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German artist poses 1,250 Nazi garden gnomes

STRAUBING, Germany – A German artist is posing 1,250 garden gnomes with their arms outstretched in the stiff-armed Hitler salute in an installation that he calls a protest of lingering fascist tendencies in German society.

Artist Ottmar Hoerl posed the gnomes in the historic central marketplace of Straubing, a town in southeastern Germany, on Wednesday. The exhibit called "dance with the devil" is to run through Oct. 19.

Most of gnomes are black plastic, but about 20 are painted shiny gold.

Displaying Nazi symbols is illegal in Germany but a court ruled earlier this year that Hoerl's gnomes were clearly satire and thus allowed.

Hoerl says: "the fascist idea, the striving to manipulate people or dictate to people ... is latently dangerous and remains present in our society."

October 14 9:21 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | recipes

UFO

And you thought rainbows were cool. A few days ago, a mysterious cloud shaped like a halo appeared over Moscow, and the buzz has yet to break. We're the first to admit that a photograph of the heavenly cloud appears to be photoshopped. It's just so...perfect. But meterologists have spoken up and said the cloud wasn't digitally altered. However, it wasn't exactly what it appeared to be, either. When the cloud initially formed, some UFO enthusiasts declared it to be a "true mystery." Some even compared it to the giant spaceship hovering over Earth in the movie "Independence Day." Reality quickly dashed any predictions of an alien invasion. An article from the Daily Mail explains that the "luminous ring-shaped cloud" was simply an optical effect. An official spokesperson for Moscow's weather department said, "Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west — this is how the effect was produced." The cloud loomed last week, but the searches are still soaring. Lookups on "halo cloud" and "moscow cloud" are both booming, and a video clip has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. You can check it out for yourself below...

October 13 8:10 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | recipes

Fatima 1917

In May 1917 in Fatima, a small town in Portugal, three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos, 9 years old and her cousins Francisco Marto, (eight years old) and Jacinta Marto (six years old) claimed to have seen an apparition of luminous lady who stood on a cloud in an evergreen tree in a pasture called the Cova de Iria, near the village of Aljustrel about a mile from Fatima.

Although all three children saw the vision, only Lucia and Jacinta heard the woman speak. She asked the children to return to the site on the thirteenth of each month until October. Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto in 1917

The local authorities and some Church leaders made every effort to bring the children's story into disrepute. Despite this, on the 13th of October thousands of people came to Cova de Iria, hoping to share the vision.

They experience a dramatic solar phenomenon however, the woman was visible only to the children. She appeared on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on 13 May, the Fatima holiday.

She called herself "Our Lady of the Rosary" and requested that the children pray the rosary everyday erect a chapel at the site of the visions and proclaim the need for a moral life

October 13 9:34 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | recipes

The Grand Canyon: A True Wonder of the World

A tribe member looks at the new Grand Canyon West Skywalk built by the Hualapai Indians. Critics say it harms the natural beauty of the canyon.

The canyons of America's Southwest are deep, ancient openings in the earth. They look as if they formed as the earth split apart. But the canyons did not split. They were cut by rivers.

The rivers carried dirt and pieces of stone that slowly ate away at the surrounding rock. For millions of years, the rivers turned and pushed. They cut deeper and deeper into the earth. They left a pathway of great rocky openings in the earth that extend for hundreds of kilometers.

The Grand Canyon in Arizona is one of the largest and most beautiful of all canyons. It extends four hundred fifty kilometers.

The surrounding area does not make you suspect the existence of such a great opening in the earth. You come upon the canyon suddenly, when you reach its edge. Then you are looking at a land like nothing else in the world.

Walls of rock fall away sharply at your feet. In some places, the canyon walls are more than a kilometer deep. Far below is the dark, turning line of the Colorado River.

On the other side, sunshine lights up the naked rock walls in red, orange, and gold. The bright colors are the result of minerals in the rocks. Their appearance changes endlessly -- with the light, the time of year, and the weather. At sunset, when the sun has moved across the sky, the canyon walls give up their fiery reds and golds. They take on quieter colors of blue, purple, and green.

