Badass of the Week.

Fridtjof Nansen If you can look at this picture and tell me that this isn't one of the sweetest photos of a dude with a 'stache that you've ever seen, then you obviously need to learn a little something about facial hair and being awesome.  This picture alone makes the guy badass, even if you didn't know the story behind it.  You will be pleased to learn, no doubt, that the man behind this vicious strip of solidified testosterone is sufficiently badass to pull off a soup strainer that epically righteous.  It can be no other way. Fridtjof Nansen was a tough-as-nails Norwegian psychopath with an impossible-to-spell first name and an unstoppable desire to constantly freeze his balls off and risk his life in the name of science and kickassery.  Born in 1861 in a town near Oslo, as a teenager this super-brilliant, ultra-hardcore crazy person constantly went outside into the frostbite-inducing snow-covered wilderness Bear Grylls-style to test himself against the most volatile bullshit Mother Nature could furiously dump on him.  Spending days and weeks at a time alone in the wild with just his faithful dog, a sharp knife, and his badass 'stache to keep him company, this guy quickly forged himself into a high-endurance asskicker.  This dude was so ridiculously tough that that he could get out and cross-country ski fifty miles a day, every day, for pretty much as many days as he wanted.  For those of us who have no idea what skiing two marathons back-to-back actually means, the 50km cross-country ski race (30 miles for those of you who continue to resist the global tyranny of the metric system) is the longest ski race the Olympics has ever offered.  In the 1948 games, 20 world-class athletes busted ass and finished the race in times ranging from 4 to 5 hours, with seven more guys dropping out and not even being able to crawl their half-dead asses over the finish line.  They haven't offered the race since, presumably because that bullshit constitutes something akin to "cruel and unusual punishment." For this guy it was half a day's ski in the woods. In 1882, the 21 year-old Nansen went on a naval expedition to Greenland and instantly fell in love with the harsh, unyielding hellhole he discovered there.  Greenland, contrary to what it's name might imply, is actually a freezing-ass wasteland of ice and pain and misery, but that's apparently the sort of thing that appeals to guys who enjoy spending their time fist-fighting wild animals in the uncharted mountainous regions of Norway.  Nansen, who loved learning about zoology, ecology, and oceanography, used his time on the ship wisely – while lesser men were below decks doing wussy crap like huddling for warmth or losing their fingers to frostbite, Nansen was getting up-close-and-personal with polar bears, making observations and writing a damn book about how balls-out he was. Returning to Norway so pumped up he wanted to barf, Nansen got his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Oslo. When he wasn't working on a dissertation exploring the central nervous system of lower invertebrates, developing the groundwork for the field of science that would become neuron theory, or working at a research station with Armauer Hansen (the man who discovered the leprosy bacteria), Nansen took a study break to ski 300 miles over a usually-impenetrable mountain range so that he could participate in a ski jumping competition that was taking place on the other side of the country.  I wasn't able to find the results of the competition, but knowing what we know about this guy it's probably safe to assume that he flew off the ramp, did a double backflip and landed on top of a volcano in Iceland. One day Nansen got bored of being a super-genius ski-jumping wilderness expert, so he got a couple friends together and decided to be the first person to cross Greenland on skis.  To this point, nobody had ever attempted an exploration of the interior of Greenland, and the closest anybody had come to reaching the North Pole was writing a letter to Santa Claus, but Nansen didn't give a crap about any of that shit.  Nothing would stand in the way of him kicking one of Saint Nick's reindeer in the antlers.  He landed a ship on the East coast of Greenland, unpacked his skis, and got ready to freeze his junk off. Figuring that retreat or surrender would be an indelible sign of weakness, Nansen took the head-searingly insane step of burning his boats after he landed, thereby removing the one possible avenue of escape from this uncharted wasteland nobody had ever successfully ventured across without dying.   Victory or death, as they say.  Nansen and five other men then spent the next two months cross-country skiing across the continent, battling through dangerous ice, exhaustion, elevations over 9,000 feet, and temperatures as low as fifty below.  Incredibly, they made their way all the way from east to west, landing in the warmer sunny climes of Siberia before heading home to a victory parade, an artillery salute, and the status of a national hero.  Fridtjof turned his experience into two best-selling books, both of which he also illustrated, because of course this guy was strong, smart, and also artistic. And women loved him, obviously. For his next trick, Fridtjof Nansen decided he was going to become the first person to reach the North Pole.  He developed a pretty ingenious tactic for doing so – he built the famous, ultra-hard wooden ship Fram, lodged it into the ice pack off the coast of Siberia in 1893, and let it drift in the ice while the tides of ocean carried him across the pole.  This was a tactic that would be used by great explorers from Scott to Shackleton to traverse both Arctic and Antarctic climes, and this guy pioneered that shit. Ah, good times. Nansen and his crew drifted for 18 months, somehow surviving in the freezing-ass cold temperatures, but unfortunately the tides of the Arctic Sea decided not to cooperate with Nansen's plan, no matter how good it was or how intensely he tried to stare it down.  Realizing that he was drifting too far from the pole and wouldn't cross it, Nansen obviously did the badass thing – he and one other guy jumped out of the drifting boat, jumped on a dog sled, and rushed 140 miles across open ice to get there. Nansen didn't reach the pole – he was forced to turn back just a couple hundred miles away – but he had achieved the highest latitude ever reached at this point in history, which was definitely something to be proud of.  Not convinced that he could find his still-drifting ship as it made its way through the polar ice, Nansen and his homedog instead headed south across Greenland.  They spent a winter living in the inhospitable climate of the extreme North, building a hut out of stone and eating walrus blubber and polar bears he personally clubbed to death with his boner, and finally reached Norway by kayak the next summer.  In addition to being awesome and also kicking ass, the six volumes of research material he published on his trip got him a post as a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Oslo and plenty of prestige in the legitimate scientific community.  His ship, Fram, would go on to carry Roald Amundsen to the South Pole.  To this day, it's still the wooden ship that has achieved the furthest North and furthest South latitudes, and this dude built it back in 1890 using ingenious mathematics-oriented ship-building techniques he devised himself. When World War I broke out in 1914, Nansen had to halt his balls-out research/almost dying, which sucked.  He was so pissed about it that he went out and won the Nobel Peace Prize so that he could get back to doing dangerous things.  Seriously.  He was Norway's representative in the League of Nations, the High Commissioner for Refugees, and he closely worked with governments and the Red Cross to provide humanitarian aid to people affected by the war.  He negotiated a relaxation of the Allied blockade of Europe, allowing much-needed food to get through to starving people, and negotiated the repatriation and ethical treatment of displaced persons and refugees, developing techniques still used by the UN today.  His most badass accomplishment to this end was the development of the "Nansen Passport", a document that allowed refugees to travel to countries that could help them.  My guess is that he just put his picture on there and people were so awe-struck by the glorious stache that they did whatever he wanted. "LET THIS PERSON INTO YOUR COUNTRY!!!" After the war, Nansen continued being awesome to the world.  He negotiated post-war prisoner-of-war exchanges and releases, and helped Turks, Greeks, and Armenians escape persecution from various sources after a bunch of terrible shit went on in their respective territories.  When the Russian people were starving to death after a decade of war and revolution, Nansen rallied international support and got food and medical supplies for them.  The Soviets distrusted the Western powers, and refused to deal with anyone except Nansen.  He's credited with saving the lives of something like ten million people with his food policy in Russia. Not bad for a guy who was head-butting polar bears and building shelters in the wilderness of Greenland a few years earlier. The adventurer, explorer, scientist, and humanitarian badass Fridtjof Nansen died in 1930 – just a couple years before he would have found a way to single-handedly end World War II with his facial hair.

