Atlantis Mystery
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The lost city of Atlantis has been found, say scientists studying storm-tossed traces deep beneath the sea between Spain and Morocco.
A geological survey led by Marc-Andre Gutscher, of the University of Western Brittany in Plouzane, France, discovered a 40-inch-thick layer of coarse-grained sand under the Straits of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean.
The sand deposit, formally known as "turbidite," is only formed by violent shaking and turbulence following a major tsunami or undersea earthquake.
And Gutscher believes this layer could be the last remnant of the catastrophe that destroyed the island kingdom of Atlantis.
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato recorded travelers' tales of the enlightened civilization and the cataclysmic earthquake that sent it to a watery grave in a single day and a night, thousands of years earlier.
The turbidite deposit dates to around 12,000 years ago, matching Plato's account perfectly.
It was discovered near Spartel Island, a sunken mountain that was once a sunny circle of dry land ideal for building a technologically advanced city.
Gutscher's findings also show that serious earthquakes happen in the region once every 1,500 years. The most recent event took place in 1755, unleashing a seismic shockwave that decimated the city of Lisbon, Portugal.
Mother And Son In Combat
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A National Guardsman currently serving in Iraq doesn't have to sed letters home to his mom - because she's part of his combat unit!
In civilian life, Sgt. Felipe Diaz, 29, is a cop in Paterson, New Jersey, but he's been called up as part of the 250th Brigade Support Battalion's Foxtrot Company.
One of his duties before heading out to Iraq was introducing the company to their newest combat medic, 46-year-old Sgt. Carmen Villegas - his mother.
An experienced oncology nurse, she'd planned to retire from the Guard, but changed her mind when she learned her son was being deployed.
"The Guard's like family to me," Villegas explains. She joined in 1979, when her son was still in diapers.
They're not the only family members heading out to the Middle East.
Villegas recently married Victor Hernandez, a sergeant in a National Guard unit also in Iraq.
Chinese Vase Lamp Mistake!
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After drilling a hole into an old vase to make a lamp, its horrified owner discovered it was a 250-year-old Chinese porcelain that would have been worth $500,000!
The woman's great-grand-father bought the blue and white vase in the Far East in the early 1900s, and it wass passed down through several generations.
But with a sticker on the bottom that read "14 dollars," no one in the family considered it had more than sentimental value. So the present owner thought nothing of popping a hole in the bottom for an electrical cord and converting it into a lamp.
Unfortunately, a knowledgeable friend failed to tell her about its potential worth until after she'd drilled through the masterpiece!
Auctioneer Guy Schwinge says the Qing dynasty vase would have fetched $500,000, but now it's only worth about $40,000.
"It's a tale of what might have been," says Schwinge, of Dukes of Dorchester Auctioneers in Dorset, England.
Man Sues Church For $2.5 Million!
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A man so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit that he fell and smacked his head during a worship service is suing the church for $2.5 million in damages!
Matt Lincoln, 57, says he was forced to bring law suit against Lakewind Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, after his claim for medical bills, lost income and pain and suffering was denied by the church's insurance company.
Lincoln says he's always been caught by other congregants when the force of God knocked him off his feat, but eyewitnesses say he appeared unhurt and was laughing after he hit the floor.
Hanuman Hindu Monkey God Horror!
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The power of prayer saved a teenage girl from a hairy future as the bride of a Hindu monkey god, say stunned paranormal researchers!
The girl, named Nittaya, from a rural village in Prachinburi province, Thailand, had a bizarre encounter with a primate she believed was Hanuman, the Hindu god of monkeys.
"My missionary friends, the Johnsons, told me that in many rural settings, there are sometimes manifestations of Hanuman reported by the local villagers," explains Reverend Robin Swope, editor of the Paranormal Pastor Web site (http://paranormalpastor.blogspot.com).
"They always took these stories as colorful folklore until they met Nittaya."
She was in the forest looking for rare fruits with her brother Sanun when they were suddenly charged by a wild boar.
The hog gored Sanun and was about to finish him off when a fierce, ape-like humanoid swooped down from the branches.
The "monkey man" was wearing human clothes and carried a small cane, which it used to beat the boar furiously.
As it did so, the humanoid let out a screech that summoned hundreds of wild monkeys from the trees. The screaming simians soon drove the boar away.
Then the ape-man inspected Sanun's wounds, turned to Nittaya and croaked the words, "Save him for a price."
The stunned girl nodded. The monkey applied leaves and powder to the wound, which rapidly healed, then vanished into the woods.
