Bytes

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Saturday, August 24, 2024

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY . . .

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Ron, here’s another Kansas City item for you . . .

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The non-decomposing nun:

Source: Daily Mail

Date: 24 August 2024

Link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13774079/Missouri-nun-Sister-Wilhelmina-Lancaster-body-decomposed.html

A team of experts has been unable to explain why a Missouri nun who died in 2019 has not decomposed, according to the Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, passed away on May 29, 2019. When her body was exhumed in April 2023, it was found to be remarkably preserved despite not being embalmed and being buried in an unsealed wooden coffin.

The discovery sparked widespread interest and a pilgrimage to the small town of Gower, Missouri, where Lancaster's body was placed on public display.

Bishop James V. Johnston commissioned a team of medical experts to investigate the case. After a thorough examination, the team concluded that Lancaster's condition was 'highly atypical' for the time elapsed since her death.

'Within the limits of what has been observed during this time, the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster does not appear to have experienced the decomposition that would have normally been expected under such previous burial conditions,' Bishop James V. Johnston of Kansas City-St. Joseph said in a statement published on the diocesan website.

In addition to examining her body, 'the team inspected the casket, and interviews were conducted with eyewitnesses to events immediately preceding the burial in 2019 and the exhumation in April 2023,' he said. 'In the final report, the investigative team noted that the condition of Sister Wilhelmina's body during the examination was notable for a lack of any detected features of decomposition,' Johnston said. Despite the casket's lining having 'completely deteriorated,' Lancaster's habit and other clothing 'showed no features of breakdown,' Johnston said.

While soil tests found no unusual elements that would prevent decomposition, the experts were unable to provide a definitive explanation for the phenomenon. In the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the preservation of a body after death is known as 'incorruptibility.' Although Lancaster has not been officially designated as 'incorrupt,' her case has raised questions about the nature of death and the possibility of miracles.

The nun's remains are in a glass case in the abbey's church and she is able to be viewed each day, per the abbey's website.

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster

People pray over the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles abbey on Sunday, May 28, 2023

People wait to view the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles abbey on Sunday

People collect dirt from the gravesite of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles abbey Sunday, May 28, 2023

(The sign says ‘Please take no more than a teaspoon of dirt. Thank you’)

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Comment:

Reminds me of the following:

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards." He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."

Suddenly the realisation of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."

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While on the topic of religion . . .

The Shroud of Turin

Source: Daily Mail

Date: 24 August 2024

Link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13773733/Shroud-Turin-analysis-study-Medieval-forgery.html

Scientists are calling for a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin amid a seemingly growing body of evidence that challenges the idea it's a fake. There are also claims that bad data was used in a landmark 1988 UK study which found the shroud was a Medieval forgery and not the cloth Jesus was buried in.

A new review by researchers from France and Italy has revisited those 30-year-old findings and claims to have discovered discrepancies in the data which were not made public and raise doubts about the definitiveness of the results.

Tristan Casabianca, a French independent researcher, who made the find, told DailyMail.com that his findings do not confirm the shroud is older or the burial cloth used to lay Jesus to rest. But Casabianca - who was an atheist until he began investigating the shroud 20 years ago - said those factors could not be ruled out 'without a re-analysis.'

The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen featuring a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus

The 1988 study used a technique known as carbon dating to determine the age of the controversial Shroud of Turin. The team determined with '95 percent confidence' the relic was manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD, long after the time of Christ's resurrection. The conclusion was reached after analyses performed on a corner of the ancient fabric by three different labs - at the universities of Arizona, Zürich and Oxford.

But after obtaining the raw data, Casabianca found the results varied by decades. One of Zürich's estimates in the Nature study said the cloth was up to 733 years old, but 595 years in the raw data. Oxford's shroud sample was between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw data featured estimates that were off by up to 55 years. Arizona's linen was between 591 and 701 years old, with the raw data showing a difference of up to 59 years.

Even though that would still places the cloth in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, Casabianca said it raises doubts. He continued to explained that 'the lack of precision seriously affects the reliability of the 95 percent,' suggesting it was no more than 41 percent. Anything lower than 60 percent suggests that there is a lot of disagreement or inconsistency among the results, according to the 2019 study published in Archaeometry.

'We can say with confidence that the 1988 radiocarbon dating process led to a failure,' said Casabianca, who is an independent researcher in France. 'It was supposed to close a book, and it has only opened a new chapter. This failure could have been avoided with a better protocol.'

