The Mystery Of Cursed French Bread (A Secret CIA Experiment?)
Ted Goodman on PhyOrg recounts the strange events of August 16, 1951, when dozens of villagers in the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit were struck with unexplainable and horrifying hallucinations of fire and snakes and beasts of all kinds, from, what was described as by villagers, eating le pain maudit (”cursed bread”).
Recently on Russia Today, Hank Albarelli, author of A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, suggests this incident was part of a CIA-funded experiment on foreign soil with LSD. According to Albarelli, five hundred people were affected by the “experiment” — resulting in forty people being taken to a nearby psychiatric institute and at least three suicides.
Albarelli specifically discusses this incident at around 5:10 into this video, and relates it to the work of Frank Olson, the subject of his book.
Remembering Mac Tonnies
Art by Isoban
Via Technoccult:
Mac Tonnies was a ufologist, the author of After the Martian Apocalypse and The Cryptoterrestrials, and the blogger behind Posthuman Blues. He died on October 19th, 2009 due to heart complications.
The Cryptoterrestrials was released posthumously on March 15th, 2010. Fortunately, Mac gave numerous interviews on the subject of his book prior to his death, including this one with the Ballardian and an interview on Coast to Coast AM.
Since his death, a dedicated community of friends and readers has been working to preserve his legacy. Blazingbetta (aka Sarah Multiverse) has started a Mac Tonnies tribute site, and Capn Marrrk has been hard at work archiving Posthuman Blues. I talked to both of them via instant message.
Did Aliens From Friendship Island Warn Of The Chile Earthquake?
In January I visited Chile, luckily for me before the earthquakes. While there I was told a story about Friendship Island, a mythical island inhabited by strange beings off the southern coast of Chile (learn more here). Although famous amongst Chilean conspiracy buffs and ufologists, it is seldom discussed outside the region. I would have left it as an amusing piece of local lore, but recently the leading Chilean TV conspiracy theorist, Salfate, went on air in December 2009 claiming that beings from Friendship Island had told him there would be many earthquakes and tsunamis in 2010…
OK, it’s totally nutty stuff, but the natural disasters are hitting as predicted. What does anyone know about Salfate – is he credible or a crank?
NASA Close to (Dis)Proving the Existence of a ‘Death Star’ in our Solar System
Charlie Jane Anders has a fun post on io9.com about the Nemesis theory, which the WISE telescope will prove or disprove, hopefully, soon.
The reason I say “fun” post is it’s very unlikely a Nemesis star does exist, as we have been able to figure out masses and orbits in the solar system with a high degree of accuracy for quite some time. Meaning if an object this massive was this close — Nemesis is thought to be a red dwarf star or brown dwarf — we’d have to account for it in the astronomy.
In any event, I do expect Nibiru devotees to disagree with this opinion, or if/when WISE doesn’t find it.
Charlie’s post refers to an article in Astrobiology Magazine, which is sponsored by NASA. Check out what they have to say, Leslie…
Theodore Roosevelt – Monster Hunter?
The Bull-Moose is the first person I would choose for my early 20th century Tennessee monster hunt!
From the Examiner:
The year is 1918 and some thing is stalking the woods around Knoxville, Tennessee.
The mysterious beast is killing farm animals – hogs and calves and the occasional hunting dog – and residents are afraid to leave the house at night. Children are kept home from school. Local efforts to stop the beast have failed so desperate residents make a plea to America’s foremost outdoorsman and big game hunter to come to their aid.
President Theodore Roosevelt.
The former president’s glory days were behind him at this point in his life. His health was poor. He was sixty and suffered from severe rheumatism and carried a bullet in his chest from a failed assassination attempt in…
‘CIA Experiment’ Sends French Village Mad
From News.com.au:
A US writer has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA spiked a French village’s food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD.
The Sun online reports journalist H P Albarelli Jr came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of a biochemist who fell from a 13th floor window two years after a mystery illness that caused an entire French village to go temporarily mad 50 years ago.
Hundreds of residents in picturesque Pont-Saint-Esprit were suddenly struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations on August 16, 1951.
