Archive for 2012-05-06

THE JERSEY DEVIL Legend or Truth?

The historic states along America’s Atlantic Seaboard have given birth to hundreds of ghostly tales and unusual stories over the years. One of the strangest is undoubtedly that of the Jersey Devil, a creature that is believed by some to be a mythical creature and by others, a real-life monster of flesh and blood. Its origins date back to when New Jersey was still a British colony.
According to the legend, Mrs. Jane Leeds came from a poor family who eked out an existence in the Pine Barrens of Jersey, a rugged place with vast forests, sandy soil and patches of swamp. In 1735, Mrs. Leeds discovered that she was pregnant with her 13th child. She complained to her friends and relatives that the “Devil can take the next one”, and he did. When the baby was born, he was monster! He immediately took on a grotesque appearance and grew to more than 20 feet long, with a reptilian body, a horse’s head, bat wings and a long, forked tail. He thrashed about the Leeds home for a bit and then vanished up the chimney. The creature, or the “Jersey Devil” as he was dubbed, began haunting the Pine Barrens.

The New Jersey Pine Barrens
As the story spread, even grown men declined to venture out at night. It was said that the beast carried off large dogs, geese, cats, small livestock and even occasional children. The children were never seen again, but the animal remains were often found. The Devil was also said to dry up the milk of cows by breathing on them and to kill off the fish in the streams, threatening the livelihood of the entire region.
In 1740, the frightened residents begged a local minister to exorcize the creature and the stories stated that the exorcism would last 100 years, however the Devil returned to the Pine Barrens on at least two occasions before the century was over. Legend has it that naval hero Commodore Stephen Decatur visited the Hanover Iron Works in the Barrens in 1800 to test the plant’s cannonballs. One day on the firing range, he noticed a strange creature winging overhead. Taking aim, he fired at the monster and while some say that his shot struck it, the Devil continued on its path.

