not the best - and one of the most essential for understanding the overall historical process of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of Palestine.

Given the nature of the book, it also hints at the gradual process through which all of Mandatory Palestine west of the Jordan River gave way to the acceptance of only a partial space - the West Bank and Gaza - within the overall colonial-settler area of Israel, as a region for a Palestinian state.

Its general focus, however, is the political process beginning with Jimmy Carter to find a solution to the stalemate between the Arab countries and Israel, including a settlement of the Palestinian position, after the Yom Kippur war of 1973.

The result was a highly watered down document - the Camp David Accords - providing Anwar Sadat of Egypt with his original territory, peace with Israel, and the usual billions of dollars from the U.S. Palestine and the other Arab states were not included in the deal with Palestine receiving the first in a series of many talking points but no commitments or action towards an actual sovereign entity.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

The Origins of the Deep State in North America Part II

Matthew Ehret
The Duran
Fri, 10 May 2019 16:09 UTC
Chrystia Freeland
Part two: Milner's Perversion Takes over Canada.

"As between the three possibilities of the future: 1. Closer Imperial Union, 2. Union with the U.S. and 3. Independence, I believe definitely that No. 2 is the real danger. I do not think the Canadians themselves are aware of it... they are wonderfully immature in political reflection on the big issues, and hardly realize how powerful the influences are... On the other hand, I see little danger to ultimate imperial unity in Canadian 'nationalism'. On the contrary I think the very same sentiment makes a great many especially of the younger Canadians vigorously, and even bumptuously , assertive of their independence, proud and boastful of the greatness and future of their country, and so forth, would lend themselves, tactfully handled, to an enthusiastic acceptance of Imperial unity on the basis of 'partner-states'. This tendency is, therefore, in my opinion rather to be encouraged, not only as safeguard against 'Americanization', but as actually making, in the long run, for a Union of 'all the Britains'." [1]

-Lord Alfred Milner, 1909


Comment: Part I: The Origins of the Deep State in North America

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Books

Rare manuscript found reveals massive archive of 16th century books that are now lost

Stefan Andrews
The Vintage News
Fri, 19 Apr 2019 15:52 UTC
old books and manuscripts
© iStock
Hernando Colón (anglicized to Ferdinand Columbus) was born in 1488 to explorer Christopher Columbus, or Cristóbal Colón in Spanish, and his mistress Beatriz Enriquez de Arana. Although an out-of-wedlock child, Colón was recognized by his father. Like father like son, Colón also had a project which was larger than life.

While Columbus was exploring the oceans and pursuing a quest to find the New World, his son was avidly trying to read every book he could lay hands on. In fact, he aimed "to create a universal library 'containing all books, in all languages and on all subjects, that can be found both within Christendom and without'," according to the Guardian.

For his zealous effort, Colón even hired a fleet of scholars to go through the books he owned, asking them to produce quick summaries for what would be a ground-breaking 16-volume manuscript with cross-references to other items in the library collection. He would personally proofread and edit each of those summaries before submitting them to the manuscript.
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Question

Mystery surrounds circa-1200s Spanish coins found in Utah desert

Luke Andrews
The Daily Mail
Thu, 09 May 2019 18:49 UTC
ancient spanish coin
© Pen NewsThe oldest coin found, which has been tentatively dated to the 1200s
Spanish treasure that predates the arrival of Columbus by 200 years has been found in a US national park.

The two coins, one minted in Madrid in 1660 and the other made around the 1200s, were found lying on the floor at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah. Their presence in the desert remains unexplained and no information has been released about whether they were found with other artifacts.

Spanish explorers arrived in Mexico in the 1500s and began exploring north, although there is no record of them being in America at the time the coins were made.
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Treasure Chest

Prittlewell: Stunning artefacts discovered in Anglo-Saxon nobleman's burial chamber in Southend-on-Sea, England

Mark Brown
Guardian
Thu, 09 May 2019 00:01 UTC
Prittlewell burial
© Joe Giddens/PAConservator Claire Reed inspects the remains of a wooden drinking vessel with a decorated gold neck found in the Prittlewell burial chamber. Photograph:
An Anglo-Saxon burial chamber found on a grassy verge next to a busy road and not far from an Aldi is being hailed as Britain's equivalent of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Archaeologists on Thursday will reveal the results of years of research into the burial site of a rich, powerful Anglo-Saxon man found at Prittlewell in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

When it was first discovered in 2003, jaws dropped at how intact the chamber was. But it is only now, after years of painstaking investigation by more than 40 specialists, that a fuller picture of the extraordinary nature of the find is emerging.

Comment: Laura Knight-Jadczyk in Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls writes:
Until that point in time, the Britons had held control of post-Roman Britain, keeping the Anglo-Saxons isolated and suppressed. After the Romans were gone, the Britons maintained the status quo, living in towns, with elected officials, and carrying on trade with the empire. After AD 536, the year reported as the "death of Arthur", the Britons, the ancient Cymric empire that at one time had stretched from Cornwall in the south to Strathclyde in the north, all but disappeared, and were replaced by Anglo-Saxons. There is much debate among scholars as to whether the Anglo-Saxons killed all of the Britons, or assimilated them. Here we must consider that they were victims of possibly many overhead cometary explosions which wiped out most of the population of Europe, plunging it into the Dark Ages which were, apparently, really DARK, atmospherically speaking.
And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar!

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Dig

Archaeologists unearth largest Mayan figurine factory to date

Lizzie Wade
ScienceMag.com
Thu, 18 Apr 2019 11:05 UTC
mayan figurine factory
© Brent Woodfill
Archaeologists working in Guatemala have discovered the largest known figurine workshop in the Mayan world, they announced at the Society for American Archaeology meeting here last week. The workshop, buried for more than 1000 years, made intricate, mass-produced figurines that likely figured heavily in Mayan political customs.

Finding the workshop was a stroke of luck: Brent Woodfill, an archaeologist at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, learned about it from friends in Cobán, Guatemala, who were doing construction on their property. A few months later, Woodfill and colleagues excavated the site, called Aragón, and surveyed it with a drone. Although the workshop was destroyed by the construction, archaeologists were able to recover more than 400 fragments of figurines and the molds for making them (above), as well as thousands of ceramic pieces-more than at any other known Mayan workshop.

Comment: See also:

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