Over the next few weeks, Nittaya began suffering from strange dreams of the monkey man visiting her as she slept, telling her that soon she would live with him and all the animals of the wild.
She gradually lost the ability to speak and began growing coarse hair all over her body.
Desperate, her family brought her to the Johnsons, who took her to their mission clinic. But the medical experts were stumped.
Then, as Nittaya slept, Mrs. Johnson opened her bedroom door and saw a monkey bending over the girl's face. She scared it off, woke her husband and the two of them prayed over the sleeping girl.
Nittaya's condition gradually improved, and within a few months, all the hair that had covered her body was gone.
'I've seen a lot of unexplained things," Swopes explains. "I've heard about even more from friends who live in the far ends of the Earth.
"Rather than flee the unexplained, we should use the brain our Creator gave us and try to fully understand the world we live in."
That Has Got To Hurt!
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Ouch! An angry bull brings up the rear for matador Juan Jose Rueda in Madrid, Spain. But the bottom line is, the brave toreador escaped the goring unharmed.
Bullfighting is one of the most popular events of the San Isidro Festival, celebrated every year in honor of the patron saint of Madrid. Other entertainments include concerts, dances, fairs and religious parades.
Large donations are also collected to fund charities working with the poor and homeless.
Cow In The Window
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A trio of good samaritans rescued a stranded cow after spotting the befuddled beast peering out the second-story window of an old abandoned house.
Thomas Withnell and his pals Johnny McMann and Arnold Seim initially tried herding the Holstein down the stairs, but the frightened animal bolted through the window and out to the roof.
Finally, after a monumental struggle, they managed to loop a rope around its neck and drag it down to safety.
The men think the severely dehydrated animal was stuck in the house for at least three days and would have died if not for them.
A Look Back On Michael DeBakey Super-Surgeon
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In a career that spanned seven decades, DeBakey, who died at age 99, personally operated on more than 60,000 people, including luminaries such as comedian Jerry Lewis, screen legend Marlene Dietrich, former Russian president Boris Yeltsin and international jet-setter the Duke of Windsor.
But his true legacy is the dozens of life-saving inventions and innovations he was responsible for.
"I know of no one who has made a greater contribution, not only in cardiovascular medicine, but also as a medical statesman and leader," says Dr. Antonio Gotto, dean of Cornell University Medical School and DeBakey's collaborator for more than 25 years.
Debakey refused to retire and practiced medicine until the day he died at Baylor University College of Medicine, which he helped to found.
He trained thousands of heart surgeons and invented many surgical instruments and procedures, which are in use all over the world.
His record as a medical pioneer began early in his career. When he was only 23 and still a student at Tulane University in New Orleans, he invented the roller pump, a device that led to the heart-lung machine and made open-heart surgery possible.
He constructed the world's first artificial blood vessels in 1958, making the prototype on his wife's sewing machine.
During World War II, he set up the very first MASH units to treat wounded soldiers. He also established a network of health care facilities for returning vets, which evolved into the Veteran's Administration.
In the operating room, he performed the first removal of a blockage in the carotid artery and the first patch-graft angioplasty to widen narrowed heart arteries. He played a key role in the development of the artificial heart and was the first surgeon to use an external heart pump successfully on a patient.
Outside the field of cardiology, DeBakey was the first doctor to point out a link between smoking and lung cancer.
"Medicine is an extremely complex system, and he contributed to every part of it," says Dr. Norman McSwain, a professor of surgery at Tulane. "If you look at it from the big perspective, he is the best surgeon who ever lived."
Ku Fu Kid Hero
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A kung fu kid saved his family from pistol packing creeps using a deadly pair of weapons - a calm head and a telephone!
Brave Bryan Huynh, a martial arts student from Weymouth, Massachusetts, didn't give in to panic when armed goons broke into his home and tied up his aunt, his 50-year-old mom and his 77-year-old grandmother.
Instead, the plucky 12-year-old snatched his cousin's cell phone, slipped downstairs into the basement and called 911.
"My heart was pounding very hard," Huynh recalls. "But I do a lot of martial arts performances and I try to keep cool for them, so that definitely helped me."
Huynh has been studying traditional Vietnamese martial arts since he was 9. But nothing could have prepared him for the moment three men burst into his living room and gagged and bound his family with duct tape and plastic ties.
Two men held guns on the women while a third went from room to room, scooping up jewelry and about $1,00 in cash. A fourth waited outside in a gataway car.
The boy says his blood ran cold when he heard one of the assailants yelling at his mother, "If you don't stop screaming, I'll kill you!"
