Crikey!

The crazy Croc hunter has finally met his match. For those of you who enjoyed watching the Crocodile hunter while taking a study break -like me- you will be sad to know that the fearless hunter met his match while doing a film on dangerous sea animals off the coast of Australia.

Steve Irwin was swimming above a 220 pound stingray, when the fish got scared and shot it's 8 inch stinger directly into the Croc hunter's heart. Steve had just enough time to pull it out, then he died a couple moments later.

Steve was a never ending source of entertainment for me during my college days. I especially enjoyed seeing him jump out of his moving Land Cruiser, shouting "Look, snake!" and go tearing off after one the most deadly snakes in the world.

Crikey! Steve will be missed.

Troy discovered

For those of you who are history majors or interested in history in general. I just got done reading a fascinating book that details overwhelming evidence that the lost city of Troy was in fact located in Cambridge, England. The name of the author is Iman Wilkens and he wrote "Where Troy once stood." It was re-released in 2005 with an updated 12 years of research in it. He has spent over 30 years studying and in my opinion, giving overwhelming evidence that Troy never existed in Turkey. He has found battlements and evidence that fit Homer's description of Troy to the tee, along with tons of bronze weaponry-the type of metal used for fighting during the Troy era. It is pretty fascinating stuff. He also concludes that Homer was most likely a Celt and his writings just became adopted by the Greeks who assimiliated the Celts into their culture as the Celts migrated south.

Another point that is made by Wilkens is that the war was not fought over Helen, but rather over the fact that southern England had massive reserves of tin which had recently been discovered could be used to make bronze, a far superior metal to that of which they currently had. Following that theory, Wilkens and others, now believe that the people who battled the Achaians of Troy may have been a mixture of Norsemen and many other tribes who wanted a piece of the action and get bronze weapons.

The fanciest theory that Wilkens puts forth is that the Odyssey journey by Odysseus was a journey that took him across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean, where there have been islands found that meet the descriptions of those in the Odyssey. For instance, Cuba is thought to be the birthplace of the Greek gods Apollon and Artemis.

Truly fascinating stuff, if you would like to read a review, you can follow this link: http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/where-troy-once-stood/where-troy-once-stood.htm or you can follow this link to a lecture put forth by a professor on the subject of the book at this link: http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/trojan-kings-of-england/trojan-kings-of-england.htm