Graphic designer Otangelo Grasso created a progression of what Jesus may have looked like based on the shroud image

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Comment:

I remember reading a book some years ago about the shroud and it made some interesting points:

The samples tested might have been contaminated or taken from a repair to the original fabric.
The shroud image is a negative, not a positive, which would have been hard to do at that time.
The wounds depicted match the Biblical descriptions of the wounds of Jesus.
The shroud was ahead of its time in showing that the person deoicted had been crucified by the wrists when all artworks had shown Jesus crucified through his palms.
There were two angles of bloodflow from the wrists, the hypothesis being that one bloodflow pattern was when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he other after he was taken down.
The further conclusion is that the person was not dead when taken down from the cross, hence being able to pear resurrected some days later.
It was suggested that this was the burial shroud for Jesus but he was not dead. The heat of the body reacting to the herbs etc applied to his body caused the imprint on the shroud.
The authors replicated the above with one of them, from memory, having a fever, having the herbs etc applied and staying in a similar closth. A rudimentary image was left.
The belief that Jesus ‘resurrected’ because he was not really dead is not new, it was put forward by Dr Hugh Schhonfeld in his book The Passover Plot.

As with the non-decomposing nun:

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World’s second-largest diamond found:

Source: Daily Mail

Date: 22 August 2024

Link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13768581/Miners-second-biggest-diamond-carat-tens-millions-X-ray-technology-Botswana.html

The second biggest diamond ever found - a rough 2,492-carat stone - has been unearthed in Botswana thanks to specialist X-ray technology. The gem, uncovered by Canadian mining firm Lucara, is the largest diamond seen in the last 120 years since the discovery of the world-famous Cullinan Diamond. The 3,106-carat stone was found in neighbouring South Africa in 1905 and was cut into nine separate stones, many of which now form part of the British crown jewels.

The newly discovered diamond

Picture shows the scale of the huge stone next to a golf ball

It is not known whether the latest diamond to be discovered will yield the highest-quality gems, but the sheer size of the rock means it will likely be worth tens of millions regardless.

The gem was recovered by X-ray transmission technology first installed in 2017. It is designed to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds, extracting them from the ground without causing them to break.

The stone was found in the Karowe mine, located roughly 300 miles north of Botswana's capital, Gaborone. Two other huge diamonds were also found in the mine in recent years - the 1,758-carat Sewelo and 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona. In 2017, British diamond mogul Laurence Graff paid $53 million (more than £40m) for the 1109 carat Lesedi La Rona. Two years later, in 2019, Louis Vuitton parted with an undisclosed sum for the 1758 carat Sewelo Diamond.

The discovery comes amid a lull in diamond sales, with prices falling to their lowest in four years, according to the Diamond Standard Index. The industry did well during the pandemic, when wealthy customers unable to spend on travel and entertainment wanted to splash out on luxury goods instead. However, demand has since dipped, and the market has become oversaturated, including by the rise in synthetic stones.

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Comment:

As regards the Cullinan Diamond:

It was named after Thomas Cullinan, the owner of the mine where it was found.

In April 1905, it was put on sale in London, but despite considerable interest, it was still unsold after two years.

In 1907, the Transvaal Colony government bought the Cullinan and Prime Minister Louis Botha presented it to Edward VII, the British king who reigned over the territory.

When cut, Cullinan produced stones of various cuts and sizes, including 9 major stones:

Nine largest stones split from the rough Cullinan diamond

The largest cut stone is named Cullinan I and was named the Great Star of Africa by Edward VII. It is the largest clear cut diamond in the world. Cullinan 1 is mounted in the head of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross.

The head of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross

The second-largest is Cullinan II or the Second Star of Africa, mounted in the Imperial State Crown.

Imperial State Crown of the United Kingdom

Both Cullinan 1 and Cullinan 11 are part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

Seven other major diamonds were privately owned by Elizabeth II, who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953. The Queen also owned minor brilliants and a set of unpolished fragments.

The nine major stones cut from the rough Cullinan diamond. Top: Cullinans II, I and III. Bottom: Cullinans VI, VIII, IV, V, VII and IX.

Queen Mary wearing Cullinans I and II as a brooch on her chest, III as a pendant on the Coronation Necklace, and IV in the base of her crown, below the Koh-i-Noor

Friday, August 23, 2024

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

PLACES: KANSAS CITY

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Continuing a look at the hometowns of some regular overseas contributors.

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Next batter up: Ron of Kansas City . . .

It's another lengthy one, readers.

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Kansas City, Missouri

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About:

Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by population and area. It is the central city of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Missouri–Kansas state line and has a population of 2,392,035.As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090, making it the 37th most-populous city in the United States, as well as the sixth-most populous city in the Midwest.

Sitting on Missouri's western boundary with Kansas, with Downtown near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, the city encompasses about 319.03 square miles (826.3 km2), making it the 25th largest city by total area in the United States.