Hundreds of rocky points rise from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Some are very tall. Yet all are below the level of an observer on the edge, looking over.

Looking at the Grand Canyon is like looking back in time. Forty million years ago, the Colorado River began cutting through the area. At the same time, the surrounding land was pushed up by forces deep within the Earth. Rain, snow, ice, wind, and plant roots rubbed away at the top of the new canyon. Below, the flowing river continued to uncover more and more levels of ancient rock.

Some of Earth's oldest rocks are seen here. There are many levels of granite, schist, limestone, and sandstone.

The Grand Canyon has several weather environments. The top is often much different from the bottom. On some winter days, for example, you may find cold winds and snow at the top. But at the bottom, you may find warm winds and flowers.

Several kinds of plants and animals are found in the canyon and nowhere else on Earth. Because the canyon's environments are so different, these species did not spread beyond the canyon, or even far within it.

Native American Indians occupied the Grand Canyon three thousand years ago. Evidence of their existence has been found in more than two thousand five hundred places so far. Bones, hair, feathers, even the remains of plants have been found in deep, dry caves high in the rock walls.

The Hopi, the Paiute, the Navajo and other Native American tribes have all been in the area for at least seven centuries. However, much of what we know today about the Grand Canyon was recorded by John Wesley Powell. In eighteen sixty-nine, he became the first white American to explore much of the canyon.

A picture from one of Powell's trips down the Colorado River

John Wesley Powell and his group traveled in four boats. They knew very little about getting over the rapid, rocky waters of the Colorado River. In many areas of fast-flowing water, a boat could be turned over by a wave as high as a house.

Soon after starting, Powell's group lost some of its food and equipment. Then three members of the group left. As they walked up and out of the canyon, they were killed by Indians. The rest of the group was lucky to survive. Starving and tired, they reached the end of the canyon. They had traveled on the Colorado River for more than three months. John Wesley Powell's reports and maps from the trip made him famous. They also greatly increased interest in the Grand Canyon. But visitors did not begin to go to there in large numbers until nineteen-oh-one. That was when a railroad reached the area.

Today, the Grand Canyon is known as one of the seven wonders of the natural world. About five million people visit the canyon each year. Most visitors walk along paths part way down into the canyon. It takes several hours to walk to the bottom. It takes two times as long to get back up. Some visitors ride mules to the bottom and back. The mules are strong animals that look like horses. They are known for their ability to walk slowly and safely on the paths.

Visitors can travel down the Colorado River by boat in the Grand Canyon

America's National Park Service is responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon from the effects of so many visitors. All waste material must be carried out of the canyon. All rocks, historical objects, plants, and wildlife must be left untouched. As the National Park Service tells visitors: "Take only photographs. Leave only footprints. "

There are several other ways to visit the Grand Canyon. Hundreds of thousands of people see the canyon by air each year. They pay a helicopter or airplane pilot to fly them above and around the canyon.

About twenty thousand people a year see the Grand Canyon from the Colorado River itself. They ride boats over the rapid, rocky water. These trips last from one week to three weeks.

Visitors walk on the Skywalk on the Hualapai Indian Reservation

Visitors can see the Grand Canyon in still another way. A huge glass walkway, called the Skywalk, extends twenty-one meters from the edge of the Grand Canyon. The Skywalk is suspended more than one thousand two hundred meters above the bottom of the canyon. It is shaped like a giant horseshoe. Visitors pay twenty-five dollars each to walk beyond the canyon walls, surrounded by the canyon, while standing at the edge of the glass bridge.

The Hualapai Indian Tribe built the Skywalk at a cost of more than forty million dollars. The tribe owns almost four hundred thousand hectares of land in the canyon. The Hualapai built the Skywalk to gain money by getting more people to visit its reservation. The tribe says the area, called Grand Canyon West, will include a large visitors' center, restaurants, and possibly hotels in the future.

