The Book of THoTH Newsletter Issue 140

[ReverendChaos]

Newsletter for the week of March 16th to March 22th

Hello to everyone! To all of our new subscribers out there, welcome
to the book of THoTH Newsletter and to our Book of THoTH Google
group. Thanks for taking the time to subscribe and thanks for joining
our group. We're glad that you've joined our mailing list and hope
that you enjoy what we have to offer in its pages.

As of this newsletter, we have had 27 new members to join us this
week at BoT. To those who've joined, we say thanks for taking the
time to be a part of the greatest paranormal site on the web! Due to
this new addition of members, we now stand at 7,765 members strong. A
huge thanks to each and everyone of you for helping to make this site
what it has become! We couldn't do it without you.


This Week at BoT:
We have another change of hands with the prestigious GoldStar award.
Lonecat, last week's holder GoldStar, passed the most deserving award
onto Momma this week. This GoldStar was a perfect Mothers Day gift to
BoT's very own Momma, along with being "in recognition of all the
effort Momma puts into keeping this fantastic website running
smoothely". Congratulations go out to you, Momma!

Our last member to wear the BoT LabCoat, TrentCoole, has posted a
question. Trent's question is:
"What is the proper terminology for when a barren landscape (such as a
volcanic island arising from the sea or an abandoned open pit mine)
develops naturally into an ecosystem & what is involved?"

No one's attempted an answer yet, so if you want a chance at getting
to wear the stylish and highly coveted BoT LabCoat, then step into
"BoT LabCoat Quiz Part VIII".
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/ftopic-19452-90.html


This Week on the Front Page:
On the front page this week, be sure not to miss the Happy Mothers Day
message to BoT's (and THoTH's) very own mother, Momma. To leave a
message for the person who has worked so hard around here and has
become our rock, take the time to read THoTH's message on the front
page.
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/article1835.html


This Week in the Forums:
"Military jets chase UFO over AZ town" is a thread by mensa517 that
tells of how witnesses reported jets following a triangular shaped
craft over town. Was it ETs or our own? To join in on the
discussion, see mensa517's thread in the UFO section.
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/ftopict-19939.html

If you want to catch some interesting articles by our members, and
maybe even submit your own, be sure to take a browse around in our
Featured Authors section. This is a section where you can find out a
little more about our resident authors, read articles by our members,
and even submit articles of your own that may find their way to our
front page.
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/forum-36.html

Do you believe in past lives? This is the subject of Mort's thread in
the Phenomena section. How about cases of reincarnation? Are those
memories of former lives messages instead? For more discussion on the
topic, don't miss "Past Lives".
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/ftopict-19959.html

For information on Mt Redoubt in Alaska, see Phoenix's thread in the
Nature & Environment section. In it contains a link to a report from
the USGS in Alaska and a video of it's explosions. To find out more,
see "VIDEO: Special Report from the USGS Alaska On Mt. Redoubt".
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/ftopict-19958.html

Has a clue been found on the old D.B. Cooper case? Is there a link
between him an a French comic book? To find out more and to read
about why the FBI is interested is this comic, be sure to check out
Borgia's thread in the Human Condition section, "New clue in the D.B.
Cooper case".
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/ftopict-19908.html


Random Site Feature of the Week:
If you've ever wondered where all of our members are from, then stroll
on over to our Visitor Map. This is a map, courtesy of Google Maps,
where you can place a virtual pin on your location for all of BoT to
see where you live. And if you're lucky enough to be photographed by
a satellite, you can even place it right on top of your house! So
please, have a look and let us know what part of the world you call
home.
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/View-Members.html


Strange Fact of the Week:
According to "Scientific American", a family in Venezuela awoke one
night in 1886 to a loud noise and a vivid light that filled their
home. Soon afterward, the family became extremely ill, with their
faces and lips swelling abnormally. Nine days later, their skin
peeled and their hair fell out. On that same day, the trees
surrounding their house suddenly withered. The cause of the strange
incident has never been found.


