Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Origins of mysterious World Trade Center ship revealed
Posted: Jul 29, 2014 12:42 PM CDT

MANHATTAN, N.Y. (CBS News) - In July 2010, amid the gargantuan rebuilding effort at the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, construction workers halted the backhoes when they uncovered something unexpected just south of where the Twin Towers once stood.

At 22 feet (6.7 meters) below today's street level, in a pit that would become an underground security and parking complex, excavators found the mangled skeleton of a long-forgotten wooden ship. Now, a new report finds that tree rings in those waterlogged ribs show the vessel was likely built in 1773, or soon after, in a small shipyard near Philadelphia. What's more, the ship was perhaps made from the same kind of white oak trees used to build parts of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independenceand U.S. Constitution were signed, according to the study published this month in the journal Tree-Ring Research.

Archaeologists had been on-site throughout the excavation of the World Trade Center's Vehicular Security Center. They had found animal bones, ceramic dishes, bottles and dozens of shoes, but the excitement really kicked up when the 32-foot-long (9.75 m) partial hull of the ship emerged from the dirt.

The vessel was quickly excavated, to prevent damage from exposure to the air. Piece by piece, the delicate oak fragments were documented and taken out of the rotten-smelling mud. The timbers were sent to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, where they would be soaked in water to keep the wood from cracking and warping.

A few timbers were sent back to New York, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the World Trade Center, to the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. Researchers at the lab dried the fragments slowly in a cold room and cut thick slices of the wood to get a clear look at the tree rings.

The team established that the trees used to build the ship -- some of which had lived to be more than 100 years old -- were mostly cut down around 1773. Then, to determine where the wood came from, the researchers had to find a match between the ring pattern in the timbers and a ring pattern in live trees and archaeological samples from a specific region. "What makes the tree-ring patterns in a certain region look very similar, in general, is climate," said the leader of the new study, Dario Martin-Benito, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Regional ring patterns arise from local rain levels and temperatures, with wetter periods producing thicker rings and drier periods producing smaller rings, he said.

Martin-Benito and his colleagues at Columbia's Tree Ring Lab narrowed their search to trees in the eastern United States, thanks to the keel of the ship, which contained hickory, a tree found only in eastern North America and eastern Asia. Otherwise, the researchers would have had much more difficulty in limiting their search, as oak is found all over the world.

The ship's signature pattern most closely matched with the rings found in old living trees and historic wood samples from the Philadelphia area, including a sample taken during an earlier study from Independence Hall, which was built between 1732 and 1756. "We could see that at that time in Philadelphia, there were still a lot of old-growth forests, and [they were] being logged for shipbuilding and building Independence Hall," Martin-Benito told Live Science. "Philadelphia was one of the most -- if not the most -- important shipbuilding cities in the U.S. at the time. And they had plenty of wood so it made lots of sense that the wood could come from there."

Historians still aren't certain whether the ship sank accidently or if it was purposely submerged to become part of a landfill used to bulk up Lower Manhattan's coastline. Oysters found fixed to the ship's hull suggest it at least languished in the water for some time before being buried by layers of trash and dirt.

Previous investigations found that the vessel's timbers had been damaged by burrowing holes of Lyrodus pedicellatus, a type of "shipworm" typically found in high-salinity, warm waters -- a sign that the ship, at some point in its life, made a trip to the Caribbean, perhaps on a trading voyage. Martin-Benito speculated that the infestation might have been one of the reasons the ship met its demise just 20 or 30 years after it was built. "I don't know much about the life expectancy for boats, but that doesn't seem like too long for something that would take so long to build," Martin-Benito said.

http://www.kalb.com/story/26141596/o...-ship-revealed

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[Jolie Rouge]

August 27, 2014 - 1:24pm
Death Valley’s moving rocks caught in the act

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL



One of Death Valley’s most enduring mysteries has been solved by what one researcher called “the most boring experiment ever.”

For decades, people have puzzled over Racetrack Playa, where hundreds of rocks weighing as much as 700 pounds roam across the surface of the dry lake bed, leaving meandering tracks hundreds of yards long.