But minutes after his quiet phone call to the cops, he heard the wail of approaching sirens.
"The boy is the hero," declares Sgt. Richard Fuller, of the Weymouth Police Department. "If he hadn't called police, the thieves would've gotten away with the brutal crime."
Police nabbed all four crooks - two when they fled the house, and the other two after they crashed the getaway car. They face charges of home invasion, armed robbery, kidnapping and fire arms offenses.
But Huynh shrugs off talk of heroism.
"This is something that anyone could have done," he says.
Calendar Gets Mormon Booted
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Enraged church elders have excommunicated the designer of a semi-nude calender featuring Mormon missionaries.
"I felt like I spoke the truth," declares Chad Hardy, an entertainment entrepreneur - and now former Mormon - from Las Vegas.
"Bottom-line, they still felt the calender is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have."
The controversial project, entitled Men on a Mission, includes 12 young Mormons posing without their trademark white shirts. Photographs of them in modest missionary garb and short biographies of their religious beliefs are also included.
But the ex-member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says he wasn't surprised by the harsh punishment he received for breaking a church taboo.
"I have no ill feelings toward any of those people on the council," Hardy says. "They did what they believed was right, and I really do feel it was the best decision for both of us."
The 31-year-old businessman may have lost his church membership, but he's made a killing on the calendar , selling 10,000 copies at $14.99 a pop.
Hardy still insists his intention was not to embarrass the 13 million members of the church, but to show Mormon missionaries in a modern-day light.
"The project is about stepping outside the stereotypes and the traditional image and I let them know we're not trying to portray an image for the entire church."
Despite his pleas for understanding, Hardy's name was removed from official church rolls by the 12-member council that oversees Mormon congregations in Las Vegas.
However, while he can't receive the sacrament or participate in any church projects, he will be allowed to attend Sunday services.
A Blind Air Traffic Controller
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An airport is looking for a new air traffic controller - and blind people can apply!
Local residents are laughing at the bizarre job announcement from St. Mary's in the Scilly Isles off the English coast, which offers applications in Braille upon request.
A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority says all controllers must have 20-20 eyesight, while locals contend the ad is a fine example of political correctness gone wild.
"The islands are always on the cutting edge of innovation," quipped a sarcastic citizen. "So it would certainly be something for Scilly to have the world's first blind air traffic controller."
Fun Food Facts
Feeling hungry for trivia? Satisfy that craving with these fascinating food facts:
-The ancient Incas measured time in potatoes - instead of hours and minutes, they marked the time it took to boil a spud!
-The average Alaskan eats twice as much ice cream as residents in any other state.
-Commercial bakeries are allowed to add 27 chemicals to bread without listing them on the label.
-To make a ton of raisins, you need 4 tons of grapes (and a lot of sunshine).
-Most bananas travel 4,000 miles before winding up in your kitchen - and Americans eat 12 billion of them every year.
-The most popular fruit in America, however, is the apple.
-New York City is a diner's paradise. A person could eat out every night of the year and never dine in the same restaurant twice.
-The first stems of broccoli arrived in America in the 1920s.
-Every day, about half the people on Earth will have eaten rice.
-Every second, 13 boxes of Jell-O are sold.
-Every four seconds, someone somewhere is opening a new can of Spam.
-Researchers say the most recognized smell is coffee brewing. Half the world's coffee drinkers take it black.
Marie The Cursed Doll
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An avid collector got more than she bargained for when a sweet-faced doll she bought at a flea market turned her home into a house of horrors!
"Porcelain dolls made in the Victorian era are my favorite," says May Dewey, of Montgomery, Alabama.
"And the dealer quoted me such a low price, I thought I'd made a real steal."
But within days of buying the doll she named Marie, the 67-year-old widow began having a series of terrifying nightmares.
"My dolls sit on a shelf in the upstairs hallway outside my bedroom," Dewey explains. "Two days after I bought Marie, I dreamed all the dolls came to life, crawled into my bed and stabbed me in the face with tiny daggers!"
"It was so real, I woke up screaming and covered in sweat."
After more sleepless nights, Dewey moved down to a couch in the den.
"Everything was fine until one evening, I heard a woman's voice shouting from upstairs, 'Get out! Get out!'" she recalls.
"I grabbed a poker from the fireplace and crept up the stairs to find Marie had moved to the center shelf."
"Her face had changed expression from a sunny smile to a malevolent leer that sent shivers down my spine."
Dewey began questioning her own sanity when the doll's smile returned the next day.