A Map of Jersey Devil Sightings
(Rosemary Ellen Guiley)
The second sighting took place a few years later and this time the Devil was seen by another respected witness. Joseph Bonaparte, the former king of Spain and the brother of Napoleon, leased a country house near Bordertown from 1816 to 1839. He reported seeing the Jersey Devil while hunting game one day in the Pine Barrens.
In 1840, as the minister warned, the Devil returned and brought terror to the region once again. It snatched sheep from their pens and preyed on children who lingered outside after sunset. People all across South Jersey locked their doors and hung a lantern on the doorstep, hoping to keep the creature away.
The stories continued to be told and the lore of the Devil was recalled throughout the 1800’s, although actual sightings of the creature were few. Then, in 1909, the Jersey Devil returned again and literally thousands of people spotted the monster or saw his footprints. It became so bad that schools closed and people refused to go outside.
A police officer named James Sackville spotted the monster while walking his beat one night. He was passing along a dark alley when a winged creature hopped into the street and let out a horrific scream. Sackville fired his revolver at the beast but it spread its wings and vanished into the air.
 In spite of the sightings, the beast was always considered a regional legend until the bizarre flap in 1909, which even the most skeptical researchers admit contains authentic elements of the unexplained. Many people saw the creature during the month of January, including E.W. Minster, the postmaster of Bristol, Pennsylvania, which is just over the New Jersey border. He stated that he awoke around 2:00 in the morning and heard an “eerie, almost supernatural” sound coming from the direction of the Delaware River. He looked out the window and saw what looked to be a “large crane” that was flying diagonally and emitting a curious glow. The creature had a long neck that was thrust forward in flight, thin wings, long back legs and shorter ones in the front. The creature let out a combination of a squawk and a whistle and then disappeared into the darkness.
Sightings continued. On January 19, 1909, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Evans were awakened in the early morning by the sound of a large animal on the roof of their shed. They described it as: “about three and a half feet high, with a face like a collie and a head like a horse. It had a long neck, wings about two feet long and its back legs were like those of a crane and it had horse’s hooves. It walked on its back legs and held up two short front legs with paws on them.”
One afternoon of that same week, a Mrs. J.H, White was taking clothes off her line when she noticed a strange creature huddled in the corner of her yard. She screamed and fainted and her husband rushed out the back door to find his wife on the ground and the Devil close by, “spurting flames”. She chased the monster with a clothesline prop and it leapt over the fence and vanished.
A short time later, the creature struck again. This time, it attacked a dog belonging to Mrs. Mary Sorbinski in south Camden. When she heard the cry of her pet in the darkness, she dashed outside and drove the Devil away with a broom. The creature fled, but not before tearing a chunk of flesh from the dog. Mrs. Sorbinski carried her wounded pet inside and immediately called the police.
By the time that patrolmen arrived, a crowd of more than 100 people were gathered at the house. The crowd was witness to the piercing screams that suddenly erupted from nearby. The police officers emptied their revolvers at the shadow that loomed against the night sky, but the Devil escaped once again.
Eyewitness accounts of the Devil filled the newspapers, as well as photos and reports of cloven footprints that had been found in yards, woods and parking lots. The Philadelphia Zoo offered a $10,000 reward for the capture of the Devil, but there were no takers.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the Devil vanished again.
The creature did not return again until 1927. A cab driver was changing a tire one night while headed for Salem. He had just finished when his car began shaking violently. He looked up to see a gigantic, winged figure pounding on the roof of his car. The driver, leaving his jack and flat tire behind, jumped into the car and quickly drove away. He reported the encounter to the Salem police.
In August 1930, berry pickers at Leeds Point and Mays Landing reported seeing the Devil, crashing through the fields and devouring blueberries and cranberries. It was reported again two weeks later to the north and then it disappeared again.
In November 1951, a group of children were allegedly cornered by the Devil at the Duport Clubhouse in Gibbstown. The creature bounded away without hurting anyone but reports claimed that it was spotted by dozens of witnesses before finally vanishing again.
Sightings continued here and there for years and then peaked once more in 1960 when bloodcurdling cries terrorized a group of people near Mays Landing. State officials tried to calm the nervous residents but no explanation could be found for the weird sounds. Policemen nailed signs and posters everywhere stating that the Jersey Devil was a hoax, but curiosity-seekers flooded into the area anyway. Harry Hunt, who owned the Hunt Brothers Circus, offered $100,000 for the capture of the beast, hoping to add it to his sideshow attractions. Needless to say, the monster was never snared.
The most recent sighting of the creature was said to have been in 1993 when a forest ranger named John Irwin was driving along the Mullica River in southern New Jersey. He was startled to find the road ahead of him blocked by the Jersey Devil. He described it as being about six-feet tall with horns and matted black fur. Could this have been the reported Jersey Devil - or some other creature altogether? Irwin stated that he and the creature stared at one another for several minutes before the monster finally turned and ran into the forest.
Today, there are only a few, isolated sightings of the Jersey Devil. It seems as though the paved roads, electric lights and modern conventions that have come to the region over the course of two and a half centuries have driven the monster so far into hiding that it has vanished altogether. The lack of proof of the monster’s existence in these modern times leads many to believe the Devil was nothing more than a creation of New Jersey folklore. But was it really?
If it was merely a myth, then how do we explain the sightings of the creature and the witness accounts from reliable persons like businessmen, police officers and even public officials? They are not easy to dismiss as hearsay or the result of heavy drinking. Could the Jersey Devil have been real after all? And if so, is it still out there in the remote regions of the Pine Barrens - just waiting to be found?

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Sun-like star may harbor alien life


unsolvedmystery- Our solar system is rather unique. It is a spinning disk with the sun in the center, of which is surrounded by four terrestrial - or rocky - planets, an asteroid belt, four gas giants and five dwarf planets. Many other star systems have been discovered, but many just don’t fit the bill for likeness to our own. For one, many of these systems have Hot Jupiters, inner planets the size of - and sometimes larger than - the planet Jupiter.

To occasionally break the rule, scientists have discovered a new star called HP 56948. HP 56948 is remarkably similar to our own sun. It has relatively the same mass as our sun and, as well, it is a G2V (yellow dwarf) sharing chemical composition and temperatures with our sun. It also has planets revolving around it.

However, sharing characteristics with our own sun doesn’t say that the HP 56948 system has planets similar to our Earth that can support life. Many Hot Jupiters revolve around a star very similar to our star (like 51 Pegasi b, also called Bellerophon). Here’s where it gets interesting, though: astronomers have not detected a short-period wobble on HP 56948, meaning that no Hot Jupiter would be that close to the star (If otherwise, its gigantic size would influence its sun to create a wobble).

If there were no (or at least not many) Hot Jupiters revolving around HP 56948, then could there be terrestrial planets? Perhaps even some in the “Goldilocks zone“? The chemical composition of the star suggests so. It has an amount of silicon, magnesium, aluminum and calcium similar to our sun, elements of which are usually found in asteroids, rocky planets and interplanetary dust.

