Thread: Strange News

This came across as a bit strange.

How $70 million fighter jets just fall off aircraft carriers. Repeatedly, it seems.

Second US fighter jet falls overboard from Truman aircraft carrier

For the second time in just eight days, a US fighter jet has been lost to the Red Sea after falling from the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, US officials say.


An F/A-18F Super Hornet was attempting to land on the Truman's flight deck on Tuesday when a manoeuvre failed, "causing the aircraft to go overboard", an official told the BBC's US partner CBS News.
The two crew members inside the aircraft ejected, and sustained minor injuries in the incident. The jets are reportedly worth around $67m (£50m) each.


"Both aviators safely ejected and were rescued by a helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 11," the official told CBS.



It comes after another Super Hornet went overboard into the same sea last Monday in a separate incident.

Second US fighter jet falls into Red Sea from Truman aircraft carrier

DEI back at it again?

Harvard learned it has an authentic Magna Carta. In 1946, it paid less than $28 for it

It wasn't exactly like the big reveal on the Antiques Roadshow. But one day in December 2023, David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King's College London, was searching through the digital archives of the Harvard Law Library when he clicked on a document that would become the biggest discovery of his career.

It had been labeled as a 1327 copy of the Magna Carta, "somewhat rubbed and damp-stained," according to the archive's description. But Carpenter knew almost immediately when he opened the document that it wasn't as advertised: "What do I see before my eyes? For all the world [it] seemed to me an original of the 1300 Magna Carta." He immediately thought, "Oh, my God, this isn't known at all."

It was a remarkable find not only for Carpenter, but for Harvard — especially since the university had paid a London bookseller just $27.50 (about $460 adjusted for inflation) for the document in 1946. An authentic Magna Carta sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.

The Magna Carta is one of the most important documents in history and deeply influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution. First signed by England's King John in 1215, it aimed to circumscribe the king's power and establish the principle that even the monarchy is not above the law. It also guaranteed certain rights such as protections from arbitrary imprisonment and the right to due process.

But the document went through six different iterations throughout the 13th Century, the final one dating to 1300. "It is, in a way, the last Magna Carta ... the final emphatic Magna Carta," Carpenter says.

Searching through Harvard's digital archives, there were a few giveaways that tipped Carpenter off that he was looking at an authentic copy. "In particular, the letter E of the 'Eduardus,' the king confirming the charter ... looked very similar to the letter in the other originals" of the famous document, Carpenter says. "It clearly was Edward I confirming Magna Carta. And the date at the end was 1300."

But his intuition still needed scholarly backing. Carpenter brought in a colleague, Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia and a fellow Magna Carta expert. "We combined forces to try and prove that we were right because, you know, first impressions can be misleading," Carpenter says.

They contacted Harvard, requesting an ultraviolet scan so they could examine the document more closely. That's when Jonathan Zittrain, head of the Harvard Law School library, first learned there was some interest in the document.

"There's not always a 'eureka' moment, where it's like 'Ah, yes,' " Zittrain says. "You've got to tie together a number of threads to figure out the authenticity of something."

"We were very fortunate that our British colleagues were in a position with their deep, deep expertise on exactly this topic, to look at a digitized copy of our holding," he adds. "They could then do a bunch of preliminary work from their desks."

Carpenter says while copies of the Magna Carta are abundant, originals are quite rare — with only about two dozen known to exist. There are only six other known copies of the 1300 version of the document like the one at Harvard.

Zittrain says it's serendipity that the document's authenticity was ever discovered — one that "nobody might have thought was in the cards."

He credits not only Carpenter and Vincent, but Harvard's decision to digitize their archives so that the public at large can access them. "And of course," Zittrain adds, "it makes you wonder, gosh, what else do we have between the couch cushions?"

An authentic Magna Carta has been discovered in Harvard's archives : NPR

So incredibly strange, yet again.

happens every day

Melania Trump (the Statue) Vanishes in Slovenia

The bronze sculpture, erected near Ms. Trump’s hometown in eastern Slovenia, was chopped off at the feet and stolen, the police said.

Where is Melania Trump?

No, not the rarely seen first lady, but the statue made in her likeness that watched over her nearby hometown, Sevnica, Slovenia.

