Return of the Taliban

Documentaire

Television Commercials (1950s-1960s)

A collection of vintage ads: Country Corn Flakes, Alka-Seltzer, Dristan, American - certified lead-free gasoline, two ads of Lustre-creme shampoo, National Association of Broadcasters, Goodyear, two Coca-Cola ads, two ads of Colt 45 Malt Liquor, Volkswagen, a black and white and a coloured version of fashion ad, Bactine medicated skin cream, Alka-Seltzer, Bactine medicated skin cream, Alka-Seltzer, Noxzema medicated instant shave, Marlboro, The 1967 American Motors, Heinz Pickles, Shearson Hammill, Oil Heat. This video is in public domain and available to download at Internet Archive.

Levitating stones of Shivapur.

Astounding mysteries of India's ancient times can be found in the town of Shivapur. There are two enigmatic stones resting opposite the local shrine. One of them weighs 55 kilograms, the other one is 41 kilograms. If eleven men touch the bigger stone, and nine men touch the smaller stone, if they all chant the magic phrase, which is carved on one of the walls of the shrine, the two stones will raise two meters up in the air and will hang there for two seconds, as if there is no gravitation at all. A lot of European and Asian scientists and researchers have studied the phenomenon of levitating stones of Shivapur.

The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

Ancient Model Aircraft
There are artifacts belonging to ancient Egyptian and Central American cultures that look amazingly like modern-day aircraft. The Egyptian artifact, found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt in 1898, is a six-inch wooden object that strongly resembles a model airplane, with fuselage, wings and tail. Experts believe the object is so aerodynamic that it is actually able to glide. The small object discovered in Central America (shown at right), and estimated to be 1,000 years old, is made of gold and could easily be mistaken for a model of a delta-wing aircraft - or even the Space Shuttle. It even features what looks like a pilot's seat.



The Grooved Spheres
Over the last few decades, miners in South Africa have been digging up mysterious metal spheres. Origin unknown, these spheres measure approximately an inch or so in diameter, and some are etched with three parallel grooves running around the equator. Two types of spheres have been found: one is composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white; the other is hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance. The kicker is that the rock in which they where found is Precambrian - and dated to 2.8 billion years old! Who made them and for what purpose is unknown.

The Dropa Stones
In 1938, an archeological expedition led by Dr. Chi Pu Tei into the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains of China made an astonishing discovery in some caves that had apparently been occupied by some ancient culture. Buried in the dust of ages on the cave floor were hundreds of stone disks. Measuring about nine inches in diameter, each had a circle cut into the center and was etched with a spiral groove, making it look for all the world like some ancient phonograph record some 10,000 to 12,000 years old. The spiral groove, it turns out, is actually composed of tiny hieroglyphics that tell the incredible story of spaceships from some distant world that crash-landed in the mountains. The ships were piloted by people who called themselves the Dropa, and the remains of whose descendents, possibly, were found in the cave.


The Ica Stones
Beginning in the 1930s, the father of Dr. Javier Cabrera, Cultural Anthropologist for Ica, Peru, discovered many hundreds of ceremonial burial stones in the tombs of the ancient Incas. Dr. Cabrera, carrying on his father's work, has collected more than 1,100 of these andesite stones, which are estimated to be between 500 and 1,500 years old and have become known collectively as the Ica Stones. The stones bear etchings, many of which are sexually graphic (which was common to the culture), some picture idols and others depict such practices as open-heart surgery and brain transplants. The most astonishing etchings, however, clearly represent dinosaurs - brontosaurs, triceratops (see photo), stegosaurus and pterosaurs. While skeptics consider the Ica Stones a hoax, their authenticity has neither been proved or disproved.


The Antikythera Mechanism
A perplexing artifact was recovered by sponge-divers from a shipwreck in 1900 off the coast of Antikythera, a small island that lies northwest of Crete. The divers brought up from the wreck a great many marble and and bronze statues that had apparently been the ship's cargo. Among the findings was a hunk of corroded bronze that contained some kind of mechanism composed of many gears and wheels. Writing on the case indicated that it was made in 80 B.C., and many experts at first thought it was an astrolabe, an astronomer's tool. An x-ray of the mechanism, however, revealed it to be far more complex, containing a sophisticated system of differential gears. Gearing of this complexity was not known to exist until 1575! It is still unknown who constructed this amazing instrument 2,000 years ago or how the technology was lost.


The Baghdad Battery
Today batteries can be found in any grocery, drug, convenience and department store you come across. Well, here's a battery that's 2,000 years old! Known as the Baghdad Battery, this curiosity was found in the ruins of a Parthian village believed to date back to between 248 B.C. and 226 A.D. The device consists of a 5-1/2-inch high clay vessel inside of which was a copper cylinder held in place by asphalt, and inside of that was an oxidized iron rod. Experts who examined it concluded that the device needed only to be filled with an acid or alkaline liquid to produce an electric charge. It is believed that this ancient battery might have been used for electroplating objects with gold. If so, how was this technology lost... and the battery not rediscovered for another 1,800 years?


The Coso Artifact
While mineral hunting in the mountains of California near Olancha during the winter of 1961, Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell found a rock, among many others, that they thought was a geode - a good addition for their gem shop. Upon cutting it open, however, Mikesell found an object inside that seemed to be made of white porcelain. In the center was a shaft of shiny metal. Experts estimated that it should have taken about 500,000 years for this fossil-encrusted nodule to form, yet the object inside was obviously of sophisticated human manufacture. Further investigation revealed that the porcelain was surround by a hexagonal casing, and an x-ray revealed a tiny spring at one end. Some who have examined the evidence say it looks very much like a modern-day spark plug. How did it get inside a 500,000-year-old rock?

Giant Stone Balls of Costa Rica
Workmen hacking and burning their way through the dense jungle of Costa Rica to clear an area for banana plantations in the 1930s stumbled upon some incredible objects: dozens of stone balls, many of which were perfectly spherical. They varied in size from as small as a tennis ball to an astonishing 8 feet in diameter and weighing 16 tons! Although the great stone balls are clearly man-made, it is unknown who made them, for what purpose and, most puzzling, how they achieved such spherical precision.

Impossible Fossils
Fossils, as we learned in grade school, appear in rocks that were formed many thousands of years ago. Yet there are a number of fossils that just don't make geological or historical sense. A fossil of a human handprint, for example, was found in limestone estimated to be 110 million years old. What appears to be a fossilized human finger found in the Canadian Arctic also dates back 100 to 110 million years ago. And what appears to be the fossil of a human footprint, possibly wearing a sandal, was found near Delta, Utah in a shale deposit estimated to be 300 million to 600 million years old.

Out-of-Place Metal Objects
Humans were not even around 65 million years ago, never mind people who could work metal. So then how does science explain semi-ovoid metallic tubes dug out of 65-million-year-old Cretaceous chalk in France? In 1885, a block of coal was broken open to find a metal cube obviously worked by intelligent hands. In 1912, employees at an electric plant broke apart a large chunk of coal out of which fell an iron pot! A nail was found embedded in a sandstone block from the Mesozoic Era. And there are many, many more such anomalies.

What are we to make of these finds? There are several possibilities:

* Intelligent humans date back much, much further than we realize.
* Other intelligent beings and civilizations existed on earth far beyond our recorded history.
* Our dating methods are completely inaccurate, and that stone, coal and fossils form much more rapidly than we now estimate.

In any case, these examples - and there are many more - should prompt any curious and open-minded scientist to reexamine and rethink the true history of life on earth.

AP sepoys fought British first

Visakhapatnam, Oct. 1: The first War for Independence occurred not at Meerut in 1857, but in Visakhapatnam way back in 1780. In those days, it was known as Vizagpatam. The sepoys of the East India Company army stationed here rose in rebellion protesting against the oppressive attitude of the English officers.

