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Hong Kong's flag-carrier, Cathay Pacific has had a very bumpy past year, whilst the airline has seen demand drop over during civil unrest in the city, the carrier also has to contend with the ongoing Coronavirus which has seen a number of carriers reducing and even temporarily cancelling flights.
Cathay Pacific has already slowly began cancelling flights, with regional destinations affected first with long-haul destinations also seeing demand falling with frequency decreases and lately temporary cancellations.
For Cathay Pacific's 5 daily flights between London Heathrow and Hong Kong has also considerably fallen... Between 17th February 2020 to 29th February 2020, the number of flights have fallen to 20 weekly flights, dropping further to only 15 weekly flights between 1st March 2020 to 28th March 2020.
The suspension across Cathay Pacific's network equates to 40% of capacity, although flights to Mainland China has been heavily impacted with 90% of capacity being cut.
For the rest of 2020 is going to be a tough year for Cathay Pacific and hope the airline can recover what has been a difficult year for the carrier.
Currently, Cathay Pacific operates 68 Boeing 777s, which includes 17 Boeing 777-300s and 51 Boeing 777-300ERs. Cathay Pacific have 21 Boeing 777-9s on-order.
Kilo Quebec Alpha is one of 51 Boeing 777-300ERs in service with Cathay Pacific, delivered new to the flag-carrier on lease from BBAM on 17th April 2012 and she is powered by 2 General Electric GE90-115B engines.
Boeing 777-367/ER B-KQA on final approach into Runway 09L at London Heathrow (LHR) on CX257 from Hong Kong-Chek Lap Kok (HKG).
sir! I'm getting a strange signal!
where's it coming from, corporal?
it's from outside the galaxy, sir, but closing with incredible speed! and it's coming right at us!
can you read the signal? what does it say?
it says. . . oh my god!
what? what?
it says, 'get out of the way. my brakes are completely shot!'
brakes? on an inter-galactic cruiser? must be from earth. they cannot give up on their ridiculous car culture.
should we change position, sir?
change position? what is this, a 2-lane blacktop? we're in deep space, dammit!
but sir. they are on a collision course!
ok ok. tell navigation to. . . how do you say. . . pull over.
do we need to activate our blinkers, sir?
blinkers? this might as well be 2014. sure. turn them on. I bet you his muffler is probably rusted out too.
muffler, sir?
never mind.
the frequency of intuition
Created for the NASA remix Challenge #11 - Through the Looking Glass
angel by Marcus Ranum
Crystal Formation by Nasa
There are only 3 trains per day (on weekdays) connecting Metz with Bar-le-Duc. The line between them is a double track electrified main line. Can somebody please teach SNCF what a fixed frequency is.
Bluebird Buses Ltd trading these days as Stagecoach North Scotland along with the Highland operation is expected to report its financial postion later this month but is poised to post higher profits than First Aberdeen. Its main challenge has been engineering, the ability to keep its fleet of buses on the road with high number of service cancellations due to break downs across the network. The hydrogen fleet have paid there part in this and are likely to exit the fleet in 2019. The unreliable Profile fleet has taken a further cut in size during 2018 although the decker fleet has gained older Tridents to allow young Enviro400 vehicles to move north.
Aberdeenshire funding cuts have hit the company in the shire but have been offset by increased funding from Aberdeen City Council with Stagecoach successful in picking up the new 14 service that replaced the First X40 service and taking the 15A and 94 from First and Central respectively.
The AWPR finally, almost, opening at the end of 2018 will benefit the company in 2019 as building works has cost the company in recent years delaying most of its services coming into the city and the reduced traffic congestion will allow faster journey times and perhaps even reduced PVR on some routes or the opportunity to increase frequencies once traffic movement settles although the new Haudagain remodel will hit the 727 and Inverurie and Oldmeldrum services as work begins on that corridor. The new 747 and 757 routes that start later this month represent a fresh opportunity for the company and the new TECA events arena opens in 2019 that should benefit the 727 after First pulled out of the area although it may be tempted to extend the 17B in the complex which has a dedicated bus entrance. Whilst First has been unable to follow through with plans to expand to Portlethen due to its driver challenges it has fiercely protected the 17 corridor flooding with low fares and the new 17B service.
With First Aberdeen not investing in new buses, Stagecoach has felt no pressure to upgrade its Aberdeen fleet with investment instead targeted at its Moray operations. It does need to face in to its maintenance challenges in 2019 having lost school contracts in 2018 due the unreliability of its fleet. Stagecoach will be hoping the remainder of winter is kind to its Aberdeenshire operations in keeping buses on the road.
A selection of buses at Tullos on New Years day representing the current feet, the Profile much less evident with 53316 skulking in the background of this shot.