Trump Stands between America and Tyranny

The movie Titanic had one really good scene. The ship had already swiped the iceberg. The behemoth continued sailing along and appeared to be doing just fine. But one person on the ship, Thomas Andrews, knew that it was doomed. Andrews was a naval architect who was in charge of the plans to build the ship.

After he tells the captain and some other key people on the ship that it is going to sink, they react in disbelief. One declares that the ship can't possibly sink.

Andrews responds, "She's made of iron, sir! I assure you she can. And she will. It is a mathematical certainty."

It's one of cinema's great scenes as men wrestle with approaching doom, made all the stronger by Victor Garber's superb performance. It's also the perfect metaphor for our current moment in history.

People pay too little attention to math because numbers lie far less effectively than words. There comes a point when a nation has raced over the cliff, but it may take years before that reality becomes obvious to everyone.

This movie scene was on my mind heading into election night in 2016. All indications were that Hillary Clinton was going to be elected. Based upon the math, America as a nation appeared doomed. Clinton was eyeing the White House like a ravenous wolf and relishing the opportunity to cast misery across America.

But Wisconsin and then Michigan and finally Pennsylvania vomited on her pantsuit. On election night, I had no idea what we had just elected, but the fact that it wasn't Clinton was more than enough for one night.

Three years later, President Trump has shattered conservative expectations and may go down in history as one of the greatest U.S. presidents. It brings to mind another historical surprise. Winston Churchill was elevated to leadership during England's darkest days against all odds. He was under withering attack by both the opposing party and his own in those early months, and his survival as leader was very much in doubt.

Trump was also elevated under extraordinary circumstances that many would regard as a historical anomaly. As a New York real estate mogul and non-politician, he was declared unelectable by prominent and respected Republican pundits. The media initially pushed his candidacy with glee, assuming he would be the easiest Republican for their paramour to knock off in the...

10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (9/8/18)

Seven days have passed, and it is time, yet again, to look at some of the stranger stories that made headlines this week.

We have a multifarious collection of news items today. There’s pole dancing in China, a ghost ship in Myanmar, and a giant penis on an English hillside. We make an amazing discovery about sharks and explore some trouble aboard the ISS. We also take a look at two peculiar heists—one which just occurred and one that was solved after 13 years.

10 Astronaut Plugs Hole With Finger

Photo credit: International Space Station/Twitter

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station faced potential peril last week when they discovered that a leak somewhere on the station was causing the air pressure to drop. Fortunately, the hole was small enough that one of the astronauts simply plugged it with his finger.The leak was first detected by NASA ground crews while everyone aboard the ISS was sleeping. The next morning, the first order of business was finding the breach. They located the 2-millimeter-wide hole in the orbital section of Soyuz spacecraft MS-09.[1] It was probably caused by a micrometeorite hitting the ISS with enough force to punch through the wall.German astronaut Alexander Gerst stopped the air pressure from dropping by plugging the leak with his finger. Obviously, this was only a temporary measure while a more permanent solution was devised, not that the lasting resolution was significantly more high-tech. In the end, astronauts used epoxy and high-strength tape to seal the hole. So far, it is working, but they are still looking into something more reliable for the foreseeable future.

9  LSD On Trial

The first ever LSD microdosing trials started this week to see what benefits, if any, this method of consumption has.

As its name suggests, microdosing involves taking very small doses of the drug, as little as one-fifteenth of a tab. It is said that this technique eliminates all hallucinogenic effects but helps with focus and depression. It has become a popular aid in the digital world of Silicon Valley. However, the method has never been tested scientifically, so all reports of benefits and side effects are anecdotal. On September 3, though, a placebo-controlled trial started at Imperial College London, sponsored by the Beckley Foundation, an organization founded to advance research into mind-altering substances.[2]

There’s just one problem—taking LSD is still illegal, no matter the dose. Therefore, researchers had to adopt a less conventional approach by inviting people who already microdose to join a “self-blinded study.” In other words, participants will be providing their own drugs which they will be inserting into some gel capsules while leaving others empty to serve as the control. Then they will take doses regularly without knowing if they are consuming LSD or a placebo.

Afterward, the test subjects will participate in online questionnaires and cognitive games to see what effects the drug has. The research team will know which capsules have LSD inside through QR codes and will tally the results after four weeks of testing.

8  The Ghost Ship Of Yangon

Photo credit: Yangon Police/Facebook
A curious sight occurred in the city of Yangon in Myanmar last week when a giant “ghost ship” was found drifting near its shore. The mystery was put to rest on Saturday when the vessel was identified as the Sam Ratulangi PB 1600, an Indonesian freighter headed for Bangladesh.

