Category: Uncategorized

One of the Most Terrifying Survival Stories of All Time

Posted on by

Explorers are a different breed. Their desire to go “where no man has gone before,” no matter the cost, sometimes has them pay the ultimate price.

In November 1912, they had started as a crew of 24.  Before the expedition was over Douglas Mawson was alone in the Antarctic fighting time and the elements to get back to the base camp before their ship left…

“What followed was one of the most terrifying survival stories of all time.”

Into the Unknown by David Roberts [Photo by Frank Hurley] for The National Geographic told the tale.   Here’s a taste…

Mawson was now in a race against time, as well as miles. The expedition’s relief ship Aurora was scheduled to arrive at Commonwealth Bay on January 15 to pick up the men and steam toward home in Australia. But as the days ticked by, Mawson was still more than 80 miles from the hut, and he was growing weaker by the hour.

One day, plowing through deep snow, he broke through a snowbridge covering a hidden crevasse. Suddenly he was falling unchecked through space. Then a fierce jolt halted his plunge. The 14-foot harness rope attaching him to the sledge had held, but now Mawson was sure that his weight would pull the sledge in on top of him. He thought, So this is the end.

Miraculously, the sledge stuck fast in the deep snow, anchoring him. But as his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, Mawson saw how hopeless his predicament was. He dangled free in space, the crevasse walls too far away to reach even with the wild swing of a boot. His first thought came as a searing regret that he had not had the chance to eat the last ounces of his food before he died.

His only chance to escape was to pull himself hand over hand up the harness rope. Providentially, he had tied knots in the rope at regular intervals. He seized the first knot and pulled himself upward, then lunged for the next. Even for a fit, healthy man, such a feat would have been barely possible; yet Mawson pulled, rested, and lunged again. He reached the lip of the crevasse and tried to roll onto the surface above.

That effort broke loose the overhanging lip. Mawson fell all the way to the end of his harness rope. Despair overwhelmed him. He pondered slipping out of the harness to plunge to the bottom of the crevasse, ending things at once rather than by strangling or slowly freezing. At that moment, a verse from his favorite poet, Robert Service, flashed through his mind: “Just have one more try—it’s dead easy to die, / It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.”

The words spurred him to “one last tremendous effort.”…

Geronimo aka “He Who Yawns”

Posted on by


That’s the famous Apache renegade, Geronimo.  He’s probably one of the few Indians  – or Native Americans – if you prefer the more politically correct term, that modern people know by name.  Did you know that…

  • Geronimo’s birth name was Goyahkla — He Who Yawns which was given to him because of his “sleepy” nature  
  •  It would be said that after one of his victims screamed for mercy in the name of Saint Jerome — Jeronimo in Spanish — the Apaches had a new name for Goyahkla.  
  • …white settlers in the American West were known to frighten their misbehaving children with the threat that Geronimo would come for them.  

Craig’s Back – Where’s He Been?

Posted on by

Well, it’s been a while hasn’t it.

My computer crashed on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend.  I took it into the shop ( a great local place called Volusia Computers) the next morning.  What followed was a run of bad luck I haven’t seen since Big John Beatty busted out on triple aces twice in a row in a game of In-Between.

But that’s a story for another time.

The guys at Volusia Computers were great, but my computer could not be resuscitated.  We almost had it back, but then it died again.  At that point I decided to buy a refurbished, but bigger and faster computer.  It was ready for pick-up and started experiencing minor problems when they were showing me it’s features.  So for my inconvenience I was upgraded to an even better computer for a lower price.

The downside was that it took some time to get my new refurbished computer ready for me to take home.  Oh, and did I mention that while all this was going on that my big screen tv died?  It did.

FPL came out and installed a smart merter and didn’t tell us to turn off appliances.  So for a few days I was without my computer AND my big screen tv.

All is good now.  I’ve got a new tv and new (to me) computer.  Both are improvements over what I had.  So…

I’m back, baby.

Did You Hear About the Time-Traveling Attorney?