Researchers have investigated the phenomenon since the 1940s, but all they ever produced was speculation. No one ever actually saw the rocks move.

Until now.

The first ever observations, which came in December, are documented in a new paper published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS ONE by a research team that set out to solve the mystery, once and for all.

“We expected to wait five or ten years without anything moving, but only two years into the project, we just happened to be there at the right time to see it happen in person,” said Richard Norris, a paleobiologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s just the most amazing thing to see all that play out.”

It turns out the key ingredient for moving rocks in North America’s hottest place is floating ice.

The process works like this: First, the playa must fill with just the right amount of water, deep enough for floating ice to form during cold winter nights but shallow enough to expose the rocks. Then the pond freezes into sheets of “windowpane” ice thin enough to move freely but thick enough to maintain its strength.

When the ice begins to melt, it breaks into large floating panels that even light winds can drive across the shallow pool. As the ice sheets move, they slowly push the rocks in front of them, causing them to leave trails in the soft, slippery mud below the water’s surface.

“It’s like the Goldilocks thing. Everything has to be just right,” Norris said.

He and his cousin and co-author James Norris were the first to actually see the process in action, though they never expected to. They traveled to the remote Eastern California playa on a rough dirt road more than 200 miles northwest of Las Vegas to check their test subjects: 15 specially quarried stones embedded with motion-activated GPS sensors and placed on the dry lake two years earlier, with Park Service permission.

The Norrises arrived to find the Racetrack covered with water. Then, just before noon on Dec. 21, they watched in astonishment as the ice started to crack and break apart, and the rocks began, ever so subtly, to shift.

Jim Norris managed to capture the action in series of still pictures that he strung together to make a one-of-a-kind movie.

“Jim and I were just grinning at each other when we finally came off the mountainside,” Norris said.

The researchers eventually charted individual rockslides that lasted from a few seconds to 16 minutes. They also recorded rocks three football fields apart that moved simultaneously for more than 200 feet in a single trip.

In the process, they may have solved another mystery: tracks left in the mud with no rock in sight. The Park Service has long suspected that tourists were stealing stones from the playa, leaving behind tracks with no rocks at the end of them, but the researchers found that the ice panels themselves appear to carve trails in the mud before melting without a trace.

Previous theories for the strange rock movements at the Racetrack and a handful of other spots, including Bonnie Claire dry lake in Nevada, involved hurricane-force winds, dust devils, slick algal films or ice sheets thick enough to lift the stones up and drag them along a flat dry lake bed.

“We all thought it was really powerful wind that was driving the rocks,” Norris said.

Instead, they discovered that the rocks could be pushed by winds of just 10 mph and ice no thicker than window glass.

But this is far from a real racetrack. The rocks only move a few inches per second, a speed almost imperceptible when you’re standing on the shore of the soupy, wet playa and watching from a distance. Norris said it’s entirely possible that visitors have been there before when it was happening but just couldn’t see it.

“It doesn’t look like they’re moving, but they’re moving very slowly,” he said.

The “most boring experiment ever” comment came from another of the paper’s authors, Ralph Lorenz of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, and he was not wrong. The project promised years of monotony punctuated by regular trips to the hard-to-reach playa to replace batteries on the GPS units and download data from the weather station the researchers built nearby.

“We had a three-year permit from the park for our experiment, and we had every expectation that we would have to renew it one or more times,” Norris said.

Now that they have their answer, he said it’s hard not to feel slightly wistful over the loss of one of the Mojave’s most compelling mysteries. But there’s no denying they were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Norris said what happened in December was probably the best “move event” the playa has seen in 15 years. And Dec. 21, the day they finally caught the phenomenon on camera, was Jim’s birthday.

At least one puzzle remains. Though researchers recorded rocks moving five different times over 10 weeks, including one event that involved hundreds of stones, they never caught so much as a budge from any of the “really big boys” out on Racetrack Playa. Which leads Norris, as ever, to a question: “Does that work the same way?”