Downtown Kansas City skyline

Kauffman Stadium

Courtyard near entrance of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Kauffman Center for Performing Arts at daytime in Kansas City, MO.

Opened in 2011, it houses two venues: the 1,800-seat Muriel Kauffman Theatre, home of the Kansas City Ballet and Lyric Opera of Kansas City; and the 1,600-seat Helzberg Hall, home of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra.

Does anyone else think this resembles an armadillo:

The Kansas City Symphony prepares to begin their annual performance of Handel's Messiah in Helzberg Hall.

Aerial photo of the National WWI Museum and Memorial with the Kansas City skyline.

That one above doesn’t look like an armadillo but . . .

Kansas City Union Station

Opened in 1914 as the second largest train station in America at the time. Now served by 6 Amtrak trains each day. Its primary use today is to house the Science Center, restaurants, and museums.

Downtown Kansas City looking over Union Station from the Liberty Memorial

Country Club Plaza (view from J.C. Nichols Parway at 47th Street), Kansas City, Missouri

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History:

The town of Kansas, Missouri was incorporated on June 1, 1850, reincorporated and renamed City of Kansas on March 28, 1853, and renamed Kansas City in 1889.

The area straddles the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, and was considered a good place settle.

In past centuries, the area's tribal inhabitants include the Hopewell tradition, Mississippian culture, Kansa, Osage, Otoe, and Missouri.

The first documented European visitor to the eventual site of Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, he had deserted his post as fort commander and was avoiding French authorities. Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about 90 miles (140 km) east near Brunswick, Missouri, where he illegally traded furs.

To clear his name, he wrote Exact Description of Louisiana, of Its Harbors, Lands and Rivers, and Names of the Indian Tribes That Occupy It, and the Commerce and Advantages to Be Derived Therefrom for the Establishment of a Colony in 1713 and The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River in 1714. In the documents, he describes the junction of the "Grande Riv[ière] des Cansez" and Missouri River, as the first adoption of those names. French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the area's first reasonably accurate map.

The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but were not to play a major role other than taxing and licensing Missouri River ship traffic. The French continued their fur trade under Spanish license. The Chouteau family operated under Spanish license at St. Louis, in the lower Missouri Valley as early as 1765 and in 1821 the Chouteaus reached Kansas City, where François Chouteau established Chouteau's Landing.

In 1831, Gabriel Prudhomme Sr., a Canadian trapper and partner of François Chouteau, purchased 257 acres (104 ha) fronting the Missouri River. He established a home for his wife, Josephine, and six children. He operated a ferry on the river.

In 1833, John McCoy, son of Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy and brother-in-law of Johnston Lykins, established West Port along the Santa Fe Trail, 3 miles (4.8 kilometres) south of the river. In 1834, McCoy established Westport Landing on a bend in the Missouri to serve as a landing point for West Port, with Lykins as the first postmaster. He found it more convenient to have his goods offloaded at the Prudhomme landing next to Chouteau's landing than in Independence. Several years after Gabriel Prudhomme's death, a group of fourteen investors purchased his land at auction on November 14, 1838. By 1839, the investors divided the property and the first lots were sold in 1846 after legal complications were settled. The remaining lots were sold by February 1850.

The Kansas City Pioneer Square monument in Westport features Pony Express founder Alexander Majors, Westport and Kansas City founder John Calvin McCoy, and mountain man Jim Bridger who owned Chouteau's Store.

After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, noting it was a good place to build a fort. In 1831, a group of Mormons from New York state led by Joseph Smith settled in the area. They built the first school within what became Kansas City, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833.

In 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the town of Kansas, Missouri. By that time, the towns of Kansas, Westport, and nearby Independence, had become critical points in the westward expansion of the United States. Three major trails – the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon – all passed through Jackson County.

During the Civil War, the city and its immediate surroundings were the focus of intense military activity. Although the First Battle of Independence in August 1862 resulted in a Confederate States Army victory, the Confederates were unable to leverage their win in any significant fashion, as Kansas City was occupied by Union troops and proved too heavily fortified to assault. The Second Battle of Independence, which occurred on October 21–22, 1864, as part of Sterling Price's Missouri expedition of 1864, also resulted in a Confederate triumph. Once again their victory proved hollow, as Price was decisively defeated in the pivotal Battle of Westport the next day, effectively ending Confederate efforts to regain Missouri.

General Thomas Ewing, in response to a successful raid on nearby Lawrence, Kansas, led by William Quantrill, issued General Order No. 11, forcing the eviction of residents in four western Missouri counties – including Jackson – except those living in the city and nearby communities and those whose allegiance to the Union was certified by Ewing.

