Unicorn

The unicorn is a mythical animal referred to by classical authors. It was said to be like a horse but with one straight horn.

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According to legend, the unicorn is the strongest of all animals and can defeat an elephant but is humbled by a virgin maiden.

HISTORY

The recent discovery in Kazakhstan of the skull of an Elasmotherium sibiricum, also known as Siberian unicorn, suggests that humans and some sort of unicorn may have been around at the same time. The one-horned Siberian unicorn, a real unicorn that looked more like a hairy rhinoceros, roamed the Earth as recently as 29,000 years ago.

In the King James Bible, there are six references to unicorns in the Old Testament. One example is in Numbers 23:22; “God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.” Most scholars agree the unicorns mentioned in the Bible were either a type of wild ox – as the Hebrew name suggests – or a one-horned rhinoceros as the Greek suggests.

Unicorns were depicted in art as early as the Mesopotamian era (5000-3500 BC), as well as in ancient Greece, India, and China.

The Indus Valley civilization, at around 3000BC, sealed clay tablets with a unicorn emblem.

Unicorn seal of Indus Valley, Indian Museum By Royroydeb

Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history believed they were real creatures that lived far away in India.

In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder wrote of the “very fierce, one-horned monoceros”. According to Pliny, this animal had the body of a horse, the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a lion, with a black horn projecting ‘two cubits’ from the middle of its forehead.

In the Middle Ages a unicorn became seen as a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured or tamed by a virgin. Medieval apothecaries sold “unicorn horn”, also known as “alicorn”, for its medicinal properties.

Fresco by Domenichino of a maiden taming a unicorn, c. 1604–05 (Palazzo Farnese, Rome)

A unicorn's horn and the substance it's made of was called alicorn, and it was believed that the horn holds magical and medicinal properties. The Danish physician Ole Worm determined in 1638 that the alleged alicorns were the tusks of narwhals.

In the 1980s a US patent was granted for a surgical procedure for growing unicorns.

A unicorn was displayed in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the 1980s. In 1985 federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. Instead, they were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.

FUN UNICORN FACTS

The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.

The unicorn was used on the Scottish royal coat of arms by William the Lion in the 12th century.

The British royal coat of arms of a lion and a unicorn symbolized the joining of the English lion with the Scottish unicorn in 1707.

Royal arms of Queen Elizabeth II, as used in England

Unicorn hunters may obtain a Unicorn Question Licence from Lake Superior University, Michigan.

Source Daily Express

UFO

An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any light or objects seen in the sky whose immediate identity is not apparent. Even though UFOs can be anything, people often use the word UFO when they are talking about alien spacecraft.

Photograph of an alleged UFO in Passaic, New Jersey, taken on July 31, 1952

HISTORY

The first reported unidentified flying object (UFO) sighting took place in the 15th century BC, in Ancient Egypt.

In 214BC, the Roman historian Livy reported seeing "ships in the sky."

There was a mass sighting of a large black triangular flying saucer-type object over Nuremberg, Germany on April 14, 1561. A broadsheet news article printed later in the month describes how around dawn on that day, residents of Nuremberg saw what they described as an aerial battle, followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and then a large crash outside of the city. According to witnesses, the broadsheet claims  there were also hundreds of spheres, cylinders and other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead.

Many skeptics claim the phenomenon was likely to have been a sun dog, an atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the Sun.

The broadsheet

The world’s earliest sighting of a UFO from an airplane occurred on January 30, 1916, when a British pilot near Rochford, Essex, reported seeing a row of lights, resembling the lighted windows on a train carriage, that rose up into the sky and disappeared.

Finnish observers reported in 1946 the first sightings of unidentified flying objects known as "ghost rockets", which have not yet been positively identified.

The term 'flying saucer' has been used since 1947. This followed a sighting of nine flying objects by pilot Kenneth Arnold in June 1947, whose motion he likened to a saucer skimmed across water.

The first significant UFO sighting was reported on July 8, 1947, when various news agencies recounted the capture of a "flying disc" by U.S. Army Air Force personnel in Roswell, New Mexico. The military later stated that what was actually recovered was debris from an experimental U.S. Air Force high-altitude surveillance weather balloon. 

Over the years, the Roswell incident has become one of the most famous and controversial UFO cases, with numerous conspiracy theories and debates surrounding what exactly happened. The incident was later a feature of the hit sci-fi TV series The X-Files, starring David Duchovny.