What will you experience, after your human vessel passes away (die). The human vessel is destroyed by a happening or by aging and the body can’t fulfill the tasks at hand to sustain life and the body and brain passes away. The Soul, your consciousness of your awareness will pass over. Suppose a person has a car accident and the body and brain died. On that moment the Soul will stop projecting consciousness more or less in your body. And the Soul will observe your physical body and what is happening to your physical expression of energy. As awareness you will float next to your body or look at it from above. On this moment of passing over, you cannot reason and you do not remember who you are. This makes dying or passing over as we call it, a very tranquil process. You just observe everything that is happening to your physical body. Because also how you died, is an experience and as Souls we want to gather all information we can and we do. Our observer is not in our brain and not in our body, the observer is always our direct conscious part of our Soul as awareness. On the moment of passing over, you just observe. Than suddenly you will be pulled to another location, a location of a funeral, cremation or even a ceremony, by the thoughts of the loved ones who are still on earth. Again you will observe everything that is happening on the funeral, cremation or ceremony, you can hear thoughts, see people who are saying goodbyes to you of your previous life. Again to gather all information about this life, we observe automatically, what happens to us. How long it will take for a passed over Soul to use the conscious awareness of the Soul again, is different for all Souls. With one it goes quicker than another Soul. Depending, when you are ready for it or not. Normally we observer in a human life, direct with our conscious part of our Soul without our senses, this happens on a high energetic frequency. That is the reason why we can observe in life, as well as after we passed over. Our human life happens in the apparently material dimension, everything looks real, still it is an expression of energy we are dreaming. Because of the cause and consequence in repetitive cycles we experience life as a constant, that means we see life as a reality, however it is still an important dream. That gives us the opportunity to experience a seemingly material life. When we pass over we will come into the In-between dimension (This is the dimension between earth and Heaven. Heaven is the immaterial pure positive dimension. The Soul is always present in this in-between dimension and can’t be part of the apparently material dimension. That is why the Soul projects consciousness into the human vessel. To become a part in this dream and a play its part. Our senses are like a filter over our awareness, and works on a low energetic frequency, this means, that we can’t use this in the In-between dimension. Because our senses just like the apparently material dimension happens all on a lower energetic frequency. To make things simple for our Soul and we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel and that creates the so called reality.When the Soul focus of attention is in the in-between dimension as we passed over, we first only observe as told above. After this we start to reason and to remember with our conscious part of our Soul on a high energetic frequency, this takes a while. That is the reason that after you passed over there is no panic. Again real passing over is very tranquil. You feel an incredible love surrounding you, this is happening. Because you feel the connection you have with Oneness (=God), all energetic awarenesses have an individuality AND on the same time they are all connected to each other. So in the in-between dimension, you feel this incredible love around you and you feel very comfortable. This is also depending on how large your ego perspective has grown in life. You start to learn how to remember your previous life (last life), with your conscious part of your Soul. You start to reason again, and slowly you become the same perspective and personality, you were as you lived your human life. You are literally the same person as you were in life, only you don’t have a physical body anymore, but an esoteric body. A body of energetic light, because everything is created from energy. You will notice that when you think about a loved one on earth, you will be there too. And you can observe this loved one doing his or her things on earth. Or when a loved one speaks to you in thoughts, you will hear them and be there to communicate. Only the loved ones on earth, rarely understand, sense or hear you. When someone on earth a loved one thinks of you, you think of this person and visa versa. That is how we as Souls are connected. You can even split your consciousness again, and talk with more people on the same time. As Soul we can do so much more. When you think about a place you visited in the past when you were alive, you can visit it again, to see it again and float around in the streets, beach or what ever you like to visit again. When a loved one is thinking about you with thoughts, you can hear the thoughts too. Because we don’t have the flat simple senses, we had on earth. After a while you will feel an urge to move on and to go back home, to Heaven. Because the love is drawing you home. This happens also depending on how large your ego perspective has developed. Can you let go of the loved ones, can you let go of your possessions on earth, can you let go of the ego perspective you have taught yourself and was taught by others Also the loved ones on earth have to let you as passed over Soul go too. When they hold tide to your being, your Soul will stay longer connected to earth because of the loved ones. Many people experience the passed over loved one, talking to them, to let them go. Which is really necessary. Some people have a big trouble of letting go the passed over loved one, and pull them constantly back to earth. This can take a while, because the loved one has to accept that you have passed over and moves on in her or his life. Better is for a loved one to accept right away that you passed over, and focus again on positivity in their lives.
When you let go of the loved ones on earth, the possessions and earth, you are ready to move on on your journey to Heaven. When your loved ones let you go, you will go into a next phase of passing over. This phase is called the path to enlightenment. When people really get enlightened in life and die, they will immediately merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension. To be enlightened means that you bring your conscious part of your Soul, what is your awareness and equals all your thoughts, memories and formulation of thoughts unto a pure positive angelic level. We humans are ALL reincarnated angels. Believe it or don’t, still it is true. That is the reason why we have to bring our thoughts back on the angelic level of formulating all the time pure positive thoughts. Thoughts are energy patterns moving in space. When you formulate positive thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a high frequency. When you formulate negative thoughts, you create your awareness to vibrate energetically on a low frequency. In a human life most people create more negative thoughts than positive thoughts, this will cause a split Soul. Between your awareness and your Higher Self. Your awareness is vibrating energetic on a much lower frequency than your Higher Self. The Higher Self is your angelic pure positive awareness. The voice of the Higher Self can be heard by your intuition and conscience. That is how you can know, why we are angelic beings from origin. Before you were born, your Soul split into a conscious and a subconscious part. The conscious part is your awareness, your formulation of thoughts, memories and everything we learn into our memory. Not in our brain, because the brain is an expression of energy, to give form to our thoughts. At birth, the awareness is cleared from memory of previous lives, and in total cleared from your Souls life. So you can start living this experience fresh and clean. In some cases young children can remember past lives, because they have still a good connection with the Higher Self. Some can tell you some interesting details of real past lives. That is another story for another time. Which you can find in previous answers about past lives.
