The seventh person connected to the discovery of a prehistoric man found in the Alps has died, adding to the legend of a curse behind the ancient warrior.
Is Oetzi haunting his discoverers?
That a 63-year-old man should die of natural causes would normally raise few eyebrows. But when that man was a scientist connected to the discovery of a 5,300-year-old frozen corpse known as Oetzi the Iceman -- and the seventh such person to die within a year -- talk about a curse is inevitable.
US-born molecular archaeologist Tom Loy was found dead in his Brisbane home two weeks ago as he was finalizing a book about Oetzi, according to The Australian newspaper.
The director of the University of Queensland's archaeological sciences laboratories had suffered from a blood-related condition for about 12 years, members of his family told the paper. The condition was diagnosed shortly after he became involved with the Iceman.
Loy "didn't believe in the curse," a colleague told The Australian. "It was just superstition. People die."
Oetzi was discovered high in the Italian alps near the Austrian border in 1991, and reports and pictures of the perfectly preserved Stone Age warrior sparked worldwide interest. But so did the murmurings about a curse, built around the theory that the Iceman was angry at being disturbed after 53 centuries.
The rumor of the curse began a year ago when the German tourist who discovered the mummy, Helmut Simon, 67, fell to his death during a freak blizzard while hiking near the same spot where he saw Oetzi through the ice.
Is it a curse such as those thought to surround the tombs of ancient Egypt?
Within an hour of Simon's funeral, the head of the mountain rescue team that was assigned to find him, Dieter Warnecke, 45, died of a heart attack. Then in April, archaeologist Konrad Spindler, 55, who first inspected the prehistoric corpse, died of complications from multiple sclerosis.
The head of the forensic team examining Oetzi, Rainer Henn, 64, died in a car crash on the way to give a lecture about the iceman. The mountaineer who led Henn to the Iceman's body, Kurt Fritz, 52, died in an avalanche, the only one of his party to be hit. And the man who filmed Oetzi's removal from his icy mountain grave, celebrated Austrian journalist Rainer Hoelzl, 47, died of a brain tumor.
Loy was renowned for discovering human blood on the Iceman's clothing and weapons. His work -- the subject of a National Geographic documentary in 2002 -- debunked the theory that Oetzi, age 30-45, died alone in the mountains after a hunting accident. By revealing four different types of human blood on Oetzi's clothing, he surmised that the Stone Age man was hunting with a companion when the pair got into a territorial skirmish.
Fatally wounded, Oetzi appears to have leaned against his companion for support.
These days, Oetzi rests in a refrigerated room at the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, which attracts around 300,000 visitors a year and brings in 5 million (4 million euros) in tourism.
Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a Prehistoric Man Found in an Alpine Glacier
The Mystery of the Iceman"
WORLD'S BIGGEST MUSHROOM?
Residents of Puxiong Township in China's Yunnan province had good reason to fetch their cameras following the discovery of a giant fungus.
The large clump of mushrooms, which numbered over 100 caps attached at the base of their stems, caused quite a stir amongst locals.
"I guess this mushroom can be entered into the Guinness World Records," said one woman as she photographed the ball of grey capped mushrooms.
The fungus, which weighed more than 33lb (15kg) and measured 36in (93cm) in diameter, was proudly put on display by the man who found it.
However, it is not known what type of fungus it is, nor whether it is safe to eat.
MASSIVE SOLAR HOLE DISCOVERED
A spacecraft recently spotted a massive hole in the sun's atmosphere. The anomaly, called a coronal hole, covers almost a quarter of our star and spews solar material and gas into space.
The hole was spotted by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) between July 13 and 18. The anomaly is a darker, cooler region of the sun's atmosphere.
The region contains little solar material, allowing magnetic field lines to whip out into the solar wind, reports Yahoo! News. In other areas, the magnetic field lines appear as a loop that juts out, then returns to the sun's surface.
