britain

Julia Martha Thomas hires Kate Webster as a maid Dubbed the “Barnes Mystery” or the “Richmond Murder”, the case became one of the most notorious crimes in the late 19th-century Britain. Julia Martha Thomas, a widow in her 50s who lived in Richmond in southwest London, was murdered on March 2, 1879 by her maid, Kate Webster, a 30-year-old Irishwoman with a long history of criminal activities. Webster disposed of the body by dismembering it, boiling the flesh off the bones, and throwing most of the remains into the River Thames. The boiled fat from the body however, she retained for her own devious use. In 1879, Julia Martha Thomas lived alone in a small cottage at 2 Mayfield Cottages on Park Road in Richmond, just outside

On two nights in late-December 1980, bizarre lights and mysterious flying objects were witnessed by dozens of military personnel in Rendlesham Forest, just outside the Bentwaters airbase in Suffolk. Dubbed "Britain’s Roswell", the Rendlesham Forest UFO event is one of the most well-documented and widely-witnessed UFO sightings in modern times. It is also one of the most government-suppressed UFO reports in history. Now a witness to the event, Col Charles Halt, claims he has new evidence in hand supporting military personnel’s claim of the unusual objects they witnessed in Rendlesham Forest. Summary of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident Three US military officers (John Burroughs, Bud Steffens, and James Penniston) based at RAF Bentwaters (an airbase used by the US Air Force during the Cold War) claimed a

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program – aka the “Star Wars Project” The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, popularly known as the “Star Wars project”, was first proposed by United States President Ronald Reagan in 1983 (and was likely conceived a few years prior to that). Its stated mission was simple: create a space-based system to protect the United States and its allies from attack by enemy strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. To the United States of course, the Strategic Defense Initiative could realize ground-breaking technological advances but Britain had much to gain too. In return for Margaret Thatcher’s support for the Star Wars program, the Reagan Administration promised a number of lucrative SDI contracts to the British defense industry including partnerships with key British defense companies

A no more unusual circumstance than swallowing molten metal can be imagined but in fact, there are many recorded cases of people swallowing molten metals (both by accident and as a method of torture). After a particularly unusual incident in Plymouth, a series of experiments were conducted on dogs, cats, and fowl to determine the effects of swallowing molten material. The case that sparked the interest within the medical community was the death of Henry Hall who accidentally swallowed molten lead while fighting a lighthouse fire in 1755. The death of Henry Hall 94-year-old Henry Hall was a lighthouse keeper who worked on the Eddystone Lighthouse in the English county of Devon. At around 2:00 AM on December 2, 1755, Hall discovered that a spark from a

Mandy Ewington was strolling along a British coastline when she looked up and noticed two odd-looking “tubes” sticking out of the face of a cliff. She quickly recognized the protruding white tubes for what they were, femur bones, and snapped pictures which she sent to leading coastal archaeologist Karl-James Langford. Langford also recognized the grisly remains as two thigh bones which were slowly being revealed as the cliffs eroded away. Langford explained that Monknash, in South Wales, was a burial ground for Cistercian monks in the Middle Ages. Analysis of the bones revealed they belonged to a male in his late 20’s which were estimated to have been interred in the 1200’s. “It's quite an easy picture to put together. There was a religious community close to

Security footage has captured what appears to be a ghostly spirit in Bolton’s oldest pub (and fourth oldest in Britain).  The CCTV video was captured at the Ye Olde Man and Scythe pub in Churchgate, Britain, a bar that has long been rumored to be haunted, and shows a ghostly figure flickering into view before quickly disappearing. Manager Tony Dooley was awoken on Friday by the sound of breaking glass. He got up to investigate and noticed that the pub’s security cameras had stopped working so he checked the footage to see what was up. “At first I thought someone had broken in, but I thought it was weird that the cameras stopped working, and then I watched it back and saw the figure.” Early frames of the

In a war that featured, for the first time, “modern” formidable weapons such as grenades, mortars, machine guns, flamethrowers, and armored tanks, one eccentric young soldier decided early on to buck traditional convention and stick what he was most comfortable with. Thus, John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, who came to be known as “Mad Jack,” fought in World War II using a sword, bow, and a quiver of arrows, an arsenal that proved quite effective and earned Mad Jack two Distinguished Service Orders, a Military Cross, and a promotion to commanding officer. When asked about his outdated weaponry, Mad Jack flatly stated, “In my opinion, any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.” Romantic and sensitive, Mad Jack was an avid

"I am a freak… and if you saw me you'd faint" "I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you'd faint, you'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt." Thus said Gef when asked what he was. Hiding in the walls of a quaint farmhouse on the Isle of Man (Mann), Gef was indeed a unusual persona. Researched extensively by legendary ghost hunter, Harry Price, Gef was thought to be a spirit that took shape in the form of a talking mongoose. On a farm in Manx, Doarlish Cashen in the United Kingdom's Isle of Man, in the early 1930’s, Mr. James T. Irving discovered what he thought was a strange animal inside his house.