Gastro Obscura Ada Blackjack, the Forgotten Sole Survivor of an Odd Arctic Expedition

Ada Blackjack, pictured with the rest of the expedition to Wrangel Island. INTERNET ARCHIVE/ PUBLIC DOMAIN

WHEN ADA BLACKJACK SET SAIL in 1921 for a remote speck of land north of Siberia, the petite Inupiat woman was an unlikely Arctic heroine. In her role as the seamstress for an expedition comprised of four men and a female cat named Vic, Blackjack was assured that during…

via Ada Blackjack, the Forgotten Sole Survivor of an Odd Arctic Expedition – Atlas Obscura

In Pursuit of a Dream

In the 1930s, several hundreds of Swedish people left their homes in the far north of their country and set off for the Promised Land. Not, as one could think, some sort of belated Zionist movemen…

Source: In Pursuit of a Dream

Lenin’s Wife | toritto

Everyone knows of Lenin.  His body is still on display in the great Kremlin square, once known as Red Square, for those with a bit of ghoulishness in their souls to see.  His name and statues have been taken down everywhere in Russia and just about everywhere else as well.  He has been written out of history kind of like Pharaoh Akhenaten’s name was chiseled off of Egyptian walls.

Yet his body is still there on display.Yes, every one, save perhaps our current crop of high school kids drudging their way through what is euphemistically known as the public educational system, knows something of Lenin.

Few however, outside of left wingers, communists and historians know of Lenin’s wife – or even that he had a wife.

Nadezhda “Nadya” Krupskaya was Lenin’s wife – and Nadya was a revolutionary to the

Source: Lenin’s Wife | toritto

Mysterious wooden statue found in peat bog is ‘twice as old as Stonehenge’ – Asia – World – The Independent

A wooden statue pulled from a peat bog in Russia more than a hundred years ago is now believed to be twice as old as Stonehenge. The Shigir Idol, which found in the Ural Mountains in 1890, is thought to be 11,000 years old – making it the oldest wooden sculpture in the world. Depicting a man with mysterious symbols inscribed on him – which scientists believe could be an ancient encrypted code – the statue is 1,500 years older than previously thought. Scientists in Mannheim, Germany, used the most up-to-date carbon dating technology, called Accelerated Mass Spectrometry, to determine…

Source: Mysterious wooden statue found in peat bog is ‘twice as old as Stonehenge’ – Asia – World – The Independent

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II | History | Smithsonian

Originally posted on Smithsonian.

Karp Lykov and his daughter Agafia, wearing clothes donated by Soviet geologists not long after their family was rediscovered.

Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs. This forest is the last and greatest of Earth’s wildernesses. It stretches from the furthest tip of Russia’s arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: five million square miles of nothingness, with a population, outside a handful of towns, that amounts to only a few thousand people.

When the warm days do arrive, though, the taiga blooms, and for a few short months it can seem almost welcoming. It is then that man can see most clearly into this hidden world–not on land, for the taiga can swallow whole armies of explorers, but from the air. Siberia is the source of most of Russia’s oil and mineral resources, and, over the years, even its most distant parts have been overflown by oil prospectors and surveyors on their way to backwoods camps where the work of extracting…

via For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II | History | Smithsonian.

Medieval Swedish Sword Found in Siberia

Life in Russia

The scientists would be keen to hear from European experts who could throw more light on its origins. Picture: The Siberian Times

German made, Adorned in Sweden

How is it possible that a German-made 12th century blade, adorned in Sweden, reached Siberia?

Buried under a tree in the Novosibirsk region, Archaeologists discovered a medieval sword. Unearthed in 1975 scientists are looking to unlocking it’s secrets with the help of European experts. It is the only weapon of its kind ever discovered in Siberia.

What is known is that it’s origins lie in the Rhine basin of Germany, this beautifully engraved sword then possibly traveled to the Swedish mainland, or Gotland an island of Sweden were it was adorned with an ornate silver handle and Norse ruse pattern.

The blade was made in the Rhine basin of Germany in late 12th or early 13th century. Pictures: The Siberian Times

Mother of…

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Is this the world’s oldest secret code?

The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately 9,500 years ago, and preserved as if in a time capsule in a peat bog on the western fringe of Siberian. Expert Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol, believes that the structure’s faces carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic era of the Stone Age concerning their understanding of ‘the creation of the world’.

German scientists are now close to a precise dating – within five decades – of the remarkable artifact, which is a stunning example of ancient man’s creativity.

The results are likely to be known in late February or early March, The Siberian Times can reveal.

Now the question is turning among academics to a better understanding of the symbols and pictograms on this majestic larch Idol, one of Russia’s great treasures, which is now on display a special glass sarcophagus at its permanent home, Yekaterinburg History Museum, where…

via Is this the world’s oldest secret code?