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Micah Hanks delivered another of his “articles” that turned out to be yet one more in his series of unoriginal summaries of a book he happened to read. This time it was about the Fisher King from the Holy Grail myth, taken in large measure from The Holy Grail: The History and Legend of the Famous Relic, a 2013 CreateSpace paperback by the “Charles Rivers Editors,” an online content farm producing short, error-riddled slapdash histories for the eBook market. He didn’t bother even to look up the readily accessible texts of the medieval versions of the Fisher King story, merely copying the summary from the Charles Rivers text and delivering some canned remarks on the basic level of symbolism of the Grail and the Fisher King. To be fair, this article is a bit more than a simple summary, for it adds material from an online journal article, includes references to the Da Vinci Code, and also noticed that Doctor Who used the name “Fisher King” last season, so I guess that counts as progress.
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Last night The Curse of Oak Island delivered its verdict on the allegedly “Roman” sword that erstwhile Treasure Force Commander and current History Heretic J. Hutton Pulitzer has been promoting as a “100% confirmed” Roman artifact that would rewrite Nova Scotia history. The Lagina brothers, stars of the show, had the sword examined at St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, where both an expert in Classics and a chemist specializing in metals declared that the sword is almost certainly modern. A chemical analysis of the sword found that it was made of brass with a zinc content of about 35%, characteristic of brass made in the 1890s or later. Older brass has a lower zinc content.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, there is a new museum in Anaheim exhibit devoted to teaching parents and children about UFOs and the ancient astronaut hypothesis from a credulous perspective. “This is a 101 on UFOs,” curator Brian Bouquet said in describing the purpose of “Encounters: U.F.O. Experience,” which is on exhibit in Anaheim until May 31 following successful runs in Arizona last year and South Carolina in 2013. According to organizers, about 13,000 people per week visited at the Arizona State Fair, and in Anaheim more than 1,000 have already paid the $12 admission fee ($8 for children 8 years or older; free under 8) since the exhibit opened in early January. The exhibit is located just around the corner from Disneyland.
Last week I presented what I have been able to find about the 1886 French volume The Gospels without God by the socialist politician Louis Martin, apparently the first modern text to claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married with children. I have not yet obtained a copy of the book itself, but in researching it I learned that some early Mormons alleged that Jesus had multiple wives, essentially all of the women mentioned in the Gospels, as evidence for why they too should have many wives. The funny thing is that they claim this based on an ancient text that doesn’t say any such thing.
Ancient astronaut theorist Zecharia Sitchin died in October of 2010, right after the publication of There Were Giants Upon the Earth, which he called his “crowning oeuvre.” This year Inner Traditions is releasing a new paperback edition of Sitchin’s culminating work, and they made galley proofs available for review. There is a sort of touching level of retro charm to the book, particularly when old twentieth century ancient astronaut chestnuts come out to play. Sitchin, for example, claims that aliens (specifically the Mesopotamian death god Nergal) nuked Sodom and Gomorrah and that the contaminated cloud of radiation that resulted from the blast poisoned Sumer. None of the material is particularly fresh or new; a good deal is recycled, sometimes verbatim, from some of Sitchin’s earlier books.
J. Hutton Pulitzer must be getting desperate. He’s started lashing out at anyone and everyone who criticizes him. He says that he sent a letter of complaint to the Canadian Chronicle Herald newspaper that criticized his claims about the alleged “Roman” sword of Oak Island, and in a podcast last night he asked his fans to send hate mail to that newspaper to protest their alleged “bias” against him and his ideas. In so doing, he made a number of false statements about me and Andy White, some of which bordered on the libelous. I will let White speak for himself, but I will take issue with Pulitzer’s assertions about me.
Earlier today I appeared on the Sheldon MacLeod Show on News 95.7 radio in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to discuss the “Roman” sword J. Hutton Pulitzer and the Curse of Oak Island have made famous over the past several weeks. We discussed the provenance of the supposedly ancient sword, J. Hutton Pulitzer’s involvement with it, and the confidentiality agreements put in place, as MacLeod notes, to try to preserve the mystery in order to generate higher ratings. Canada is apparently a few weeks behind the U.S. in Oak Island airings, and MacLeod said that the no one associated with the show was allowed to discuss the sword with him until after the episode airs in Canada. Lucky us: We get to hear all about it on Tuesday!
I’m getting a little bored by the ongoing saga of the Oak Island sword and its various problems. If you aren’t following the story, we have now learned that there are even more copies of the same sword, at least one of which, in Spain, is attributed to the Atenaea Workshop of Archaeological Reproductions, a Spanish manufacturer of decorative objects. Atenaea claims that the sword is a reproduction of one in a Neapolitan museum, but there is no specific information about what that original (if it exists) might be.
I haven’t really been keeping up with the Curse of Oak Island, mostly because every episode is the same: the cast digs a hole, speculates about what crazy theory they can prove with it, and then discover nothing. I tuned in to last night’s episode because it promised to cover the infamous “Roman” sword that history gadfly J. Hutton Pulitzer has been promoting as a “100% confirmed” Roman artifact. I still don’t get how this show has so many fans.
Jason Martell's Baghdad Battery Puffery; Plus: The Real Story Behind the "Sumerian" Cellphone1/12/2016 Today I thought I’d present two quick stories about ancient high technology. The first comes to us from our friend Jason Martell, the ancient astronaut theorist and Ancient Aliens pundit who once asked his fans to send me hate mail. In his biography appearing on his JasonMartell.com website, I noticed that Martell makes a rather startling claim about his impact on history. The claim concerns the alleged Baghdad battery, a small clay jar that some have speculated might have been used to generate a small electrical current in the Roman era. The poor spelling and punctuation are as given in the original:
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. 
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