In 1994, the U.S. Air Force released a report titled "The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert," which concluded that the debris recovered in 1947 was indeed part of a top-secret research project to monitor Soviet nuclear testing. The report aimed to debunk the UFO claims and provide a plausible explanation for the incident. However, the Roswell UFO incident remains a subject of interest and speculation for many UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists.

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947, announcing the "capture" of a "flying saucer"

On January 7, 1948 Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell fatally crashed his P-51 Mustang after being sent in pursuit of an UFO near Fort Knox, Kentucky. Mantell's aircraft crashed under circumstances that remain unclear. Some accounts suggest that he may have blacked out due to lack of oxygen at high altitudes, while others speculate about the possibility of Mantell pursuing a large, metallic balloon. The incident remains one of the more famous early UFO-related events in the United States, and it is often discussed in UFO folklore and investigations. The official conclusion by the U.S. Air Force was that Mantell's encounter was likely with a skyhook balloon,.

The term 'UFO' for Unidentified Flying Object was coined by US Air Force officer Edward Ruppelt in 1952.

In 1954, the mayor of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in France banned flying saucers from his territory.

In 1969 The United States Air Force closed its study of UFOs, Project Blue Book, stating that sightings are generated as a result of "A mild form of mass hysteria, Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, psychopathological persons, and misidentification of various conventional objects."

A local farmer Renato Nicolaï reported a UFO sighting in Trans-en-Provence, France on January 8, 1981, which was claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".
He saw a saucer-shaped object about eight feet in diameter land about 50 yards (46 m) away at a lower elevation. Nicolaï claimed the object took off almost immediately, rising above the treeline and departing to the north east. It left burn marks on the ground where it had supposedly sat.

On May 7, 1988, the U.S. city of Boston held the world's first convention for people who said they had been abducted by aliens.

FUN UFO FACTS

The countries of France, Italy and Chile have all formally recognized the existence of UFOs.

The first country to depict flying saucers on its postage stamps was Equatorial Guinea in 1975.

More than 40,000 Americans have taken out insurance against being abducted by aliens.

Studies have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons, clouds, or astronomical objects such as meteors or bright planets.

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Over the past 40 years there has been a daily average of about six reported UFO sightings. These occur most often on Fridays, in the West, during drinking hours.

Source Daily Express

Turin Shroud

In the late Middle Ages a piece of linen purporting to be the burial garment of Jesus Christ emerged. It showed two faint images of the front and back of a crucified man bearing the same marks as Jesus did at the time of his death and it became known as the Turin Shroud.

The Shroud of Turin: modern photo of the face, positive left, digitally processed image right. By Dianelos Georgoudis

Clement VII, one of the rival popes of the fourteenth century, after first trying to hush up those who would expose the shroud of Turin, signed papers declaring it a fraud. Supposedly, the artist who painted it acknowledged it as a forgery. According to contemporary documents, certain men, for hire, had pretended the "relic" cured them, giving it a reputation, because the forgers desired to make money off it.

In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Thirty years later radiocarbon dating tests simultaneously carried out by laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and Tucson, Arizona dated a corner piece of the shroud as having been made between the years 1260 and 1390. Though they concluded it was a medieval fake, no one has ever been able to give an explanation how it came to be made.

In a carefully worded statement Pope Francis urged the faithful in 2013 to contemplate the shroud with awe, without asserting its authenticity.

The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

Nostradamus

EARLY LIFE

Michel de Nostradame (Latinised as Nostradamus) was born on December 14, (or 21) 1503 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France.

Nostradamus studied at the university of Avignon before qualifying as an apothecary (pharmacist).

In 1529, Nostradamus entered the University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine. He was expelled shortly afterwards when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, a "manual trade" expressly banned by the university statutes, and had been slandering doctors.  His expulsion letter is still in the faculty library.

Nostradamus's first wife and their two children died from the plague in 1534, while he was travelling around France advising villages how to eradicate the disease.

WORK AS A SEER AND HEALER 

After the death of Nostradamus' wife and two children, he became interested in the occult.

 Portrait of Nostradamus, painted by his son César de Nostredame 

The wealthy and influential started to consult Nostradamus and ask him to cast their horoscopes. He wasn’t much of an astrologer and made frequent errors in the star charts he created for his clients, so he encouraged them to provide their own.