Some people say the Skywalk is an engineering wonder. However, other people have criticized the Skywalk and future development. They say it harms a national treasure and reduces the enjoyment of nature in the Grand Canyon.

Many writers have tried to describe the wonder of the Grand Canyon. They use words like mysterious, overpowering, strange. Yet writers recognize that it is impossible to put human meaning in such a place. The Grand Canyon exists in its own space and time.

Some visitors say they feel so small when measured against the canyon's great size. One writer who has spent a lot of time in the Grand Canyon finds it a peaceful place. He says the almost overpowering silence and deepness of the Grand Canyon shakes people -- at least briefly -- out of their self-importance. He says it makes us remember our place in the natural world.

October 13 7:20 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | recipes

Hitler

THE game was up. The war was lost. Their leader had killed himself.

So why would Adolf Hitler's aides have gone to such lengths and risked their lives to take his body and that of Eva Braun out of his bunker, under fire from Soviet artillery, and try to burn them beyond recognition?

Now a fragment of skull, believed for 64 years to have been from the remains of the Fuhrer, has been shown to be that of a woman aged between 20 and 40.

It is a sinister thought but conspiracy theorists all over the world will be asking once more: Did Hitler really die in his bunker?

Historians have generally agreed since the end of the Second World War that, staring defeat in the face, an increasingly feeble and paranoid Hitler had married Eva Braun in the bowels of his Berlin bunker after midnight on April 29, 1945, and later dictated his will.

His physician Werner Haase, in response to Hitler's questions, had recommended a dose of cyanide and a gunshot to the head as the most reliable form of suicide.

‘ I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I did not see any blood on his head ’

BODYGUARD ROCHUS MISCH

Hitler, convinced of the treason of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, doubted the reliability of the SS-supplied cyanide tablets and had one tested on his dog Blondi, after which the dog died.

Following lunch on April 30, with Soviet forces less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler and Eva said goodbye to staff and fellow occupants, including the Goebbels family, private secretary Martin Bormann and military officers.

They went into Hitler's personal study at 2.30pm and at around 3.30pm some witnesses reported hearing a loud gunshot.

Those, including valet Heinz Linge, who went into the study reported the smell of almonds, consistent with cyanide gas.

They said they saw Hitler slumped on his desk with a bullet wound to his head, a pistol on the floor and blood pooling on the arm of the sofa on which Eva lay beside him with no visible sign of injury.

Shelling

Several witnesses said the bodies were then carried up to the emergency exit and into a small bombed-out garden behind the Chancellery where they were doused with petrol and set alight, then buried in a small crater when the Soviet shelling made it unsafe for the cremation to continue.

Seven and a half hours later, Red Army troops began storming the Chancellery and the remains of Hitler, his wife and two of his dogs were said to have been discovered in a shell crater by a Soviet soldier.

But were they? The Soviet story changed regularly in the aftermath of the fall of Berlin and in the following years. Conspiracy theorists point to suggestions that:

Joseph Stalin told Western leaders at the Potsdam conference in 1945 he believed Hitler may have escaped to Spain or South America.

Stalin's top army officer, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, said: "We found no corpse that could be Hitler's."

The acting chief of the US trial counsel at Nuremberg, Thomas J Dodd, said: "No one can say he is dead." The most convincing evidence of Hitler's suicide came from the testimonies of those who were in the bunker - but they did not all agree on the details.

Hitler's bodygyuard Rochus Misch, the only survivor of the bunker still alive, told this year how he heard someone shout to Hitler's valet, "Linge, Linge, I think it's happened."

He told The Sun: "They'd heard a gunshot, but I hadn't. I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I did not see any blood on his head."

After the bodies were carried upstairs, Misch said: "Someone shouted to me, 'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' "

But Misch decided not to go, in case the "last witnesses" were shot.

He was later captured after fleeing the bunker and spent eight years in Soviet prison camps.

Details of a Soviet autopsy on the remains they found, released years later, apparently showed gunshot wounds and cyanide poisoning.