The life-size bronze statue, 15 minutes outside Sevnica, disappeared from its perch this week. The theft was reported on Tuesday, the police said. But it’s not clear when, exactly, it was taken, Alenka Drenik Rangus, a spokeswoman for the police, said by phone on Friday.

Police are still assessing the theft, and an investigation is still ongoing, Ms. Drenik Rangus added.

Residents of Sevnica have their suspicions. Some in the town of about 5,000 people in eastern Slovenia say it could have been an act of vandalism; others say it was probably melted down for cash. None of the people interviewed thought, however, that the statue’s disappearance had been in any way political.

Melania is rarely seen in the spotlight or anywhere else, and even when she does do something, it’s so bizarre, so I don’t even want to think about her that much, said Igor Pavkovic, who has lived in Sevnica all his life and recalled laughing when he first saw the statue.

The expressionless sculpture, its arm raised in a tight wave, never quite captured the heart of Sevnica’s residents. Originally made of wood, it was hacked from a linden tree and unveiled in 2019 by an artist who used a chain saw to create a very, very rough likeness of the first lady.

Painted powder blue to reflect the cashmere dress and gloves that Ms. Trump wore to her husband’s first inauguration, in 2017, the statue stood nine feet tall. But it was derided as resembling a scarecrow or a Smurf. Anonymous arsonists set the statue on fire on July 4, 2020.

A bronze replacement was erected later that year. Now, only the statue’s heavy Cubist feet, hacked off at the ankles, remain on the tree trunk that had served as the statue’s plinth. It had stood in a lonely field, far away from the municipal apartment block where Ms. Trump grew up and the school she attended. The privately owned field overlooks the Sava River and a verdant valley, but only runners and cyclists would have regularly crossed paths with the statue.

Both the wood and metal iterations had been commissioned by an American artist, Brad Downey, who worked with local artisans to create the sculptures. He had reported the statue missing, he said in an Instagram post on Saturday.

What’s left is a fragment — rooted, but silenced, he said alongside images of the severed statue.

Mr. Downey said in 2019 that he saw the statue’s form and location as an interrogation of President Trump’s harsh stance on immigration.

The idea to commission the first monument to Melania has some cheekiness to it, but I wanted to do a serious investigation there, Mr. Downey said, adding at the time that the statue, placed atop a tree stump, was rooted in the area Ms. Trump came from.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the statue’s disappearance, it vanished at a time when public dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump’s second-term policies have been expressed globally through vandalism of vehicles made by Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s adviser. Satirical advertisements mocking both men have also popped up around London in recent weeks.

Shipment of thousands of chicks left in USPS truck. Overwhelmed shelter needs help adopting them

A Delaware animal shelter is trying to care for and rehome thousands of chicks that survived being left in a postal service truck for three days. Trapped in a warm enclosure, without food and water, thousands died before they were discovered on May 2, CBS affiliate WBOC reported.

The involved parties are still awaiting answers as to how 12,000 chicks were abandoned within the truck at a Delaware mail distribution center. The United States Postal Service said in an email to the Associated Press that it was aware of a process breakdown and was actively investigating what occurred.

The USPS says it has been working with hatcheries for more than 100 years to transport mail-order chicks and that it transports thousands of chicks every year, according to its website.

"Chicks can be safely transported without food or water within 72 hours of hatching. In fact, placing food and water inside the hatchery box could jeopardize the integrity of the box and could endanger the health and safety of the animals inside," the Postal Service website says.

Pennsylvania-based Freedom Ranger Hatchery raised the shipped chicks for their weekly distribution to clients across the country, said a spokesperson for the company. Due to biosecurity concerns, the hatchery cannot take the chicks back.

The chicks were supposed to be delivered to several states, including Texas, Ohio, Florida, and more but the entire shipment was mistakenly sent to Delaware following shipping delays and rejections from distribution centers across the country, WBOC reported.

The hatchery's spokesperson said it would have been best if USPS, after discovering the chicks, had completed delivery, as the recipients would have been adequately equipped to handle the birds — even malnourished ones.

"After three and a half days in the heat, these crates were wet with dead fowl. It was a mess," John Parana, executive director at First State Animal Center and SPCA, told CBS affiliate WBNS-TV.

For more than two weeks, the surviving chicks have been nursed and cared for at the shelter, Parana said.