Nostradamus succeeded in stopping a plague, which had swept through Aix and Lyons in the mid-1540s. He insisted on cleanliness and the removal of corpses, forbade the bleeding of victims, and devised his own tonic.

After Nostradamus predicted the death in a jousting accident of King Henry II of France, he was summoned to Paris in 1556, where he became an intimate occult friend to Queen Catherine de' Medici. The prophecy was fulfilled three years later when Henry II died from a terrible head wound whilst jousting.

WORKS 

Nostradamus started to produce an annual almanac, the first being published in 1550. The Almanacs were published two or three times each year from 1550 until his death. Taken together, these almanacs contain at least 6,338 predictions.

In The Prophecies Nostradamus compiled his collection of major, long-term predictions. Fearing religious persecution, Nostradamus made them difficult to interpret The first installment was published in 1555 and contained 353 quatrains.

Copy of Garencières' 1672 English translation of the Prophecies

Since its first publication The Prophecies has rarely been out of print. Over the years, many people have come to believe that Nostradamus predicted a range of events in history.

Nostradamus published in 1555 a medical cookbook, Excellent er Moult Utile Opuscule a tous necessaire qui desirent avoir connaissance de plusieurs exq uises recettes (An excellent and most useful little work essential to all who wish to become acquainted with some exquisite recipes). Included were recipes for various fruit jams such as cherry, lime or oranges made with ginger, honey, cooked wine and sugar. He also wrote about ways of cleaning teeth.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH

Nostradamus spent his last years in Salon-de-Provence, a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in southern France.

Nostradamus house in Salon. By Leon petrosyan - Wikipedia Commons

By 1566, Nostradamus's gout, which had plagued him painfully for many years, had turned into dropsy. On the morning of July 2, 1566 he was found dead, lying on the floor next to his bed and a bench.

Nostradamus was buried in the local Franciscan chapel in Salon-de-Provence.

His dwelling is maintained as a museum, and for four days every June or July, Salon-de-Provence celebrates its history during the time of Nostradamus.

Source Daily Mail.

Miracle

A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws, which is brought about by God or other supernatural force (such as an angel).

The Bible has no word exactly like "miracle." Rather, the most typical word is "sign" with the emphasis being God demonstrating his underlying normal activity in remarkable ways to help people's faith in Him.

The gospels record three sorts of miracles performed by Jesus: exorcisms, cures, and nature wonders. Jesus' attributed his healing gifts to His heavenly Father, whom He glorified when performing His miracles and many became His followers after He'd ministered to them. The first public miracle that Jesus performed was turning water into wine.

Jesus healing the paralytic by Palma il Giovane, 1592

Out of the 3,779 verses in the four gospels, 727 (195) of the total relate specifically to the healing of physical and mental illnesses and the resurrection of the dead.

In the New Testament, the greatest miracle is the resurrection of Jesus, the event central to Christianity.

The New Testament records several miracles of healing performed by Saint Paul including raising a young man to life after he'd died in a fall. The youngster had fallen out of the third storey window after dropping off to sleep during a long sermon by the apostle.

In his early writings Augustine of Hippo argued that healing was meant for Jesus and the New Testament Christians only and that believers should not look for a continuation of the practice. However by the time he came to write his book Retractions at the end of his life,  Augustine had changed his mind because of his experiences as Bishop of Hippo. He wrote "I realized how many miracles were occurring in our own day and which were so like the miracles of old…how wrong it would be to allow the memory of these marvels of Divine power to perish from among our people."

Christian countries in early medieval Europe carried out the practice of trial by ordeal on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on their behalf.  Emma of Normandy, the wife of King Canute, once had to go through this trial by ordeal. Her test was to walk on nine red-hot ploughshares without injury. She miraculously managed to walk over the blades completely unscathed and was thus declared innocent. She expressed her thanks to God by giving nine manors to the Church of Westminster.

In the ten years following the murder of Archbishop Becket by four of the king's knights at Canterbury Cathedral. around 700 miraculous cures were recorded at the martyred saint's shrine.