Posted on by

Andrew Basiago is a Seattle attorney who, since 2004, has been publicly proclaiming that as a child he was involved in a government sponsored time-travel program known as Project Pegasus.  According to Basiago, the US government has had time-travel technology for over 40 years. 

Basiago further claims that, as a child he time-traveled to [and was photographed at] Gettysburg when Lincoln gave his famous speech.  If you click over to this article at the Huffington Post, you can see the photograph from 1863 of the child that Basiago claims is him, taken while on his time-travel mission.  You can also view a  video of Basiago talking about his time-travel experiences. 

Wow!  Andrew Basiago’s claims make his childhood sound like a cross between Johnny Quest and The Time Tunnel.  Both of which, were more plausible.

Happy New Years 2012

Posted on by

We’re just a little over 6 hours away from 2011 going into the history books and 2012 opening a new chapter in all of our lives.  I like the promise that a new year holds.  Don’t you?  [You’re not one of those “2012: end of times” fanatics are you?  If so, I’ll bet you’re having a hard time getting excited about the promise of the coming year.]

I have to admit though that I’m usually not excited to see a year come to an end.  For one thing it means we’re getting a year older.  That by itself is no biggie.  Who cares about one year coming to an end?  It’s the cumulative effect of all those previous years ending that take their toll.  Plus when a year comes to a close, it signals that all of our unfinished goals, resolutions and projects won’t be finished THAT year.

I do like that New Year’s is a time to pause and reflect on the past year and the blessings that we’ve received or heartache we’ve been spared.  I also enjoy the opportunity to plan for the coming year.  Although I’m not one for resolutions, at least public resolutions, I hope 2012 sees a couple of mine succeed.  While I’m hoping for good things in 2012, let me wish you and yours the best that a new year can bring.  

Moon Conspiracy Theories

Posted on by

TruTV recently posted a piece about called 10 Conspiracies About the Moon (Not Including the Big One).  Here are some tidbits that I thought interesting:

  • “Nostradamus… is believed to be telling of the moon landing… ‘He will come to go into the corner of Luna / Where he will be captured and put in a strange land / The unripe fruits will be the subject of great scandal / Great blame, to one great praise.'”
  • Late in the war, “the Nazis were developing high-tech weaponry and, some believe, space shuttle technology. Theories say that the Nazis could have been the actual winners of the space race in 1942… While there, they set up a base, which is said to have since been frequented by astronauts from other countries. Another rumor suggests that Hitler survived WWII, fled the planet using rocket technology and lived a long life on the Nazi moon base.” [I would love to see a Hellboy story set in the 1960’s based on  Hitler living on the moon with a Nazi army!]
  • There is “alleged Apollo 14 footage of a monkey or dog-like creature moving rapidly across the lunar surface while the astronauts are already back inside the spacecraft.”
  • Some folks “now believe that there are weapons of mass destruction locked and ready to blast off from the moon. But are they pointing at Earth or into space?”
  • The 2011 film Apollo 18 is a mockumentary-style horror flick with the basic concept that we did not return to the moon because of an alien presence the astronauts found there. Or is it a documentary?
  • “According to the UFO Casebook website, NASA has captured images of what are believed to be alien bases on the far side of the moon. In 1994, the US Navy sent a satellite called Clementine to take images of the moon, but found nothing unusual enough to share with the public.
  • “Though 1.8 million images were taken, only 170,000 images were made public. The rest have been classified, which leads many to believe that proof of alien life is being withheld from the public.”
  • Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who was the Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 14, claimed during a radio interview with Nick Margerrison of Kerrang Radio in 2008 that aliens had made contact with humans many times but that the government has been hiding the truth.”
  • “Another rumor: both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin saw and filmed an active alien moon base on the far side of the moon during their lunar jaunt. James Lovell of the Apollo 8 mission is also rumored to have seen evidence of alien life.”

i would love for friendly (big smile) intelligent  alien life to be discovered.  Until then, I’m going with the Hitler and Nazi army on a moonbase as my favorite moon conspiracy theory.