There were no crew members or goods aboard the ship. Myanmar navy officials believed it had been towed after finding two cables at the head. An investigation eventually found an Indonesian tugboat called Independence about 80 kilometers (50 mi) away.

What started off as an intriguing, even spooky mystery had a mundane explanation. The tugboat had been towing the freighter since August 13. They were headed for a ship-breaking factory in Bangladesh, but bad weather caused a cable to break.[3] They then decided to simply abandon it.

7   Going Up

Photo credit: CNET
We are getting one step closer to a space elevator this month, as Japanese scientists will test a miniature version as proof of concept.

Researchers from Shizuoka University are planning to send up an elevator stand-in box measuring 6 centimeters (2.4 in) long, 3 centimeters (1.2 in) wide, and 3 centimeters high. Unlike a regular space elevator, this one will be launched into space using a rocket. It will also be joined by two miniature satellites which will be connected together using a 10-meter-long (33 ft) steel cable.

The motorized box will travel between the two satellites on the cable, acting as a substitute for an elevator car. Its short journey will be recorded and transmitted back to Earth. The main goal here is to see how a container connected to a cable moves through space.[4] The mission is set to launch on September 11 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima.

There are many obstacles left before a real space elevator becomes a reality. However, the significant reduction in risks and costs is pushing development ever further. The university’s collaborator and adviser, Japanese construction giant Obayashi Corporation, is working on its own space elevator, which should be ready by 2050. Such a device is expected to reduce the costs of transporting cargo from $22,000 per kilogram via shuttle to just $200.

6  Whiskey In The Jar

102-Year-Old Abandoned Ship is a Floating Forest

The SS Ayrfield is one of many decommissioned ships in the Homebush Bay, just west of Sydney, but what separates it from the other stranded vessels is the incredible foliage that adorns the rusted hull. The beautiful spectacle, also referred to as The Floating Forest, adds a bit of life to the area, which happens to be a sort of ship graveyard.

Originally launched as the SS Corrimal, the massive 1,140-tonne steel beast was built in 1911 in the UK and registered in Sydney in 1912 as a steam collier which was later used to transport supplies to American troops stationed in the Pacific region during World War II. The ship went on to serve as a collier between Newcastle and Miller's terminal in Blackwattle Bay.

Eventually, in 1972, the SS Ayrfield was retired and sent to Homebush Bay which served as a ship-breaking yard. While many ships were taken apart, about four metallic bodies of vessels that are over 75 years old currently float in the bay, though none are enveloped by nature quite like the Ayrfield. The ship continues to attract visitors to its majestic presence, rich with mangrove trees.

Top image by Andy Brill

Image by Neerav Bhatt

Image by Steve Dorman

Image by Rodney Campbell

Image by Louise Evangelique

Image by Louise Evangelique

via [Bhakta's Weblog, Oddity Central]

10 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

The last hundred years have borne witness to humankind’s extraordinary technological advancements. Man has walked on the moon, ventured deeper into the oceans than ever before and even uncovered the building blocks of life, DNA. But even with our inexorable progress as a species there are still mysteries and enigmas the solutions to which elude us. Below is a selection of 10 of the most puzzling mysteries in history.












10) The SS Ourang Medan


In June 1947, a chilling SOS message was picked up: “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead." This was followed by some indecipherable Morse code, and one final grisly message... "I die." Then, silence.

It was picked up by nearby ships and listening posts, who identified the vessel as the Dutch freighter SS Ourang Medan and located it within the Strait of Malacca that separates Indonesia from Malaysia. The nearest merchant ship, The Silver Star, raced to her aid. The Silver Star was soon alongside the Dutch ship and their boarding party found a macabre sight: every member of the crew lay dead, their corpses scattered on the decks. More than this, their eyes were still open and expressions of sheer terror were etched on their features. The Silver Star’s party found the radio operator dead too, his hand still on the Morse sending key, eyes wide open and teeth bared. There were no sign of wounds or injuries on any of the bodies.

The decision was made to tow the mysterious ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began emanating from the decks below. The boarding party hurriedly returned to their ship and barely had time to cut the tow lines before the SS Ourang Medan exploded and swiftly sank.

It has been claimed that clouds of noxious natural gases could have bubbled up from fissures in the seabed and engulfed the ship; even aliens and ghosts have been cited as possible explanations for the Ourang Medan’s macabre and mysterious demise. To this day, the exact fate of her crew remains an impenetrable mystery.

9) The Aluminum Wedge of Aiud



In 1974 (or 1973 depending upon which source you believe) a curious aluminum wedge was discovered on the banks of the Mures River in Transylvania, near the city of Aiud. It was found buried deep beneath the sand alongside two mastodon bones.

Upon examination, the object – which resembled a hammer head – was found to be encased in a one millimeter thick layer of oxide which suggests that it is some 300-400 years old. A second, Swiss investigation confirmed the results of the first examination. Furthermore, as it was found with mastodon remains it could even be as much as 20,000 years old.

Aluminum is abundant in the earth’s crust but it is always combined with other minerals and the wedge predates the technology used to extract it. An aeronautical engineer suggested that the wedge is similar to the foot of landing gear used on spacecraft. The scientific community believes ‘the wedge was made on earth and its purpose is not yet identified’. Unfortunately, the Aluminum Wedge of Aiud is currently locked away in a secret location; however, some photographs of the curious, unexplained object do exist online.

8) Dulce Base

Supposedly, a top secret subterranean complex is carved into the rock below the Archuleta Mesa in Dulce, New Mexico. Claims that the base is a ‘genetics lab’ in which humans and extraterrestrials cooperatively conduct disturbing experiments have been made by various ‘leaked documents’, witness reports and even an ex-employee.

Strange humming sounds that seem to emanate from the earth near the town of Dulce have added to speculations of an underground facility, as have the presence of military helicopters that have been spotted around the area.

