Jeffrey Sterling, the case officer for the CIA's covert "Operation Merlin," who was convicted in May 2015 for allegedly revealing details of that operation to James Risen of the New York Times, was released from prison in January after serving more than two years of a 42-month sentence. He had been tried and convicted on the premise that the revelation of the operation had harmed U.S. security.

The entire case against him assumed a solid intelligence case that Iran had indeed been working on a nuclear weapon that justified that covert operation.

But the accumulated evidence shows that the intelligence not only did not support the need for Operation Merlin, but that the existence of the CIA's planned covert operation itself had a profound distorting impact on intelligence assessment of the issue. The very first U.S. national intelligence estimate on the subject in 2001 that Iran had a nuclear weapons program was the result of a heavy-handed intervention by Deputy Director for Operations James L. Pavitt that was arguably more serious than the efforts by Vice-President Dick Cheney to influence the CIA's 2002 estimate on WMD in Iraq.

The full story the interaction between the CIA operation and intelligence analysis, shows, moreover, that Pavitt had previously fabricated an alarmist intelligence analysis for the Clinton White House on Iran's nuclear program in late 1999 in order to get Clinton's approval for Operation Merlin.

What's more fun than drinking alcohol in a pub? Guzzling it down after satisfactorily solving a puzzle, of course. In the 16th-19th centuries, Western European drinkers enjoyed playing drinking games with specially built "puzzle jugs." A puzzle jug, shaped with a bulbous middle and slender head, was a multi-spouted decanter. The challenge for the drinker was to figure out how to drink the alcohol inside without spilling any.

Multiple holes or spouts opened up onto hollow chambers with liquid inside them, and drinkers would have to plug some of them to prevent spills. But how did it work? Antiques expert Robert Aronson noted that "the hollow handle ... forms a siphon from the lower body," but the suction from the hollow handle was "broken by a small hole beneath the top of the handle." That secret hole was the most important of all; hidden away from public view, that was the one the drinker had to cover "in order to create the vacuum that allows him to suck the liquid from the jug up through the handle, around the rim and out through the one functioning nozzle."

A new analysis of two mummies shows the pair were sporting tattoos. The mummies belong to a collection of six found in 1900. They were named the Gebelein mummies after the region in which they were found. Now in the possession of the British Museum, they were reanalyzed as part of an ongoing project to reexamine valuable artifacts.

Both individuals date anywhere from 3351 B.C. to 3017 B.C., making them some of the earliest known bearers of tattoos. The next known example of ancient Egyptians getting tattoos doesn't appear for more than a millennia later.

Only Ötzi the Ice Man, a cave man dating back to about 3370 B.C., has earlier evidence of tattoos.

Scientists in Massachusetts will soon know if bones discovered in a pirate shipwreck belong to one of the most notorious Pirates of the Caribbean that ever sailed the seven seas - Captain Samuel "Black" Bellamy. In 2008, Forbes reported that during his time as a pirate, Bellamy amassed the equivalent of "$120 million" in today's money.

This story unfolds like a Hollywood movie and it began in 1982 when underwater explorer Barry Clifford discovered a shipwreck 20 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. Then, in 1985 he recovered the ship's bell - "THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716" - sounding a 'gong' on the first authenticated pirate shipwreck ever discovered in North America.

Built in England in 1715, The Whydah Gally was a 300-ton, 102-foot-long (31 m) English slave ship and was fitted with 18 cannons, but Bellamy beefed it up with 10 more. The ship could reach speeds of up to 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph) and under the command of Bellamy it plundered 54 ships in the Caribbean in 1716 and 1717. Historical reports detailing her inventory when she went down recorded "about four or five tons of silver and gold, indigo, Jesuit's bark, ivory and other precious trade goods."

Recently, it has been popular to suggest in some circles that Christianity was influenced, or even derived from, the ancient Roman mystery religions - religions often known to have orgiastic rituals and connection to a personal god. One pagan figure that is popular among proponents of this idea is Attis, a Phrygian god associated with vegetation and consort of the goddess Cybele. Attis is claimed to have been born of a virgin, crucified on a tree and rose again from the dead in a similar manner to Jesus. Those elements may sound similar, however closer examination shows that there is little evidence for these claims and that the original myth bears little resemblance to the Gospel narrative.

Mystery Religions and Christianity

Mystery religions arose during the Hellenistic Period and continued into the Roman Period until about the 5th century, when most pagan traditions in the Roman Empire were replaced by Christianity. They were characterized by elaborate orgiastic rituals, secret knowledge, and an emphasis on a direct personal relationship with a particular god.

The old Greek and Roman gods were distant and indifferent to human concerns. The gods of the mystery religions, however, genuinely cared about humanity and could be personally accessed with relative ease. Isis, the Egyptian goddess and the subject of a particularly popular mystery religion, fed the Nile with her tears and, in the past, was responsible for nurturing Pharaoh and giving him his divine power to govern Egypt effectively.