What is balance in yourself, balance in yourself, is to bring the thoughts of your awareness on the same level as the Higher Self awareness is thinking. A difference in thoughts, will cause negative emotions and bad feelings. As a signal to tell you, that you are not on the positive path in life. Transform your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. What equals the same thoughts as your Higher Self and you will create positive emotions and you feel good, balanced and positive again. You are then on the right positive path in life. It is a guidance to help the Soul to find its way in a human life. We only lost touch with this guidance system of the Higher Self. This balance in thoughts of your awareness and the higher Self is also called enlightenment. To create One Soul again. When your awareness formulates positive thoughts the same as your Higher Self does, than your awareness vibrates energetically on the same high frequency. Just like Jesus has told us too. When you are born you are One (One Soul), when you grow up you become TWO (Soul and Ego), when you die, what will you do, when you are TWO? We explain this later. We need long explanations, because it is necessary to understand what happens when you passed over. You see that we have never been told the truth, that is why we have such a lack of information about this event. The enlightened persons after death, will pass over and merge with the Higher Self and enter Heaven. They are home. This is the quickest way to go back home to Heaven. The normal persons in life who has formulated positive thoughts in life which is called thoughts and actions upon by the perspective of the Soul. And they have on the same time formulated negative thoughts in life, what is called thoughts and actions by the egoistic and greedy ego perspective. The ego perspective is always the creator of negative thoughts. Most people have this split Soul and can’t merge with the Higher Self and can’t enter Heaven. Negative thoughts creates negative emotions and feels bad or sad. Positive thoughts creates positive emotions and feels great. How you feel is always a result of the thoughts you have been formulating consciously or subconsciously. A positive thought is good for you AND on the same time it is good for all people on the world AND good for Nature. This is the only way to create balance in yourself, balance between all people and balance with Nature. The people who have a split Soul, they will go into a next phase after they passed over, in the In- between dimension and let go of their loved ones and earth. They will have to become enlightened as an angel, other wise you can’t enter Heaven. Believe me, this is the best place to be. These people, most of you, will experience that our fears, worries, and other negative emotions which are based on negative thoughts and indirect actions in life will repeat again in new dreams. Again to give you a choice. To choose a positive thought or a negative thought. When you choose a negative thought. The dream will repeat itself, perhaps slightly in a different way. You will see all the wrong doings and consequences in your life. Until you choose the positive thoughts and reach enlightenment. That means that you choose pure positive thoughts that equals your higher Self. When you do, you cause your Soul to become ONE< that means that your awareness and Higher Self vibrates on the same energetic high frequency. The Higher Self is than able to merge with your awareness and now you will go into Heaven, the immaterial pure positive dimension that vibrates on a high frequency. Than you are able to remember all previous lives including the total life of your Soul. Enlightenment is the key to enter Heaven. As I explained also in the Gospel to Heaven, the real path to Heaven in my first pinned answer in my profile on Quora.
Children are helped by spirit guides to go through this process. No one is alone. All humans have at least two spiritual guides. Only most of you don’t know this, because you are all busy to enjoy yourself, to get what you want. Instead of evolving as a human being into enlightenment. Spiritual development means therefor the development of negative thoughts into positive thoughts in your perspective. That is how you can evolve in life. Than you have people who embrace the occult, satanism and made very egoistic decisions in life, by killing, deceiving, destroying, etc. These people have a very large ego perspective, and they will need many centuries to restore their Soul as One. They will often choose again and again negative thoughts. They will experience a kind of Hell, because they created this experience, by their expectation. Everything that you desire, wish to experience, consciously AND subconsciously will immediately manifest in the in-between dimension. So thoughts have consequences. In this last group of passed over Souls you have also Souls of a human life or other lives from other planets, that chooses to stay negative, egoistic and destructive. They desire to keep their influence in life on certain people, who connects with them through blood rituals, sacrificing and others. We call these the Fallen angels. The angels who desire not to return to Heaven. They don’t want to do the effort to become enlightened. They are the creators of negativity in life, which are performed by humans in our society to make our civilization more and more negative, evil and bad. These are the people who desire power, possessions and oppression, by force and negative actions. They want to pull other Souls into the same fallen angel situations, as they are or will be. In the end every one will come back to Heaven. That is our natural state of being of everyone. That is why it is said: God forgives everyone. When you choose to go to Heaven, do the effort of becoming enlightened and embrace pure positive thoughts, you will return to Heaven. This is all the real judgment of our lives. No one will escape their thoughts and actions on earth. Like Jesus said; the first in life (people with a large ego perspective) will be the last in Heaven. Which is true and confirms these statements again and again. God forgives everyone, but do you forgive yourself? Than you have what is called repentance, repentance means to become enlightened. To do the effort to develop your thoughts into pure positive thoughts. That is repentance. Something so easy, so misunderstood by many. False prophets? There are many. It is your decision to find out, who is right and who is wrong. How more enlightened you will be, how more awakened you will become, how more you will see the truths in life. Religious scriptures, books, movies and even main stream media all are rewritten for power and control. Many untruths are told and spread, to keep you trapped into a repetitive cycle, without transforming your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Why is this no where mentioned? Because the people with power don’t want to share knowledge and wisdom. Negative people are easy to enslave and positive happy souls are not. Last point. A hell does not exist as the opposite of Heaven. This is very logical. A human being, a Soul and even a fallen angel as Soul all are constructed from a harmonious energetic intelligence and being. This can only happen in a harmonious and balanced positive dimension. It is only the thoughts with free will, that makes the difference, the thoughts we choose to embrace. Positive or negative thoughts. Still the body and construction of the Souls or a human vessel is all angelic perfection. The same is with humans, we are part of our own angel being projected as consciousness in a human vessel. All humans are equal, only the thoughts they choose with free will are different. Do you see what I mean? We choose positive thoughts or negative thoughts. This decision, decides who we will become in our awareness, a good or a bad person or somewhere in between. Still humans are part of the developed intelligence angelic pure positive dimension, other wise we cannot even exist. Therefore hell does not exist. The opposite of Heaven is real CHAOS and no intelligence or being can exist here. Some of us will experience a hell as they have embraced evil thoughts in life, they will manifest this, in the in between dimension like a dream. You will reap, what you sow.