An author with the nom de plume of Branton claims to have interviewed former workers at the base who said: "[There] are experiments done on fish, seals, birds and mice that are vastly altered from their original forms. There are multi-armed and multi-legged humans and several cages of humanoid bat-like creatures up to seven feet tall. The aliens have taught the humans a lot about genetics, things both useful and dangerous." The U.S. government denies the base’s existence, but that doesn’t stop the speculation.

7) BEKs

Chances are you have not heard of BEKs (Black Eyed Kids) yet. Sightings of them are few and far between but via the internet they are growing in number, and the reports describe close encounters that are not only weird, but also frightening.

The stories almost always start with a ring of the doorbell. One, two or more children appear on a ‘victim’s’ doorstep and ask for help: they need to use the toilet, make an urgent phone call or relate another tale of distress. They ask to come in, plead in some cases, but the homeowners never let them in due to an unexplained feeling of terror that overcomes them. Perhaps it is the BEKs’ entirely black eyes that induce the overwhelming horror; perhaps it is because, as one ‘witness’ described, their faces appear as slightly blurry. The mysterious encounters don’t stop there, either: “For a period of three days straight, [the BEKs] kept showing up on my driveway. When the police came they were nowhere in sight. After that, they never showed up on my driveway, but every once in a while, I will see them in the downtown area, like they are following me. They will be behind a tree, I will drive to another section of Sacramento and I would see them again or I will see them on the side of the road as I am driving by and they will stare at me.”

One man did let the children in. They claimed to need to use the toilet and phone, but it was only when they entered into the house that he saw their peculiar eyes and felt the full force of dread. The BEKs moved towards him, saying that ‘they had come to collect him’. He fled the house in terror.

6) The Piri Reis Map

Currently located in the Library of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Piri Reis map is a puzzling enigma. It outlines the coast of western Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and even a section of the northern coast of Antarctica (thought to have been discovered 300 years after Piri Reis’s lifetime). Furthermore, the map shows the coastline without its glacial covering. Geological evidence suggests that Antarctica was last in this ice-less state in 4000 BC. Reis was a famous Turkish admiral whose passion (understandably for a seafarer) was cartography. Taking advantage of his rank and his privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople, his 1513 gazelle skin map was built upon the work of others, with some of his cartographical sources dating back as far as the time of Alexander the Great. The map also seems to detail more about the topographical features of South America than Europeans were thought to have in 1513, such as the Andes.

5) Commandment Rock

An 80 ton boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain in New Mexico bears a puzzling inscription. Carved into the stone’s flat side is what has been interpreted by some to be a version of the Ten Commandments in a form of ‘Paleo-Hebrew’.

Discovered by academia in 1933 by archaeology Professor Frank Hibben, it had been known to locals for decades, and the guide who led Hibben to it said he had known of it since the 1880s – a date which, if genuine, means the rock’s authenticity is likely, as the Paleo-Hebrew script was then unknown. This means it outdates Columbus’s discovery of America and suggests that people from Israel or Phoenicia (who used a similar language) discovered the continent centuries before it was thought possible. Skeptics draw upon punctuation and grammatical ‘errors’ as evidence of it being a fake, while others still doubt this debunking.

4) The Somerton Man

In the early hours of December 1, 1948 a dead body was found lying on Adelaide’s Somerton Beach. The man was judged to be in his early forties and in good physical condition. Curiously, all the labels were missing from his clothing, he had no identification and his dental records did not match any known person.

Even the coroner and Scotland Yard had no luck finding out the man’s identity or cause of death. The mystery deepened when a piece of paper with the printed words “Tamam Shud” on it was discovered in a secret pocket concealed within the dead man’s trousers. The scrap of paper was traced to a rare edition of a book entitled The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the back of which contained some kind of a code. Numerous unsuccessful attempts by amateurs and professional codebreakers to crack it have failed. The identity of the deceased man and even the cause of death remain unsolved to this day. The case was never closed by the South Australian Major Crime Task Force and many individuals continue to work on it.

3) Gef the Talking Mongoose

Also referred to as the Dalby Spook, Gef was said to be a creature resembling a mongoose. It was reported to live with the Irving family in their farmhouse near the hamlet of Dalby on the Isle of Man. Gef’s true identification remains shrouded in mystery. It has been interpreted as (among other things) a poltergeist, a cryptid and of course, a hoax.

In September 1931, the Irvings started hearing strange scratching noises coming from their farmhouse’s attic. Soon the scratching became more like a baby ‘gurgling’. The gurgling then evolved to ‘resemble a baby learning to talk and shortly after to mimic certain words that the ‘animal’ seemingly picked up from the Irving family’. If that wasn’t weird enough it described itself as a “an extra, extra clever mongoose,” an “earthbound spirit” and “a ghost in the form of a weasel.” It could even sing.

The case was investigated by Harry Price, but aside from a few grainy photographs of a strange animal roaming the fields outside the house, nothing substantial was ever recorded.

2) The Black Mausoleum – Tomb of ‘Bluidy’ MacKenzie

Edinburgh is a ghost hunter’s paradise. It seems that there is barely a nook or cranny of the Scottish capital that doesn’t lay claim to spooky goings-on of one kind or another, and there is one hot spot in particular that boasts inexplicable activity which is unusually well-documented.

George MacKenzie (1638–1691), Lord Advocate of Scotland, was a merciless persecutor of the Presbyterian Covenanters in life, and now it seems that he (or something else) has returned from parts unknown to take up residence in his tomb and continue his nefarious deeds.

In 1998, a vagrant broke into his tomb and fell through a rotten lower floor into a plague pit filled with skeletons. Since then, there have been over 450 reports of strange incidents, from people having lost consciousness to inexplicable fires breaking out and an unusually high number of dead animals having been found around the tomb. Visitors have had their fingers broken, hair pulled and been punched or kicked by an invisible assailant. Unexplained bruises, scratches and burns, skin gouges, nausea and numbness are all commonly reported.

The physical signs of attack often go unnoticed until people arrive home and relax or return to their hotels for the night. Witnesses have even reported activity following them home. Whatever lurks within the Black Mausoleum, it is certainly active.

