Monday, March 19, 2018
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #200
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
10 Northern European Mysteries That Remain Unsolved
Mysteries, mysteries everywhere. For everything we know, there’s so much more that we don’t. Whether it’s an unsolved crime, an unexplained sighting, or weird things falling from the sky, sometimes there are just no answers.
On this list are ten mysteries from Northern Europe that need solving. Hopefully someday, someone will do just that, especially where doing so could provide closure to the families of those who fell victim to as-yet unsolved crimes.
On October 19, 2004, Anna-Lena Svensson, 56, and an eight-year-old schoolboy by the name of Mohammed Ammouri were going about their day in Linkoping, Sweden. Suddenly, a commotion startled passersby. The woman collapsed, having been stabbed in her stomach. Minutes after this, while people rushed to her aid, Ammouri also started screaming. Then everything was quiet. Both had been attacked in the street in broad daylight. The little boy died immediately, while the woman lost the fight for her life in the hospital a few days later.[1]
The police collected several pieces of evidence from the scene, including the murder weapon (a butterfly knife) and a piece of clothing. They were confident that they would find the murderer within 24 hours, having set their sights on a suspect who was thought to be mentally ill. Almost 14 years later, police have questioned more than 7,000 suspects, but the murderer is still on the loose. With no apparent motive for the crimes, it seems unlikely at this stage that the case will ever be solved.
On this list are ten mysteries from Northern Europe that need solving. Hopefully someday, someone will do just that, especially where doing so could provide closure to the families of those who fell victim to as-yet unsolved crimes.
10Double Murder In Linkoping
The police collected several pieces of evidence from the scene, including the murder weapon (a butterfly knife) and a piece of clothing. They were confident that they would find the murderer within 24 hours, having set their sights on a suspect who was thought to be mentally ill. Almost 14 years later, police have questioned more than 7,000 suspects, but the murderer is still on the loose. With no apparent motive for the crimes, it seems unlikely at this stage that the case will ever be solved.
9Purple Slime In Lyngen Fjord
Photo credit: Roger B. Larsen/UIT
In August 2015, fishermen fishing off the coast of Northern Norway began reporting a strange phenomenon in the area. A thick, purple, mucoid slime had appeared almost overnight, covering millions of cubic meters around the Lyngen Fjord.[2]
Experts who investigated the phenomenon likened the texture of the slime to that of margarine and initially believed it to be the remains of dead jellyfish. The slime covered the fish that the fishermen were catching and even messed with their sonar equipment. A fisheries expert said that he had never seen anything like the purple substance in the fjords.
However, now almost three years later, no real confirmation has been given that the slime did indeed come from a type of jellyfish. Therefore, the reason for its existence remains a mystery.
8Where’s Beverina Castle?
Latvian history states that Estonians stormed and attacked Beverina Castle in 1208 in the district of Trikata. The Estonians retreated and settled down for the night at a lake near the road of Beverina. However, the crusaders and the Kaupo happened upon them here and chased them away. After this, they had a morning meal at the same lake.[3]
The name of the lake remains unknown as well as the destination to which the road of Beverina led to. However, the biggest mystery remains the location of Beverina Castle. The castle is mentioned 16 times in the Chronicle of Henry and was the residence of Talivaldis. The exact location of the castle is never mentioned. It is thought by archaeologists that the castle may be located on two foothills near Lake Vaidava, but research has never been done to validate this theory.
When Europeans returned to Greenland in the 18th century, they found no human life, only the ruins of the Vikings who once lived and loved there. The most popular theory for their unexplained disappearance was climate change. Cooling temperatures and glaciers forming in the area are thought to have been too much for the Vikings. Soil erosion and lack of trees to build more ships were cited as part of the problem as well. New research, however, suggests that the colder weather may not have been the reason at all. Rather, the Black Death could have caused the Vikings to return to the lands they originally came from. All of this remains speculation at this point, though, and the reason for the vanishing Vikings remains a mystery.
There remains a lot to learn about the Vikings and the technology they used. One artifact that has puzzled archaeologists for a very long time is...
The name of the lake remains unknown as well as the destination to which the road of Beverina led to. However, the biggest mystery remains the location of Beverina Castle. The castle is mentioned 16 times in the Chronicle of Henry and was the residence of Talivaldis. The exact location of the castle is never mentioned. It is thought by archaeologists that the castle may be located on two foothills near Lake Vaidava, but research has never been done to validate this theory.
7What Happened To Greenland’s Vikings?
Photo credit: Ciril Jazbec
In September 1408, Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Thorstein Olafsson married in a beautiful granite church on a fjord slope in Greenland. They had ended up in Greenland after their boat was blown off course while traveling from Norway to Iceland, and they decided to stay and make a life for themselves with the Vikings who had already settled there over hundreds of years. Their union in marriage, as well as other information about the daily goings-on in Greenland, was documented in three letters and recorded by scribes.[4]However, the existence of the Vikings seemingly ceased after these recordings. They simply disappeared.When Europeans returned to Greenland in the 18th century, they found no human life, only the ruins of the Vikings who once lived and loved there. The most popular theory for their unexplained disappearance was climate change. Cooling temperatures and glaciers forming in the area are thought to have been too much for the Vikings. Soil erosion and lack of trees to build more ships were cited as part of the problem as well. New research, however, suggests that the colder weather may not have been the reason at all. Rather, the Black Death could have caused the Vikings to return to the lands they originally came from. All of this remains speculation at this point, though, and the reason for the vanishing Vikings remains a mystery.
6Swedish Spheres
In May 1808, villagers in Biskopsberga, Sweden, were out in the hot sun, working on farms or simply going about their day, when it suddenly became rather dark. Looking up, they saw that the Sun had grown dim and that they could look directly into it. Then, a host of objects that resembled spheres appeared from the west. They were dark in color and headed toward the ever-dimming Sun. As they approached it, the spheres became black and lined up in a straight line, heading toward the horizon.[5]
The villagers stared as these little balls filled up the sky, never becoming stationary but continuously moving toward the Sun and then disappearing in the east. K.G. Wettermark, secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, saw one of the spheres hit the ground, and he remarked that it left behind a thin film resembling a cobweb, which soon completely disappeared. A reason or explanation for this incident has yet to be found.
5Ulfberht Swords
Photo credit: Ancient Pages
There remains a lot to learn about the Vikings and the technology they used. One artifact that has puzzled archaeologists for a very long time is...
CAREER DOJ EMPLOYEES AND AN OBAMA APPOINTEE SANK MCCABE
The firing of Andrew McCabe has heads exploding among members of the anti-Trump resistance. No surprise there.
However, at Lawfare, a resistance site, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes say they are reserving judgment about the firing, and they caution others to do the same. “It is simply not clear at this stage whether or not the record will support his dismissal,” they say.
They are right. It isn’t clear, and won’t be until the full inspector general report on the Clinton email investigation, including information on McCabe’s conduct, is released.
However, there is a sound basis to form a tentative belief that the firing of McCabe was justified. That basis comes through in what Jurecic and Wittes write:
The FBI takes telling the truth extremely seriously: “lack of candor” from employees is a fireable offense—and people are fired for it. Moreover, it doesn’t take an outright lie to be dismissed. In one case, the bureau fired an agent after he initially gave an ambiguous statement to investigators as to how many times he had picked up his daughter from daycare in an FBI vehicle. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against the agent when he appealed, finding that “lack of candor is established by showing that the FBI agent did not ‘respond fully and truthfully’ to the questions he was asked.”
So if McCabe was less than candid in answering questions, his firing was justified and consistent with FBI practice. Was he? We don’t know. But the finding that McCabe did not meet FBI standards for honesty was made by career Justice Department officials, not Jeff Sessions or other political appointees. As Jurecic and Wittes say:
[A]lthough Sessions made the ultimate call to fire McCabe, the public record shows that the process resulting in the FBI deputy director’s dismissal involved career Justice Department and FBI officials—rather than political appointees selected by President Trump—at crucial points along the way. To begin with, the charges against McCabe arose out of the broader Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.
While the inspector general is appointed by the president, the current head of that office, Michael Horowitz, was appointed by President Barack Obama and is himself a former career Justice Department lawyer. As Jack Goldsmith has written, the inspector general has a great deal of statutory independence, which Horowitz has not hesitated to use: Most notably, he produced a highly critical 2012 report into the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” program. So a process that begins with...
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