Gold For Monday Mystery...!

If all the legends are true, there is still a lot of golden treasure that remains unfound.

Here is a story from the days of the civil war that focuses on one of the most well known of those treasures...the Dents Run treasure.

The Legend Of The Dents Run Gold

There are a lot of hidden treasures still waiting to be found. In the United States, the Civil War in particular spawned many tales of buried gold, and the FBI may have actually uncovered one of these caches.

According to legend, shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, the Union Army dispatched a wagon full of gold to pay its soldiers. It set off from Wheeling, West Virginia, but disappeared somewhere near Dents Run in Elk County, Pennsylvania. Since then, numerous treasure hunters, historians, and private investigators scoured those woods in hopes of finding the lost gold, all to no avail.

In March 2018, the FBI set up shop nearby in Benezette Township and started digging. They obtained a court authorization to do it, which led to speculation that they had to have convincing evidence that the gold might be there.

The FBI provided few details regarding their intentions. Spokeswoman Carrie Adamowski simply said that they were conducting an excavation, concluding that “nothing was found.”[9] However, local media reported that Dennis and Kem Parada were present at the dig site. The two run a treasure recovery service called Finders Keepers and have been searching for the Civil War loot for decades. Other local historians are far more skeptical regarding the existence of the gold, but even they admit that the involvement of the FBI adds a new layer to the mystery.

Now, I have to ask myself just what was the interest of the FBI in something generally thought of as a legend or myth? Does their involvement mean that something was actually found, despite all the claims to the contrary? Certainly lends an air of mystery to the whole thing, don't you think?

Coffee out on the sunny patio again this morning!

No Sunday Post...!

Big electrical storms in the Houston area, which means power is going off and on a LOT! Sooo, I'm doing this post on Saturday night just to let you know that Sunday I won't be doing one. Make any sense?

Sorry about that, folks!

Last Cartoon Sunday...!

This will probably be the last time I do the 'toons for Sunday. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up about that!







And the final one...



Ok folks...that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed these cartoons and maybe I'll have something more folks will like next Sunday.

Coffee out on the patio this morning, if that's OK with everyone.

That's A Lot Of Cookies...!

Girl Scout cookies are something that nearly everyone is familiar with, right?

Well, here is a story about a troop of Girl Scouts that sold more cookies than even they thought possible. Kinda gives you a little more faith in mankind again.

The First-Ever Troop of Homeless Girl Scouts Just Crushed Their Cookie Sales Goal

BY MICHELE DEBCZAK APRIL 24, 2018

Selling 32,500 boxes of cookies in a single week would be noteworthy for any team of Girl Scouts, but it's an especially sweet achievement for Troop 6000: The New York City-based chapter is the first-ever Girl Scout troop composed entirely of children living in homeless shelters.

According to NBC News, this season marked the first time the troop took part in the organization's annual cookie sale tradition. In early April, they received exclusive permission to set up shop inside the Kellogg's Café in Union Square. They kicked off their inaugural stand sale aiming to sell at least 6000 boxes of cookies: At the end of six days, they had sold more than 32,500.

Some customers waited in line an hour to purchase boxes from the history-making young women. Others gave their money directly to the troop, collectively donating over $15,000 to fund trips and activities. After purchasing their cookies, customers could also buy special Girl Scout cookie-inspired menu items from the Kellogg's store, with all proceeds going to Troop 6000.

The troop formed in 2016 as a collaboration between the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, Mayor de Blasio, and the city Department of Homeless Services. Meetings are held in shelters across the city, and many of the troop leaders, often mothers of the scouts, are homeless women themselves. About 40 percent of New York's homeless population are children, and Troop 6000 had to expand last summer to accommodate a flood of new recruits. Today, there are about 300 girls enrolled in the program.

Now that is definitely a good thing as far as I'm concerned. But then, I do love me some cookies!

Coffee out on the patio once again today!

Terrible Fashion Idea...!

While many fashion statements are a little screwy, this one is downright crazy!

How anyone could begin to even walk in these is totally beyond me. Thank goodness most women didn't even try. I can only imagine the injuries that would come from that endeavour. Besides, in my opinion they are really ugly!

Armadillo Shoes

Photo credit: Christie’s

Though they haven’t been around long enough to really be historic, as they were designed by Alexander McQueen in 2010, armadillo shoes will surely go down as one of the worst of the worst. Everyone hopes these shoes will stay in the annals of fashion history, where they belong, never to be seen on a runway or at an award show again.

