We all watch movies like National Treasure and secretly hope that something cool like that might actually be out there in the world or even better that it might, out of some cosmic chance, actually happen to us.
David Martin of England had a small bit of such wishful awesomeness fall into his lap when he began renovating his 17th century fireplace. Inside the chimney were the remains of a pigeon….but not just any pigeon…
David Martin uncovered the remains of a carrier pigeon…and not just ANY old remains of some random carrier pigeon…
These particular remains were attached to a small red cylindrical container…and not just ANY small red cylindrical container…oh no, kids…Mr. Martin had found the remains of a World War II carrier pigeon that was still clutching a little red container which held a small, cigarette paper-sized encrypted message!
Martin found this mysterious container in 1982 and sent it off to have it solved. Intelligence officials believed that it was impossible to break because the code books from back then that might hold the answers to this particular code had been lost or gone missing.
Addressed to the mysterious “X02” from the more mysterious “Sjt W Stot”, the message, sent during the Allied invasion, continues to baffle codebreakers who are working on the message. Bletchly Park, once a highly secretive location where the Nazi’s Enigma Code was broken and now features a museum about pigeons’ role in the war, has more than 30 messages carried by pigeon and not a single one is written in code which causes many of those involved to believe that this message was of utmost importance and urgency.
Just how important was the information this little bad-assed bird o’ war was carrying?
When Martin showed the bird to a counter-espionage specialist who was actually THE inspiration for Ian Fleming’s infamous agent 007?
“When I showed the bird and code, the blood drained from his face and he advised us to back off. He said nothing would ever be published.”
Tom Merritt joins us as we discuss a massive natural event that happens to alert us to the opening of a new movie. Tom has to make a terrible decision that could leave him buried in Apple rumors or Sasquatch reports.
Also, is belief a chief tenant of science?
All this and more in an unfortunately Mayne-less episode of Weird Things.
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
And in true WeirdThings fashion here’s a story to enjoy while you’re waiting for your Turducken to golden its sweet self.
Most of you prefer white meat. Some of you prefer dark meat.
NYPD officer Gilberto Valle prefers something he’s coined ‘girl meat’. According to the prosecution in a bizarre case against Valle, he was going to sit down to a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings and a plateful of said ‘girl meat’.
“I’m planning on getting some girl meat. This November, for Thanksgiving. It’s a long way off, but I’m getting the plan in motion now. She’s not a volunteer. She has to be abducted. I know where she lives. I will grab her from her house. I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus. Cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible.”
We can hear everyone quietly putting down their forks and looking around awkwardly.
Valle is apparently part of a small subculture that prefers its meat right off the bone…the human bone. The ‘girl meat’ that Valle was refering to was just that…the meat of an abducted girl. Federal prosecutors produced the transcript of an online chat between Gilberto Valle and an alleged co-conspirator that revealed his plan to abduct a woman he knew and roast her alive and slowly over an open flame.
While his defense claims that Valle would never commit such an act and that his thoughts alone don’t deserve jail-time (he’s currently locked up in solitary confinement), an FBI expert from Quantico looked at the case and stated that he would definitely eventually act on his plans.
The judge handling the case has denied bail for the third time as of this posting and the court proceedings begin on January 22nd which could actually make CourtTV worth watching.
Now pass us those fava beans (we couldn’t resist)!
Michonne and Merle get all Hunger Games, but who is Katniss and who is the weird wolf monsters from the end? Andrea continues to have the absolute worst taste in men… or does she. And Rick is on the edge of the madness.
Zipping through the thin air of Denver, a mystery has been uncovered by a local man and his Fox affiliate. The Unidentified Flying Object(s?) seem to appear every day between noon and 2 p.m. and are not visible to the naked eye. In fact, even the professional cameras caught them and had to slow things down frame by frame to see it (them).
The most likely explanation? A bug or insect, probably a fly or bee.
Or there is the fun one we just made up. Aliens are getting day drunk and driving home, ya’ll!
How else would you account for how erratic that driving is? Furthermore, only 23 minutes away the main brewery for beer magnate Coors. What I am saying is that it’s highly likely these aliens are working night jobs in the greater Denver area. Knocking off their shift around 6 a.m. and somehow sneaking into the source of Rocky Mountain refreshments. They enjoy one too many Cold Certified beverages.
They return to their craft and take off like a Silver Bullet. Zigging and zagging until they break orbit and find their way home. Wasted.
What would you do if you could live forever. Also, do we now know if the initials to SpaceX’s MCT project? What exploded a peaceful neighborhood in Indiana? We return to the Snuggery after a WTP listener offers to go investigate. Also, when will it be unethical to turn off a video game character?
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
A woman has a strange job. It sparks a statistical argument between Brian and Justin to rival the Presidential Election. A new way to tell if Mars is housing a killer plague sets up a scenario involving precursor aliens and bears on a level you never before seen. The boys discuss the place the Water Bears have their picnic.
Also.
Star Wars TALK!!!
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
Star Wars uses tractor beams as frequently as newly graduated college kids use U-Haul trailers.
Imagine if, just like in the movies, you could hook up those U-Hauls with a tractor beam instead of trying to get one of those ball-and-cup trailer hook-ups?
That day might not be as far away as it once was according to research at the Department of Physics and Centre for Soft Matter Research at New York University. Although it’s on a significantly smaller scale than trying to yank the Millenium Falcon into your garage using a flashlight, scientists have recently used a beam of light to pull a particle in a line. While researchers of the ideas surrounding what’s being called ‘soft matter’ have used laser ‘tweezers’ to pull along particles, using light alone to move something verged on magical.
By varying the relative phase of the two beams, this technique traps the particle in a moving hologram they call an ‘optical conveyor’ which allows ‘bi-directional transport in three dimensions’.
New Scientist explains how projecting the beams in this way creates a pattern of alternating bright and dark regions. By fine tuning the beam photons in the bright regions which flow past the chosen particle can be made to scatter backwards, hitting the particle and knocking it on towards the next bright region.
Watch the guy in the video explain it in an endearingly enthusiastic nerdy manner…and then explain what he’s talking about to us.
December 21st of this year is the big party date for the supposed end of our world.
Sure everyone’s already ordering kegs, ordering faux “Danger: Apocalypse In Progress – Do Not Cross” banner tape by the case and prepping for their end-of-the-world get-togethers.
But then again…everyone hasn’t been watching the news coming out of Mexico that clearly shows an active volcano and something entering it from the sky like an old Thunderbirds vehicle.
Falling star? Busted satellite? No one’s sure at this point but seriously…the odds of something as agile (sarcasm, kids…sarcasm) as a giant mountain full of raging lava catching an object from space? Slim.
We’ll let you put all those party supplies back, start handing you some nails and plywood and make sure your shotgun’s loaded.
Okay, maybe not quite – at least it looks like Bilbo’s house from the photo of the archeological site. What scientists do think they’ve found is the oldest town in Europe, dating back to somewhere around 4500 BC; 1,500 years before the start of Greek civilization.
Located in modern day Bulgaria, the town may have centered around the trade of salt bricks used to preserve meat.
40 years prior, the oldest hoard of gold was found in a cemetary 21 mile away, indicating this area was rife with commerce nearly 7,000 years ago.
Gary and The Weasel make their podcast debut to solve a Polish crime. Who would win in a fight: a Neanderthal or a human? Andrew quizzes us on a mysterious man who witnessed something amazing. Can the boys figure out his identity? And what did he see?
The results connect the very fabric of our history through a meld of technology and culture! Prepare friends, for yet another Weird Things podcast!
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