The remains were repeatedly buried and exhumed by Russian agents during their relocation from Berlin to a new facility at Magdeburg. There, they were put in an unmarked grave with the bodies of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, his wife and their six children.

When the facility was due to be handed over to the East German government in 1970, the KGB, it is said, exhumed all ten bodies, burned them and threw the ashes in the river Elbe to prevent the area becoming a Nazi shrine.

They kept Hitler's jaw and part of his skull - the fragment now thrown into doubt by US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni, who was given permission to examine the artefacts in the Russian state archive.

Other discrepancies which have muddied the waters include a photo released by Soviets at the time of the fall of Berlin which purported to be the body of Hitler, shot in the forehead. It is now thought to be one of Hitler's body doubles.

Others who believe he escaped subscribe to a variety of conspiracy theories. The most popular include one or more of these elements:

Hitler and Eva Braun escaped from the bunker on April 22, 1945, leaving behind doubles who killed themselves or were murdered.

They were flown to Norway where German subs were waiting to transport them away from Europe.

They were helped by the Vatican to escape to Spain then Argentina.

Two German submarines seized by Argentina after the war had delivered Hitler to a secret Nazi base in the heart of Antarctica.

Rocket

The Falklands War was fought by Britain not to protect the islanders but the secret that British authorities knew about the Nazi base in nearby Antarctica.

Hitler thrived in a community of Germans in Argentina where he went under the alias of priest Father Krespi. When 'Krespi' died in 1993, Germans from all over the world flew in for the funeral.

Using rocket technology, the Nazis sent Hitler to a secret base on the moon. Not all of the theories are so far-fetched.

In the book Hitler's Escape, by Ron T Hansig, the author argues that the Nazi leader may have made his getaway to Spain.

It claims that Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller told his American interrogators in 1948 that he had arranged Hitler's escape and that the German leader and Eva Braun flew to Barcelona on April 26, 1945.

So did Hitler survive? Were the details of his death deliberately muddled by the Soviets?

The truth of what happened in Hitler's bunker may never be known, but the only survivor, Rochus Misch, is convinced he saw his master dead.

He told The Sun: "Hitler's body was wrapped in a blanket as I watched. He was then taken outside to be burnt. It was over."

HISTORIANS were rocked yesterday after a DNA test showed Hitler's skull to be from a WOMAN.

The discovery was made by an expert given access to the Fuhrer's remains by Russia.

Last night it cast doubt on whether the Nazi tyrant really did commit suicide in his Berlin bunker in April 1945.

For 64 years history books have stated the World War II monster took a cyanide pill aged 56 and shot himself as the Red Army closed in.

The Russians later dug up a burnt and buried corpse - its head sporting a bullet hole - which they declared was his.

In 1970 the KGB finally cremated it, saving only the jawbone and a fragment from the skull.

US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni flew to Moscow after being granted permission to examine the artefacts in the state archive - including bits of the bunker's bloodstained sofa - for one hour.

He not only discovered the skull was female but also that it was from someone much YOUNGER.

He said: "The bone seemed very thin - male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40."

Hitler's lover Eva Braun, who also took cyanide, was 33. But Dr Bellantoni said: "There is no report of her having shot herself or having been shot afterwards. It could be anyone's." .

October 02 1:58 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | recipes

Mayor won't stop begging

The new mayor of an Indian town is refusing to give up begging - because he's making too much money.

Dharmveer Bhoora, 56, says he makes so much money from begging he can subsidise town council projects in Khaikheri, northern India. On a good week, the veteran pan-handler - who has never held a steady job - reckons he rakes in more than £350'

"The money I make from begging provides for my family and sometimes the whole town," he said. "I am responsible now for looking after the development of the village and part of the money I make out of begging will also be utilised for undertaking developmental projects in the village.".

He added: "I am very grateful for every small bit of money that anyone gives to me while begging and I am sure it will make some people feel good that they are not just helping me and my family but also my whole village."./.

October 02 9:58 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | recipes