Last Tuesday, the shelter began offering the birds for adoption, but only a few hundred out of thousands have been picked up. There is no complete count of the chicks, as the shelter has no feasible way to do so, but Parana estimates there to be more than two thousand available.

Some have inquired about buying the birds for meat, but, as a no-kill shelter and SPCA, those were refused.

The strain has turned the animal care center into a 24/7 operation and necessitated a staffing increase, Parana said. Money remains the biggest concern for the donation-reliant nonprofit. Some employees have begun spending their money to support the operations, he added.

Among the birds were young turkeys, geese and quail, but the vast majority were Freedom Ranger chicks. One concern for the shelter, Parana explained, was the increasing demand for space and feed over time, as Freedom Rangers take about ten weeks to reach maturity.

The Delaware Department of Agriculture, after a call from USPS, directed the animals to the shelter, which shares a memorandum of understanding with the animal center as a state vendor. The department said it is responsible for assisting the shelter with funds — for chickens, the rate was $5 each per day.

The department's chief of planning, Jimmy Kroon, said negotiations were ongoing, but Parana claims that the department communicated that they had no funds to allocate for the chicks. Both acknowledged the original rate would be unreasonable in the current circumstances.

"They said that they're gonna try to go after the post office to get recoupment," Parana said. "That doesn't help us in the meantime."

Shipment of thousands of chicks left in USPS truck. Overwhelmed shelter needs help adopting them - CBS News

Bear cub rescued from woods is being raised by humans dressed as bears

Story and pics MSN

Now we know where Seeking an Ursine landed up

Originally Posted by david44

Now we know where Seeking an Ursine landed up

Or it could be just as simple as awful moderation here at TD so he left this dumpster fire like many posters have over the past couple years.

River of Death: 8,000 dinosaur bones discovered at CanadaÂ’s fossil mass grave

In Alberta, Canada, paleontologists continue to excavate one of the biggest dinosaur bonebeds in the world.

In Alberta, Canada, paleontologists continue to unearth thousands of Pachyrhinosaurin bones across a kilometer of land, making this gigantic bonebed one of the densest fossil sites in the world.

Nicknamed “The River of Death,” a local high school teacher initially discovered Pipestone Creek in 1974. Now considered one of the most significant finds from the age of the dinosaurs, it even gave birth to a museum.

A massive event, still unknown, wiped out a whole herd of pachyrhinosaurians in an instant about 72 million years ago. The active site, populated by paleontologists and enthusiasts alike, is about the size of a football field and jam-packed with bones.

But getting to them requires a sledgehammer to crack through the rock before dusting away the layers of time to get to the treasure that never seems to end.

It is jaw-dropping in terms of its density, Professor Emily Bamforth told the BBC.

A terrible tragedy becomes a triumph

Finding dinosaur bones northwest of Alberta, Canada, isnÂ’t exactly unusual. In the Deadfall Hills, super-sized bones are cast along the shoreline. However, underneath the slopes of this lush forest, the biggest reward turned out to require a little extra muscle and delicate handling at the same time.

The treasure of fossilized bones emerges under layers of dirt and dust. The team has collected over 8,000 dinosaur bones thus far, BBC reports. Professor Bamforth gave a map of the dinosaur bones: bones that look like blobs and ribs that appear like long, skinny bones.

As a site that continues to yield fossils belonging to one dinosaur, the pachyrhinosaurus, the evidence is conclusive, even if researchers still cannot confirm what happened to the herd whose bones covered an impressive area the size of a football field.

With a robust build, the member of the Ceratopsidae family had a distinctive beak, a three-horned head, and a “nasal boss.” However, unlike its relatives, its facial structure was more pronounced than the horns.

We believe that this was a herd on a seasonal migration that got tangled up in some catastrophic event that effectively wiped out, if not the entire herd, then a good proportion of it, Prof Bamforth told BBC News.

A flash flood turned a treasure trove: 8,000 dinosaur bones discovered at Canada'''s fossil mass grave

Ship run aground in Norway should be removed within days: company

A ship that made world headlines for running aground in Norway a stone's throw from a house should be dragged loose within days, the head of the company managing the salvage operation said Monday.

Ole Bjornevik, managing director of BOA Offshore, said the company would first unload the ship's cargo, then remove the 135-metre (443-foot) vessel.

