New Falcon Herald:

Pikes Peak was the scene of a fraud perpetrated in 1876 by John O’Keefe, whose job was to take weather readings on the summit and signal them to the city below.

O’Keefe’s tall tale about rats on the peak’s summit was first printed in the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper. The tale then spread to the Rocky Mountain News, which published an articled entitled “Rodents on the Rampage – an Awful and Almost Incredible Story, a Fight for Life with Rats on Pikes Peak.”

In the Rocky Mountain News story, O’Keefe claimed the top of Pikes Peak was overrun by rats the size of cats that fed on “saccharine gum that percolates through the pores of the rocks.”

The story continues:

“Since the establishment of the government’s signal station on the summit of the peak, these animals have acquired a voracious appetite for raw and uncooked meat, the scent of which seems to impart to them a ferocity rivaling the fierceness of the starved Siberian wolf.”

O’Keefe claimed that on his first night at the station, he and his wife were attacked by rats and would have been overwhelmed had they not electrocuted them using electrical wire powered by a battery.

When the battle was over, they discovered the rats had eaten their infant daughter, Erin.

O’Keefe claimed he buried all that was left of Erin (her skull) under a pile of rocks with a marker and this inscription, “Erin O’Keefe, daughter of John and Nora O’Keefe, who was eaten by mountain rats in the year 1876.”

The grave became a popular tourist attraction, and O’Keefe charged 50 cents for tourists to have their picture taken at the site.

O’Keefe was eventually revealed as a fraud. He didn’t have a wife or daughter, and probably buried his dead burro under the rocks.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

A retired soldier sells matches on the street in Canterbury, Kent, 1928.

England in 1928.

Wikipedia tells us that the life expectancy for African lions in the wild is 10-14. The male lion taken by Dr. Walter Palmer recently in Zimbabwe, known as “Cecil” by the media, was 13.

Aged lions do not die in bed in a retirement home surrounded by solicitous animated friends. Bad things happen to aged lions as this photo collection on Clash Daily demonstrates.

Statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, where he was a student for one term in 1873. Rhodes left a portion of his estate to the college.

Last April, a statue of Imperialist hero Cecil Rhodes erected in 1934 was removed from the campus of the University of Cape Town. The statue had been previously desecrated with paint and excrement. When a crane lifted the statue away, celebrating students climbed up and danced on its plinth. Rhodes had to be removed, you see, because the 19th century figure was guilty of believing in African Inequality and was a renowned champion of British Colonialism.

Telegraph story

The insistence upon the removal of prominent historical figures guilty by the present standards of the extremist left of politically incorrect behavior and opinions is not merely restricted to Third World countries where revolutionary regimes have succeeded to power.

In Oxford, in the heart of England itself, the campus left is following the South African example and demanding the removal of a statue of Rhodes from a niche on the facade of his own college. Newsweek

The Left’s war on history, as you see below, at Yale, has been underway for decades.

What could possibly demonstrate the intellectual and moral fatuity of today’s academic establishment than this kind of abject surrender to the worst kinds of left-wing extremism in response to emotionalist blackmail?

If the study of History produces any kind of wisdom at all, the most basic component of that enlightened understanding would have to be the apprehension that it is impossible to pass judgement on the beliefs and actions of people living in the past by the standard of conventional opinions of the present.

The stained glass picture of Vice President, Secretary of State, and political philosopher John C. Calhoun, Yale Class of 1804, ornamenting the Common Room of the Yale residential college named for the great man was deliberately broken by left-wing students during the 1970s. The window was restored, but portions of the window depicting a black slave in chains kneeling at Calhoun’s feet were removed officially in 1993, after a black student complained that he was personally offended.

A double-edged sword, 13th century, possibly of German manufacture, but discovered in the River Witham in Lincolnshire, England in the 19th century (British Museum 1858,1116.5)

The British Library is currently exhibiting the above sword and is asking for help interpreting the inscription.

One of those objects is a double-edged sword, found in the first section of the exhibition, on loan to the British Library from our friends at the British Museum. The item in question was found in the River Witham, Lincolnshire, in July 1825, and was presented to the Royal Archaeological Institute by the registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln. It weighs 1.2 kg (2 lb 10 oz) and measures 964 mm (38 in.) in length and 165 mm (6½ in.) across the hilt; if struck with sufficient force, it could easily have sliced a man’s head in two.

An intriguing feature of this sword is an as yet indecipherable inscription, found along one of its edges and inlaid in gold wire. It has been speculated that this is a religious invocation, since the language is unknown. Can you have a go at trying to decipher it for us? Here’s what the inscription seems to read:

+NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+

The comments have interesting guesses.

Mytheos Holt strokes his chin and analyses the phenomenon which is the Trump Candidacy. Amusingly, Mytheos assigns the blame to the pious Left rather than to the angry Right.

[I]f there was ever a man who was suited for a national moment because of his flaws rather than his virtues, I would argue that it’s Donald Trump. …

Since the Republican implosion in the 2012 election, much of American political discourse has centered not so much on whether particular ideas are wrong as on whether they can be expressed at all. Sometimes this approach has helped to root out genuine ideological cranks, but it’s also a style that has clearly favored the Left more than the Right. Witness the constant barrage of arguments that people who dissent from leftist causes are on the “wrong side of history,” as if history is something that can be predicted in advance like the weather.

