Just like Khyber Pass gunmakers. How are you going to stop them, Gun Controllers? Imagine what Americans with access to machine tools could produce in their garages.

New York Post:

A fisherman in the Philippines is happy as a clam after discovering that a mammoth pearl he stashed away for 10 years under his bed is worth a cool $100 million.

The lucky angler, who has not been identified, discovered the 75-pound pearl — believed to be the biggest ever — in the sea off Palawan Island, the Mirror of the UK reported.

Unaware of the giant pearl’s value, he kept it as a good-luck piece under his bed until a fire in his home forced him to move. The superstitious fishermen then decided to hand it over to the tourism office in remote Puerto Princesa, city officials said.

A stunned tourism officer determined that the pearl, measuring a foot wide and 2.2 feet long, dwarfs the official current record holder — the $35 million, 14-pound Pearl of Allah, which in 1934 was also found off Palawan.

“The fisherman threw the anchor down and it got stuck on a rock during a storm,” tourism officer Aileen Cynthia Amurao explained. “He noticed that it was lodged on a shell and swam down to pull up the anchor, and also brought the shell with him.

“He didn’t know how much it was worth and kept it tucked away at home as a simple good-luck charm,” she added. …

Officials plan to keep the fisherman’s pearl in the Philippines in a bid to increase tourism to the area.

Giant clams, which rarely produce pearls, can grow as large as four feet in length and weigh 500 pounds. They’re typically found in the South Pacific or Indian Ocean.

Lieutenant Cesar Baza, Philippine Army Air Corps (1915 – 12 December 1941)

Richard Fernandez had a very nice Pear Harbor day posting.

[L]iberty is the building block of history; the primitive element of biography. It is perhaps even the building block of reality. Without choice — free will — everything is mechanical sound and fury. To understand this clearly, recall that today marks the 73rd anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a moment now on the furthest fringe of living memory. Suppose the significance of that long-ago day consists not in the physical events which occurred, as if the bombs were just rocks tumbling down the hillside of some mountain, but in the things that were chosen that day.

Our telescopes are turned outward seeking Dyson Spheres in the vast reaches of the cosmos for proof of life. Yet I have on my hard drive the picture of a man long ago dead, part of a group of fliers who rose in [horribly obsolete -JDZ] Boeing P-26 Peashooters to challenge Zeros over Batangas province on December 12, 1941. The pilot did not survive the day. In some modern cosmology there is multiverse where he landed safely; just as there is one where all the battleships at Pearl Harbor rode out the day peacefully at anchor. There is a multiverse where America surrendered to Japan. But while those multiverses may exist in potential, the universe we have, through the operation of choice is the one where the flag flies, unvanquished to this day. But that particular today had its price. To purchase it the pilot could not land and the proud warships were forbidden to live out the day.

Captured 21′ (6.4 m.) saltwater crocodile. The crocodile is suspected of the killing of a 12-year-old girl in 2009 and of a farmer who went missing in July 2011.

Villagers in Bunawan, Philippines last month successfully captured what is believed to be the largest crocodile ever taken alive.

The monster is 21 feet (6.4 m.) long, and weighed in at over a ton (2365 lbs. — 1065 kg.). It took more than one hundred men to lift the giant reptile out of the swamp where he was trapped and to get him onto a truck.

The villagers named the crocodile “Lolong” and plan to exhibit him to tourists in a new park built for the purpose. Lolong will be the largest reptile in captivity in the world, so he will probably attract plenty of visitors.

It took about a month, but Lolong resumed eating early in October.

Daily Mail