Father Christmas 'buried in Ireland'

Historians believe that the remains of the man who inspired Father Christmas, St Nicholas, are buried in Ireland. He lived during the 4th century and gained sainthood for his tendancy to leave gifts for the poor. He died in the year 346 AD.


"The remains of St Nicholas, the man who inspired Father Christmas, are buried at Jerpoint Abbey in County Kilkenny, Ireland, historians believe. Experts claim that the philanthropist St Nicholas of Myra is entombed at the 12th century abbey after his body was moved there 800 years ago."

Titanic and Titan Similarities ??

In 1898 Morgan Robertson published a novel about pride, greed, and stupidity. It was called The wreck of the Titan, and it described the maiden voyage of a transatlantic luxury liner named 'Titan'.

Although reputebly unsinkable, the 'Titan' strikes an iceberg and sinks, with enormous loss of life. In 1912 the Titanic, a transatlantic luxury liner widely touted as unsinkable, made her maiden voyage. She struck an iceburg and sank, with enormous loss of life.

Some further similarities are :

• Both ships sank in April
• Both ships had Passengers and crew of over 2000 on board
• Both ships had only about 20 lifeboats
• Both ships where more or less the same weight and length
• Both ships had 3 propellers
• And the speed of impact was about 25 knots

Believe it !!

Mark Twain's dream

In the late 1850's young Mark Twain and his brother Henry worked together on the riverboats then playing the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans.

One night during a stay at his sisters house in St. Louis, Twain had an unusually vivid dream. In it he saw his brother's corpse lying in a metal coffin in his siter's sitting room. The coffin rested on two chairs, and a bouquet with a single crimson flower at its centre had been placed on Henry's chest.

When Twain awoke, he was quite convinced that his brother had died and was lying in the sitting room. He dressed, thought of visiting the corpse, but decided to take a walk first. He left the house and had gone half a block before he realized he had been dreaming. He then returned and told his sister of the dream.

A few weeks later Twain and his brother were together in New Orleans but took different boats back to St. Louis. Henry's passage was on the 'Pennsylvania', whose boilers exploded not far from Memphis, killing many people. Henry was badly injured and taken, in great pain, to Memphis, where he died a few days later.

Although most victims of the accident were buried in wooden coffins, a number of Memphis woman, moved by pity for the young man, raised the money to provide a metal coffin. Thus, when Mark Twain came to say his last farewells to his brother, he found the body lying in a metal coffin. just as it had been in his dream. The bouquet, however, was missing. But as Twain stood beside the body a woman entered the room and placed on Henry's chest a bouquet of white flowers. At its centre was a single red rose

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

In 1838 Edgar Allan Poe published a grim tale called "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket."

In it three survivors of a shipwreck, dying of thirst and starvation, kill and eat their companion, Richard Parker, who lost when they drew lots.

In 1884 three survivors of a shipwreck where tried for the murder of a fourth. Adrift, and and facing starvation, they they had killed and eaten their companion, a cabin boy named Richard Parker.

The Prophecies of Nostradamus

The most famous of all nonbiblical prophets, Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus,was born at St.Re'my in the south of France in 1503. He first became famous for his medical work with victims of the plague that broke out at Aix-en-Provence and Lyons in 1546-47 and only after this began making prophecies.

His first collection was published as an almanac of weather predictions in 1550, and in 1555 he published the first of 10 collectionsof prophecies ( Almost 1000 in all) under the title of "Centuries". He died at Salon, in southern France, in 1566.

Nostradamus wrote his prohecies in verse, for the most part in a highly symbolic style. This, and the fact that he chose not to arrange them in any particular order, makes their interpretation, in many cases,a matter of conjecture. Nonetheless,a number of the prophecies do seem to pont rather clearly to events that had not yet occurred when "Centuries" appeared.

The first prophecy to bring Nostradamus fame as a seer was the following:

The young lion will overcome the older one, in a field of combat in a single fight: He will pierce his eyes in their golden cage; two wounds in one, then he dies a cruel death.

Four years later, in July 1559, King Henry II of France, who sometimes used the lion as his emblem, engaged in a jousting contest. The lance of his young opponent pierced the King's gilt helmet and wounded him; Henry died after prolonged agony.

Few of Nostradamus's prophecies contain anything so precise as a date, or even a partial date. But he seems to have given one for the great fire of London in 1666, saying it would occur "in three times twenty plus six"

Most of Nostradamus's prophecies concern largescale political movements and the affairs of the high and mighty. The french Revolution seems to be the subject of several verses, including this:

From the enslaved populace, songs, chants and demands, while Princes and Lords are held captive in prison. These will in the future be received by headless idiots as divine prayers.

The first sentence is straightforward. The "headless idiots" of the second sentence are thought to refer to the early leaders of the revolution, who percieved the demands of the French populace as "prayers," and who, ultimately corrupted by their new power, were themselves overthrown and guillotined.

In a letter to King Henry II, Nostradamus also predicted 1792 as a key date in the affairs of state. In September of that year, at the culmination of the revolution, France was declared a republic. The deaths of Queen Marie Antoinette and Madame Du Barry, a mistress of Louis XVI, also appear to have been forecast by this remarkable seer.

Like most prophets, Nostradamus seems to have had a particular talent for predicting disasters and falls from power. He is held to have described the fate of Napoleon, whose rule over the French Empire ended with his imprisonment on the tiny island of St. Helena in 1815, and to have predicted the abdication of King Edward VIII of Great Britian in 1936.

In two quatrains Nostradamus came close to naming Adolf Hitler and described his calamitous activities with some accuracy. According to the first one:

Liberty shall not be recovered, a black, fierce, villianous, evil man shall occupy it, when the ties of his alliance are wrought. Venice shall be vexed by Hister.

The second quatrain was even more vivid:

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers, the greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister. He will drag the leader in a cage of iron, when the child of Germany observes no law.

In content the verses are remarkably apt. Liberty was seized, or occupied, by an evil (black-hearted and black-haired) man.

Venice, along with the rest of Italy, was indeed eventually 'vexed' by her former ally. Hitler's troops did cross rivers, and other boundaries, like ravening beasts, even though the majority of countries were against them. The last sentence is unclear but may refer to the German naval blockade of Britian, which, before Pearl Harbour, was the loan leaderof the free world's battle for survival.