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The next portion of the story requires a few more people to give permission to tell some bits and pieces. So, while we wait a day or three, here is a musical interlude (courtesy of the Lohrs) from the always wonderful Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. As a ukulele player, I loved it but I [...]

The last part of this story may or may not have happened. There are fierce arguments on both sides. Make up your own mind.

Here is the scene: Robert the Bruce was king of Scotland but his kingship was not universally accepted. A large number of the most powerful nobles in Scotland wouldn’t accept him as [...]

Generally speaking, as soon as someone mentions the Templars they are written off as a kook. The reason that happens is that quite a few kooks have used the legends and history of the Templars to advance their private conspiratorial views of history. Dan Brown and his ilk have nearly ruined the ability to hold [...]

Consider this a sidebar from our Hidden History series. I’ll be back to that in a couple days. In the meantime, learn from this all too common collision between experts, academia, and the establishment on one hand and reality on the other hand.
In the race to develop a practical flying machine everyone knew who was [...]

Continuing our look at the Kensington Runestone… and other stuff…
Once upon a time, those who designed academic programs in American anthropology insisted that every student take at least lower level courses in four disciplines: cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic archaeology, and biological anthropology. That may be too much to ask in an age in which information [...]

Scott Wolter’s books on the Kensington Runestone, while very interesting, sometimes veer into the weird and — in my opinion — bizarre. Still, as a geologist, he did some incredible work on the stone and has forced a re-evaluation of the entire story of the stone Olaf Ohman dug up in Minnesota. Alice Beck Kehoe [...]

As we regain our story, Olaf Ohman’s discovery has been pronounced a fake — and a particularly coarse, obvious one — by the leading experts in runes, history, and archaeology. That is where it would have stayed had it not been for others who came along and questioned how Ohman could have pulled of such [...]

[NOTE: Three books have recently been published on the Kensington Runestone. Alice Beck Kehoe's "The Kensington Runestone: approaching a research question holistically" is the best of them. The other two are by geologist Scott F. Wolter, "The Kensington Runestone: compelling new evidence" and "The Hooked X." I will be referring to information found in them [...]

I’m back. Feeling better, if road weary. Now… where were we? Ah, yes…
Gathering mentions of Welsh speaking Indians can become a full time job. Governor Sevier — who we’ve mentioned in his role as early explorer of Tennessee — is the first to write of the Melungeons, mentions Welsh fortifications, and tells of the time [...]