Reports of strange and unknown apes abound from all across the planet. There's absolutely no doubt that the most famous of all such creatures is Bigfoot - which is also known as Sasquatch, as if you didn't know that! You don't even need to have the slightest interest in the subject of Bigfoot to know what it is said to be. That's how incredibly famous Bigfoot has become in the last half a century or so. But, Bigfoot is far from being alone. Australia has the hairy hominid known as the Yowie. China is said to be the home of a massive ape known as the Yeren (which may well be surviving pockets of a huge ape believed to have become extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago: Gigantopithecus blacki).

The Himalayas are the domain of the Abominable Snowman - which is also known as the Yeti. And, Sumatra is the lair of the Orang-pendek, which, personally-speaking, I think will be identified in the near future. Although, I sincerely hope none will be captured, taken from their environments, and paraded for all to see in King Kong-style; that would be a major tragedy. In the last few years there have been some extremely credible, close-up encounters with this "Littlefoot"-type creature. Moving on, even the U.K. has its equivalents. They include the Man-Monkey, the Beast of Bolam, and the Shug Monkey. It must be stressed, though, that the vast majority of all the U.K. cases on record are dominated by paranormal aspects.

With Rosia Montana being a mining area, a number of interesting discoveries have been unearthed there over the years - one of the most interesting being a skeleton of a 10 meter (32.8 feet) tall giant which was found in 1976.

About 5,500 years ago, an underground gallery was constructed in the region by the Agathyrsi. In February 2012, a group of geologists followed the gold vein in the same place. They kept digging until they ended up at the base of the gallery. To their utter surprise, they found a gravestone which was definitely not made of common rock. The geologists took a sample, and the laboratory results revealed that the components of the tombstone included 55% 50 karat gold dust, 15% granite dust and 30% wolfram. Also, the analysis revealed that the composite rock had been made using a type of technology unknown today.

The Hyperborean Gallery

Known by the name of "The Hyperborean Gallery" or "Gallery 13", the place of this amazing discovery is located beneath Cornea village. A number of other discoveries were made at the site in 1976. However, in the name of "security" the anthropological and archaeological discoveries were deemed too unusual and shocking for the time, so the gallery was permanently sealed.

The 'Fake History' and 'Fake News' pejoratives (like 'Conspiracy Theory' before them) have only recently entered common parlance, but the falsification of history and news reporting is as old as history itself. For many a long year television news channels and newspapers owned or controlled by the Money Power (including the British Broadcasting Corporation), have been feeding us a daily diet of fake information. But in a black is white Orwellian reversal of truth it is the very people spreading falsehood who hurl the 'fake news' and 'fake history' pejoratives at truth tellers. To maintain control and stem dissent, the ruling elites maliciously misrepresent and question the integrity of alternative media and non-corporate news sources which broadcast genuine news, and the honest revisionist historians who relate historical truths. George Orwell suggested in his 'war is peace', 'freedom is slavery', 'ignorance is strength' thesis that the masses fall for the ruling power's lies because their critical thinking has been so repressed they will believe any absurdity in contradiction of the plain facts.

Orwell famously added: 'Who controls the past controls the future.' Fake history is a weapon wielded by ruling elites to exert control over us, for it is knowledge about the past that has the power to shape us as people and develop our comprehension of reality. True history reveals to those who care to learn that democracy is a sham; that we the people are akin to Orwellian proles in Oceania watched over by Big Brother and accepting of anything he cares to tell us or throw at us. Money Power control of the received history is crucially important (more so than control of fake news) because it enables them to keep us in the dark and ensure our ongoing subservience. After almost seventy years Orwell's observation may appear somewhat clichéd, but it is now more relevant than ever. The highly perceptive author added: 'The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.'

"Spring is coming," The Altamont Enterprise editor announced in the March 10, 1888 "Home Matters" column. "Blue birds have been seen in various neighboring localities." Local readers of the newspaper, having enjoyed the mild weather of recent days, were eagerly anticipating dry roads and spring planting, blissfully ignorant of the monster winter storm just then crossing the Great Plains.

As it reached the North Carolina coast, the storm combined with a coastal low, pulling in huge amounts of moisture. Simultaneously, an Arctic front thrust down from Canada, the blast of frigid air colliding with the moisture laden nor'easter. Once all these components were in place, the worst winter storm ever recorded on the East Coast aimed its vengeance at New York and New England.

Early Monday morning, March 12, as farmers tended to their chores in barns across Guilderland, the steady rain that had begun falling the night before quickly changed to snow as temperatures started to plummet. Within a few hours the winds picked up, reaching gale force as the night wore on.

It used to be thought that only high-class houses had survived from the Medieval period. Radiocarbon and tree-ring dating has now revealed that thousands of ordinary Medieval homes are still standing in the English Midlands, many incorporated into des res village houses. Chris Catling reports on how some peasants lived very well in the Middle Ages.

The term 'peasant' suggests poverty, ignorance, missing teeth, and poor personal hygiene: Baldrick stuff, all threadbare rags, hunched shoulders, and a life shared with pigs in a squalid hovel barely adequate to keep out the bitter winter wind. In fact, all that 'peasant' really means is that you live mainly off the produce of your own labour. Many a modern allotment-holder leads a semi-peasant lifestyle, and there are plenty of contemporary peasants all over southern and eastern Europe - not to mention those living in hippy communes in west Wales. For peasant, read 'largely self-sufficient'.

Who are you calling a peasant?