Most people forgot that at every situation in life you have a choice, to formulate positive or negative thoughts. A human life was created for our Souls. This means that a human life is in fact the school for the Soul. To experience a material life with fun and enjoyment, to learn from the experiences, to create new experiences and to evolve in the end. We lost our guidance and control of our thoughts. When you don’t master your thoughts, you don’t master your feelings. Most of us want to embrace, hide, avoid and even justify negativity in life, instead of transforming negativity into positivity. This is the biggest problem in life, what has created our unbalanced world.
Read my words and study them, which I have described in my answers and you see that everything interlinks and is connected on this way. Still it is your choice if you want to do something with it or not.
Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 miles (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.
The park consists of 310.31 square kilometres (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain annually.
Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was re designated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018.
As stated in the foundation document in U.S. National Park Service website:
The purpose of Arches National Park is to protect extraordinary examples of geologic features including arches, natural bridges, windows, spires, and balanced rocks, as well as other features of geologic, historic, and scientific interest, and to provide opportunities to experience these resources and their associated values in their majestic natural settings.
The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. This salt bed is thousands of feet thick in places and was deposited in the Paradox Basin of the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago (Mya) when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with debris eroded from the Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast. During the Early Jurassic (about 200 Mya), desert conditions prevailed in the region and the vast Navajo Sandstone was deposited. An additional sequence of stream laid and windblown sediments, the Entrada Sandstone (about 140 Mya), was deposited on top of the Navajo. Over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of younger sediments were deposited and have been mostly eroded. Remnants of the cover exist in the area including exposures of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale. The arches of the area are developed mostly within the Entrada formation.
The weight of this cover caused the salt bed below it to liquefy and thrust up layers of rock into salt domes. The evaporites of the area formed more unusual "salt anticlines" or linear regions of uplift. Faulting occurred and whole sections of rock subsided into the areas between the domes. In some places, they turned almost on edge. The result of one such 2,500-foot (760 m) displacement, the Moab Fault, is seen from the visitor center.
As this subsurface movement of salt shaped the landscape, erosion removed the younger rock layers from the surface. Except for isolated remnants, the major formations visible in the park today are the salmon-colored Entrada Sandstone, in which most of the arches form, and the buff-colored Navajo Sandstone. These are visible in layer-cake fashion throughout most of the park. Over time, water seeped into the surface cracks, joints, and folds of these layers. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and putting pressure on surrounding rock, breaking off bits and pieces. Winds later cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, the cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many damaged fins collapsed. Others, with the right degree of hardness and balance, survived despite their missing sections. These became the famous arches.
Although the park's terrain may appear rugged and durable, it is extremely fragile. More than 1 million visitors each year threaten the fragile high-desert ecosystem. The problem lies within the soil's crust, which is composed of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and lichens that grow in the dusty parts of the park. Factors that make Arches National Park sensitive to visitor damage include being a semiarid region, the scarce, unpredictable rainfall, lack of deep freezing, and lack of plant litter, which results in soils that have both a low resistance to and slow recovery from, compressional forces such as foot traffic. Methods of indicating effects on the soil are cytophobic soil crust index, measuring of water infiltration, and t-tests that are used to compare the values from the undisturbed and disturbed areas.
Geological processes that occurred over 300 million years ago caused a salt bed to be deposited, which today lies beneath the landscape of Arches National Park.[ Over time, the salt bed was covered with sediments that eventually compressed into rock layers that have since been named Entrada Standstone. Rock layers surrounding the edge of the salt bed continued to erode and shift into vertical sandstone walls called fins. Sand collected between vertical walls of the fins, then slightly acidic rain combined with carbon dioxide in the air allowed for the chemical formation of carbonic acid within the trapped sand. Over time, the carbonic acid dissolved the calcium carbonate that held the sandstone together. Many of the rock formations have weaker layers of rock on bottom that are holding stronger layers on top. The weaker layers would dissolve first, creating openings in the rock. Gravity caused pieces of the stronger rock layer to fall piece by piece into an arch shape. Arches form within rock fins at points of intense fracturing localization, or weak points in the rock's formation, caused by horizontal and vertical discontinuities. Lastly, water, wind, and time continued this erosion process and ultimately created the arches of Arches National Park. All of the arches in the park are made of Entrada Sandstone, however, there are slight differences in how each arch was developed. This allows the Entrada Sandstone to be categories into 3 groups including Slick rock members, Dewey rock members, and Moab members. Vertical arches can be developed from Slick rock members, a combination of Slick rock members and Moab members, or Slick rock members resting above Dewey rock members. Horizontal arches (also called potholes) are formed when a vertical pothole formation meets a horizontal cave, causing a union into a long arch structure. The erosion process within Arches National Park will continue as time continues to pass. Continued erosion combined with vertical and horizontal stress will eventually cause arches to collapse, but still, new arches will continue to form for thousands of years.
Humans have occupied the region since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans lived in the area until about 700 years ago. Spanish missionaries encountered Ute and Paiute tribes in the area when they first came through in 1775, but the first European-Americans to attempt settlement in the area were the Mormon Elk Mountain Mission in 1855, who soon abandoned the area. Ranchers, farmers, and prospectors later settled Moab in the neighboring Riverine Valley in the late 1870s. Word of the beauty of the surrounding rock formations spread beyond the settlement as a possible tourist destination.
The Arches area was first brought to the attention of the National Park Service by Frank A. Wadleigh, passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Wadleigh, accompanied by railroad photographer George L. Beam, visited the area in September 1923 at the invitation of Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector living in Salt Valley. Ringhoffer had written to the railroad to interest them in the tourist potential of a scenic area he had discovered the previous year with his two sons and a son-in-law, which he called the Devils Garden (known today as the Klondike Bluffs). Wadleigh was impressed by what Ringhoffer showed him, and suggested to Park Service director Stephen T. Mather that the area be made a national monument.