At least five people in the southern French village died and dozens were locked up in asylums after witnessing terrifying hallucinations of dragons and fire.
In the horror scenes an 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a…
Japanese Fish Predicts Earthquakes?
If it’s well known that animals have a heightened perception of developing weather patterns, this would be no exception, via motherboard.tv:
Japan is bracing itself for bad times after scores of the usually rare, giant Oarfish have washed ashore and been caught in coastal fisherman’s nets.The sightings started after the ‘quake in Chile and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan. The rash of tectonic shifting around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” is causing concern that Japan is next, and these gigantor fish aren’t helping.
The Oarfish is traditionally known as a messenger fish from the sea gods, and it’s tidings are usually grim. The fish can grow up to five metres in length and usually found at depths of 1, 000 ft. Long and slender with a dorsal fin that runs the…
Aliens Land In Russia
From Pravda:
Residents of the city of Perm, in Russia’s Ural region, say that they could see a strange object in the sky. The object, eyewitnesses said, was hanging in the air above the city, scanned the area with a beam of light and even let off several “passengers.” The people did not specify what kind of passengers they were exactly and how they disembarked from what seemed to be a spaceship.
A woman saw a strange object in the window at about 2-4 o’clock a.m. She woke up her daughter and asked her to take a look at the strange sight. The two women could see a disk-like object sending three glittering beams of light on the ground…
2 Ton Mystery Object Crashed in Mongolia
Witness image. MUFON database.
Roger Marsh writes in the Examiner:
Very little information accompanied a photo of what is claimed is an object that fell from the sky near the Mongolian capital, according to a report filed February 23 with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness database.
The report states that two objects fell near the Mongolian capital on February 19. The first object, according to the report, weighed 10 kg, while the second larger object weighed “approximately 2 tons.”
Could this simply be an engine that fell off a jet?
Read More: Examiner
Master Shaman Jose Vargas’ Alien Encounters (Video)
Master Shaman Jose Vargas describes his telepathic communications with alien beings in another dimension where time moves more slowly, for Reality Sandwich:
Beware the ‘Flying Toblerones’: Reports of Scottish UFOs Released
The BBC reports:
Reports of “flying Toblerones” and objects travelling at 1,100 mph across the Scottish sky have been released by the Ministry of Defence. The files detail how unidentified objects have been witnessed flying over a range of locations across Scotland.Among them were one from a senior air traffic controller at Prestwick Airport who reported seeing a fast-moving UFO on the airport radar.
While four fishermen spotted a flat, shiny object hovering off the coast. The Scottish accounts are among the thousands of reports made of close encounters with UFOs across the UK which have been released in a joint project between the MoD and the National Archives.
For five years the people both you and I represent have witnessed a phenomenon in the area that has been left unexplained The Prestwick airport…
A Meteorite, Older Than the Sun, Contains ‘Millions of Organic Compounds’
Definitely adding to the ideas for an exogenesis-related explanation for life on Earth. (I won’t go so far to embrace panspermia, although the co-discover of DNA, Francis Crick, did later in life.)
Interesting nonetheless. Doreen Walton writes on BBC News:
Scientists say they have confirmed that a meteorite that crashed into earth 40 years ago contains millions of different organic compounds. It is thought the Murchison meteorite could be even older than the Sun.”Having this information means you can tell what was happening during the birth of the Solar System,” said lead researcher Dr Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin. The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We are really excited. When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so amazed,” said Dr Schmitt-Kopplin, who works at the Institute for Ecological Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany. Meteorites are like some kind of fossil. When you try to understand them you are looking back in time,” he explained.
The researchers says the identification of many different chemicals shows the primordial Solar System probably had a higher molecular diversity than Earth.
SETI Opens All Data and Coding to the Public
Ole Ole Olson writes on News Junkie Post:
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) just announced that it is releasing all information to the public. SETIQuest.org was launched on Wednesday to facilitate the release and help coordinate an ‘army of citizen scientists’ to help search for anomalies in interstellar microwave patterns.
The New Scientist reports, “SETIQuest is the product of astronomer Jill Tarter’s TED Prize wish. After being awarded the TED Prize last year, Tarter was given the opportunity to make a single wish before an auditorium full of the top names in technology and design. Tarter wished that they would “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.”
