Huguenots
The Huguenots were French Christian Protestants expelled with the Jews and Muslims by the Catholics from 1600s-1700s France.
Today, Huguenots’ descendants are ethnic French found all around the world except for France. Famous Huguenot descendants and where their descendants immigrated to include Laurence Olivier (England), Charlize Theron (South Africa), Davey Crockett (United States), and Samuel Beckett (Ireland).
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Sunrise mirage
The rare sunrise mirage is one of the most striking mirages. These are seen over frigid areas, such as frozen lakes and icy lands. The sunlight is bent upwards along the earth’s curved surface making the sunrise appear earlier than normal. The sun is also distorted. Sometimes two suns are seen at once, one superimposed over the other.
This mirage was noticed centuries ago by Western explorers stranded in the Arctic over the winter. That far north there is no sun 24 hours a day for much of the winter. The explorers were surprised when the first sunrise of the season appeared days before it was supposed to. It wasn’t until centuries later that experts realized the explorers had witnessed this mirage.
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Huge Alamo collection from an unlikely source
The world's largest and most valuable collection of artifacts from 1836's The Battle of the Alamo between Mexico and America, including Jim Bowie's knife and Davey Crockett's gun, was accumulated and owned by British rocker Phil Collins. He said he gained a lifelong fascination with the battle after watching Disney's 1950s Davey Crockett television series as a young boy in London. In 2014 he donated the collection to the city of San Antonio Texas, the site of the battle, and the mayor named him a "true Texan."
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Famous astronauts with different personalities
Though the most famous ever 'space travelers,' Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American astronaut Neil Armstrong had opposite personalities. Gagarin was famously gregarious, and friendly, loved greeting crowds, and nearly always had a big smile. Armstrong, on the other hand, was notoriously shy, aloof, and dreaded being the center of social attention.
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Wax mummy portraits
Shown above and below are ancient encaustic Fayum mummy portraits, on wood panels and attached to the entombed mummies showing what the people looked like when alive. Encaustic is an ancient type of paint where the pigment is mixed with beeswax, and encaustic paintings have a distinct waxy look and smell.
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A banned war docudrama
One of the most famous speculative documentaries, The War Game was a 1965 British short black-and-white documentary-style and ultrarealistic drama made by Peter Walkins for the BBC. About the worst-case scenario of a nuclear war between the East and the West, it focuses on the effects on a scenic little English town hit by an errant missile. The BBC and British government found it too disturbing and horrifying for public consumption and it wasn't shown in the UK until the 1980s.
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Quote of the week
"You can trust that little screwball with your life or your hopes or your weaknesses, and she wouldn't even know how to think about letting you down."-- Clark Gable on his wife Carole Lombard
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Henry & Baruch cartoon of the week
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