1) DB Cooper

The solution to one of the greatest mysteries of all time still eludes America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. On the November 24, 1971, a man in his mid forties and giving the name Dan Cooper (he is also known as DB Cooper due to a ‘press miscommunication’) hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft and demanded $200,000 in ransom and two parachutes. His claim of having a bomb in his briefcase was verified by an air stewardess.

Cooper was given the ransom money at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. He allowed passengers and some members of the flight crew to leave before ordering the plane to be flown to Mexico.

Soon after the plane took off, Cooper then opened the rear airstairs and parachuted into the pitch black, rain-lashed night. A five month manhunt – said to the most extensive and expensive of its kind – was immediately launched. Despite $5,880 of the ransom being discovered by a boy in 1980, no other trace of the hijacker was ever found.

In 2007, the F.B.I. reopened the case, saying that it does not believe Cooper survived the jump, but expressed an interest in ascertaining his identity, saying: “Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely.”

Despite there being hundreds of leads since 1971 (including many deathbed confessions), Cooper’s identity remains a mystery and the world's only unsolved skyjacking case.

Found HERE.

Russia, a Chinese cargo ship and the sabotage of subsea cables in the Baltic Sea

Earlier this month, as the world’s attention was focused on the horror unfolding in Israel and Gaza, it was easy to miss the news that two subsea telecommunications cables and a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea had been damaged.

On the night of 7 October, the 77-kilometre Balticconnector gas pipeline and a separate but close-by subsea telecommunications cable stretching between Finland and Estonia were damaged in the Gulf of Finland. A week later, it emerged that, on the same night, another subsea telecommunications cable—connecting Estonia and Sweden—had also been damaged.

That might not seem particularly newsworthy. After all, subsea cables—despite facilitating around 95% of internet traffic, making them the physical backbone of our digital world—are notoriously vulnerable to damage. These fibre optic cables, often only the diameter of a garden hose, along with gas pipelines, zigzag all across the ocean floor, where they can suffer damage from storms, marine life, waves, earthquakes and accidental maritime vehicle activity. There are hundreds of such incidents each year.

This case, however, appears to have been no accident.

Finland, Estonia and Sweden soon announced that the gas pipeline and cables had likely been deliberately damaged and were being investigated as related incidents.

At the centre of the investigation was a Russian state-owned nuclear-powered cargo ship, the Sevmorput. Russia has long posed a threat to vital subsea cables in the region, particularly since the start of the Ukraine war. The threat has escalated since the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022. Indeed, earlier this year Russia announced that it could damage subsea cables in retaliation for Nord Stream and European countries’ support for Ukraine. In June NATO even set up a subsea cable taskforce because of the high threat of Russian sabotage in the region. And with Finland recently joining NATO—and Sweden in the process of joining—it’s highly likely that Russia damaged the cables in retaliation.

However, another vessel was also reported to be under investigation—a Hong Kong–registered cargo ship, the NewNew Polar Bear, that had been travelling with the Russian vessel.

Open-source tracking showed that both the Russian and Chinese vessels had been in the exact location at the exact time when each of three lines—the two subsea telecoms cables and the gas pipeline—was damaged.

This is where the mystery starts to get stranger.

On 20 October, Finland announced that the Chinese ship—not the Russian vessel—was the prime suspect for damaging the Balticconnector pipeline. Estonia and Sweden followed by saying that the Chinese vessel was also the prime suspect in both subsea cable incidents.

An investigation by Finland into the gas pipeline has since determined that the damage was indeed caused by the Chinese vessel. Finnish authorities have recovered its anchor from the site. The next phase of the investigation will be to determine—somehow—whether the damage was done intentionally, accidentally or as a result of poor maritime activity, and what the motivation was. After the revelation that the Chinese vessel was at fault for the gas pipeline damage, Estonia and Sweden reaffirmed that the subsea cable incidents were linked to the gas pipeline attack.

Unsurprisingly, both Russia and China have vehemently denied any involvement in damaging the cables. Russia, despite its history of threats to sabotage European subsea cables and its recent sabre-rattling over NATO expansion, has dismissed the accusations as ‘rubbish’. China, for its part, has agreed to provide information and called for an ‘objective, fair, and professional’ investigation, emphasising the Chinese vessel’s routine maritime activities. Central to this mystery is why a Chinese vessel would even be involved in damaging subsea cables in the Baltic Sea in the first place. Would China really take its ‘no-limits partnership’ with Russia to a whole new level?

Indeed, this is where the situation gets murkier still.

While initially the NewNew Polar Bear was reported to be operated by China’s Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping Company, an update to the ship’s paperwork while still in transit a few days ago has changed its operator’s name to Torgmoll, a Russian company specialising in maritime trade with China. Marine ownership and control are often opaque, and in some instances, downright shady. It’s possible that Russia chartered the vessel to conduct the sabotage, knowing it would test and complicate any European response if the vessel was registered in Hong Kong. Russia may have undertaken the sabotage with or without the knowledge of Beijing. Indeed, China may be involved, knowing that the murkiness of the situation makes it difficult to...

A U.S. Navy Amphibious Assault Ship Just Set Sail with a Whopping 13 Stealth Fighters

The U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS America in 2019 has set sail across the Pacific region with no fewer than 13 U.S. Marine Corps F-35B stealth fighters aboard.

The U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS America in 2019 has set sail across the Pacific region with no fewer than 13 U.S. Marine Corps F-35B stealth fighters aboard.

The current cruise represents the latest effort by the Navy and Marines to develop procedures and tactics for operating the Navy’s 10 assault ships as light carriers, each packing more aerial firepower than most of the world’s air forces.

As an earlier proof of concept, USS Wasp in March 2019 deployed to the Pacific region with no fewer than 10 F-35Bs aboard. America in May 2019 forward-deployed to Japan, freeing up Wasp to return to the United States for maintenance.

A Navy assault ship usually embarks just six F-35s or older AV-8B Harrier jump jets plus dozens of helicopters. The vessels can increase their fixed-wing component by reducing the number of helicopters. At a minimum, an assault ships needs just a pair of H-60 helicopters for search and rescue.

USS America (LHA-6) F-35B loaded

With 10 Wasp- and America-assault ships each carrying 20 or more F-35s plus another 10 Nimitz-class supercarriers (and new Ford-class supercarriers under construction), the United States possesses at least 20 aircraft carriers.