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/ne...cks-caught-act

[Jolie Rouge]

Team New Zealand Confronts U.S. Basketball Team
with… a Haka War Dance?
By Caroline Schaeffer 1 hour ago



The New Zealand war dance, known as the “Haka,” is a traditional dance that has been performed by the aboriginal Maori people of New Zealand for hundreds of years. It is used to terrify opponents with a fierce war cry, loud stomping, and erratic movements.

The country’s “All Blacks” rugby team has used it to such great effect that calls have arisen for the dance to be banned because it gives the Kiwi team an “unfair physical advantage.”

But when the country’s basketball team performed the Haka before the USA team at the Basketball World Cup, the only reaction it seemed to provoke from the Americans was utter bewilderment.

But it obviously didn’t break their concentration, since the U.S. went on to route the New Zealanders 98-71, as The Daily Mail reported.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski told the Daily Mail that the players knew the New Zealand team would perform the haka, but judging by the look on their faces, they were as perplexed by it as we were.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/09/1739...-bewilderment/

I think it is awesome !

[Jolie Rouge]

Gargoyle statue falls, kills Chicago woman
Afternoon walk turns deadly for mother of two

http://news.msn.com/us/video?videoid...ocid=ansnews11 ( video )



Woman Killed By Stone That Fell From Gargoyle On Historic Church
The Huffington Post | By Kim Bellware
Posted: 09/04/2014 7:08 pm EDT

Chicago city inspectors opened an investigation after a woman was killed Thursday morning by a piece of stone, which fell from a historic church.

Citing photos from the scene, the Chicago Tribune reported the piece of "falling masonry" was likely the head of an ornamental gargoyle on the exterior of the Second Presbyterian Church, a landmark in the neighborhood of South Loop.

Witnesses told the Tribune that 34-year-old Sara Bean was crossing the street with another pedestrian just after noon when she was struck in the head by the stone, which fell from about 30 feet above. One witness told the paper he saw the scene unfold and watched the stone hit the woman then "crash onto the pavement and split in half."

Bean, a local resident and mother of two, was taken to an area hospital, where she was pronounced dead, NBC Chicago reports. She was an employee at Lurie Children's Hospital and was planning on marrying her boyfriend, Lance Johnson, who was with her at the time of the accident at Second Presbyterian, according to the Tribune.

Built in 1874, the church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2013. Once the place of worship for prominent Chicago families like those from the Pullman rail dynasty or Marshall Fields, the church failed building inspections in 2007, 2009, 2010 and twice in 2011, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Building department records from 2010 indicated the church's outside walls had issues that included “fractures, washed out mortar at various locations, spalling (flaking) stone at various locations of the tower elevations," the Tribune reports.

The church did, however, pass its most recent inspection in March of 2013, per media reports.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5768496.html

[Jolie Rouge]

BREAKING NEWS: The Colossus roller-coaster is on fire at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, according to the L.A. County Fire Department. http://abc7.la/1BnP6WE




BREAKING: The peak of Colossus has collapsed.

A fire atop the iconic, wooden roller coaster ripped through the track, sending a portion of the ride to the ground.



Sky5 was overhead Six Flags Magic Mountain and captured video of the fall.

Watch KTLA's video here: http://ktlane.ws/1rTRDqq

[Jolie Rouge]

King Richard III died painfully on battlefield
1 day ago | By MARIA CHENG of Associated Press



This undated photo issued on Wednesday Sept. 17, 2014 by the University of Leicester shows a scan showing injuries to the skull of King Richard III, the inset image shows close up of injury

LONDON (AP) — England's King Richard III might well have lost his kingdom for a horse.


The reviled king suffered nearly a dozen injuries on the battlefield, but the fatal blows were probably only sustained after he had to abandon his horse, according to a new paper.

Since the skeleton of the 15th-century king was discovered under a parking lot in central England in 2012, scientists have done numerous studies, including an examination of his twisted spine that led Shakespeare to label him a hunchback. In the latest research, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet, scientists used computer scans and other methods to analyze the king's skeletal wounds.

