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Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries
''Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries: Uncovering Mysterious Sites, Symbols, and Societies'' is a 2009 book called a "robust and skeptical look at the kind of esoteric nonsense celebrated in ''The Da Vinci Code''." The book itself covers various sites and societies favored by conspiracy theorists and unexplained mystery enthusiasts, including Rosslyn Chapel, Area 51, Skull and Bones, Opus Dei, the Esalen Institute, Mount Weather, Heinrich Himmler's Wewelsburg Castle, Montecristo island and Disneyland's Club 33. In this work, the authors seek to put forward new evidence (and novel theories) about some 150 controversial places and legends, including the following hypotheses: *That the Mediterranean island of Montecristo, an Italian government exclusion zone forbidden to visitors without special permission, may conceal the greatest hidden treasure of all time—the immense booty of Turkish pirate and admiral Turgut Reis. *That contrary to the commonly held view that Yale's Skull and B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerald Warner
James Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie (born 1945) is a Scottish newspaper columnist, author, broadcaster, commentator, and former policy adviser to Michael Forsyth when he was Secretary of State for Scotland. Biography A graduate of the University of Glasgow (Honours MA in Medieval and Modern History), he has been a columnist and social diarist (i.e. society editor) for ''The Sunday Times'', a columnist and editorial (i.e. leader) writer for ''Scotland on Sunday'', and a leader writer for the '' Scottish Daily Mail''. Although his legal name in Scotland is "James Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie", he does not appear to use this formal style in his journalistic writing, preferring "Gerald Warner". During the 1990s Conservative government of Prime Minister John Major, he left journalism to become Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland, the British cabinet minister responsible for Scottish affairs. He had previously been, in 1974, an unsuccessful Parliamentary cand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wewelsburg
Wewelsburg () is a Renaissance castle located in the village of Wewelsburg, which is a district of the town of Büren, Westphalia, in the ''Landkreis'' of Paderborn in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The castle has a triangular layout, with three round towers connected by massive walls. After 1934 it was used by the SS under Heinrich Himmler, and was to be expanded into a complex which would serve as the central SS cult-site. After 1941, plans were developed to enlarge it to be the so-called "Centre of the World". In 1950, the castle reopened as a museum and youth hostel. (The youth hostel is one of the largest in Germany.) The castle today hosts the Historical Museum of the Prince Bishopric of Paderborn and the Wewelsburg 1933–1945 Memorial Museum. History Earlier structures Predecessor buildings existed. One of these, the Wifilisburg, was defended during the 9th and 10th centuries against the Hungarians. Count built another predecessor fortificati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2009 Non-fiction Books
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and Gupta started curving the bottom vertical line coming up with a -look-alike. The Nagari continued the bottom stroke to make a circle and enclose the 3-look-alike, in much the same way that the sign @ encircles a lowercase ''a''. As time went on, the enclosing circle became bigger and its line continued beyond the circle downwards, as the 3-look-alike became smaller. Soon, all that was left of the 3-look-alike was a squiggle. The Arabs simply connected that squiggle to the downward stroke at the middle and subsequent European change was purely cosmetic. While the shape of the glyph for the digit 9 has an ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures the character usually has a descender, as, for example, in . The mod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Student Corps
Corps (or Korps; "''das ~''" ('' n''), (''sg.''), (''pl.'')) are the oldest still-existing kind of ''Studentenverbindung'', Germany's traditional university corporations; their roots date back to the 15th century. The oldest corps still existing today was founded in 1789. Its members are referred to as corps students (''Corpsstudenten''). The corps belong to the tradition of student fraternities which wear couleur and practice academic fencing. The corps are organized in two federations, the ''Kösener Senioren-Convents-Verband'' (''KSCV'') and the ''Weinheimer Senioren-Convent'' (''WSC''). Together, they comprise 162 Corps throughout Germany, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Switzerland and Lithuania. The German Student Corps were traditionally recruited from the nobility, royalty, and social elite, and are traditionally viewed as more aristocratic and elitist than other German student fraternities such as the Catholic Cartellverband and the Burschenschaften. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turgut Reis
Dragut ( tr, Turgut Reis) (1485 – 23 June 1565), known as "The Drawn Sword of Islam", was a Muslim Ottoman naval commander, governor, and noble, of Turkish or Greek descent. Under his command, the Ottoman Empire's maritime power was extended across North Africa. Recognized for his military genius, and as being among "the most dangerous" of corsairs, Dragut has been referred to as "the greatest pirate warrior of all time", "undoubtedly the most able of all the Turkish leaders", and "the uncrowned king of the Mediterranean". He was described by a French admiral as "A living chart of the Mediterranean, skillful enough on land to be compared to the finest generals of the time. No one was more worthy than he to bear the name of king". In addition to serving as Admiral and Corsair in the Ottoman Empire's Navy under Suleiman the Magnificent, Dragut was also appointed Bey of Algiers and Djerba, Beylerbey of the Mediterranean, as well as Bey, and subsequently Pasha, of Tripoli. While ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Club 33