"A horrible ghost was inside that doll," she declares. "That meant I couldn't sell her to anyone else, so I burned her in the fireplace and buried her ashes in my garden."
But the angry spirit continued to stalk Dewey's home night after night, screaming, cursing and demanding she leave.
"I finally moved in with my oldest daughter and put the house on the market," says the distraught woman. "I thought I'd outsmarted the doll dealer, but it was the biggest mistake of my life. That bargain cost me everything!"
Death From Above
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Earth is overdue for a deadly asteroid encounter, say scientists studying the remnants of two colossal collisions in our past.
A century ago, an explosion 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic blast at Hiroshima erupted near the Tunguska River in central Siberia.
Eyewitnesses as far as 35 miles away watched a blazing ball of fire hurtling through the summer sky, then felt a shock wave strong enough to knock people off their feet.
The blast flattened 80 million trees over an area of 800 square miles, and at least one hunter died after being slammed into a tree.
Experts now believe the mysterious blast was caused by an unstable comet exploding six miles above the ground.
"If this was to happen over an area as populous as Chicago or Minneapolis, the death toll would easily be in the millions," explains astrophysicist Clark Dunchess, of Sioux Falls, Iowa.
"The Tunguska Event should remind us that these collisions happen all the time."
"And, as the latest news out of Ohio proves, some of them can be even more destructive."
Geologists have analyzed sites in Ohio and Indiana that contain fragments of gold, silver and diamonds blasted out of fields miles away in Canada by a massive explosion 12,900 years ago.
At the same time, the most recent Ice Age ended and thousands of species of animals - including the last surviving wooly mammoths - suddenly went extinct.
The first human society in North America, the Clovis civilization, was snuffed out like a candle.
"The one scenario that fits all the evidence is a Tunguska-like exploding comet," Duchess explains. "The blast would have been strong enough to set most of North America on fire."
At first, scientists were skeptical that the extinctions had been caused by a mile-wide object from space blowing itself to smithereens in Earth's atmosphere.
But teams sent to disprove the theory instead found proof of a cataclysmic comet explosion that wiped out most of life on Earth.
"The kind of evidence we're finding does suggest that climate change at the end of the last Ice Age was the result of a catastrophic event," explains Ken Tankersly, of the University of Cincinnati.
Astronomers are still not sure how to identify potentially explosive comets that are smaller than the mammoth-killer asteroid but still large enough to cause a planetary disaster.
"Our solar system is full of deadly objects too small and fast-moving for our telescopes to see," warns Dunchess. "So far, we have no way to defend ourselves from the next one."
Let's Talk About The RepRap
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For the first time ever, a machine has made an exact, fully functional copy of itself. And soon one of these self-replicating super-gizmos will be attached to just about every computer in the world.
RepRap works like a printer, but instead of squirting ink onto a piece of paper, it puts down thin layers of plastic, which then solidify into 3-dimensional objects. The machine works from blueprints freely available on the Internet.
So far, RepRap is capable of making simple objects, such as door handles and coat hangers and coat hooks - and all the components required to assemble another version of itself. Creator Dr. Adrian Bowyer, an engineer at the University of Bath in England, says the potential is limitless.
"Why shouldn't people run their own desktop factor capable of making many of the things they now buy in stores?" he asks.
"If the design of an existing object doesn't quite suit their needs, they can easily redesign it on their computer and print that out instead of making do with a mass-produced, second-best design."
"They can also print out extra RepRap printers to give to their friends."
NTT DoCoMo Technology
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The latest advances in "wearable technology" will enable you to change the channel on your TV by blinking your eyes, download music into your iPod by wiggling your ears or play video games by snapping your fingers.
Most wearable gadgets are still a little bulky, but designer Masaaki Fukumoto, of the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo, says the day is fast coming when they'll be small enough to go without being noticed.
Fukumoto already has a wearable cell phone ring. When you get a call, you stick your finger in your ear and the digital signal is converted into sound waves that are transmitted to the eardrum along the bone of your digit.
Another gizmo comes in form of a wristwatch. When you snap your fingers, it functions as a remote control for TVs, DVD players and other devices.
A Digital Pot With Emotions
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People get all mushy about their plants. They tend them, they talk to them and even grieve for them if they pass on to that garden in the sky. Wouldn't it be great if your plants could reciprocate and show their emotions to you?
Well, they'll soon be able to do just that. Designer Junyi Heo has come up with a digital pot for your plants to live in. The pot monitors the moisture of the soil and surrounding temperature and humidity.
