The tale of the Trojan Horse has been recounted countless times — including with a giant rabbit in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail — and a wooden replica used in the 2004 film Troy now stands in Çanakkale, Turkey, near the site of ancient Troy. The timely legend even sparked the saying, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” Yet historians still aren’t certain whether the story is factual or, more likely, an elaborate myth with some roots in reality. Some have theorized that the horse was a metaphor for whatever did destroy the city of Troy, such as a natural disaster or an enemy ship. But the prevailing theory is that the clever structure may have been based on ancient siege engines, such as battering rams, which were often covered with wet horse hides. The damp hides helped protect the wooden siege engines (and the soldiers using them) from flaming arrows, which may have been the inspiration for the legendary ruse.

In 1968, an American bought the old London Bridge and moved it to Arizona.

If you want to see the 19th-century version of London Bridge, don’t travel to London — or even England, for that matter. Instead, head to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where a U.S. businessman by the name of Robert McCulloch moved the bridge after buying it in 1968. That the landmark structure was even for sale was the result of English officials realizing the bridge was sinking, albeit at the relatively slow pace of 1 inch every eight years. And so, after a tenure of some 130 years — a bit shabby, when you consider that its medieval predecessor stood for more than 600 — that iteration of London Bridge was put on the market after London City Councilor Ivan Luckin convinced his colleagues that he could persuade someone in America to buy it. 

He was right, of course, and it made sense that McCulloch would be the one to purchase it. An eccentric industrialist who once attributed his success to “booze and broads,” McCulloch jumped at the opportunity to bring a piece of history to a patch of land he was hoping to turn into a haven for tourists. Buying the bridge for the princely sum of $2.46 million was the easy part — it was disassembling and moving it, granite brick by granite brick, that turned out to be a logistical nightmare. Three years and another $7 million later, London Bridge settled in its (apparently) final resting place on October 10, 1971. Today, it’s one of Arizona’s top attractions.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

The world of politics has turned into an absolute circus of idiots. Trump is getting breaks from the courts for reasons no one with a brain can figure out. The dole wagon never stops running because  someone is always on the net or the phone with their hand out telling you how it is imperative for you to donate, donate and donate.

  Then along comes someone with a story about a satanic cult in the White House. This comes from  a conservative senator and it is guess what he puts in his coffee, bet it isn’t sugar. At any rate the far right has to run up the flag of yet another evil that is putting all conservatives at risk. The rest of us are doing just fine but the bunch that is passing restrictive laws, burning books, closing libraries and attempting to turn back the clock are fearful of an imagined cult in the WH. 

  How did we get to this point where everything is upside down? We have lived for years with the apathy of society and a wish not to get involved. As a result we have had minority rule on many things that the majority would not have allowed to happen if they had taken the time to pay attention and get involved.

  Our government has been run by the minority party for years because they find ways to make it possible to get their people elected and the opposition to be kept out. Once they have the upper hand they fill the supreme court with people that have the same views as themselves. As for things in the world of everyday life it is the squeaking wheel that gets the grease, be it on a college campus or in a workplace situation. 

  Now we are hearing about MAGA Soldiers that will be at polling places to ensure that there are not problems with the voting. More likely they will be there to harass and cause problems with people that they feel are not voting the way the Man wants them to.  Will they be at the voting places in districts that are primarily Republican or Democrat, I’m guessing in the latter and the function to carry out will be to get those voters to leave before they can vote. The fact that they  show up just to intimidate should be enough to get them arrested and possibly to get their candidate removed from the ballot.

  The nation has had enough of the bully boy faction and we need to go back to being civil to one another. All the hate speech and negative attitudes along with the rise in the purchase of weapons and we don’t go a day without someone dying because someone else did not like what was said, or how they were looked at, or some other imagined slight and they reach for the gun and start shooting. 

  The days of the snake oil salesman have not passed, they are no longer working out of the back of a covered wagon. Today they are working from very fine offices located in buildings belonging to all sorts of industries and in government buildings as well. The constant stream of lies that have been fed to the public make it hard to tell the truths from the fictional information and trust becomes a problem. Big Pharm will tell you they have cure for something and yet that cure requires that you continue to buy their pill or salve to make the cure work. Cars are being built that can drive themselves, and yet that has proven to be less than true. Each of us needs to look at every situation, promise or whatever and consider if what we are being told makes sense before we jump into the pond and get eaten by whatever lives in that pond.

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” in an effort to prove to European naysayers that the world was round, right? Not at all. In fact, Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo (his real name), his European contemporaries, and basically all educated humans dating back to the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere. Famous mathematician Pythagoras of Samos (of a2 + b2 = c2 fame) figured out as much around 500 BCE, and 260 years later, another Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes accurately measured the Earth’s circumference. But defying the status quo and risking a deathly plunge into the vacuum of space certainly adds some dramatic tension, which is probably why Washington Irving invented this fictional flourishfor his 1828 biography The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Although he was known for his inventive works of fiction, such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving’s creative history of Colombo became one of the most persistent myths of the Age of Exploration.

Charles Dickens is known for a good ghost story. Some of his most famous works, including the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, revolve almost entirely around the supernatural. The English author’s interest in spirits even extended beyond the written word: He was an original member of the Ghost Club in London, an exclusive group interested in dissecting all things otherworldly.

The Ghost Club claims to be the oldest society of its kind. It was formally founded in 1862, although its history dates back to informal gatherings of Cambridge University academics in the mid-1850s. Along with Dickens, the group has counted such literary luminaries as W.B. Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon, and Arthur Conan Doyle among its members. Spiritualism was a hot topic in Victorian-era England, and the curiosity and discussion around it was widespread: Physicists, philosophers, biologists, and more were found among the early Ghost Club members. The club kept minimal records, and little is known about specific investigations at the time of Dickens’ membership, but research suggests that ghostly encounters, clairvoyance, and exposing frauds working as mediums were all on the table.

Dickens, for all his obvious spiritual inclinations — including dabbling in hypnosis — was also healthily skeptical. “All such narratives must be received with the greatest circumspection, and sifted with the utmost care,” he wrote in an 1853 article about haunted houses. “Nothing in them must be taken for granted, and every detail proved by direct and clear evidence, before it can be received.” Dickens died in 1870 and the Ghost Club later disbanded, although not for long. It was revived in 1882, and despite fluctuations in activity, the club endured, and remains an active organization today.

Personally I do the same things I have always done, wash my hand, cover my mouth when I cough or sneeze. I worked in health care for years so having the courtesy to wear a mask when I am not feeling well was and is not an issue. All the pandemic did was alert me to the number of people who are not safe and really don’t care about the health and safety of others.