"Richard was probably in quite a lot of pain at the end," said Sarah Hainsworth, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Leicester and one of the study authors. She said the king was most likely attacked by numerous assailants after dismounting from his horse, which got stuck in a marsh.

Richard's skeleton showed evidence of 11 injuries from weapons including daggers, swords and a long metal pole with an axe and hook that was used to pull knights off their horses. "Medieval battle was bloody and brutal," she said, noting one of the skull injuries showed a sword had pierced his head.

The nine injuries Richard suffered to his head prove the king somehow lost or took off his helmet during the battle at Bosworth Field, against Henry Tudor, on Aug. 22, 1485. He was the last English monarch to die in battle.



This is an undated file photo released by the University of Leicester, England, of remains found underneath a car park in September 2012 in Leicester, which have been declared "beyond reasonable doubt" to be the long lost remains of England's King Richard III, missing for 500 years.

Even if Richard's injuries had been treatable, it was highly unlikely his rivals would have shown him mercy, said Steven Gunn, an associate professor of history at Oxford University, who was not part of the research.

"A live ex-king is just an embarrassment," he said.

Gunn also said it was significant there were no attempts to disfigure Richard. "Having evidence that the real Richard III is dead is very useful," he said. "You don't want somebody popping up somewhere later claiming to be the real king."

Hainsworth said the wounds in Richard's skeleton match historical accounts that he fought until the very end.

"This doesn't tell us anything about what kind of king he was or the controversy surrounding his nephews," she said, referring to rumors that Richard murdered his two nephews to protect his throne. "Whatever else people think about him, he fought bravely until he died."

___

Online: http://www.thelancet.com

http://news.msn.com/science-technolo...ocid=ansnews11

[Jolie Rouge]

Actual Headline :

Quadruple Amputee 'On the Run', Person of Interest in Parents' Deaths

Authorities are looking for a Florida quadruple amputee in connection with the murder of his parents.

Sean Petrozzino, 30, is on the run and considered armed and dangerous, authorities say. He went missing after his parents were found fatally shot in their home, and he is believed to be driving his father’s red Toyota Camry.

Petrozzino has two prosthetic legs and no hands. He became an inspiration in his community as a teenager when he kept smiling after losing his limbs to bacterial meningitis. At the time, the South Florida Sun Sentinel called him perky, silly and polite.

Back in 2000, he told the paper, “Lots of important things in my life just happened by chance. You know someone and get a job that makes you millions of dollars, or you get a disease. There doesn’t seem to be any reason some things happen.”

Authorities say Petrozzino had moved back in with his parents a week before the murder after separating from his wife.

They say he may be heading down to South Florida, where he grew up.

Petrozzino’s mother, Nancy , was an elementary school teacher. His father, Michael, was a costumed character at Disney World.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/11/0...arents-murders

I'm going to hell for laughing .. his crime is not funny ... but the way the story was written and worded is killing me

..

So a guy with no hands whose father was a three fingered Disney character is fleeing in a red Camry?? Ironic.

..

it's the "armed and dangerous" part that stumps me ??

..

.. don't forget he is on the "run" with 2 prosthetic Legs ... like how could u miss this guy ??

..


The investigation is limping along...

..

With no real clues on hand...

[Jolie Rouge]

This Dutch City Built a Glowing 'Van Gogh' Bike Path for Psychedelic Cyclists
The Atlantic - John Metcalfe - 2 days ago



Psychonauts seeking a two-wheeled spirit quest should head to northern Europe, where the Dutch have just unveiled a dreamy bike path that makes it seem like you're riding atop the Milky Way.

