What is behind the history of dragons? Ancient peoples from all over the world spoke about unusual, reptile-like creatures (large and small) that once roamed the earth. Europeans called them “dragons.” The descriptions sound similar to dinosaurs. Scientists agree that legends are often based on facts, not just imagination. Dragon pictures are found in Africa, India, Europe, the Middle East, the Orient and every other part of the world. Dragon history is universal throughout the world’s ancient cultures. Where did this global concept originate? How did societies throughout the world describe, record, draw, etch, sew and carve such creatures in consistently similar ways?

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Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank? (1998) by Robin Gardiner

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‘The unthinkable about the unsinkable..(Oxford Times)

The comment made by the Oxford Times’ writer sums up the book nicely. Conspiracy theories don’t get more controversial than this. Whether you finally decide there is any truth in it, to me is irrelevant, I just welcomed a sideways look at a subject everyone seems to be an expert on, as we near the centenary of this great maritime tragedy.

One of the most controversial and complex theories is that the Titanic sinking was more than a tragic accident. It was put forward by Robin Gardiner in his book, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank? (1998).  Following on from The Riddle Of The Titanic(1995), co-authored with Dan Van Der Vat, the author includes more facts to support the theory of the switch perpetrated by the White Star line, and startling evidence of the possible collusion of the British Government in a cover-up. Gardiner draws on several events and coincidences that occurred in the months, days, and hours leading up to the sinking of the Titanic, and concludes that the ship that sank was in fact the Titanic’s sister-ship RMS Olympic, disguised as the Titanic. Read more »»

(Completes the earlier Post Conspiracy Theory-part one ,May 25th 2010)

Part Two: Seeing the wood for the trees

The very fact that there are so many theories, and people who believe in them, raises an important question: Amid so much evidence to the contrary, and so much visible heartbreak from victims’ family members, why do people believe in conspiracy theories at all?

The Third Man, Alida Valli, Joseph Cotten, 1949

Tragedy is usually the result of a randomly cruel world, ‘time and unforeseen occurrence’. That, however, doesn’t demean people who were victimized by or who are afraid of tragedy should not feel the need to blame someone or something. After all, we are uncomfortable with ‘randomness’ – we feel if something happens, it must be because ‘someone’ caused it, there’s no such thing as an ‘accident’, ‘someone’ must be to blame, and the more prominent a person is, the more in the public eye, the greater the forces needed to pull them down or kill them. Accidents and lone gunmen are for ‘ordinary’ people, not ‘special’ ones, and they certainly don’t commit suicide, do they?

The term “conspiracy theory” is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from the general populace.

Today, there are more conspiracy theories and more conspiracy theory believers than ever before.In the article ‘Paranoia and the roots of Conspiracy Theories‘ for  ‘Psychology Today’, Ilan Shrira wrote: “Conspiracy theories help us cope with distressing events and make sense out of them. Conspiracies assure us that bad things don’t just happen randomly. Conspiracies tell us that someone out there is accountable, however unwittingly or secretly or incomprehensibly, so it’s possible to stop these people and punish them and in due course let everyone else re-establish control over their own lives. Conspiracies also remind us that we shouldn’t blame ourselves for our predicaments; it’s not our fault, it’s them! In these ways, believing in conspiracies serves many of the same self-protective functions as scapegoating.” That is one view..

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The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meegeren by Jonathan Lopez

Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) painted in the style of Johannes Vermeer, but his works also include forgeries of Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard ter Borch. In 1937 the director of Museum Boijmans, Dirk Hannema, purchased ‘The Supper at Emmaus’ for 540,000 guilders (approximately $4million today). There was great interest in the painting, which some experts believed to be an early masterpiece by Vermeer. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam even offered Vermeer’s ‘The Love Letter’ in exchange for the painting, but Hannema rejected the offer. Museum Boijmans exhibited the work as one of the highlights of its collection and art experts praised the work’s high quality…

Han Van Meegeren 'Supper at Emmaus' Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