The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

By comparison, China in late 2019 is preparing to commission its second flattop capable of carrying fixed-wing planes. The Chinese fleet aims eventually to field six large carriers.

The Royal Navy meanwhile is working up a two-carrier fleet. France, Russia and India each have one carrier. Italy and Spain both operate assault ships carrying Harrier jump jets. Japan and South Korea have announced plans to modify their own assault ships to be compatible with F-35Bs.

The carrier-disparity underscores the sheer size and power of the U.S. fleet.

The idea of a “Lightning carrier” has been years in the making. For years the normal air wing for the Navy's eight Wasp-class assault ships has included around 10 MV-22 tiltrotor transports, four AH-1Z attack helicopters, four UH-1Y light helicopters, five CH-53E heavylift helicopters and just six fighters, plus a couple of Navy H-60s for search and rescue.

But the L-class Wasps were capable of trading helicopters for fighters. During the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, four assault ships each embarked up to 20 Harriers in order to contribute to the coalition air campaign.

"This is not the norm for an amphib," Senior Chief Aviation Boatswain's Mate Wynn Young, leading chief petty officer of USS Bonhomme Richard's air department, in 2003 told a Navy reporter. "Our air assets dictate that we operate more like a carrier."

As the Marines began replacing old AV-8Bs and other jets with "fifth-generation" F-35s, planners dusted off the "Harrier carrier" concept and rebranded it as the “Lightning carrier." Other naval experts simply refer to the Harrier and Lightning carriers as "light carriers."

"By 2025, the Marine Corps will operate 185 F-35Bs—enough to equip all seven L-Class ships," the Marines Corps explained in its 2017 aviation strategy. In fact, the Navy expects to operate at least 10 L-class ships, including the Wasps and newer...

He's The Captain....It's His Parade...

 

Everybody, listen to me

And return me my ship

I'm your captain, I'm your captain

Though I'm feeling mighty sick

I've been lost now, days uncounted

And it's months since I've seen home

Can you hear me, can you hear me

Or am I all alone

If you return me to my home port

I will kiss you, Mother Earth

Take me back now, take me back now

To the port of my birth

Am I in my cabin dreaming

Or are you really scheming

To take my ship away from me?

You'd better think about it

I just can't live without it

So, please don't take my ship from me

Yeah, yeah, yeah

I can feel the hand of a stranger

And it's tightening around my throat

Heaven help me, heaven help me

Take this stranger from my boat

Tanker Ship Off India Hit by Attack Drone 'Fired From Iran,' Pentagon Says

Locator map showing Iran with its capital, Tehran.

A Japanese-owned chemical tanker struck Saturday off the coast of India was targeted by a drone "fired from Iran," the Pentagon said in a statement, a sign of expanding risks to commercial shipping beyond the Red Sea.

The attack came amid a flurry of drone and missile strikes by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels on a vital Red Sea shipping lane. The attacks began after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, with the rebel group claiming to act in solidarity with Gaza.

Saturday's attack took place around 10 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) and caused no casualties aboard the vessel, the Pentagon statement said, adding that a fire had been extinguished.

The U.S. military "remains in communication with the vessel as it continues toward a destination in India," the statement said.

The drone strike occurred 370 kilometers off the coast of India, it said, adding that no U.S. Navy vessels were in the vicinity.

It was the first time the Pentagon has openly accused Iran of directly targeting ships since the start of Israel's war on the militant group Hamas, which is backed by Iran and is a designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K, EU and others.

In an interview published Sunday, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron branded Iran a "malign influence" and pledged stepped-up deterrence toward Tehran.

"Iran is a thoroughly malign influence in the region and in the world -- there's no doubt about that," he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

"You've got the Houthis, you've got Hezbollah, you've got the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq that have actually been attacking British and American bases, troops. And, of course, Hamas.

"So you've got all of these proxies, and I think it's incredibly important that, first of all, Iran receives an incredibly clear message that this escalation will not be tolerated."

The former British prime minister echoed accusations by the United States Friday that Iran is involved in attacks on commercial ships by Yemen's Houthi rebels, providing drones, missiles and tactical intelligence.

The Pentagon statement said the MV Chem Pluto ship is flying under a Liberian flag and operated by a Dutch entity even though it is owned by a Japanese company.

Ambrey, a maritime security firm, said the "chemical/products tanker ... was Israel-affiliated" and had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Dutch company operating the MV Chem Pluto "is connected to Israeli shipping tycoon Idan Ofer."

The Indian navy said it had responded to a request for assistance.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike.

Last month, an Israeli-owned cargo ship was hit in a suspected drone attack by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Indian Ocean, according to a U.S. official.

The Malta-flagged vessel managed by an Israeli-affiliated company was reportedly damaged when the unmanned aerial vehicle exploded close to it, according to Ambrey.

The Red Sea attacks on shipping since the start of the Israel-Hamas war have prompted major firms to reroute their cargo vessels around the southern tip of Africa, despite the higher fuel costs of much longer voyages.

The United States has been joined by more than 20 countries, including the U.K., in setting up a multinational naval task force to...

BREAKING, Coast Guard Ship Fires 30 Warning Shots After Encounter With Iranian Vessels

A U.S. Coast Guard ship fired about 30 warning shots after 13 vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came close to it and other American Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon said on Monday.

This is the second time within the last month that U.S. military vessels have had to fire warning shots because of what they said was unsafe behavior by Iranian vessels in the region, after a relative lull in such interactions over the past year.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the warning shots were fired after the Iranian fast boats came as close as 150 yards (450 feet) of six U.S. military vessels, including the USS Monterey, that were escorting the guided-missile submarine Georgia.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Maui fired the warning shots from a .50-caliber machine gun before the Iranian vessels left, Kirby said.

“It’s significant… and they were acting very aggressively,” he said, adding that the number of Iranian vessels was more than in the recent past.

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In April, a U.S. military ship fired warning shots after three vessels from IRGCN came close to it and another American patrol boat in the Gulf.