The "Van Gogh-Roosegaarde" cycle avenue debuted this week just outside of Eindhoven, the design capital of the southern Netherlands. https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/pr...h-bicycle-path It's a collaboration between construction firm Heijmans and Daan Roosegaarde, the same duo who built a nearby glow-in-the-dark highway. http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/04/...lly-here/8878/ The path's swirling, spectral patterns are meant to recall "The Starry Night," the delirious masterpiece that Dutch native son Vincent van Gogh painted while locked in an asylum. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-c...900002/?no-ist



The path's supernatural aura comes from thousands of embedded nuggets that suck up solar energy and release it as light at night. The project cost about $870,000 and is part of a larger effort to make the region a laboratory for sustainable infrastructure. Roosegaarde says he hopes it will feel like "techno-poetry" that "people will experience in a special way" https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/up...oosegaarde.pdf (perhaps with the assistance of certain locally popular substances? http://www.dailysmoker.com/various/a...al-netherlands ).





http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/magazi...=ansAtlantic11

[Jolie Rouge]

Tomb Of Previously Unknown Queen Found In Egypt
Avaneesh Pandey
8 hrs ago


Czech archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a tomb of a previously unknown queen believed to be the wife of a pharaoh who ruled about 4,500 years ago, Egyptian officials announced Sunday, according to media reports. The tomb, along with limestone and copper utensils, was reportedly excavated at Abu Sir, 15 miles southwest of the capital city of Cairo.

Miroslav Barta, an archaeologist who headed the team from the Czech Institute of Egyptology, which made the discovery, reportedly said that since the tomb was found inside Pharaoh Neferefre's funeral complex, it is believed that it belonged to the pharaoh's wife. Neferefre was an Egyptian pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty who is believed to have ruled between 2448 BC and 2445 BC.

“This discovery reveals an unknown part of the Fifth Dynasty history which opens the door for more future studies on the family tree of this previously unknown Queen,” Barta reportedly said.

The pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty reigned for about 150 years between 2494 BC and 2345 BC. A number of pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty rulers and temples dedicated to the sun god Ra have been found at or near Abu Sir. It is also believed that Abu Sir was used as a cemetery during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, which encompasses the Fifth Dynasty and lasted from 2686 BC to 2181 BC.

The queen was identified by archaeologists as Khentakawess, which was the name found inscribed on the walls of her tomb, according to media reports. The discovery would reportedly make her Khentakawess III, as two previous queens with the same names have already been identified. While Khentakawess I was a queen of the Fourth Dynasty, Khentakawess II is believed to be Neferefre’s mother.

“This is the first time we have discovered the name of this queen who had been unknown before the discovery of her tomb,” Mamdouh el-Damaty, Egypt’s antiquities minister, reportedly said, in a statement. “This discovery will help us shed light on certain unknown aspects of the Fifth Dynasty, which along with the Fourth Dynasty, witnessed the construction of the first pyramids.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...ypt/ar-BBhx1OL


Tomb of unknown Egyptian queen discovered: Inscription reveals 4,500-year-old grave belonged to Khentakawess III
Discovered in Abu-Sir, south-west of Cairo, the tomb is thought to belong to the wife or mother of Pharaoh Neferefre who ruled in the Fifth Dynasty
The area was an Old Kingdom necropolis where pyramids dedicated to Fifth Dynatsy pharaohs, including Neferefre, can be found
The location of the queen's grave has made archaeologists believe that she was probably the wife of the pharoah

By Rachel Reilly



The tomb of a previously unknown queen has been discovered, Egyptian officials have revealed.

Unearthed in Abu-Sir, south-west of Cairo, the tomb is thought to belong to the wife or mother of Pharaoh Neferefre who ruled 4,500 years ago.

Abu-Sir was an Old Kingdom necropolis used by the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis

Here pyramids dedicated to Fifth Dynasty pharaohs, including Neferefre, can also be found.

The location of the queen's grave, in Pharaoh Neferefre's funeral complex has hints that she was probably the wife of the pharoah, however.

Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said that her name, Khentakawess, had been found inscribed on a wall in the necropolis.

Mr Damaty added that this would make her Khentakawess III as two previous queens by this name were already known of.



The Czech archaeologists also found 30 utensils - with 24 made of limestone - a statement added.

Mr Damaty explained that the discovery would help them shed light on unknown aspects of the Fifth Dynasty, which along with the Fourth Dynasty, saw the construction of the first pyramids.

THE SARCOPHAGUS THAT HINTS AT EGYPT'S DECLINE
In December last year, a 2,400-year-old coffin bearing unusual and amateurish decorations, revealed the decline of Ancient Egypt.



