'Mythbusters' cannonball mishap
A cast iron cannonball rocketed through two homes and landed inside a minivan in Dublin, California on Tuesday when a “Mythbusters” TV experiment went wrong. Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are hosts of the scientific experimentation show, which airs on The Discovery Channel. The pair was reportedly trying to figure out how fast a cannonball would travel, when it misfired and shot hundreds of feet in the air.
“This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill,” said J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile.
It flew straight though the front door of a home on Cassata Place, and bounced around like a pinball, flying up to the second floor before blasting through a back bedroom wall. The wayward cannonball then blasted across a busy road and through a second home some 50 yards away, demolishing roof tiles. The homeowner’s mother was frightened.
“It was a very loud boom; she thought a tree fell, maybe a meteor,” said Ming Jiang. “It wasn’t clear that it was a cannonball landing on the roof.” The out of control cannonball finally came to a stop inside Jasper Gill’s minivan. “It hit the dash, through the passenger window,” said Gill, who had gotten out of the vehicle just 10 minutes before the ball struck. “I’m lucky I’m alive.” Incredibly, no one was injured in the mishap. - cbslocal
Mythbusters: Big Blasts Collection - DVD
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UFO sightings in SW Riverside County, CA starting a buzz
I received the following from a reader, who had received it from an associate
I don't know about you but in the past 2 months out here in SW Riverside County, (CA) We have suddenly been seeing many UFOs. At first people started asking me if i saw anything because they know i'm a trained aircraft spotter and so is my dad who lives in Lake Elsinore and we have trained a few other people, even my cousin Nick in Riverside...which all 3 of us are avid members of the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino. So we know aircraft very well, enough to be credible witnesses to what we are seeing.
2 weeks ago on Sunday night around 5 pm my sister and i were going to dinner in Hemet and the moon was a sliver in the west and we could see a bright star...but then we also could see something else. Very big and shining from the sunlight hitting it and another on its side...strobing red and orange. Then my dad called me 5 mins later from Elsinore asking if we could see it because at that point it had moved directly overhead of Elsinore. Then my cousin in Riverside called me asking about it from Riverside. Then when we got home neighbors started asking me if i had seen it, That was the start of a bunch of sightings since then...but what we are doing is using our cellphones from place to place to alert everyone so we can get eyes and cameras on them hoping to get the lucky shot. I'm hoping with your help to spread the word and set up a cellphone network of UFO watchers to start tracking from everywhere and get people aware.
I've had a weird feeling for the past year that with all the uptake in sightings and fleet sightings from all around the world, not to mention the ones that look like wormholes opening with craft going through them, that something big is coming to us soon. In the past 20 years i've now seen 15 of them and now its getting to be almost every week with others seeing them too. The usual things the 45 dg turns, bullet takeoffs, etc. So its time we all band together and track them via eyes on and with cellphones and cameras and if possible keep it quiet from gov't eyes but with the help of the UFO community at large. What do you think??
John A
UFOs Over California: A True History Of Extraterrestrial Encounters In The Golden State (Schiffer Books)
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Mysterious stone carvings found in Jerusalem...experts stumped
Mysterious stone carvings made thousands of years ago and recently uncovered in an excavation underneath Jerusalem have archaeologists stumped.
Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V'' shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 20 inches (50 centimeters) long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served.
The archaeologists in charge of the dig know so little that they have been unable even to posit a theory about their nature, said Eli Shukron, one of the two directors of the dig.
"The markings are very strange, and very intriguing. I've never seen anything like them," Shukron said.
The shapes were found in a dig known as the City of David, a politically sensitive excavation conducted by Israeli government archaeologists and funded by a nationalist Jewish group under the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem. The rooms were unearthed as part of the excavation of fortifications around the ancient city's only natural water source, the Gihon spring.
It is possible, the dig's archaeologists say, that when the markings were made at least 2,800 years ago the shapes might have accommodated some kind of wooden structure that stood inside them, or they might have served some other purpose on their own. They might have had a ritual function or one that was entirely mundane. Archaeologists faced by a curious artifact can usually at least venture a guess about its nature, but in this case no one, including outside experts consulted by Shukron and the dig's co-director, archaeologists with decades of experience between them, has any idea.