William Clarke Quantrill (1837 – 1865) was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War. Quantrill experienced a turbulent childhood, became a schoolteacher, and joined a group of bandits who roamed the Missouri and Kansas countryside to apprehend escaped slaves. The group became irregular pro-Confederate soldiers called Quantrill's Raiders, a partisan ranger outfit best known for its often brutal guerrilla tactics, and including the young Jesse James and his older brother Frank James. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant on April 9, 1865. On May 10, the US Army caught up to Quantrill and his band in an ambush in Wakefield, Kentucky. While attempting to flee on a skittish horse, Quantrill was shot in the back and paralysed from the chest down. Quantrill was brought by wagon to Louisville, Kentucky, and taken to the military prison hospital. He died from his wounds on June 6, 1865, at the age of 27.

After the Civil War, Kansas City grew rapidly, the population exploding after 1869, when Hannibal Bridge, designed by Octave Chanute, opened. The boom prompted a name change to Kansas City in 1889, and the city limits to be extended south and east. Westport became part of Kansas City on December 2, 1897.

Landscape architect George Kessler shaped Kansas City into a leading example of the City Beautiful movement, with a network of boulevards and parks.

The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse (below) was a major disaster. Two overhead walkways in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, collapsed on July 17, 1981, killing 114 people and injuring 216. Loaded with partygoers, the concrete and glass platforms crashed onto a tea dance in the lobby. Kansas City society was affected for years, with the collapse resulting in billions of dollars of insurance claims, legal investigations, and city government reforms.

In the 21st century, the Kansas City area has undergone extensive redevelopment, with more than $6 billion in improvements to the downtown area on the Missouri side. One of the main goals is to attract convention and tourist dollars, office workers, and residents to downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

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Kansas City is located in Tornado Alley, a broad region where cold air from Canada collides with warm air from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the formation of powerful storms, especially during the spring. The Kansas City metropolitan area has experienced several significant outbreaks of tornadoes in the past, including the Ruskin Heights tornado in 1957 and the May 2003 tornado outbreak sequence (363 tornadoes overall, of which 62 were significant). The region can also experience ice storms during the winter, such as the 2002 ice storm in which hundreds of thousands of residents lost power for days or weeks. Kansas City and its outlying areas are also subject to flooding, including the Great Floods of 1844, 1951, and 1993.

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Gallery:

The Junction, Kansas City, 1890

1903: The second great Kansas City flood consumes the railroad station (Union Depot) in the city’s West Bottoms district. Rail executives decide to build a new train station on higher ground and in a more central location.

Construction begins on the massive building. Union Station is designed in the beaux-arts architectural style popular in the United States and France in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Kansas City city market 1906

Stockyards at Kansas City, Missouri, 1890s. The facility established in 1871 along the Kansas River and the Kansas Pacific and Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks, became one of the leading livestock markets in the United States. The stockyards closed for business in October of 1999.

Main Street, Kansas City Mo, 1864

Main Street, looking north from 6th Street. Horses and wagons line up where parked cars and scooters currently reside. Bullene Dry Goods is visible from this view. The department store would eventually become a part of the Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company that was established in 1889. It was the same year as the Battle of Westport, which is sometimes known as “The Gettysburg of the Midwest.”

Coates Homestead, 1868

The Coates Homestead stands tall over recently planted trees on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 10th Street. The home belonged to Kersey Coates, a businessman who was well known in Kansas City in the late 1800s. Coates was a colonel in the Missouri Militia during the Civil War. In 1871 he organized the first Kansas City agriculture and industrial fair. He was also a founding member of the Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the first Board of Trade. He died on April 24, 1887.

Public Square, 1871

The public square included what is now known as the River Market today. It got that name from the open-air farmers market that was located in the public square. Here, people gathered and seemingly lined up their horses and wagons like it was a parking lot. The River Market was designated as a historic district in 1978.

Kansas City and Westport Streetcar 1870

This mule-drawn streetcar is taking Kansas City residents from downtown to Westport. The fare at the time was 25 cents. The city has an interesting history with streetcars. In the mid-1880s, cable lines began to replace horse- and mule-drawn streetcars, which we reported on back in June. The Southwest Boulevard line was the first to become powered by electricity in 1896. By 1948, seven streetcar lines had been replaced by trolley bus lines. By 1959, there were no more streetcar lines – until the new downtown streetcar line opened 2016.

Steamboats 1880

At the foot of Main Street, people gather to get on a steamboat traversing the Missouri River. Steamboats first appeared on Western rivers in 1807. Before steamboats, flatboats were the main source of transportation by water. They could only be carried by the flow of water. Steamboats made water travel much more efficient, with the newfound ability to travel upstream.