The following year, additional support for the monument idea came from Laurence Gould, a University of Michigan graduate student (and future polar explorer) studying the geology of the nearby La Sal Mountains, who was shown the scenic area by local physician Dr. J. W. "Doc" Williams.
A succession of government investigators examined the area, in part due to confusion as to the precise location. In the process, the name Devils Garden was transposed to an area on the opposite side of Salt Valley that includes Landscape Arch, the longest arch in the park. Ringhoffer's original discovery was omitted, while another area nearby, known locally as the Windows, was included. Designation of the area as a national monument was supported by the Park Service in 1926 but was resisted by President Calvin Coolidge's Interior Secretary, Hubert Work. Finally, in April 1929, shortly after his inauguration, President Herbert Hoover signed a presidential proclamation creating the Arches National Monument, consisting of two comparatively small, disconnected sections. The purpose of the reservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act was to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations for their scientific and educational value. The name Arches was suggested by Frank Pinkely, superintendent of the Park Service's southwestern national monuments, following a visit to the Windows section in 1925.
In late 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that enlarged the Arches to protect additional scenic features and permit the development of facilities to promote tourism. A small adjustment was made by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 to accommodate a new road alignment.
In early 1969, just before leaving office, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation substantially enlarging the Arches. Two years later, President Richard Nixon signed legislation enacted by Congress, which significantly reduced the total area enclosed, but changed its status. Arches National Park was formally dedicated in May 1972.
In 1980, vandals attempted to use an abrasive kitchen cleanser to deface ancient petroglyphs in the park, prompting park officials to recruit physicist John F. Asmus, who specialized in using lasers to restore works of art, to use his technology to repair the damage. Asmus "zapped the panel with intense light pulses and succeeded in removing most of the cleanser".
Climbing Balanced Rock or any named or unnamed arch in Arches National Park with an opening larger than 3 ft (0.9 m) is banned by park regulations. Climbing on other features in the park is allowed but regulated; in addition, slacklining and BASE jumping are banned parkwide.
Climbing on named arches within the park had long been banned by park regulations, but following Dean Potter's successful free climb on Delicate Arch in May 2006, the wording of the regulations was deemed unenforceable by the park attorney. In response, the park revised its regulations later that month, eventually imposing the current ban on arch climbing in 2014.
Approved recreational activities include auto touring, hiking, bicycling, camping at the Devils Garden campground, backpacking, canyoneering, and rock climbing, with permits required for the last three activities. Guided commercial tours and ranger programs are also available.
Astronomy is also popular in the park due to its dark skies, despite the increasing light pollution from towns such as Moab.
Delicate Arch is the subject of the third 2014 quarter of the U.S. Mint's America the Beautiful Quarters program commemorating national parks and historic sites. The Arches quarter had the highest production of the five 2014 national park quarters, with more than 465 million minted.
American writer Edward Abbey was a park ranger at Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957, where he kept journals that became his book Desert Solitaire. The success of Abbey's book, as well as interest in adventure travel, has drawn many hikers, mountain bikers, and off-pavement driving enthusiasts to the area. Permitted activities within the park include camping, hiking along designated trails, backpacking, canyoneering, rock climbing, bicycling, and driving along existing roads, both paved and unpaved. The Hayduke Trail, an 812 mi (1,307 km) backpacking route named after one of Edward Abbey's characters, begins in the park.
An abundance of wildlife occurs in Arches National Park, including spadefoot toads, antelope squirrels, scrub jays, peregrine falcons, many kinds of sparrows, red foxes, desert bighorn sheep, kangaroo rats, mule deers, cougars, midget faded rattlesnakes, yucca moths, western rattlesnakes, and collared lizards.
A number of plant species are common in the park, including prickly pear cactus, Indian ricegrass, bunch grasses, cheatgrass, moss, liverworts, Utah juniper, Mormon tea, blackbrush, cliffrose, four-winged saltbrush, pinyon pine, evening primrose, sand verbena, yucca, and sacred datura.
Biological soil crust consisting of cyanobacteria, lichen, mosses, green algae, and microfungi is found throughout southeastern Utah. The fibrous growths help keep soil particles together, creating a layer that is more resistant to erosion. The living soil layer readily absorbs and stores water, allowing more complex forms of plant life to grow in places with low precipitation levels.
Among the notable features of the park are the following:
Balanced Rock – a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses
Courthouse Towers – a collection of tall stone columns
Dark Angel – a free-standing 150 ft-tall (46 m) sandstone pillar at the end of the Devils Garden Trail
Delicate Arch – a lone-standing arch that has become a symbol of Utah and the most recognized arch in the park
Devils Garden – many arches and columns scattered along a ridge
Double Arch – two arches that share a common end
Fiery Furnace – an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns (see biblical reference, Book of Daniel, chapter 3)
Landscape Arch – a very thin and long arch in the Devils Garden with a span of 290 ft (88 m) (the longest arch in the park)
Petrified Dunes – petrified remnants of dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area
The Phallus – a rock spire that resembles a phallus
Wall Arch – located along the popular Devils Garden Trail; collapsed sometime on August 4/5, 2008
The Three Gossips –a mid-sized sandstone tower located in the Courthouse Towers area.
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.
People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.
Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.
The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.
Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.
The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:
use of the bow and arrow while hunting,
building pithouse shelters,
growing maize and probably beans and squash,
building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,
creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,
producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.
The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.
These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.
In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.
In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.
Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.
At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.
The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.
A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.
Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.
Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.
Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.
Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.
The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.
Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.
Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.
In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.
The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.
After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.
As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.
Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.
Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.
Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.
Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.
On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.
Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century
During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.
Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:
William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859
Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866
3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868
A Black man in Uintah, 1869
Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873
Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874
Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880
William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883
John Murphy in Park City, 1883
George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884
Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886
Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925
Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).
Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.
Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.
During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.
In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.
Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.
Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.
As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.
One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.
It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.
Carnival time here at the peak of summer. But as usual, I seem to be tuned in to a different frequency than the rest of the world. All around me I see people all me having fun, laughing, eating carnival food, and on and on. I thread my way carefully through all of this, alone and avoiding it all, seeking out the the fringes. Everywhere I look I see gaps and cracks that reveal the fun as a facade, a sort of overlay to reality. Some are real, some are metaphorical. Sometimes I think it's just the filter my mind has become. Yet it seems so real to me. These little concession booths are a real fascination for me. Lit up inside like little houses as occupants (workers) go about their business. The seem cozily garish, a real oxymoron. This one caught me eye; the girl inside seemingly as oblivious to the fun as I was. Her movement caused a delightful blur. And I caught the perfect moment with the background devoid of fairgoers, as if this was a set piece created specifically for me.
The multiverse is often wobbly, with weakened vibrational frequency barriers revealing parallels most bizarre.
While Earth-616 was familiar with Robert Frank, a speedster super-hero of World War II, the Avengers were in for a surprise when they encountered another Whizzer, James Sanders, of the Squadron Sinister,* who was in fact a group artificially created by the Grandmaster to mimic the Squadron Supreme* of Earth-712, in which there is a third speedster called the Whizzer, Stanley Stewart!
It is Stanley Stewart that we consider in this photo.
As a result of exposure to the mutagenic effects of a fogbank of unknown nature, Stanley Stewart possesses superhuman speed, stamina, and reflexes.
When moving at subsonic speed, the Stewart Whizzer can create cyclones (by running in circles); run up walls and across water.
The character has limited immunity to the effects of friction (Stewart wears goggles to protect his eyes), although still generates normal fatigue poisons. As a result, Stewart must consume large amounts of calories and rest after using his superhuman speed powers extensively.
The heroic Whizzer and the Squadron Supreme have another series of skirmishes with the Avengers engineered by the group the Serpent Cartel, but eventually team together and prevent the use of the artifact the Serpent Crown.
The character and his teammates briefly feature in the title Thor, when the evil version of Hyperion attacks the Earth-712 version and then Thunder God Thor.
The Squadron are mind-controlled by the entities the Over-Mind and Null the Living Darkness, but are freed by the Defenders and aid the heroes in defeating the villains.
The character features with the Squadron Supreme in a self-titled 12-issue miniseries (Sept. 1985 – Aug. 1986) by writer Mark Gruenwald.
The series also explains why there are the Squadrons Sinister and Supreme are similar: the Grandmaster creates the Squadron Sinister modelled on the already-existing Squadron Supreme of the Earth-712 universe.
Gruenwald, Ryan, and inker Al Williamson created a graphic-novel sequel which maroons the team in the mainstream Marvel universe. The Whizzer and teammates encounter the hero Quasar, and relocate to the government facility Project Pegasus.
The entire Squadron Supreme appear in a two-part story with the Avengers that finally returns them to their home universe, where they disband for a time. The Whizzer rejoins his teammates to aid the interdimensional team the Exiles.
Stanley Stewart is a native of the alternate Earth (Earth-712 or Earth-S) on which the organization of the superhuman champions known as the Squadron Supreme arose.
Stewart had become a postal worker, marrying his wife Madeline and raising his daughter, Tina.
However, when passing through a fogbank of unknown origin, Stewart found himself capable of moving at superhuman speeds. Stewart became the masked champion known as the Whizzer.
As the Whizzer, Stewart had a highly successful career as a crimefighter. Eventually, the Whizzer became a founding member of the Squadron Supreme.
Stewart participated in all of the Squadron's activities, including its decision to implement their "Utopia Program," whereby they intended to eliminate all the major problems besetting their nation, such as crime and hunger.
Stewart also joined several members of the team in publicly revealing their identities as a gesture of good faith.
After several months of implementing the program, the Squadron was openly opposed by the Redeemers, a team dedicated to opposing the Squadron's "Utopian" rule.
The battle was devastating, and the Squadron was convinced to dismantle the Utopia Program.
Before the Squadron could fully dismantle their program, a white being of immense size began to grow and threaten to devour the Sun. Members of the Squadron, including the Whizzer, sought help from various avenues and boarded a space ship to battle their mysterious foe.
The threat was thwarted thanks to Arcanna's newborn son, but when the team tried to return to Earth, they found themselves exiled to the Avengers' reality. Stewart stood by the other Squadron members during their time trapped on Earth.
Later, when the Squadron had been duped into attacking the Avengers by Imus Champion, the Avengers found themselves able to use one of Champion's pieces of equipment to send the Squadron back to their native dimension.
The team returned to find their world completely different than they had left it. The people of Earth-S had grown weary of the constant natural, political, and social upheavals that had plagued the world in recent years, largely because of the presence of the Squadron.
Instead, they elected leaders into a Global Directorate with far-reaching and invasive political powers. The enigmatic Mysterium implored the Squadron to fix what had begun by their Utopia efforts, charging them with re-forming the founding members of their team.
The new Squadron thought Master Menace to be the power behind the tyrannical regime, but found him to be only a pawn of the Global Directorate.
The Squadron rescued Menace and returned him to their new headquarters on Utopia Isle, which was left abandoned by the Power Princess' people.
The team dedicated themselves to their new role, that of freedom fighters and champions of the oppressed.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Stanley Stewart
Publisher: Marvel
First appearance: The Avengers #85 (Mar. 1971)
Created by: Roy Thomas (Writer)
John Buscema (Artist)
* The Squadron (Supreme or Sinister) is a pastiche of DC Comic's Justice League. Before the classic JLA Avengers crossover finally happened in 2003, there were several false starts. Not caring to wait any longer, Marvel writers created this very thinly veiled JLA 'homage' and pitted them against the Avengers.
British Airways is currently in the process of updating their schedule for the next S18 schedule as the current scheduling period is due to come to a close...
At present, British Airways is rescaling its South American flights, notably to Brazil which is recovering from a major economic downturn where demand for flights were downsized... British Airways at present only serves 2 destinations in Brazil.
Let's begin with Brazil's financial centre, São Paulo... The service continues to operate daily but the service has seen considerable capacity adjustment since the W16 schedule. BA246/247 which saw frequent appearances of Super Hi-J Boeing 747-400's later saw Mid-J Boeing 747-400's and later Boeing 777-200ER's.
From 29th October 2017, Boeing 777-300ER's will take-over operation of BA246/247 and will continue through the S18 schedule period where Boeing 777-200ER's were previously diagrammed. So far, São Paulo is now getting its capacity back...
The next one is Rio de Janeiro, a destination that has suffered considerable frequency reduction and capacity cuts. With the Rio 2016 Olympics now over, demand has dropped although the frequency is slowly returning back to daily.
Initial plans for BA248/249 for the W17 schedule were that the flight increases to 6 times a week operation, and Boeing 777-200ER's were supposed to be replaced by Boeing 787-9's, but now by Boeing 787-8's from 29th October 2017. From 10th May 2018 for the S18 schedule will see BA248/249 returning back to daily operation, still utilising Boeing 787-8's.
Whilst it is good to see Rio de Janeiro regaining its daily frequency, the use of Boeing 787-8's is still a considerable capacity cut from Boeing 777-300ER's which were prevalent before the S16 schedule ended.
Currently, British Airways operates 58 Boeing 777's, which includes 3 Boeing 777-200's, 43 Boeing 777-200ER's and 12 Boeing 777-300ER's.
Yankee Mike Mike Lima is one of 43 Boeing 777-200ER's in service with British Airways, delivered new to the flag-carrier in April 2001 and she is powered by 2 Rolls-Royce Trent 895 engines. Since February 2015 following a repaint into Crest livery, she gained Masha Ma designed GREAT Festival of Creativity special colours featuring artwork inspiration from Eastern Asia incorporating Bamboo and Western Europe of the Rose.
Boeing 777-236/ER G-YMML on final approach into Runway 27L at London Heathrow (LHR) on BA246 from São Paulo-Guarulhos (GRU).
Sweet Decadence
-Anthony Mayfield-
Well, I think you could my red wine.
My sweet decadence.
Or maybe you could be my sunshine,
My moonlight.
You could be my celestial dream.
In my head is such precedence,
Such a hope sublime.
I hope that you could be my red wine.
In time,
My sweet decadence.
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47830 passes Cole in Somerset with First Great Western’s 09.25 Plymouth to Paddington service on 6 November, 1999. The operator had introduced the loco-hauled diagram due to late delivery of Class 180 DMUs and a franchise commitment to increase South Wales frequencies. Entering service on Christmas Eve 1965 as D1645, the Class 47 lives on with Freightliner, retaining its main line status but confined to ‘light duties’.
Initiatory Travel, a disconnection for a better reconnection with oneself. What is meant by disconnection is above all detachment from time, to which the mind is attached. A disconnection for a better reconnection with yourself, where it is necessary to live times of silence. It is also the opportunity to nourish oneself with intense energy by encountering the sacred. Mary Magdalene would have brought with her the holy cup which had collected the blood flowing from the side of Jesus crucified. She would have settled down with her numerous suite, in a "balme", a Baume (term which means cave)
Take a step towards wisdom by meeting the legend of Mary Magdalene (Mary Magdalene is known throughout the world as the disciple who was the first person to witness the resurrection of Jesus. Her energies include frequencies of unity, of peace, and tenderness), by soaking up the positive vibes that emanate from these places recognized as sacred, will make your trip a special one. A kind of magic then happens, something that cannot be explained but can only be felt. The change will come about as much by introspection as by the radiance of what (ux) you will encounter. In the journey to the deep self, you will be invited to participate in self-knowledge improvement sessions. And accompanied by the legend of Marie-Madeleine throughout this trip, you will learn step by step, to deploy your energy and to feel that of the places.
This journey is an invitation to awaken the divine version that exists in everyone's heart. It is an initiation which unifies the sacred Feminine and Masculine, which removes the veils and shadows, and which makes it possible to shine. Living this trip also means taking a route that can be confusing at times but so powerful because the meeting of Christelle GAMBEE and our Shaman, combined with the practice of various teachings and ancestral rites, will enrich this exceptional trip
The Jesus bloodline refers to the proposition that a lineal sequence of descendants of the historical Jesus has persisted to the present time. The claims frequently depict Jesus as married, often to Mary Magdalene, and as having descendants living in Europe, especially France but also the UK. Differing and contradictory Jesus bloodline scenarios, as well as more limited claims that Jesus married and had children, have been proposed in numerous modern books. Some such claims have suggested that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to another location such as France, India or Japan.
While the concept has gained a presence in the public imagination, as seen with Dan Brown's best-selling novel and movie The Da Vinci Code that used the premise for its plot, it is generally dismissed by the scholarly community. These claimed Jesus' bloodlines are distinct from the biblical genealogy of Jesus and from the documented 'brothers' and other kin of Jesus, known as the Desposyni.