"We estimate that there are approximately 1,500 tonnes of pressure on the fore ship. Once we've unloaded that weight of containers, we can pull it off," Bjornevik told AFP.

"We plan to do so on Wednesday," he added.

The NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just metres from a wooden cabin around dawn on Thursday.

A Ukrainian sailor in his 30s was on watch at the time and said he had fallen asleep, according to Norwegian police, who have charged him with "negligent navigation".

The seaman also said none of the cargo ship's collision alarms had worked, prosecutor Kjetil Bruland Sorensen told news agency NTB.

The investigation will also look into whether the rules on working hours and rest periods were adhered to on ship, according to police.

The occupant of the house, Johan Helberg, also slept through the incident, and only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbour called him on the phone.

None of the 16 crew members were injured.

Ship run aground in Norway should be removed within days: company

14 million bees escape after truck overturns in Washington state

Approximately 14 million bees escaped after a tractor-trailer carrying more than 70,000 pounds of pollinator hives rolled over Friday in northern Washington state, authorities said.

The commercial truck hauling the honeybees overturned at about 4 a.m. in Whatcom County, Washington, which borders Canada's British Columbia, the sheriff's office said in a social media post. It's unclear what caused the truck to roll over.

The hives came off the truck shortly after 9 a.m., which freed the bees. The incident happened on Weidkamp Road, which remains closed between Loomis Trail and West Badger roads, the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office said.

Authorities said the public should avoid the area and stay at least 600 feet away.

"While there is no general health risk to the public, anyone who is allergic to bee stings or has concerns should check the State Department of Health webpage on bees and wasps," the sheriff's office said.

Authorities said the road where the truck overturned was closed for about 24 hours to allow the bees to re-hive and find their queen bee.

More than two dozen beekeepers came to assist with the rescue, the sheriff's office said, adding: "The goal is to save as many of the bees as possible."

"At this time, on-scene work is done. Hive boxes from the overturned truck were recovered, restored and returned to use," authorities said in an update. "By morning, most bees should have returned to their hives and those responsible for their delivery will be in charge."

Initially, officials said that some 250 million bees escaped but they corrected the tally on Saturday, citing a beekeeper who assisted at the scene.

"Thank you to those who challenged the math and helped us get closer to the true number," officials said.

The World's Richest Shipwreck in History Could Be Worth More Than $17 Billion

New images support the case that the long lost San José galleon has been discovered.

Adecade ago, the Colombian government announced the discovery of what was presumed to be the wreckage of the San José, a Spanish galleon that was sunk by the British Navy more than 300 years ago. But this wasn’t just any ship. Historians say the vessel was carrying not only a crew of more than 600 men but also a massive fortune, including "200 tonnes of gold, silver, and emeralds belonging to the viceroy of Peru.” In today’s currency, that pot would be worth more than $17 billion, making it the world’s richest shipwreck in history if recovered. In the years since then, the government has funded research efforts to confirm the ship's origins.

This week, researchers shared new findings after sending an underwater drone on “a non-intrusive investigation of an 18th-century AD shipwreck,” which was covered in a new article in the archaeology journal Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press. The most essential clue: “hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins—known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish—that served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries.”

A photograph from the port section of the stern, showing the obverse and reverse faces of coin, as they were observed on the seabed.

“This case study highlights the value of coins as key chronological markers in the identification of shipwrecks, particularly those from the Tierra Firme Fleet,” researchers wrote in Antiquity. “The finding of cobs created in 1707 at the Lima Mint points to a vessel navigating the Tierra Firme route in the early eighteenth century. The San José Galleon is the only ship that matches these characteristics.”

The San José Galleon is also referred to as the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks,” and a private company Sea Search Armada (formerly called Glocca Morra) say they first discovered the shipwreck in 1981, and later shared the coordinates with the government. The company then sued the government for $10 billion, “equivalent to half the fortune, according to its calculations.” Colombia has since declared the area a “protected archaeological area,” and President Gustavo Petro wants to recover and raise the wreck for scientific purposes before his term ends in 2026, according to Bloomberg.

Colombian Shipwreck May Be the World’s Richest, Valued at Over $17 Billion

Originally Posted by S Landreth

President Gustavo Petro wants to recover and raise the wreck for scientific purposes before his term ends in 2026