'Goofy'? Experts believe the childlike paintings were made by junior artists

Its strange illustrations were described as ‘goofy’ and 'amateurish'.

Experts believe the marks were made by junior artists, after the best Egyptian painters were deported when the Persians controlled the region.

From 525 BC for around a century, the Persians ruled Egypt after king Cambyses marched into the Egyptian capital, Memphis, toppling the pharaoh.

The occupation meant that the Persian Empire stretched from what is now Turkey to Afghanistan.

The coffin could shed light on a tumultuous time in Egyptian history, in which ancient texts by Diodorus Siculus suggest the occupying Empire deported Egypt’s best craftsmen and artists to work on its own grand projects in Persia – as well as taking precious metals too.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...awess-III.html

[Jolie Rouge]

NASCAR driver accused of abuse says ex is trained assassin
By RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press 6 hrs ago

DOVER, Del. — The NASCAR driver known as "The Outlaw" testified Tuesday he believes his ex-girlfriend is a trained assassin dispatched on covert missions around the world who once returned to him in a blood-splattered gown.

"Everybody on the outside can tell me I'm crazy, but I lived on the inside and saw it firsthand," Kurt Busch said when his attorney, Rusty Hardin, questioned why he still believed Patricia Driscoll is a hired killer.

In an interview late Tuesday, Driscoll called Busch's assertion "ludicrous," saying he took it "straight from a fictional movie script" she has been working on for eight years and that he has proofread.

Busch, appearing in court again over Driscoll's request for a no-contact order, continued the push of his legal team to discredit his ex as a scorned woman out to destroy his career, portraying her as a character fit for a screenplay.

Busch said Driscoll repeatedly asserted her assassin status and claimed the work took her on missions across Central and South America and Africa. He recounted one time when the couple was in El Paso, Texas. He said Driscoll left in camouflage gear only to return later wearing a trench coat over an evening gown covered with blood.

A day earlier, Busch said his ex-girlfriend told him she was a mercenary who killed people for a living and had shown him pictures of bodies with gunshot wounds.

Busch said Tuesday that Driscoll had claimed that a female character in "Zero Dark Thirty," a film depicting the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden, was a composite of her and other women.

Last month, Michael Doncheff, who served as a personal assistant to Busch and Driscoll, said an ailing Driscoll told him in September that she had been picked up by a big man and slammed to the ground while helping round up immigrants at the Mexican border, a story Doncheff considered "far-fetched."

Doncheff said Driscoll also asserted that she was a trained assassin for the U.S. government and once told him, "I take down foreign governments. I own Washington."

During the hearing, which stretched over four days, neither Driscoll nor her attorney refuted the testimony.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday, Driscoll dismissed Busch's assertions.

"These statements made about being a trained assassin, hired killer, are ludicrous and without basis and are an attempt to destroy my credibility," Driscoll said. "Not even Rusty Hardin believes this."

"I find it interesting that some of the outlandish claims come straight from a fictional movie script I've been working on for eight years," Driscoll added.

Busch testified Monday that he decided to end his relationship with Driscoll after a race last fall because she was monopolizing his schedule and he needed to focus on racing.

Driscoll said Busch assaulted her in his motorhome at Dover International Speedway a week later, grabbing her by the throat and slamming her head into a wall three times. Busch and his attorneys have denied the allegations, which are the subject of a separate criminal investigation. Driscoll's attorney, Carolyn McNeice, cross-examined Busch on Tuesday, but few of her questions dealt directly with the assault allegations.

Busch has testified that he repeatedly told Driscoll to leave after she showed up unannounced at his motorhome, finally cupping her cheeks in his hands, looking her in the eye and telling her she had to go.

"He advised that her head tapped the wall as he was doing that," Detective James Wood testified Tuesday, recounting Busch's interview with Dover police in November.

Richard Andrew Sniffen, a Christian music minister who performs at NASCAR outreach events and befriended Busch and Driscoll, said Driscoll told him on the night of the alleged assault only that Busch had pushed her and that she hit her head. Sniffen said Driscoll was upset, angry and brokenhearted, but that she never said she was afraid of Busch and seemed intent on reconciling.