The latest incident comes as world powers and Iran seek to speed up efforts to bring Washington and Tehran back into compliance with...

The U.S. Navy's New Super Frigate: Armed to 'Sink' Russia and China

The Navy is now finalizing the weapons, sensors and technologies it plans to engineer into a new, more survivable and lethal Littoral Combat Ship variant designed to perform anti-submarine and surface warfare functions at the same time, service officials said.

“You will be able to employ both of those mission areas simultaneously,” Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer, Frigate Program Manager, told Scout Warrior in an interview. “This provides the fleet with flexibility because you can employ those ships in multiple ways and multiple venues.”

The new ship, called a Frigate, will be integrated with anti-submarine surface warfare technologies including sonar, an over-the-horizon missile and surface-to-surface weapons such as a 30mm gun and closer-in missiles such as the Hellfire,

“You will be able to have both the long range over-the-horizon missile and the Hellfire on board at the same time,” Brintzinghoffer said.

Some of the over-the-horizon missiles now being considered by the Navy include the Naval Strike Missile by Kongsberg, a modified Tomahawk missile or the Long-Range Anti-Ship missile, or LRASM made by Lockheed and ...

Abandoned Train Station

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Kayaker Finds 110-Year-Old Ghost Ship in the Ohio River

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GHOST ship crewed only by CANNIBAL rats feared to be heading for Scottish coast

Sonar May Have Turned Up a Long-Lost Confederate Civil War Ship, the Agnes E. Fry

WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA, was the Confederacy’s last port. During the Civil War, blockade runners that evaded the Union navy were one of the Confederate army’s few lifelines. But maneuvering a small, fast ship in the dead of night was hard as it sounds, and many of them didn’t make it. Archaeologists now think they’ve found the shipwreck of one of those long lost blockade runners off Wilmington: the Agnes E. Fry.

At least they’re “99 percent sure” it’s the Agnes E. Fry, says archaeologist Billy Ray Morris—this being an extremely old boat under extremely dark waters. The last one percent of uncertainty will be worked out next week, when divers descend to the shipwreck with a sonar machine to map the shipwreck in glorious 3D detail.

The search for Agnes E. Fry is part of a larger effort to map the underwater artifacts of Civil War battles. When Morris, deputy state archaeologist for North Carolina, and Gordon Watts, director of the Institute for International Maritime Research, recently resurveyed the waters around North Carolina, they found previously mapped shipwrecks were more exposed than ever—likely due to dredging in the river that feeds into the Atlantic near Wilmington. Three blockade runners had wrecked off the coast near Oak Island but never been found. What if they too were newly uncovered?

So the archaeologists ran their survey boat around Oak Island. The boat carried a magnetometer—think a metal detector that can detect distortions in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by a ship’s iron hull. And then it had a...

More Polar Scientists Stuck in the Ice

US scientists appealed to Argentina for help when the US icebreaker Laurence M Gould failed to break through the ice.

A group of American scientists was rescued from an island off Antarctica’s coast after ice prevented a U.S. Antarctic Programresearch vessel from reaching them.

The four U.S. scientists and a support staff member conducting research on Antarctica’s Joinville Island were airlifted by helicopter Sunday from an icebreaker ship dispatched by Argentina, said the National Science Foundation, which funds and manages the Antarctic program.

related: Remember When This Global Warming Krew Got Stuck In The Ice?

Argentina sent the icebreaker ship after receiving a request for assistance on Friday, the country’s foreign ministry said Saturday. The Argentine ship has helicopters able to reach the group’s camp “regardless of the ice conditions,” the National Science Foundation, a U.S. government agency, said.

related: U.S. Must Build More Icebreakers Now

No doubt in a few decades helicopter rescues of scientists stuck in the global warming will be a thing of the past.

Having said that, perhaps the USA should consider upgrading its ice breaker fleet, just in case the...

NAVY: SELF-GUIDED UNMANNED PATROL BOATS MAKE DEBUT

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- Self-guided unmanned patrol boats that can leave warships they're protecting and swarm and attack potential threats on the water could join the Navy's fleet within a year, defense officials say, adding the new technology could one day help stop attacks like the deadly 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen.

The Arlington-based Office of Naval Research demonstrated the autonomous swarm boat technology over two weeks in August on the James River near Fort Eustis in Virginia - not far from one of the Navy's largest fleet concentration areas. It said the Navy simulated a transit through a strait, just like the routine passage of U.S. warships through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

In the demonstrations, as many as 13 small unmanned patrol boats were escorting a high-value Navy ship. Then as many as eight of the self-guided vessels broke off and swarmed around a threat when a ship playing the part of an enemy vessel was detected, the office said, calling the demonstrations a success.

Robert Brizzolara, program manager at the Office of Naval Research, said that the boats can decide for themselves what movements to make once they're alerted to a threat and work together to encircle or block the path of an opposing vessel, depending on that vessel's movements and those of other nearby vessels.

The rigid-hull inflatable patrol boats can also fire .50 caliber machine guns if called upon to do so. However, a human will always be the one to make the decision to use lethal force, officials said. A sailor on a command ship would be in charge of each of the unmanned boats and could take control over any ..

FedEx Refuses to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

TIME TO STOP USING FEDEX

The Ghost Gunner, which measures about a foot in each dimension.  Defense Distributed

The new generation of “maker” tools like 3-D printers and milling machines promises to let anyone make virtually anything—from prosthetic limbs to firearms—in the privacy and convenience of his or her own home. But first, those tools have to get to customers’ homes. That’s going to be difficult for at least one new machine with the potential to make homemade firearms, because FedEx is refusing to deliver it.

Last week FedEx told firearm-access nonprofit Defense Distributed that the company refuses to ship the group’s new tool, a computer controlled (CNC) mill known as the Ghost Gunner. Defense Distributed has marketed its one-foot-cubed $1,500 machine, which allows anyone to automatically carve aluminum objects from digital designs, as an affordable, private way to make an AR-15 rifle body without a serial number. Add in off-the-shelf parts that can be ordered online, and the Ghost Gunner would allow anyone to create one of the DIY, untraceable, semi-automatic firearms sometimes known as “ghost guns.”