If things are hunky-dory, a smiling face will appear.on the pot's screen, but if you forget to water your plant regularly, the smile will turn into a frown.
If things get really bad, it'll stick out its tongue to let you know it's seriously miffed at you.
XP Vehicles
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By 2010, you'll be able to buy an inflatable car on the Internet for less than $10,000!
It'll be delivered to your door in two cartons, and you can assemble it yourself in about two hours. Once you've put it together, get ready for the ride of a lifetime.
The Whisper, the brainchild of XP Vehicles in San Francisco, is made from the same tough polymers NASA uses for its Mars landers. It runs totally on electricity and it'll get 2,500 miles on a single charge - pretty amazing when you consider the distance of a coast-to-coast trip across the United States is just 3,000 miles.
The company claims the Whisper will float during a flood and that you can even drive it off a cliff without hurting yourself.
The vehicle will be available in four body styles and 20 different colors. Options include iPod mounts, GPS, stereo sound - you can even get a convertible design.
Special ballast and aero-dynamic features will prevent the lightweight Whisper from being blown off the road on a gusty day.
If Internet sales are good, the company will market the blow-up car through dealerships.
Apocalypse Wow!
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When the Apocalypse comes, fashion mavens won't be caught dead without a desinger gas mask.
Top-of-the-line fashion designers are turning end-of-the-world panic into profit with gas mask that not only filter out atmospheric poisons, but do it in high style.
The "in" safety gear carries names like Gucci and Louis Vuitton and features jewels and other eye-catchers designed to appeal to the rich and fearful.
So far, the masks are only on display in art galleries, but can commercial versions be far behind?
If bejeweled gas masks don't light your fire, maybe you'll be among those lining up to buy self-heating overcoats, vests that monitor your heart rate, dresses that change color to suit your mood or T-shirts that emit different aromas, depending on the situation you're in.
Still not impressed? How about handbags that connect to the Internet or wallets that receive email?
Finally, designers at the universities of Ulster and Sheffield in Great Britain are working on a line of clothes that won't clutter up your closet when you grow tired of them. All you'll have to do is drop the duds in a tub of water and they'll dissolve before your eyes!
Would you rather have prevented slavery, the Vietnam War, the nuclear attack on Japan, or the experience of Native American peoples?
Selection Votes
slavery 17% 8
the Vietnam War 26% 12
the nuclear attack on Japan 34% 16
the experience of Native American peoples 23% 11
47 votes total
Would you pay reparations to any of the victims of those catastrophes?
Selection Votes
Yes 16% 7
No 84% 38
45 votes total
Would you cheat on an exam?
Selection Votes
Yes 18% 8
No 82% 36
44 votes total
Would you write your child's college entrance essay?
Selection Votes
Yes 12% 5
No 88% 37
42 votes total
Jumping Shark
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A pair of surfers intent on riding the waves never noticed the 6-foot shark joining in their fun. But a lucky camera buff caught all the action!
Kem McNair has been snapping photos on New Smyrna Beach, Florida, for 40 years, but he was amazed when he accidentally caught the shot of a lifetime.
"I had just come in from surfing, grabbed my camera and walked to the water line with a friend," McNair recalls.
"I saw something in the background and I thought, 'What was that?' I looked at the display on my camera and there it was - a spinner shark.
"It was one of those fluke things. The whole event happened in half a second. It was so quick. I just happened to be panning the camera right into the shark."
Marine experts say spinners aren't a danger to humans. But there have been so many shark attacks off New Smyrna Beach -12 people just this year - that it's known as "the bite capital of the world."
Some people have accused McNair of faking the pictures, but he says there were plenty of eyewitnessesto the event.
"I think 10 to 15 people on the beach saw the shark jump," he says. "But no one has a photo of the event. That's for sure!"
Bullet Stoppers
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Braces and lunchboxes might seem like kids' stuff, but they can be serious lifesavers!
In New Haven, Connecticut, gun-toting robbers accosted Carlos Juarez, 31, in his driveway and demanded money.
When he said he had none, they opened fire. Two bullets hit him in the side, but his lunchbox deflected three potentially lethal shots away from his chest.
And in Pontiac, Michigan, Anthony Pittman can thank his braces for deflecting a fatal bullet.
The 18-year-old was apparently an innocent bystander when a heated argument turned into a deadly gun battle.
Pittman got hit by a .45 caliber slug in his mouth, but his braces fragmented the bullet and saved his life.
Police are currently searching for a suspect in the shooting.