The skulls of a mother-and-daughter pair of female Swedish saints, treasured as holy relics for centuries at the abbey of their order, have been exposed as fakes by genetics boffins.

The two skulls were supposed to be those of Saint Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden and her daughter Saint Catherine (Katarina), noted heavyweight holy ladies of the 14th century.

Saint Bridget was, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, “the most celebrated saint of the Northern kingdoms”, famous for having visions of Jesus and writing down stuff he had told her. Born in 1303, she moved to Rome in 1349 and stayed there (barring pilgrimages to the Holy Land and so on) until her death in 1373. She got the thumbs-up for saint status from Pope Boniface IX just 18 years later, an impressive performance – especially when one considers that the intervening period had seen a massive row as to just who was the real Pope.

Bridget’s daughter Catherine, meanwhile, married a German nobleman but managed to persuade him to join her in a vow of mutual chastity and the pair lived as virgins until she joined her mother on the journey to Rome. Her husband, left behind in Sweden, died soon after they got there, and she refused to marry again despite having apparently received many offers. Catholic tradition holds that a magic holy deer of god would turn up and protect her when “unchaste youths sought to ensnare her”. Less hotly fancied in the sainthood stakes than her mother, it took Catherine over a century after her death in 1381 to get canonised.

Read more:

The Register: Swedish mother-daughter saint skulls are ringers, say boffins

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This report was heard today on Coast to Coast AM.

War of the Worlds“The 370 children at Southway Junior School, in Burgess Hill, west Sussex, saw a ’spaceship’ crash near their school and then aliens grabbed a member of staff as part of the performance.The ‘alien invasion’ show, which was supported by Sussex Police, took place without parents being informed, leaving some furious that they had to comfort their terrified children.”

Did this exercise benefit the kids in any way? It is strange that similar kinds of ‘exercises’ are also held across the pond in the US. Every so often we hear of police staging ‘terror attacks’ on school kids without the prior knowledge of the parents. This incident is no different.

Why do these ‘authorities’ feel that these are necessary?

Read the whole report on The Telegraph

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Did aliens attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama? Check it out and decide for yourself.

Here’s the original CNN video. You’ll see the object in question streak across the sky in the shot showing the people attending the event.

What was flying in front of the Washington Monument on the day of President Obama’s inauguration?

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Media Debunk this footage as Bird optical illusion

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wivb.com: Graphic artists debunk Inauguration Day UFO

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As the year draws to a close, we are inevitably drawn to predictions of the year ahead, but seldom do we look at the predictions of things that should have taken place over the previous year.

Livescience’s Benjamin Radford has drawn up a list of predictions that did not come true for 2008. Here they are:

1) Locust Swarms Destroy Wheat Crops

2) Top U.S. General in Iraq Killed; Troops Return

3) Supervolcano Spews Ash Across Globe

4) Beloved Entertainer Dies in Stunt Tomfoolery

5) Global Famine Kills Millions

The only one which in most ominous and could possibly happen is number 3.

Over the last few weeks, there have been odd earthquakes and rumblings at Yellowstone National Park. For those who don’t know, Yellowstone sits on top of an active caldera which last erupted about 640 000 years ago. Experts reckon that if it blows, it will be a super-volcano!

Read more about these predictions at LiveScience.com

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