NASA released a video of the hole in the sun as seen by the spacecraft. Karen Fox, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, explained:
"While it's unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, failing to loop back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere."
While the coronal holes are not rare, their frequency can change depending on the solar activity cycle, notes The Huffington Post. The sun is reaching its 11 year peak in activity, releasing more solar storms that are much more powerful than it will release during its more dormant time.
The solar maximum also involves the sun's poles reversing their magnetism. The number of coronal holes on the sun's surface usually decrease leading up to the switch. Then, new coronal holes will appear near the poles. NASA notes that the holes move from the poles to the equator as the sun reaches its solar minimum.
The SOHO satellite that captured the hole in the sun was launched in 1995. It is operated by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to monitor solar activity.Coronal holes, like coronal mass ejections, can affect space weather, because they send solar particles streaming from the sun's surface three times as fast as the slower wind unleashed in other areas. - Inquisitr
CLAIM: I FATHERED A CHILD WITH AN ALIEN
A Labour politician has defended his beliefs in extra-terrestrial life - after claiming to have fathered a child with an alien.
Married father-of-three Simon Parkes, who represents Stakesby on Whitby Town Council, said his wife had rowed with him after revealing he had a child called Zarka with an alien he refers to as the Cat Queen.
The 53-year-old driving instructor said he has sexual relations with the alien about four times a year.
"What will happen is that we will hold hands and I will say 'I'm ready' and then the technology I don't understand will take us up to a craft orbiting the earth," he explained.
"My wife found out about it and was very unhappy, clearly. That caused a few problems, but it is not on a human level, so I don't see it as wrong.
Councillor Parkes, who also claims his "real mother" is a 9ft green alien with eight fingers, said people only claim he is mad because they have not shared his experiences and that the encounters don't affect his work on behalf of Whitby residents.
"I can understand how you would say that because you have not seen anything yourself and that's your immediate fallback position, but you come and spend some time with me and follow me around for a day and you will actually walk away shaking your head because you will think actually he's not mad.
"There are plenty of people in my position who don't chose to come out and say it because they are terrified it will destroy their careers."
He told Channel 4 documentary Confessions Of An Alien Abductee his first recollection is of being lifted out of his cot by an alien.
Councillor Parkes, who spends hours drawing his extra-terrestrial experiences as it helps him to comes to terms with them, said: "The only thing I can remember after that is it saying to me you will never be hurt, your will never be harmed.
"I think I am fairly clear in my head that I am being monitored [by aliens] very closely and if there is anthing that's seriously about to happen or does happen then I am fairly confident in my own mind that they will intervene, they have in the past."
He said he is also often followed by the security services and that he and a female passenger in his car were recently abducted by aliens in Cloughton, near Scarborough, before being returned to the vehicle as it moved." - The Northern Echo
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NOTE: THIS UPDATE COMES FROM JUDY MARTIN (BUNKIELA) ON THE WIKI MOVE:
"650 GB OF FILES ARE BEING SENT TO THE WIKIFOUNDRY SERVERS (2 DAYS). IT WILL TAKE ANOTHER 3 DAYS TO RESTORE THE DATABASES. BY AUGUST 5, IT IS HOPED THAT "WIKICENTRAL" WILL BE UP AND RUNNING. (THE OLD WETPAINT CENTRAL IS SHUT DOWN) EVEN THE MEMBERSHIPS APPARENTLY HAVE BEEN PICKED UP AND MOVED TO WIKIFOUNDRY! YIPPEE! THAT MEANS YOUR AVATAR NAMES ARE STILL PROBABLY GOOD, TOO!"
For those who don't remember or weren't here, there was a Phantoms & Monsters Wiki....a depository for some of the P&M blogs and member sightings / experiences and forum style discussion. The membership was 1000+ when Wetpaint decided to shut us down because we weren't 'family oriented'. Long story short, it looks like we will be back in business soon thanks to the perseverance of Judy Martin, who ran the original Wiki for me. Stay tuned...Lon
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