Great Ass Info

“They are trying to steamroll us,’’ said Brian Rainville, 36, a high school government and civics teacher whose grandfather bought the farm in 1946 and whose parents and two brothers run it now. “We have a buyer holding a gun to our head saying you have to sell or else.’’

FRANKLIN, Vt. — The red brick house sits unassumingly on a sleepy back road where the lush farmlands of northern Vermont roll quietly into Canada. This is the Morses Line border crossing, a point of entry into the United States where more than three cars an hour constitute heavy traffic.

The bucolic setting of silos and sugar maples has become the focus of a bitter dispute that pits one of America’s most revered traditions — the family-owned farm — against the post-9/11 reality of terror attacks on US soil.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

In the middle of downtown Miami is one of the greatest mysteries of North America: A perfect circle, likely 2,000 years old, cut into the bedrock of the city, and stuffed with ancient teeth, weapons, and bones.

According to Atlas Obscura:

Property developer Michael Bauman was in for a real surprise when he purchased a plot of land in downtown Miami in 1998. Bauman’s plans for the land were seemingly simple: demolish a 1950-era apartment complex and build a luxury condominium in its place.

During a routine archaeological survey of the site, however, hundreds of mysterious holes were discovered in a layer of Oolitic limestone bedrock and Bauman’s development plans immediately came to a halt. Through further investigation, twenty-four of the largest holes comprised a perfect circle, 38 feet (12 m) in diameter, and excavation results found a variety of artifacts ranging from human teeth to ancient tools.

Included in the artifacts were pieces of burnt wood which, after being tested for radiocarbon dating, are believed to be 1800-2000 years old. To date, Miami Circle is the only known evidence in the United States of a prehistoric structure built into bedrock. Evidence from this mysterious prehistoric “footprint” predates other known settlements along the East Coast.

Among these tools were two axe-heads made from basalt, a hard stone that is not indigenous to Florida. The finding of these tools contradicts the theory that the site was occupied by the Tequesta, however, as the volcanic rock is believed to have been from a location in Macon, Georgia - some 600 miles (970 km) away from the site.

The site is now owned by the State of Florida, and has been protected (so far) from development. Nobody is sure what the origin or the function of the site might have been, but it has certainly given rise to some interesting conspiracy theories.

Source.

Port Fourchon, Louisiana (CNN) — It sounds like a Hollywood movie. An impending disaster — think the disabled spacecraft in “Apollo 13″ or the asteroid hurtling toward Earth in “Armageddon” — prompts a daring intervention by engineers to save the day.

This time, the threat is oil gushing from a broken well on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that could destroy livelihoods and irreplaceable coastal wetlands.

Equally real is the attempted engineering marvel — a four-story metal container that will be lowered onto the leaking pipe to try to suck in the flowing oil.

Officials of BP, the oil giant that owns the leaking well, said Monday they plan to try the unprecedented effort this week.

If successful, they say, the “pollution containment chamber” could reduce the underwater gusher by more than 80 percent and provide the first success in industry and government efforts to control the spill that began April 20 with an explosion and fire on an offshore rig.

“Everyone’s committed to getting this stopped so we can just focus on a cleanup,” said Doug Suttles, the BP chief operating officer.

KATC: Gulf shrimp season to temporarily close

THE FULL STORY CAN BE FOUND HERE

A ROVER found on the moon last week has delivered joy to the Soviets who lost it 40 years ago and evidence to any that still needed it that man did indeed once land there.

The Soviet rover Lunokhod 1 was the first successful lunar rover, landing on the moon on November 17, 1970, a full 24 years before Sojourner was successfully rolled out on the surface of Mars.

Lunokhod 1 wheeled around for the better part of a year before its signal was lost.

Its main mission was to collect soil composition and topography data, but its discovery by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has given Lunokhod 1 a new lease on life.

A reflector onboard was added by the Russians so they could bounce a laser off the rover and take readings about the moon’s orbit to within a millimetre’s accuracy, according to National Geographic.

The Full Story Can Be Found Here.