The first line of armadillo shoes were carved out of wood, which means they’re probably just as uncomfortable as they appear. The shoes were famously worn by Lady Gaga, who is notorious for bizarre fashion choices, and they sold for around $3,900 to $10,000 per pair. Only a relative few were ever produced—and only for extremely special clients, such as Gaga herself. Though Gaga made them work, one Vogue fashion blogger admitted they are impossible to walk in. No surprise there.

Maybe Lady Gaga could pull these shoes off, but I seriously doubt that anyone else could, no matter how hard they try. That's probably a good thing. Makes a good topic for Freaky Friday, though.

Coffee out on the patio again this morning...OK?

A Roach In The Nose...!

It's bad enough to find one of these critters crawling around in the kitchen, but when they get inside your head...YUCK!

Cockroach

Photo credit: mysanantonio.com

They are the kitchen culprits we all love to hate and often the reason behind a man’s girly squeal. But what if one of them ventured where no roach had ever dared to go? Perhaps . . . your skull.

In early 2017, a 42-year-old woman from India woke up to tingly, crawling sensations in her right nostril. Thinking she was simply catching a cold, the domestic worker tried to go back to sleep, only to be plagued by different movements inside her nose.

She spent the rest of the night awake, waiting for the morning Sun to appear on the horizon before she could go to a hospital. She suspected the problem to be an insect of some kind as every movement made her eyes burn.

The woman was referred to three different hospitals before doctors scanned her skull and discovered an apparent “mobile foreign body.” Finally, they used an endoscope to find the cockroach in the skull base, right between her eyes and dangerously close to her brain.

Doctors quickly used forceps and suction devices to remove the annoyance. After 12 hours, the bug was safely extracted and surprisingly still alive. Doctors were actually relieved to find the insect still alive as it could have caused a deadly infection if it had died.

Ya know, visiting India has never been on my bucket list, and is even less so after reading this story. BTW, I took this from the folks at Listverse.

Coffee out on the patio again this morning.

Burton Mossman For Western Wednesday...!

Burton was an example of how hard work and dedication can make a big difference in a person's life.

From a humble start in the ranching business to a job as an Arizona Ranger, he remained true to himself and his chosen way of living. He did alright by it, so it would seem.

1867

Arizona Ranger Burton Mossman is born

Burton C. Mossman, a rancher turned lawman, is born in Aurora, Illinois.

Little is known about Mossman’s childhood in Illinois, though he apparently learned to be self-reliant and resourceful at a young age. When he was 21, Mossman left home and moved to Mexico, where he quickly began proving himself one of the most canny and successful ranchers in the territory. By age 30, he not only had his own spread in New Mexico, but was also the superintendent of a two-million-acre ranch in northern Arizona running 60,000 cattle.

As the size of the southwestern cattle industry increased, cattle rustlers began to take advantage of the lack of surveillance on the isolated ranges to steal stock. In 1901, the territory of Arizona responded by organizing a ranger force to rid the region of rustlers and other outlaws. The governor of Arizona convinced Mossman to sign on as the first captain of the Arizona Rangers.

Mossman was suited to the task. Courageous and skilled with a pistol, he had a knack for surprising rustlers while they were still in possession of stolen cattle, freshly butchered beef, green hides, and other incriminating evidence. Though he could use violence to good effect when needed, Mossman preferred to trick his quarry into giving up peacefully when possible. In one instance, Mossman rode south alone in pursuit of the multiple-murderer Agostine Chacon, who had fled to Mexico. Clearly out of his jurisdiction, Mossman had to act with finesse. With the assistance of Burt Alvard, an outlaw turned lawman, Mossman convinced Chacon that he and Alvard were also outlaws and would help him steal several top horses from a ranch in southern Arizona. When the men crossed the border into Arizona, Mossman revealed his true identity and arrested Chacon, who was later hanged.

The Chacon arrest was a typical example of Mossman’s approach to dealing with Arizona rustlers and outlaws. “If they come along easy, everything will be all right,” he once explained. “If they don’t, well, I just guess we can make pretty short work of them… Some of them will object, of course. They’ll probably try a little gunplay as a bluff, but I shoot fairly well myself, and the boys who back me up are handy enough with guns. Any rustler who wants to yank on the rope and kick up trouble will find he’s up against it.”

After a long and adventurous career with the Arizona Rangers, Mossman eventually returned to the more peaceful life of a rancher. By the time he retired from ranching in 1944, he had business interests in cattle operations from Mexico to Montana, and more than a million cattle wore his brand. He lived out the remainder of his life at his comfortable ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, and died in 1956 at the age of 89.

Burton seems to have lived by his own set of values and it must have worked fine for him. He lived a long life and must have been a man worth knowing, for sure.

Coffee out on the beautiful patio today. By beautiful, I mean the weather...not the patio!