John Wesley recalled in his journal how after he fell ill, words from the Gospel of Mark prompted his recovery.
"I was obliged to lie down for most part of the day being easy only in that posture. Yet in the evening my weakness was suspended while I was calling sinners to repentance. But at our love feast that followed beside the pain in my back and head and the fever which still continued upon me, just as I began to pray, I was seized with such a cough that I could hardly speak. At the same time words came strongly in my mind 'These signs shall follow them that believe' (Mark 16 v 17). I called on Jesus aloud to 'increase my faith' and to confirm the word of his grace. While I was speaking my pain vanished away, the fever left me, my bodily strength returned and for many weeks I felt neither weakness or pain."

John Wesley by George Romney.jpg

At the turn of the 21st century, a premature baby, Iyanna, was born not breathing and without a heartbeat. Despite the doctor's best attempts, she could not be revived, and the doctors left the dead infant in the mother's arms. Suddenly, after more than 65 minutes without a heartbeat, little Iyanna began to breathe on her own. A fortnight later, Iyanna left the hospital being hailed by everyone as the Miracle Baby.
A two-year-old Iyanna walked out on stage on Oprah Winfrey's Good Friday show in 2002, a perfectly normal little girl. Dr. Clemons, the physician who had tried to revive the limp infant in the very beginning, said this on national television: "This has to be in the works and acts of God. I really believe there's no other explanation for it."

Source Christianity.com

Mary Celeste

Mary Celeste was built in Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia and launched under British registration as Amazon on May 18, 1861.

Mary Celeste as Amazon in 1861

The American merchant brigantine transferred to American ownership and registration in 1868, when she acquired her new name, and thereafter sailed uneventfully until her 1872 voyage.

Why the ship was renamed Mary Celeste is unknown. One theory is that she was named after an illegitimate daughter of Galileo, Maria Celeste.

On November 7, 1872 Mary Celeste left the New York City harbor and went out into the Atlantic bound for Genoa with a cargo.

Her captain was a 37-year-old devout Christian named Benjamin Briggs.

The Mary Celeste was found by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia on December 4, 1872 in good condition but abandoned drifting in the Atlantic. The mystery has never been solved.

Mutiny, piracy and insurance fraud have all been suggested as explanations of the mystery.

An anagram of Mary Celeste: Met scary eel.

The last entry in the ship’s log was made 10 days before she was found. The lifeboat was missing.

Nothing was heard again of Captain Briggs or his wife and daughter who were with him, or the ship’s crew.

The crew of the Marie Celeste left 1,700 barrels of alcohol behind them.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a book about the ship in 1894, he called the Mary Celeste the "Marie Celeste." That misspelling has been common ever since.

In 1885 the ship’s new captain deliberately wrecked her in an attempted insurance fraud. He was taken to court but the jury could not agree on a verdict.

Source Daily Express

Loch Ness

St Columba the Irish missionary who brought Christianity to Scotland is said to be the first person to have encountered the Loch Ness monster. The story goes that on August 22, 565 the saint banished a ferocious "water beast" to the depths of the River Ness after it had killed a Pict and then tried to attack Columba's disciple.

The legend of the Loch Ness monster, also known as "Nessie," is said to have begun with a newspaper article published on May 2, 1933, in the Inverness Courier. The article was written by Alex Campbell, a local reporter and water bailiff, who recounted a sighting of "a beast" in Loch Ness by unnamed locals about two weeks earlier. The article generated a great deal of interest and speculation about the possibility of a mysterious creature living in the depths of the Loch.

Interest in the Loch Ness monster was heightened by a sighting on July 22, 1933, when George Spicer and his wife saw "a most extraordinary form of animal" cross the road in front of their car.

The following year the "Surgeon's Photograph," a photo by London gynaecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson purportedly showing the monster (later revealed to be a hoax), was published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934.

The "Surgeon's Photograph" of 1934, now known to have been a hoax.Wikipedia

The earliest recorded use of 'Nessie' as an affectionate name for the Loch Ness Monster was in the Baltimore Sun in 1945.

On October 11, 1987, an investigation using £1 million worth of sonar equipment failed to find any evidence for the Loch Ness monster.

Steve Feltham holds the Guinness World Record for the longest Loch Ness Monster search, having been camped at Loch Ness since 1991.

In 2009, a search of Loch Ness for the monster located 100,000 golf balls but no beast.

2013 was the first year no one has seen the Loch Ness monster since 1933.

Scotland has an official contingency plan in case they ever catch the Loch Ness Monster.

Loch Ness is 23 miles long, one mile wide and 51 feet above sea level.

Loch Ness is so deep that it contains more fresh water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined.