Once upon a time, Axel Heilberg Island was a very strange place. Located within the Arctic Circle north of mainland Canada, a full 8/9ths of the way from the equator to the North Pole, the uninhabited Canadian island is far enough north to make Iceland look like a great spot for a winter getaway, and today there’s not much to it beyond miles of rocks, ice, a few mosses, and many fossils. The fossils tell of a different era, though, an odd time about 45 million years ago when Axel Heilberg, still as close to the North Pole as it is now, was covered in a forest of redwood-like trees known as metasequoias.

Axel Heilberg’s forests probably received equatorial water and warmth from a prehistoric weather pattern unlike anything in existence today. Other challenging mysteries remain, including how a forest could develop given the sunlight it would receive on Axel Heilberg. Because of its closeness to the North Pole both now and in the time of the redwoods, Axel Heilberg spends four months of each year in continuous sunlight and four months of each year in continuous darkness.

We …

A vase was found in precambian rock (534 million years old) in 1851 in Dorchester, Mass., U.S.A. The June 1851 issue of Scientific American reported that an explosive charge blew a metal vase out of solid rock in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The described the finding: “On putting the two parts together it formed a bell-shaped vessel, 4 1/2 inches high, 6 1/2 inches at the base, 2 1/2 inches at the top and about an eighth of an inch in thickness. The body of this vessel resembles zinc in color, or a composition metal in which there is a considerable portion of silver. On the sides there are six figures of a flower, a bouquet, beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel, a vine, or wreath, inlaid also with silver. The chasing, carving and inlaying are exquisitely done by the art of some cunning craftsman. This curious and unknown vessel was blown out of solid pudding stone, fifteen feet below the surface.” The editor suggests the vessel may have been made by Tubal-Cain, the Biblical father of metallurgy. Tubal-Cain is found in Gen. 4:22 (before …

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1994 – French authorities foil an attempt by Algerian hijackers to slam a plane into the Eiffel Tower in Paris.[1]

JANUARY 1995 – Philippine police complete a report outlining three terrorist plots after they shut down a terrorist cell. According to the report, one of the plots detailed the use of hijacked airliners to hit targets, including CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. One member of the cell was Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef was convicted in the United States for plotting to blow up U.S. airliners in Asia.[2]

JANUARY 1996 – The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center creates a special unit focusing on Osama bin Laden after his involvement in planning and directing terrorist acts becomes more evident to the U.S. intelligence community.[3]

EARLY 1996 – Sudan, which has harbored bin Laden since his 1991 expulsion from Saudi Arabia, offers to turn al Qaeda’s founder over to the Saudis for trial. Saudi Arabia doesn’t want him, and President Clinton does not push the issue of expulsion. In May, Sudan throws bin Laden out; he and his family …

It seems that a clockwork mechanism recovered in 60 metres of water from the wreck that went down in 82 BC is the only evidence of such a device in the world. The computer was described by Dr. Derek de Solla Price, an American with a grant to study the device as a box with dials on the outside and a very complex assembly of gear wheels mounted within, probably resembling a well made 18th century clock.

Doors hinged to the box served to protect the dials, and on them, as well as on all other available surfaces, there were long Greek inscriptions describing the construction and operation of the instrument.

There are at least twenty gear wheels, all made of a low tin bronze, including a very sophisticated assembly of gears that probably functioned as a differential gear system. The input was through an axle, probably rotated by hand, that turned two trains of gears and, eventually, pointers on the dials. Thus, when the main axle was turned, all the pointers turned simultaneously at various speeds. The mechanism must have worked, because it was mended twice and assumptions have …