A Sensational Discovery
Przewalski’s ( PREZ- val- ski’s) Horse has been known to the world of science since 1881, when it was described by I. S. Poliakov, based on a skull and hide imported from Central Asia by Colonel Nicolai M. Przhevalsky in 1879. Poliakov named the newly discovered species ‘Przewalski’s Horse’ in honor of the explorer. However, the wild horses were known to local inhabitants a long time before that. The Mongols called them takhi, the Chinese jie-ma. The expression kertag is also used, originating from the Kirghiz kher takhi.
Characteristic Features
The Przewalski‘s Horse is a smallish, stocky animal with a powerful, low-set head. The coat is sandy brown to yellowish in color, with a white belly and a short, dark brown, erect mane and brown tail. There is a dark, dorsal stripe running along the middle of the back. The coat is also dark above the hooves. Some horses have dark legs up to their knees and there can also be dark stripes on the legs. The muzzle is often white (the so-called flour nose), although dark nosed individuals have also been recorded. The winter coat is long and thick and it protects the horse from the cold conditions and icy winds of its native habitat.
In contrast to domesticated horses, where the hair grows out of the root of the tail in long continuous strands, the root of the wild horse’s tail is covered in shorter hairs. Read more »»

One of Britain’s iconic foodstuffs is Lyle’s Golden Syrup. Everyone knows the century-old design: a round tin can with a lid you prise off with a knife; racing green bodywork with the golden words arching over a central picture of a dried dead lion, and emanating from its stomach is a swarm of bees. A strange image for a foodstuff?

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A 2011 UK Channel Four Series

www.channel4.com/programmes/living-with-the-amish/

Living with the Amish follows six British teenagers leaving their mobile phones, Facebook accounts and partying behind, as they head to Ohio and Pennsylvania to see what they can learn from six weeks of hard work and simple living. No Amish (pronounced ‘Aah-Mish’) community has opened up in this way before, and the Amish families taking part in the series hope that it will reveal the advantages of a pure, uncluttered way of life.

Charlotte, 18, loves clothes and shopping, and never leaves the house without her make-up on. But Charlotte thinks there’s more to life than what you wear and wants to see if the Amish experience will help her gain confidence and independence..

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Cool Runnings [DVD] [1994]

Bobsledding is not exactly the first thing anyone would associate with Jamaica, but it’s precisely the unlikeliness of that combination that inspired “Cool Runnings”. The team was a novelty, and then they became a symbol of the Olympic spirit. Then they became a movie. But the four men of the first Jamaican bobsled team, the four men who went to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics having hardly seen snow, always wanted one thing.

“We wanted most of all,” said Nelson Chris Stokes, “to compete. We were not jokes. We were athletes who wanted to test ourselves.” “Some people wanted us to be a joke, but those who knew the sport and understood athletics understood how serious we were and what a great accomplishment we had.”

The film celebrates genuine sportsmanship, placing the emphasis back on how the game is played in the face of the winning-is-everything philosophy that permeates every aspect of contemporary life..
“Cool Runnings,” which takes its title from a Jamaican slang expression meaning “peaceful journey”, was inspired by actual events, but director Jon Turteltaub and his several writers have taken liberties so creatively that we’re left with the satisfying feeling that if the story didn’t exactly happen this way it should have. The people who originally conceived the idea of a Jamaican bobsled team were inspired by the islands pushcart racers, and then tried to recruit top track sprinters. However, they did not find any elite sprinters interested in competing, so instead recruited four sprinters from the army for the team. Irving Blitzer is a fictional character; the real team had several trainers, none of whom were connected to any cheating scandal. Arguably, the key moment in the film occurs at a quiet moment when Irv tells Derice that “If you’re not enough without a Gold Medal, you’re not enough with it.”

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Gold at Wolf’s Crag: An Inquiry into the Treasure of Fast Castle (1971) Fred Douglas

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Henry Bright (1814-1873)  Fast Castle from the Sea

Fast Castle is an isolated ruin on a rugged coast south of Edinburgh, north of Berwick. It might merit little obvious attention, but a closer look through the eyes of Fred Douglas was very rewarding. It seems the cache of gold (if it exists) is no nearer to being uncovered, but the trawl through the Scottish historical sources revealed much of interest.. Read more »»

It is often said that any persons who cannot accept the Trinity doctrine, common to Catholicism, Orthodox and most denominations, are not Christian. Since even before Nicea (325AD) however, there have always been outspoken individuals who rejected it as unscriptural, and often suffered for it. In the eighteenth century, a time of ferment in the history of Welsh faith, such a man was Peter Williams.

In addition, Peter Williams knew that Bibles were financially beyond the reach of most families and that, in any event, Welsh Bibles were virtually unobtainable. He was also aware that his own fervor for spiritual knowledge was shared by increasing numbers of the ordinary people of Wales, but that the copyright for publication of the Bible was held by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which made accessibility even more difficult..

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