Sharon Stories

Nowadays Earth is often a tedious and depressing place to reside. After all, the news only seems to cover the grim realities of wars in foreign lands, political ineptitude within our governments and if things couldn't get any worse, a man with a funny hairdo is running for President. You've seen it all, right? Well, maybe not everything, because, as these twenty exciting and mysterious discoveries prove, Earth can still spring up some incredible stories. So before you wallow in despair, here are twenty findings that remind us how fascinating Earth still is. The Voynich Manuscript theverge.com An illustrated hand-written manuscript, known as 'The Voynich Manuscript,' remains a mystery for historians. In part, this is because the text has no origin, thus rendering it almost impossible to track. Still, that hasn't stopped linguists and scholars attempting to solve the writing's meaning. In fact, two people came forward in 2014, with...

Cinnamon is a highly prized spice that has been used since ancient times for its medicinal and healing properties. It has the highest antioxidant strength of all the food sources and is several hundreds more potent than any fruit or vegetable. Cinnamon is a great source of vitamins A and B-complex and minerals such as chromium, iron, zinc, and calcium. It is particularly good for helping diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, indigestion, flatulence, and arthritis. Cinnamon is known to help prevent and shorten the duration of the flu as well to eliminate congestion and mucus from the body. It is also very beneficial for lowering cholesterol and to help regulate blood sugar. It is known to help increase circulation and contains anti-clotting compounds which makes it highly beneficial for helping to prevent strokes and coronary artery disease. It is also very good for reducing inflammation in the body making it helpful for people with autoimmune disorders such as fibromyalgia a...

Picture this. One day you decide you are going to do a little remodeling . You start with the basement. First you knock down a wall. Maybe when you do, there is a tunnel. Maybe you go down that tunnel and find a hidden city. Wait, what!? Is this an Indiana Jones flick or your life? It’s actually one man’s life. Back in 1963, a man in the Nevsehir Province of Turkey, in an area known as Cappadocia, was redoing his house and discovered an entire city in his basement. Can you imagine what it would be like to find a hidden city behind a wall in your basement? hellou (via www.hellou.co.uk ) He ended up finding the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu. Derinkuyu was an entire city carved into the stone below Cappadocia. hellou (via www.hellou.co.uk ) Reaching some 60 meters down, it had 18 levels, and included residences, churches, food storage, wineries, and even a s...

Along with being one of England's greatest engineers all time, Mervyn O'Gorman (1871-1958) was also one of the earliest pioneers of color photography in the early 1900's. Talk about a trailblazer. To this day, many of his photos are used in historical exhibitions, including this series of pictures featuring his daughter. Their clarity - which is sure to take you aback - is just a testament to O'Gorman's consummate engineering ability. This is O'Gorman's daughter, Christina, who he featured in many of his first photographs. Using the Autochrome process, which he helped perfect, he captured images whose quality were leagues ahead of the typical low-clarity, black and white photos of that time. The Autochrome process, which was invented by the  Lumière brothers , would use a glass mosaic screen covered in microscopic grains of red, blue, and green, to ...

  Diane and Tony Rowles have seen it all. After emigrating from the U.K. in the mid-2000s and settling in Rudozem, Bulgaria, the husband and wife came across the many stray dogs roaming the town’s streets — and their neighbors abusing them. After learning that the local shelters were no better, the couple founded the Rudozem Street Dog Rescue to help their canine friends. But after several years of saving strays, the Rowles learned of one dog that seemed beyond saving. The dog was easy to find on the streets, given her condition. But when they got to her, it was obvious just how desperate she was. Street Dog Rescue They scooped her up and brought her to the vet. Street Dog Rescue She was in horrible condition, physically and emotionally. Street Dog Rescue Still, she was a little fighter...

Did you know that it’s not the pigment that makes our eyes blue or green? In fact, every color we see in nature is a product of the scattering of multicolored light. The same thing happens in case of eye color thanks to the phenomenon called structural coloration , which is also common in marine animals, insects and birds. This is what Paul Van Slembrouck describes in his illustrated article at Medium. Let’s take a look at the structure of the human eye to better understand the physics of the eye color. The iris , the colored part of the eye, consists of two layers of cells – the stroma , the front layer, and the epithelium , the back layer. The epithelium contains dark-colored pigments, which cause those little dark specks to appear in the iris, while the stroma is made up of colorless collagen fibers. In some cases, the stroma may contain melanin, and in other cases it contains excessive collagen deposits. These two fact...

Katherine Skiba Contact Reporter Chicago Tribune A Chicago Tribune archival photo of a young man being arrested in 1963 at a South Side protest is Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders , his campaign has confirmed, bolstering the candidate's narrative about his civil rights activism. The black-and-white photo shows a 21-year-old Sanders, then a University of Chicago student, being taken by Chicago police toward a police wagon. An acetate negative of the photo was found in the Tribune's archives, said Marianne Mather, a Chicago Tribune photo editor. "Bernie identified it himself," said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to the campaign, adding that Sanders looked at a digital image of the photo. "He looked at it — he actually has his student ID from the University of Chicago in his wallet — and he said, 'Yes, that indeed is (me).'" Sanders, a U....

Harper Lee Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The Pulitzer Prize-winning author famously published only one novel until 'Go Set a Watchman' was released last July. Author Harper Lee has died at the age of 89, a source confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter . The To Kill a Mockingbird author was a resident at the Meadows, an assisted living facility, in her hometown Monroeville in Alabama. According to her publisher, Lee "died peacefully." No further details were immediately available. "Knowing Nelle these past few years has been not just an utter delight but an extraordinary privilege," her agent, Andrew Nurnberg said in a statement. "When I saw her just six weeks ago, she was full of life, her mind and mischievous wit as sharp as ever. She was quoting Thomas More and setting me straight on Tudor histo...

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Day to Night, 2015. Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes/National Geographic Of all of the arts, photography may be the discipline most accustomed to the nudge of technology, and photographer and artist Stephen Wilkes fully embraces the challenge. His latest project, " Day to Night ," takes on the idea of showcasing, in one composite still image, the transformation of a place over the course of a day. Take his photo of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. For 26 hours, Wilkes shot 2,200 photos without moving the camera and while suspended in the air in a tent-like structure with a little window, so that animals wouldn't see or hear him as he photographed them coming to a watering hole from sunrise to deep into the night. "I photograph by hand; this is not a time lapse. ... It's my eye seeing very specific moments," Wilkes says. ...

If you back up your photos on optical disks or storage drives, there’s a good chance your data won’t last as long as you do due to things known as “ disc rot ” and “ data rot “. But what if you want to ensure that your precious photos live longer than you? Good news: a new “eternal” storage technology may be on the horizon. Scientists have created nanostructured glass discs that can storage digital data for billions of years . Researchers at the University of Southampton announced this week that they’ve figured out how to store huge amounts of data on small glass discs using laser writing. They call it five dimensional (5D) digital data because in addition to the position of the data, the size and orientation plays a role too. The glass storage discs can hold a whopping 360 terabytes each, are stable at temperatures up to 1,000°C (1,832°F), and are expected to keep the data intact for 13.8 billion years at room temperature (anything up to 190°C, or 374°F). I...