There appears to be at least one other ancient marking of the same type at the site. A century-old map of an expedition led by the British explorer Montague Parker, who searched for the lost treasures of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem between 1909 and 1911, includes the shape of a "V'' drawn in an underground channel not far away. Modern archaeologists haven't excavated that area yet.
Ceramic shards found in the rooms indicate they were last used around 800 B.C., with Jerusalem under the rule of Judean kings, the dig's archaeologists say. At around that time, the rooms appear to have been filled with rubble to support the construction of a defensive wall.
It is unclear, however, whether they were built in the time of those kings or centuries earlier by the Canaanite residents who predated them.
The purpose of the complex is part of the riddle. The straight lines of its walls and level floors are evidence of careful engineering, and it was located close to the most important site in the city, the spring, suggesting it might have had an important function.
A unique find in a room beside the one with the markings — a stone like a modern grave marker, which was left upright when the room was filled in — might offer a clue. Such stones were used in the ancient Middle East as a focal point for ritual or a memorial for dead ancestors, the archaeologists say, and it is likely a remnant of the pagan religions which the city's Israelite prophets tried to eradicate. It is the first such stone to be found intact in Jerusalem excavations.
But the ritual stone does not necessarily mean the whole complex was a temple. It might simply have marked a corner devoted to religious practice in a building whose purpose was commonplace.
With the experts unable to come up with a theory about the markings, the City of David dig posted a photo on its Facebook page and solicited suggestions. The results ranged from the thought-provoking — "a system for wood panels that held some other item," or molds into which molten metal would could have been poured — to the fanciful: ancient Hebrew or Egyptian characters, or a "symbol for water, particularly as it was near a spring."
The City of David dig, where the carvings were found, is the most high-profile and politically contentious excavation in the Holy Land. Named for the biblical monarch thought to have ruled from the spot 3,000 years ago, the dig is located in what today is east Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967. Palestinians claim that part of the city as the capital of a future state.
The dig is funded by Elad, an organization affiliated with the Israeli settlement movement. The group also moves Jewish families into the neighborhood and elsewhere in east Jerusalem in an attempt to render impossible any division of the city in a future peace deal.
Palestinians and some Israeli archaeologists have criticized the dig for what they say is an excessive focus on Jewish remains. The dig's archaeologists, who work under the auspices of the government's Israel Antiquities Authority, deny that charge. - yahoo
The Archaeology of the Jerusalem Area
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
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Dead scuba diver had been missing 26 years
It had been 26 years since anyone last laid eyes on well-known wheelchair scuba diver Peter Devoe, who failed to resurface after a 1985 family dive at Cates Park in North Vancouver.
Devoe, who was 29 when he disappeared, was finally recovered in the Burrard Inlet by a pair of commercial fishers in October.
Coroners said Wednesday they identified his remains by the jewelry he wore and telltale marks on his bones from a car accident.
His body was surprisingly well-preserved within his full-body scuba suit, despite floating in the inlet for almost three decades. His remains were found just west of where he vanished during a dive with his brother on March 13, 1985.
His body never floated out of the bay, and was anchored down in the calm waters by his weighty equipment, Coroner Stephen Fonseca said.
Speaking from her home, Robin Devoe recalled the day her brother-in-law went missing after heading out for a dive with her husband.
“Peter just never came up,” she said. “It hasn’t hit home yet. He was a great person, he competed in wheelchair sports, was really concerned about other people in wheelchairs.”
She said Devoe founded a 20-member wheelchair scuba diving club in 1983, and helped others with disabilities discover a new way to enjoy life.
“For somebody with spinal cord injuries, it’s the freedom of being away from a wheelchair,” she said.
Kathy Newman, executive director of the B.C. Wheelchair Sports Association, recalled her first meeting with the athlete three decades ago.
“He was like a role model for other people that wanted to get involved in wheelchair sports,” she said, adding Devoe was admired for his endless support to sports for youth with disabilities.
“That’s why we decided naming the Peter Devoe Memorial Award after him,” Newman said of the scholarship fund that was established the same year Devoe went missing.
“He was a fantastic person.” - lfpress