Is It Time To Throw Out ‘Primordial Soup’ Theory?
Via NPR’s All Things Considered:
Is the “primordial soup” theory — the idea that life emerged from a prebiotic broth — past its expiration date?
Biochemist Nick Lane thinks so. The University College London writer and his colleagues argue that the 81-year-old notion just doesn’t hold water.
Lane tells NPR’s Guy Raz there’s another possible explanation for the emergence of life. But before we get to that, why toss out the soup theory?
Lane says the idea of a primordial soup goes back to 1929, and great biologists like J.B.S. Haldane.
“He proposed that the Earth’s early atmosphere was composed of simple gases like methane and ammonia. And they would react together under the influence of ultraviolet rays or lightning to produce a thin ’soup’ — which became thicker over time — of organic molecules,”…
‘Object X’ Likely Related to Prehistoric Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid
David Perlman writes in the SF Chronicle:
A puzzling object that seemed to be a comet flying inside the solar system’s asteroid belt is no comet at all, but the remains of a violent collision between two fossil rocks that populate the belt, astronomers say.
Captured in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, the crash of the asteroids provides scientists with their first opportunity to see clear evidence of the violent activity that has constantly churned the asteroid belt since its formation, probably when the planets themselves were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.
The object was first sighted in early January by astronomers at the Air Force LINEAR project telescope in New Mexico, who reported it as a comet that must have flown into the asteroid belt from the solar system’s outer…
A ‘Nobel Torsion Message’ Over Norway?
Richard C. Hoagland writes on Enterprise Mission:
The scientific evidence behind this growing set of suspicions — that the Spiral somehow caused the Russian missile to fail — lies in the extraordinary geometric structure that Enterprise has discovered within the too-perfect, too-concentric “shell-like rings” … making up the Spiral — A key part of this “impossible” geometry consisted of four, exactly 90-degree darkened “reticle-like” divisions of the Spiral … precisely separating it into four radiating quadrants ….
Geometric behavior simply inconceivable for any “randomly rotating … fuel-spewing third-stage rocket ….” This “too-too-regular-geometry …” can only be explained by the presence of —
Some kind of energy-induced, standing-wave-pattern in the Spiral …. Creating — Narrow, uniform-width concentric striations … ordered in an underlying medium (the leaking third-stage fuel?) by an external “forcing 3-D energy pattern” —
Then, it hit me: “Chladni Figures!”
All Humans Are ‘Aliens From Outer Space’
Humans are all aliens who came to earth from outer space, a leading British scientist has claimed. Andrew Hough reports in the Telegraph:
Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University, said new research “overwhelmingly” supported the view that human life started from outside our Earth. The Astrobiologist said the first “seeds of life” were deposited on our plant from space 3,800m years ago.
He claimed microbes from outer space arrived on earth from comets, which then “multiplied and seeded” to form human life.
His said his evidence, published in Cambridge University’s International Journal of Astrobiology, showed humans, and all life on Earth, came from aliens brought to the earth by comets hitting the planet.
“Yes, we are all aliens – we share a cosmic ancestry,” Prof Wickramasinghe said. “Each time a new planetary system forms…
The Cat Who Could Predict Death
David Dosa, MD, a geriatrician since 2003 in Barrington, Rhode Island, has made the news recently with revelations of a cat that uncannily predicts death. His book Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat is excerpted in Readers Digest:
My faith in science and my own intellectual vanity led me to reject the notion that some four-legged feline possessed special powers. As a researcher, I’d been taught to consider facts dispassionately—to analyze them, form theories, and poke holes in them until new theories arose that were closer to the truth. From a scientific point of view, it seemed ludicrous that a cat could predict human death. It was much easier to say that Oscar was drawn to warm, quiet beds—cats sleep two thirds of the time anyway, right?
Still, there was a plausible biological explanation for the “sweet smell of death,” which was perhaps what Oscar had sensed. As cells die, carbohydrates are degraded into many different oxygenated compounds, including various types of ketones—chemical mixtures known for their fragrant aroma…