To be sure, the impulse not to live long enough to see yourself become a villain or a footnote is a valid one from a pragmatic point of view. However, like all appeals to authority, this “don’t stand athwart history” argument only has a shelf life for as long as it appeals to a reasonable authority and condemns transgressors who seem genuinely bad. The idea that egalitarian principles require us to legally sanction gay marriage might be persuasive, but the idea the same principles should allow gay-rights proponents to trample religious freedom is a much harder sell. Therefore, prudence requires not overextending that argument for it to maintain its effectiveness

But the Left, high on their own success, has not just overextended this argument: it has strapped it to the rack and dislocated its limbs. The idea that certain sentiments can’t be expressed without branding you as an artifact of a dark and unenlightened past has entered the realm of self-parody. It’s all well and good when your unenlightened feminist bogeyman is Todd Akin using cocktail napkin math to pretend rape babies don’t exist; it’s another thing entirely when it’s Laura Kipnis questioning whether grad students dating professors is really such a monstrous imbalance of power. Yet, especially in its natural habitat—the faculty lounge—the Left just bulls right on, trying to write anything and everything to the right of Karl Marx and bell hooks out of existence, until even Bernie Sanders is getting booed for “whitesplaining.”

The avalanche of stories and think pieces about trigger warnings, mattress-carrying bluestockings, and freakouts over “misgendering” someone who as of only a month ago was still a man have painted a very unflattering picture of our national culture. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, appears to be in danger of becoming the land of the fragile and the home of the breakable. Everyone, both Left and Right, is getting fed up with treating their fellow citizens like overpriced glassware.

Into this great American China shop steps Donald Trump, aka the bull.

If Donald Trump didn’t exist, someone would have to invent him. While he probably won’t win the Republican nomination, the man will probably perform at least one public service by making it that much safer to speak honestly about your political views.

Only someone as rich, and seemingly immune to past failure, as Trump, could have played this role. A man who is at once worth so much, and also so used to bankruptcy court, is a man for whom the prospect of failure or disapproval no longer holds any fear.

In essence, Trump is wealthy and reckless enough to be immune from public opinion. It’s not that he has nothing to lose, it’s that he doesn’t care if he loses.

Read the whole thing.

The late Christian Taylor

Some News Agency reported the other day:

A police officer in suburban Dallas shot and killed a college football player during a struggle after the unarmed 19-year-old crashed a car through the front window of a car dealership, authorities said Friday.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the dead man as Christian Taylor, of Arlington. Taylor was a sophomore at Angelo State University in San Angelo.

Officers were responding to a burglary call about 1 a.m. Friday in Arlington when they discovered someone had driven a vehicle through a front window of the Classic Buick GMC, according to a statement from the Arlington Police Department. The statement said police approached the suspect and a struggle ensued. At some point during the struggle, an officer shot Taylor.

———————————

This surveillance video shows Taylor entering the lot of a closed automobile dealership at night, then first vandalizing cars then breaking into one. Taylor then leaves the lot and gets into his own vehicle, which he uses to break down the entrance barrier. He apparently then drove his SUV right through the dealership’s glass window onto the showroom floor. The police arrived and Taylor was shot after apparently resisting arrest.

———————————

Newsmachete, at American Thinker, collected a hilarious group of liberal reactions via HuffPo to the “tragic death” of Mr. Taylor.

Michael Beal:

Setting off every burglar alarm for a two block radius is an odd way to steal a car.

Jordan River:

So a young black male have a acident and crash into a car dealership and the cops murder him. Deja veu.

Jeff Grotke:

so the working police theory is he was crashing his own car, risking his life, in order to steal another one?

Edison Carter:

Who needs the KKK when we have taxpayer subsized killings by our own police?

Ronald Burker:

This will not change until rich white people are the victims.

Jeff Stein

Police officers nationwide continues their assault on unarmed black males. As the world watches……and politicians remain silent.

Vic Silva

Any interaction with the police is a potential death sentence.

David Poston

I suppose that is true regardless of what race you happen to be, but there is no doubt that the likelihood of dying increases exponentially if you are black.

Meesta Naturale

Guns should be locked in the police cars and only released by HQ on request of the officer.

Angelo M. Codevilla argues very cogently that Donald Trump’s ephemeral rise really signifies an unprecedented level of electoral dissatisfaction, not with a particular party or individual, but with the entire urban community of fashion establishment and ruling class. He contends that “The 2016 election is simple; the person who runs on the platform ‘Who do they think they are?’ will win.”

Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world. Trump’s attraction lies less in his words’ grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous.

Trump’s rise reminds this class’s members that they sit atop a rumbling volcano of rejection. …

[O]ur ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.

Having failed to destroy Trump, Republicans and Democrats are left to hope that he will self-destruct as Perot did. Indeed, Trump has hardly scratched the surface and may not be able to do more than that. Yet our rulers know the list of things divide them from the American people is long. They want to avoid like the plague any and all arguments on the substance of those things. They fear the rise of an un-intimidated leader more graceful and precise than Trump, someone whose vision is fuller but who is even more passionate in championing the many resentments the voicing of just a few channeled so much support to Trump.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.