That attitude shifted in the weeks that followed, Sniffen said, with Driscoll going "from a broken heart looking for love and reconciliation to anger and a little bit of revenge."

"I will destroy him," Sniffen said Driscoll told him, adding that she repeatedly said she would take Busch down.

A court ruling on Driscoll's request for a no-contact order is expected later this month or in early February.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/moto...id=ansnewsap11

[Jolie Rouge]

'Lost Colony' at last found? Fort clue on historic map examined
January 20, 2015
6:07 PM MST

Is North Carolina home to a historical “Lost Colony?” A clue found only several years ago on an ancient map is being examined, and has experts looking to a new location that might very well yield a big discovery in our nation’s past. WRAL News reports this Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, that if this map’s indication proves correct, it might be the area where many families settled years ago.

Are answers arriving at last? An investigative team member has stated that because this is "new" territory being explored, it raises a few serious questions. After all, this is not necessarily Roanoke itself. "If we were finding this evidence at Roanoke Island, which is the well-established site of Sir Walter Raleigh's colony, we would have no hesitation to say this is evidence of Sir Walter Raleigh's colonies," said Phil Evans, president of the First Colony Foundation. "But because this is a new site and not associated with Sir Walter Raleigh, we have to hesitate and ask questions and learn more. It's not Roanoke Island. It's a new thing, and a new thing has to stand some tests."

Back in early 2012, scholars associated with the British Museum and the First Colony Foundation confirmed news of this interesting historical clue. According to News Oxy, the antique North Carolina map is believed to possibly hold secrets on the fortunes of the Lost Colony. This mystery might include answers explaining just what happened to the settlers who vanished toward the end of the 1500s from Roanoke Island.

The clue revolves around a “Virginia Pars” map that highlights North Carolina and Virginia. John White, traveler and explorer, is credited with helping shape the map in the late 16th century. His work has since been featured in the British Museum since the mid 1800s, adds the source site. The area itself was named in honor of the Carolina Algonquians who dwelled there in the burgeoning years of English expansion. The territory measures nearly eight miles long and a couple miles wide. The fate of its eventual settlers remain unknown, with some people thinking they moved, others saying they died, and still others under the assumption they were abducted by extraterrestrials.

Numerous symbols on the freshly examined map are still in the process of being inspected by researchers. Noticeable are two distinct patches, with one point seemingly fixing a previous error on the plots of land. The second — set in the Bertie County region of North Carolina — showcases what looks like a fort. This fort image may play a key role in uncovering the “Lost Colony” of the settlers.

In fact, both British and American experts think this map's mark could designate the settlers’ location at one time. Based on this map’s clues and the potential for big discovery within those boundaries, archaeologists are taking a closer look at land situated on the site. Nicholas Luccketti, one of the team's leading excavators, has been supporting the organization for almost a decade now, and been involved in Virginia-based digs since 1974.

"It's fair to say it's a site of very great interest to us," said Luccketti. No fort has been found in the region, but many artifacts from the era nonetheless have historians thrilled. Though the items themselves are quite commonplace, they could be a clue to something much more from the time of this “Lost Colony” in North Carolina. "That's why domestic wares are interesting to us," Evans added. "It tells us people were there long enough to break stuff. ... We're getting these types of [historic wares] in sufficient numbers that we think people are there and they're doing something and they're there for a good bit of time.”

The man did acknowledge that it is likely no breakthrough discovery serving as concrete evidence of the settlers will be made right away. Nonetheless, little steps can yield great results over time. Finding real verification would encompass "taking lots and lots of little pieces of information, analyzing and evaluating them against other colonial sites, the history we know, the map evidence we know and then building it piece by piece," Evans concluded. "I'd be very surprised if we hit any one thing and said, 'This is it.'" Researchers will continue to scrutinize what evidence they can find, and slowly but surely, it is hopeful more secrets of the past Roanoke people will be brought to light.

http://www.examiner.com/article/nort...-big-discovery