Club 33 comprises a number of private dining clubs located within the various Disney Parks. First opening in 1967 inside Disneyland Park, the club was modeled after numerous executive VIP lounges created by pavilion sponsors in the 1964 New York World's Fair. At the time, Club 33 was the only location within Disneyland Park to offer alcoholic beverages. Additional locations of Club 33 currently exist at Tokyo Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland and as a lounge in each of the four theme parks of the Walt Disney World Resort. Disneyland Club 33 members, and their guests, also have access to the 1901 Lounge at the Carthay Circle in Disney California Adventure. Original Disneyland location Club 33 is located above the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction and next to Walt Disney's former apartment. The entrance of the club was formerly located next to the Blue Bayou Restaurant at "33 Royal Street" with the entrance recognizable by an ornate address plate with the number 33 engraved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disneyland
Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envisioned building a tourist attraction adjacent to his Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), studios in Burbank, California, Burbank to entertain fans who wished to visit; however, he soon felt that the proposed site was too small. After hiring the Stanford Research Institute to perform a feasibility study determining an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a site near Anaheim in 1953. The park was designed by a creative team hand-picked by Walt from internal and outside talent. They founded WED Enterprises, the precursor to today's Walt Disney Imagineering. Construction began in 1954 and the park was unveiled during a special televised press event on the American Broadcasting Company, ABC Television Network on July 17, 1955. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montecristo
Montecristo, also Monte Cristo (, ) and formerly Oglasa ( grc, Ὠγλάσσα, Ōglássa), is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea and part of the Tuscan Archipelago. Administratively it belongs to the municipality of Portoferraio in the province of Livorno, Italy. The island has an area of , is approximately wide at its widest point, and is long; the coasts are steep, and extend for . The island is a state nature reserve and forms part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park. Much of the island's fame is derived from the fact that it provides the title of 1844 novel ''The Count of Monte Cristo'', by Alexandre Dumas, and is one of the novel's settings. History The history of the island begins with the Iron Age. The Etruscans exploited the forests of oak needed to fuel the bloomeries of the mainland where the iron ore of Elba's mines was melted. The Greeks gave Montecristo its oldest known name, ''Oglasa'' or ''Ocrasia'', after the yellowish colour of the rocks. The Romans, how ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the Holocaust. As a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service, and did not fight. He studied agriculture in university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed by Adolf Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group, and set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was known for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Da Vinci Code
''The Da Vinci Code'' is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel ''Angels & Demons''. ''The Da Vinci Code'' follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene having had a child together. The novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, ideas derived from Clive Prince's ''The Templar Revelation'' (1997) and books by Margaret Starbird. The book also refers to ''The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'' (1982) though Dan Brown has stated that it was not used as research material. ''The Da Vinci Code'' provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Weather
The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center is a government command facility in the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia, used as the center of operations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Also known as the High Point Special Facility (HPSF), its preferred designation since 1991 is "SF." The facility is a major relocation site for the highest level of civilian and military officials in case of national disaster, playing a major role in continuity of government (per the U.S. Continuity of Operations Plan). Mount Weather is the location of a control station for the FEMA National Radio System (FNARS), a high frequency radio system connecting most federal public safety agencies and the U.S. military with most of the states. FNARS allows the president to access the Emergency Alert System. The site was brought into the public eye by ''The Washington Post'', which mentioned the government facility in its coverage following the December 1, 1974 crash of TWA Flight 514, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esalen Institute
The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanistic alternative education. The institute played a key role in the Human Potential Movement beginning in the 1960s. Its innovative use of encounter groups, a focus on the mind-body connection, and their ongoing experimentation in personal awareness introduced many ideas that later became mainstream. Esalen was founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962. Their intention was to support alternative methods for exploring human consciousness, what Aldous Huxley described as "human potentialities". Over the next few years, Esalen became the center of practices and beliefs that make up the New Age movement, from Eastern religions/philosophy, to alternative medicine and mind-body interventions, from transpersonal to Gestalt Practice. Price ran the institute until he died in a hiking accident in 1985. In 2012, the board ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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