Noted Historian Dr Kolluru Suryanarayana said that there were actually three sepoy mutinies prior to the famous revolt of 1857. “The first occurred in Vizagpatam on October 3, 1780, the second at Vellore in Tamil Nadu in 1806 and the third at Gorakhpur in 1824,” he said. Shaik Mohammed, subedar of the brigadiers, was the chief mutineer and hero of the first sepoy mutiny in Vizagpatam. “Unfortunately people know only about Mangal Pandey,” said Dr Suryanarayana, who heads the history department of Andhra University.

It was oppression and maltreatment which triggered the revolt. Native sepoys enlisted for local duty were sent all over the State for revenue collection. But they were given no extra pay and were treated like dirt by Englishmen. This caused much discontent. What triggered the revolt was the order given to the sepoys to embark a frigate to Madras to meet the impending threat from Hyder Ali of Mysore.
This order exasperated the native sepoys in general. Muslim soldiers in particular were angry at being asked to take up arms against a fellow Muslim.

But the East India Company officials were hell bent on implementing the order since war with Hyder Ali in the Carnatic had weakened them and they needed to reinforce the army urgently. The then Governor of Madras, John Whitehall, addressed a letter on September 14, 1780, to the then chief of Vizagapatam and Masulipatam settlements, James Henry Casamajor, asking him to keep sepoy grenadiers ready for embarkation.

The sepoys of Masulipatam obeyed the order without a murmur, but at Vizagapatam the English were in for a shock. The Sartine frigate had arrived and the sepoys had given no indication of the impending revolt. They were armed and even conducted a parade on October 3. However, just before 3 pm they all refused to go on board the Sartine. When the officers insisted that their order should be obeyed, the sepoys took up their guns and fired at them indiscriminately. Lt Crisps, Kingsford Venner, a cadet, and Robert Rutherford, the paymaster, died on the spot. Seeing the fury of the rebels the British panicked and ran helter skelter.

A few like Lt. Brown, Ellis and Collins swum the backwaters to reach the Sartine. Others hid themselves in different parts of the town. It did not end there. The rebels were determined to join the forces of Hyder Ali and liberate the district from the East India Company. They took several officers into custody and freed a French spy who had been imprisoned.

Shaik Mohammed assumed control of the rebels. He questioned Casamajor and learnt details of the company’s property. The mutineers then went on a looting spree and took away cash amounting to Rs 21,999. The revolt had left the English in shambles in the area. They were without men or money and did not even get the support of local zamindars.

On the morning of October 4, the mutineers marched out of the town with Casamajor and the other captured men to join the forces of Hyder Ali. But a local zamindar Gajapathi Narain Deo intervened and the officers were freed. This proved to be a costly error. Casamajor returned quickly to the frigate and ordered Captain Ensign Butler to gather loyal sepoys and go after the rebels.

He also instructed neigbouring zamindars not to support the rebels. Zamindars obeyed this and did not allow the rebels to pass through their territories. The mutineers were then ambushed and mercilessly slaughtered by Butler’s men in the gorge of Gudderallywanka on the night of October 8. A few, including Mohammed, escaped, but were caught and executed a few months later. Though the revolt was a short-lived one, it was certainly the first major shock to the British.

“The revolt of the grenadiers was in all respects an event that might have led to dangerous consequences,” wrote Casamajor in his testimony. “It annihilated our power and influence in a great measure”. Though the incident is not as well known as the 1857 revolt, it was referred to in the ‘History of the Madras Army’ by W.J. Wilson and in several letters between John White Hall-Casamajor-Brown. It was also reported in Hickey’s “Bengal Gazette”, India’s first newspaper, couple of days later.

Mohammed Faisuddin, founder president of the Shahide Watan Ashfaqullah Khan Memorial Trust, said it was unfortunate that no ceremony is held to mark the anniversary of the revolt. “Tamil Nadu government had celebrated the centenary of the Sepoy Revolt at Vellore, but the AP government has done no such thing,” he said.

“These are the incidents of national importance. The State should construct a memorial monument and commemorate the incident every year”. There are no remnants of this mutiny in the area except for the grave of Kingsford Venner in the Old Town cemetery.

ek chidiya (doordarshan)

old serial