Could HP 56948 have inner system planets similar to our own and beloved planet? If so, could there be intelligent life on one of them? Could this star have formed around the same time as our sun? If so, it would give extraterrestrials the same amount of time as us to evolve. Perhaps they even have evolved to be an intelligent civilization.

HP 56948 is just one of many new exoplanets that possibly hosts life out there and it is a beneficial contribution to astrology and possibly the future of astrobiology.

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Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937

Unsolved mystery - Amelia Earhart was born on 24 July 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Her flying career began in Los Angeles in 1921 when, at age 24, she took flying lessons from Neta Snook and bought her first airplane-- a Kinner Airstar. Due to family problems, she sold her airplane in 1924 and moved back East, where she took employment as a social worker. Four years later, she returned to aviation bought an Avro Avian airplane and became the first woman to make a solo-return transcontinental flight. From then on, she continued to set and break her own speed and distance records, in competitive events, as well as personal stunts promoted by her husband George Palmer Putnam.
Earhart's name became a household word in 1932 when she became the first woman, and second person, to fly solo across the Atlantic, on the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's feat, flying a Lockheed Vega from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland to Londonderry, Ireland. That year, she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from the Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover.

In January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Later that year she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, N.J. In July 1936 she took delivery of a Lockheed 10E "Electra," financed by Purdue University, and started planning her round-the-world flight.

Earhart's flight would not be the first to circle the globe, but it would be the longest, 29,000 miles, following an equatorial route. On March 17, 1937 she flew the first leg, from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. As the flight resumed three days later, a tire blew on takeoff and Earhart ground-looped the plane. Severely damaged, the aircraft had to be shipped back to California for repairs, and the flight was called off. The second attempt would begin at Miami, this time to fly from West to East; Fred Noonan, a former Pan Am pilot, would be Earhart's navigator and sole companion in flight for the entire trip. They departed Miami on June 1, and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Subcontinent and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. About 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would all be over the Pacific Ocean.

On July 2, 1937 at 0000 GMT, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. Their intended destination was Howland Island, a tiny piece of land a few miles long, 20 feet high, and 2, 556 miles away. Their last positive position report and sighting were over the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles into the flight. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca was on station near Howland, assigned on short notice to communicate with Earhart's plane and guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.

But it soon became evident that Earhart and Noonan had little practical knowledge of the use of radio navigation. The frequencies Earhart was using were not well suited to direction finding (in fact, she had left behind the lower-frequency reception and transmission equipment which might have enabled Itasca to locate her), and the reception quality of her transmissions was poor. After six hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communications, contact was lost.

A coordinated search by the Navy and Coast Guard was organized and no physical evidence of the flyers or their plane was ever found. Earhart and Noonan's fate has been the subject of many rumors and allegations which were never substantiated. Modern analysis indicates that after passing the Nukumanu Islands, Earhart began to vector off course, unwittingly heading for a point about 100 miles NNW of Howland. A few hours before their estimated arrival time Noonan calculated a "sun line," but without a successful, radio-frequency range calculation, a precise "fix" on the plane's location could not be established. Researchers generally believe that the plane ran out of fuel and that Earhart and Noonan perished at sea.

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Unsolved Mystery of Kava Toxicity

A major new review of scientific knowledge on kava -- a plant used to make dietary supplements and a trendy drink with calming effects -- has left unsolved the mystery of why Pacific Island people can consume it safely, while people in the United States, Europe, and other Western cultures sometimes experience toxic effects.
The article appears in American Chemical Society's journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Line Olsen and colleagues point out that for centuries, people of the Pacific Islands have safely consumed a beverage made from crushed kava roots. Kava'scalming effects made it popular in Western cultures in the 1990s, when people also began to use a herbal supplement for the treatment of anxiety, emotional stress and sleep problems. But in 2001, reports of liver damage among Westerners who took kava supplements gained widespread attention. Many Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, ban or regulate the sale of kava products. To determine why kava is toxic to some people but not to others, the researchers sifted through the scientific studies published on the topic.

Their review of 85 scientific studies on kava toxicity found no consensus on kava toxicity, despite several theories that have emerged over the years. Culprits include methods for preparing kava, the particular species of kava used, the possible toxicity of substances produced by the body when kava is digested and genetic differences among consumers. "To date, there remains no indisputable reason for the increased prevalence of kava-induced hepatotoxicity in Western countries," the researchers say.

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