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Ron, here’s another Kansas City item for you . . .
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The non-decomposing nun:
Source: Daily Mail
Date: 24 August 2024
Link:
A team of experts has been unable to explain why a Missouri nun who died in 2019 has not decomposed, according to the Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.
Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, passed away on May 29, 2019. When her body was exhumed in April 2023, it was found to be remarkably preserved despite not being embalmed and being buried in an unsealed wooden coffin.
The discovery sparked widespread interest and a pilgrimage to the small town of Gower, Missouri, where Lancaster's body was placed on public display.
Bishop James V. Johnston commissioned a team of medical experts to investigate the case. After a thorough examination, the team concluded that Lancaster's condition was 'highly atypical' for the time elapsed since her death.
'Within the limits of what has been observed during this time, the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster does not appear to have experienced the decomposition that would have normally been expected under such previous burial conditions,' Bishop James V. Johnston of Kansas City-St. Joseph said in a statement published on the diocesan website.
In addition to examining her body, 'the team inspected the casket, and interviews were conducted with eyewitnesses to events immediately preceding the burial in 2019 and the exhumation in April 2023,' he said. 'In the final report, the investigative team noted that the condition of Sister Wilhelmina's body during the examination was notable for a lack of any detected features of decomposition,' Johnston said. Despite the casket's lining having 'completely deteriorated,' Lancaster's habit and other clothing 'showed no features of breakdown,' Johnston said.
While soil tests found no unusual elements that would prevent decomposition, the experts were unable to provide a definitive explanation for the phenomenon. In the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the preservation of a body after death is known as 'incorruptibility.' Although Lancaster has not been officially designated as 'incorrupt,' her case has raised questions about the nature of death and the possibility of miracles.
The nun's remains are in a glass case in the abbey's church and she is able to be viewed each day, per the abbey's website.
Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster
People pray over the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles abbey on Sunday, May 28, 2023
People wait to view the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles abbey on Sunday
People collect dirt from the gravesite of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles abbey Sunday, May 28, 2023
(The sign says ‘Please take no more than a teaspoon of dirt. Thank you’)
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Comment:
Reminds me of the following:
When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.
When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards." He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."
Suddenly the realisation of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."
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While on the topic of religion . . .
The Shroud of Turin
Source: Daily Mail
Date: 24 August 2024
Link:
Scientists are calling for a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin amid a seemingly growing body of evidence that challenges the idea it's a fake. There are also claims that bad data was used in a landmark 1988 UK study which found the shroud was a Medieval forgery and not the cloth Jesus was buried in.
A new review by researchers from France and Italy has revisited those 30-year-old findings and claims to have discovered discrepancies in the data which were not made public and raise doubts about the definitiveness of the results.
Tristan Casabianca, a French independent researcher, who made the find, told DailyMail.com that his findings do not confirm the shroud is older or the burial cloth used to lay Jesus to rest. But Casabianca - who was an atheist until he began investigating the shroud 20 years ago - said those factors could not be ruled out 'without a re-analysis.'
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen featuring a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus
The 1988 study used a technique known as carbon dating to determine the age of the controversial Shroud of Turin. The team determined with '95 percent confidence' the relic was manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD, long after the time of Christ's resurrection. The conclusion was reached after analyses performed on a corner of the ancient fabric by three different labs - at the universities of Arizona, Zürich and Oxford.
But after obtaining the raw data, Casabianca found the results varied by decades. One of Zürich's estimates in the Nature study said the cloth was up to 733 years old, but 595 years in the raw data. Oxford's shroud sample was between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw data featured estimates that were off by up to 55 years. Arizona's linen was between 591 and 701 years old, with the raw data showing a difference of up to 59 years.
Even though that would still places the cloth in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, Casabianca said it raises doubts. He continued to explained that 'the lack of precision seriously affects the reliability of the 95 percent,' suggesting it was no more than 41 percent. Anything lower than 60 percent suggests that there is a lot of disagreement or inconsistency among the results, according to the 2019 study published in Archaeometry.
'We can say with confidence that the 1988 radiocarbon dating process led to a failure,' said Casabianca, who is an independent researcher in France. 'It was supposed to close a book, and it has only opened a new chapter. This failure could have been avoided with a better protocol.'