Trivia Question of the Week:
According to Louisiana Cajun superstition, what should you do if you
hear an owl calling late at night?


Answer to Last Weeks Trivia Question:
What is unique about the area on the outskirts of Gold Hill, Oregon?

An area on the outskirts of Gold Hill, Oregon is known as the Oregon
Vortex. Said to be a place where gravity and light play tricks and
the laws of nature appear to be warped, the American Indians new about
this place long before the first white man set foot there. Their
horses wouldn't enter the area, leading them to name it "The Forbidden
Land". It is said today that mist like forms and balls of light often
appear in photographs taken in the area. Planes flying overhead have
also been known to experience malfunctions with their instruments.


This Week in History:
March 22, 1903: Due to drought, Niagara Falls runs out of water.

March 22, 1997: Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth in
the skies over the northern hemisphere. The comet’s next pass is
predicted for the year 4397.

March 23, 1806: Lewis and Clark began their return journey east
across the U.S.

March 23, 2001: Russia's Mir space station ended its 15-year orbit of
the Earth, splashing down in the South Pacific.

March 24, 1882: Robert Koch announced the discovery of the
tuberculosis bacillus.

March 24, 1989: In one of worst oil spills in recent history, the
tanker, Exxon Valdez, ran aground and released 240,000 barrels of oil
into Prince William Sound.

March 25, 1609: English explorer Henry Hudson set off from Amsterdam,
on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, in search of the North West
Passage

March 25, 421: Friday at 12 PM - city of Venice founded

March 26, 1953: Dr Jonas Salk announces vaccine to prevent polio.

March 26, 1880: In New Mexico, a huge balloon with visible occupants
was seen. The occupants appeared to be talking in some strange
language not familiar to the observer. A piece of paper fell to the
ground from the ship with what appeared to be Chinese writing on it.
Shortly after, a Chinese man appeared in town and claimed that the
airship was the first. This began a long series of sightings of
airships that for a long time was believed to be the creations of
secret inventors.

March 27, 1914: The first successful blood transfusion was performed,
in a Brussels hospital

March 27, 1964: A 9.2 magnitude earthquake hit 80 miles east of
Anchorage, Alaska, killing 117 and producing a 50-foot tsunami that
traveled over 8,000 miles.

March 28, 1979: The nuclear power station at Three Mile Island,
Pennsylvania, suffered a meltdown in the core of one of its reactors

March 28, 1970: 1,086 die when 7.4 quake destroys 254 villages in
Gediz Turkey.


This Week's Birthdays:
Andrew Lloyd Webber (March 22, 1948) - Andrew Lloyd Webber is an
English composer of musical theatre who started composing at the age
of six and published his first piece at the age of nine. Most known
for his musicals, several of his songs have become hits outside of
their parent musicals.

John Bartram (March 23, 1699) - Bartram was an early American botanist
and horticulturalist. Born into a Quaker farm family and having no
formal education, his career started with a small area of his farm
devoted to growing plants that he found interesting. Considered the
"father of American Botany", he was also "the greatest natural
botanist in the world" according to Carolus Linnaeus.

Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874) - Born Erik Weisz, Houdini was a
Hungarian magician, escapologist, stunt performer, an investigator of
spiritualists, and an amateur aviator. Aside from his famous escape
acts, he was also known for his debunking of spiritualist mediums of
the time and even had a falling out with friend, Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, due to these activities.

Gutzon Borglum (March 25, 1867) - Borglum was an American artist and
sculptor, most famous for sculpting the presidents' heads at Mount
Rushmore, South Dakota. He is also known for dozens of other public
works of art which include one of General Philip Sheridan in
Washington,D.C., a piece call "Aviator" on the ground of the
University of Virginia, and a North Carolina state monument on
Seminary Ridge at the Gettysburg Battlefield that depicts a wounded
Confederate officer encouraging his men to push forward during
Pickett's Charge.

