Connecticut School Shooting

A young man with a suspected history of mental illness killed his mother, a teacher at a local elementary school, at home then drove her vehicle to the school and proceeded to kill some 20 children before committing suicide. The event so stunned the nation that the President addressed it in a short message earlier in the day.

It also spurred heated discussions on gun control, mental illness, security of students in public schools, and more. At least one petition calling for President Obama to introduce harsher gun control legislation was being circulated online.

In a bizarre parallel case in China, a man wounded over 20 schoolchildren with a knife. None of the students died, however.

© C Harris Lynn, 2012

Texan Carves Pentagram into Son

A 39-year-old Texan man called 911 operators to tell them he had "shed some innocent blood" yesterday. When asked what he meant by that, the man admitted to carving a pentagram into his 6-year-old son's back to commemorate 12-12-12, "a holy day," he said. The mother of the boy called moments later from a neighbor's house to report the crime.

The boy was discharged from the hospital today. His wounds were not life threatening and are believed to have been made by a box cutter recovered at the scene. 12-12-12 was the last triple digit day of this century but it is not considered "holy" by any known religion. Pentagrans are most often associated with Satanism and paganism in general, despite the fact that the symbol is actually supposed to be a protective sigil against evil.

© C Harris Lynn, 2012

Brief Note

In looking over the drafts, there are a lot of stories I've collected over the last several months that I haven't gotten around to posting yet. Some of the posts I'll be making today and tomorrow are going to be from a few weeks, even months, ago. The good thing is that I can now go back through and look for follow-ups to these stories and report them at the same time. Still, you may have heard many of these reports already and I apologize for that. The holidays are busy for everyone, I think.

© C Harris Lynn, 2012

Hades Discovered?

The cave outside Greece was discovered in 1958 and at least one archaeologist thinks it may have been the source of the Grecian mythological Hades. It even has its own lake, as Hades had the River Styx. The cave has been investigated several times since its discovery though it was first meant to be opened to the public.

Bolstering his theory is the dating of the cave, placing its most active period around the Bronze Age of Mycenaean Greece which was "the beginnings of things that produced the age of heroes in Greece," according to Michael Galaty, the archaeologist making the inference. The interior was used for funereal purposes, where bodies were interred while large amounts of dung were burned. It also appears to have drawn visitors from far and wide.

The underground complex also showed signs of having been settled and inhabited in various areas throughout the years in which it was active. The mouth to the cave collapsed some 5000 years ago, preserving much of what was inside the caverns at the time.

© C Harris Lynn, 2012