Graphic designer Otangelo Grasso created a progression of what Jesus may have looked like based on the shroud image
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Comment:
I remember reading a book some years ago about the shroud and it made some interesting points:
- The samples tested might have been contaminated or taken from a repair to the original fabric.
- The shroud image is a negative, not a positive, which would have been hard to do at that time.
- The wounds depicted match the Biblical descriptions of the wounds of Jesus.
- The shroud was ahead of its time in showing that the person deoicted had been crucified by the wrists when all artworks had shown Jesus crucified through his palms.
- There were two angles of bloodflow from the wrists, the hypothesis being that one bloodflow pattern was when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he other after he was taken down.
- The further conclusion is that the person was not dead when taken down from the cross, hence being able to pear resurrected some days later.
- It was suggested that this was the burial shroud for Jesus but he was not dead. The heat of the body reacting to the herbs etc applied to his body caused the imprint on the shroud.
- The authors replicated the above with one of them, from memory, having a fever, having the herbs etc applied and staying in a similar closth. A rudimentary image was left.
- The belief that Jesus ‘resurrected’ because he was not really dead is not new, it was put forward by Dr Hugh Schhonfeld in his book The Passover Plot.
As with the non-decomposing nun:
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World’s second-largest diamond found:
Source: Daily Mail
Date: 22 August 2024
Link:
The second biggest diamond ever found - a rough 2,492-carat stone - has been unearthed in Botswana thanks to specialist X-ray technology. The gem, uncovered by Canadian mining firm Lucara, is the largest diamond seen in the last 120 years since the discovery of the world-famous Cullinan Diamond. The 3,106-carat stone was found in neighbouring South Africa in 1905 and was cut into nine separate stones, many of which now form part of the British crown jewels.
The newly discovered diamond
Picture shows the scale of the huge stone next to a golf ball
It is not known whether the latest diamond to be discovered will yield the highest-quality gems, but the sheer size of the rock means it will likely be worth tens of millions regardless.
The gem was recovered by X-ray transmission technology first installed in 2017. It is designed to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds, extracting them from the ground without causing them to break.
The stone was found in the Karowe mine, located roughly 300 miles north of Botswana's capital, Gaborone. Two other huge diamonds were also found in the mine in recent years - the 1,758-carat Sewelo and 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona. In 2017, British diamond mogul Laurence Graff paid $53 million (more than £40m) for the 1109 carat Lesedi La Rona. Two years later, in 2019, Louis Vuitton parted with an undisclosed sum for the 1758 carat Sewelo Diamond.
The discovery comes amid a lull in diamond sales, with prices falling to their lowest in four years, according to the Diamond Standard Index. The industry did well during the pandemic, when wealthy customers unable to spend on travel and entertainment wanted to splash out on luxury goods instead. However, demand has since dipped, and the market has become oversaturated, including by the rise in synthetic stones.
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Comment:
As regards the Cullinan Diamond:
It was named after Thomas Cullinan, the owner of the mine where it was found.
In April 1905, it was put on sale in London, but despite considerable interest, it was still unsold after two years.
In 1907, the Transvaal Colony government bought the Cullinan and Prime Minister Louis Botha presented it to Edward VII, the British king who reigned over the territory.
When cut, Cullinan produced stones of various cuts and sizes, including 9 major stones:
Nine largest stones split from the rough Cullinan diamond
The largest cut stone is named Cullinan I and was named the Great Star of Africa by Edward VII. It is the largest clear cut diamond in the world. Cullinan 1 is mounted in the head of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross.
The head of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross
The second-largest is Cullinan II or the Second Star of Africa, mounted in the Imperial State Crown.
Imperial State Crown of the United Kingdom
Both Cullinan 1 and Cullinan 11 are part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.
Seven other major diamonds were privately owned by Elizabeth II, who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953. The Queen also owned minor brilliants and a set of unpolished fragments.
The nine major stones cut from the rough Cullinan diamond. Top: Cullinans II, I and III. Bottom: Cullinans VI, VIII, IV, V, VII and IX.
Queen Mary wearing Cullinans I and II as a brooch on her chest, III as a pendant on the Coronation Necklace, and IV
in the base of her crown, below the Koh-i-Noor
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