When the machine was revealed last October, Defense Distributed’s pre-orders sold out in 36 hours. But now FedEx tells WIRED it’s too wary of the legal issues around homemade gunsmithing to ship the machine to...

6 Insane Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened

We're not going to bullshit you. Look hard enough, and you can find "amazing" coincidences anywhere. With a whole universe to work with, sometimes the stars are going to align just right.

But, even cynical types like us have to admit that sometimes this stuff can get downright creepy.

#6.

A Terrifyingly Accurate Prediction by Edgar Allan Poe

In 1838, future horror-god Edgar Allan Poe released a book called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, his only full novel. The book was such a bomb that Poe eventually agreed with his critics that it was "a very silly book" (yet still good enough to inspire heavyweights like Jules Verne and Herman Melville to write Moby Dick and An Antarctic Mystery--yes, Poe was a badass).

PIMP.

Where it Gets Weird:

Poe did a Blair Witch thing with his novel, which claimed to be based on true events. This turned out to be a half-truth: The real life events simply had not happened yet.

One scene in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket visits a whaling ship lost at sea, taking with it all but four crewmen. Out of food, the men drew lots to see who would be eaten, the unfortunate decision landing on a young cabin boy named Richard Parker.

Forty-six years later, there was an actual disaster at sea involving the Mignonette. It became famous due to the legal consequences of some gruesome events on board, specifically the way the men drew lots and decided to eat their cabin boy...

Where it Gets Even Weirder:

...who was named Richard Parker.

Richard Parker: aged 17 years.

The bizarre story was discovered decades later by Nigel Parker, a distant cousin of the Richard Parker who got eaten. You can only imagine what the fuck went through his mind when he stumbled upon the connection.

Hell, this was us!

And that would go down as the freakiest unintentional prediction of future events in a work of fiction, if it were not completely blown away by...

#5.

Morgan Robertson Writes About the Titanic... 14 Years Early

A hundred years before James Cameron turned douchebaggery into an art form at the Oscars, American author Morgan Robertson wrote a shitty book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about the sinking of an "unsinkable" ocean liner. When you see the cover, you figure you're pretty clearly looking at a fictionalized version of the Titanic story.

No surprise there; it's a story that's been told over and over (there were 13 Titanic movies before Cameron's, including one by the Nazis) but Robertson's book was first.

Where it Gets Weird:

He was so eager to be first, apparently, that he didn't bother to wait for the Titanic to actually sink before writing about it. The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was even finished being [cheaply] built.

The similarities between Robertson's work and the Titanic disaster are so astounding that one has to imagine if White Star Line built Titanic to Robertson's specs as a dare. The Titan was described as "the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men," "equal to that of a first class hotel," and, of course, "unsinkable".

Both ships were British-owned steel vessels, both around 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, "around midnight." Sound like enough to keep you up at night? Maybe that's why Robertson republished the book in 1912 just in case enough people didn't know that he wrote it.

And you thought this guy was an ass.

Where it Gets Even Weirder:

While the novel does bear some curious coincidences with the Titanic disaster, there are quite a few things that Robertson got flat wrong. For one, the Titanic did not crash into an iceberg "400 miles from Newfoundland" at 25 knots. It crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots.

Wait, what the fuck? That's one hell of a lucky guess!

What 41.1 million square miles looks like.

But maybe the weirdest thing about Titan were points that had nothing to do with the story, but check out after numerous inquires and expeditions to the Titanic wreck site.

For one, both the Titan and the Titanic had too few lifeboats to accommodate every passenger on board; the Titan carrying "as few as the law allowed." While Robertson decided to be generous and include four lifeboats more on his ship than Titanic, it's an odd point to bring up when you consider that lifeboats had nothing to do with the fucking story. When Titan hit the iceberg (starboard bow, naturally), the ship sank immediately, making the point made about lifeboats inconsequential. Why the fuck mention this?!

It'd be like HAL 9000 addressing the danger posed by O-rings at low temperature decades before the Challenger disaster.

#4.

The Civil War Keeps Finding Wilmer McLean

When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, Wilmer McLean of Virginia was too old and "whatever" for warfighting. Unfortunately, he also happened to live smack dab on the road between Washington, DC and Richmond, VA, the respective capitals of the Union and Confederacy.

The first battle of the Civil War pretty much happened at this guy's place. The Battle of Bull Run, broke out on July 21, 1861 near Manassas, Virginia--McLean's hometown. Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard needed a building to serve as headquarters for his staff and many initials, and when he saw Wilmer McLean's cozy house, he figured "what the fuck..." and camped there.

Major war foul.

This immediately subjected the building to artillery fire, and one cannonball somehow found its way down the poor bastard's chimney. The entire building should have gone up like the Death Star, yet miraculously no one was hurt.

Where it Gets Weird:

But, hey, an insane amount of fighting occurred along that road. A lot of people between Richmond and DC could say a battle happened on their front lawn. And, after this narrow escape with the Reaper in his very own home, McLean figured that moving his family out of No Man's Land would be a smart bet.

However, the man took so long to skip town that when 1862 rolled around, a battle nearly twice as large and four times as bloody exploded just outside his front door again--the Second Battle of Bull Run. After dodging this second bullet the size of Civil War battlefield, McLean finally sold and moved his family as far away as he could afford.

Where it Gets Even Weirder:

When Wilmer settled on a cottage in Clover Hill, Virginia, the town that later changed its name to Appomattox Court House. By 1865, Robert E. Lee's "invincible" Army of North Virginia was too busy having the ever-loving shit kicked out of it by General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army to defend Richmond. So after abandoning their capital, Lee's sorry-excuse-for-an-army was chased by Grant all across Virginia to... fucking Appomattox Court House.

The armies of the Civil War, taking the battle to wherever Wilmer happened to be that day.

On April 9, 1865, General Lee officially surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. The site for his surrender: the parlor of Wilmer McLean's new home.

Once the two armies left (and helped themselves to some furniture as souvenirs), the now-bankrupt McLean remarked: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor," which is probably the classiest way a man can handle the single most shit-luck in American history.

Should've just moved to Gettysburg.