Robert Frost (March 26, 1874) - Frost was an American poet who is
highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his
command of American colloquial speech. With works that frequently
employed themes from the early 1900s rural life in New England and
examined complex social themes, he remains a popular and often-quoted
poet who was honored frequently during his lifetime. He received four
Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (March 27, 1845) - Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was
a German physicist, who, on November 8, 1895, produced and detected
electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as x-
rays. This achievement earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in
1901.

Maxim Gorky (March 28, 1868) - Born Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov, Gorky
was a Soviet/Russian author, a founder of the socialist realism
literary method, and a political activist.

We have also have two birthdays here at BoT this week.
MichaelSeabrook's is on the 22nd of March and mawmawbear8 has a
birthday on the 26th. Happy birthday to both of you! May you have a
great day and a fantastic year to come.


Tech Tip of the Week:
For those of you who use Windows Vista and use the Windows Vista Disk
Cleanup, you may have noticed that it doesn't completely empty your
temporary files folder. It will only delete temporary files that have
not been modified in over a week.

Sometimes this doesn't make much difference, but if you've recently
done a lot of internet surfing and a lot of work that has generated a
large number of temporary files, you may want to manually clean them.
To do this, click on Start and type in %TEMP% into the Start menu's
search box. Click enter and you will be taken to the temporary files
folder. Here, you can delete whatever you like.

If you use the Classic view for the Start menu, you wont see a search
box when you click on Start. If this is the case, you can click on
Run and type %TEMP% in there. Click on OK and you'll be taken to the
same temp folder.


Unsolved Question of the Week:
This weeks unsolved mystery deals with that mysterious object that
crashed on William "Mac" Brazel's ranch in 1947. Yes, we're talking
about the famous Roswell case.

We do know that something crashed there. The military themselves went
there to retrieve it. What we don't know is what it was. Was it a
UFO? Technically, to us, yes. It was a flying object that crashed
and we have no idea what it was. But as far as the members of the
U.S. military that went there to pick up debris are concerned, they
know what it is. The first published report of this incident even
stated that "The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a
reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group
of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough
to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the
local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County."

But wait! Was it really a flying saucer? Not according to later
statements by the military that said it was simply a weather balloon.
You would think that it would be easy to tell a weather balloon from
an alien space ship, but then the report comes out that it was part of
top-secret project (Project Mogul) to detect Soviet nuclear activity.
So perhaps members of the military didn't even know what their own was
up to.

Then there are the interviews conducted by UFO researchers who've
interviewed Mr. Brazel and members of the Roswell area. The
conclusion of these interviews is that not only did an
extraterrestrial craft crash there, but extraterrestrial bodies were
recovered from it.

Then we have the interview with former Major Jesse Marcel, who was
there during it's investigation and recovery. He was quoted as
saying, "Had there been bodies of aliens in the debris, I would have
picked them up and brought them in." But he also confessed that the
wreckage was not part of some type of balloon as the Air Force claimed
publicly. "The material was unusual," Marcel said." "It couldn't
have been a balloon. It was porous, it couldn't hold air." According
to him, and to the best of his knowledge, the military kept all of the
strange metallic fabric that largely made up the debris and that the
famous photograph of Brigadier General Ramey displaying the wreckage
was a fake, staged "strictly for the press."

Who's telling the truth? Between the amount of rumors; the people who
claimed to be eyewitnesses; the military's multiple and differing
explanations; and the confessions of a Major near the end of his life
who no longer had any reason to keep a secret, it's hard to tell.
Although there's anecdotal and circumstantial evidence, all very
convincing, there's no real hard evidence. No evidence of an alien
craft and no evidence of some type of balloon.

All of this does leave us with at least one fact: Until someone
speaks up and presents wreckage, of either an alien craft or a secret
project, we may never know exactly what it was that fell from the sky
and landed on that New Mexico ranch.


Quote of the Week:
"To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the
universe."
- Carl Sagan


That concludes this week's edition of the BoT newsletter. We hope
that you've enjoyed it, found it a nice change in your inbox, and are
looking forward to receiving the next one. As always, we should have
lots more waiting in store for you.

Until next time, keep your eyes to the skies and the door to your mind
unlocked. You never know who might drop by for a visit.