Jesus as husband and father
Historical precursors
Ideas that Jesus Christ might have been married have a long history in Christian theology, though the historical record says nothing on the subject.[1] Bart D. Ehrman, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, commented that, although there are some historical scholars who claim that it is likely that Jesus was married, the vast majority of New Testament and early Christianity scholars find such a claim to be historically unreliable.[2]
Much of the bloodline literature has a more specific focus, on a claimed marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There are indications in Gnosticism of the belief that Jesus and Mary Magdalene shared an amorous, and not just a religious relationship. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip tells that Jesus "kissed her often" and refers to Mary as his "companion".[3] Several sources from the 13th-century claim that an aspect of Catharist theology was the belief that the earthly Jesus had a familial relationship with Mary Magdalene. An Exposure of the Albigensian and Waldensian Heresies, dated to before 1213 and usually attributed to Ermengaud of Béziers, a former Waldensian seeking reconciliation with the mainstream Catholic Church, would describe Cathar heretical beliefs including the claim that they taught "in the secret meetings that Mary Magdalen was the wife of Christ".[4] A second work, untitled and anonymous, repeats Ermengaud's claim.[4] The anti-heretic polemic Historia Albigensis written between 1212 and 1218 by Cistercian monk and chronicler Peter of Vaux de Cernay, gives the most lurid description, attributing to Cathars the belief that Mary Magdalene was the concubine of Jesus.[4][5] These sources must be viewed with caution: the two known authors were not themselves Cathars and were writing of a heresy being actively and violently suppressed. There is no evidence that these beliefs derived from the much earlier Gnostic traditions of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but the Cathar traditions did find their way into many of the 20th-century popular writings claiming the existence of a Jesus bloodline.[4][6]
Modern works
The late 19th-century saw the first of several expansions on this theme of marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, providing the couple with a named child. The French socialist politician, Louis Martin (pseudonym of Léon Aubry, died 1900), in his 1886 book Les Evangiles sans Dieu (The Gospels without God), republished the next year in his Essai sur la vie de Jésus (Essay on the life of Jesus), described the historical Jesus as a socialist and atheist. He related that after his crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, along with the family of Lazarus of Bethany, brought the body of Jesus to Provence, and there Mary had a child, Maximin, the fruit of her love for Jesus. The scenario was dismissed as 'certainly strange' by a contemporary reviewer.[7]
The late 20th century saw the genre of popular books claiming that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a family. Donovan Joyce's 1973 best-seller, The Jesus Scroll, a time bomb for Christianity, presented an alternative timeline for Jesus that arose from a mysterious document. He claimed that, after being denied access to the Masada archaeological site, he was met at the Tel Aviv airport by an American University professor using the pseudonym "Max Grosset", who held a large scroll he claimed to have smuggled from the site. Relating its contents to Joyce, Grosset offered to pay him to smuggle it out of the country, but then became spooked when his flight was delayed and snuck away; he was never identified and the scroll was not seen again. According to Joyce, the 'Jesus Scroll' was a personal letter by 80-year-old Yeshua ben Ya’akob ben Gennesareth, heir of the Hasmonean dynasty and hence rightful King of Israel, written on the eve of the fall of the city to the Romans after a suicide pact ended Masada's resistance. It was said to have described the man as married, and that he had a son whose crucifixion the letter's author had witnessed. Joyce identified the writer with Jesus of Nazareth, who, he claimed, had survived his own crucifixion to marry and settle at Masada, and suggested a conspiracy to hide the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls in order to suppress this counter-narrative to Christian orthodoxy.[8][9]
Barbara Thiering, in her 1992 book Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story, republished as Jesus the Man, and made into a documentary, The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, also developed a Jesus and Mary Magdalene familial scenario. Thiering based her historical conclusions on her application of the so-called Pesher technique to the New Testament.[10][11] In this work of pseudo-scholarship, Thiering would go so far as to precisely place the betrothal of Jesus and Mary Magdalene on 30 June, AD 30, at 10:00 p.m. She relocated the events in the life of Jesus from Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem to Qumran, and related that Jesus was revived after an incomplete crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene, who was already pregnant by him, that they had a daughter Tamar and a son Jesus Justus born in AD 41, and Jesus then divorced Mary to wed a Jewess named Lydia, going to Rome where he died.[12][13] The account was dismissed as fanciful by scholar Michael J. McClymond.[12]
In the television documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, and book The Jesus Family Tomb,[14] both from 2007, fringe investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino proposed that ossuaries in the Talpiot Tomb, discovered in Jerusalem in 1980, belonged to Jesus and his family. Jacobovici and Pellegrino argue that Aramaic inscriptions reading "Judah, son of Jesus", "Jesus, son of Joseph", and "Mariamne", a name they associate with Mary Magdalene, together preserve the record of a family group consisting of Jesus, his wife Mary Magdalene and son Judah.[15] Such theory has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars, archaeologists and theologians, including the archaeologist Amos Kloner, who led the archeological exavation of the tomb itself.[16]
The same year saw a book following the similar theme that Jesus and Mary Magdalene produced a family written by psychic medium and best-selling author Sylvia Browne, The Two Marys: The Hidden History of the Mother and Wife of Jesus.[17][non-primary source needed]
The Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars involved in the quest for the historical Jesus from a liberal Christian perspective, were unable to determine whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a matrimonial relationship due to the dearth of historical evidence. They concluded that the historical Mary Magdalene was not a repentant prostitute but a prominent disciple of Jesus and a leader in the early Christian movement.[18] The claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene fled to France parallel other legends about the flight of disciples to distant lands, such as the one depicting Joseph of Arimathea traveling to England after the death of Jesus, taking with him a piece of thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which he later planted in Glastonbury. Historians generally regard these legends as "pious fraud" produced during the Middle Ages.[19][20][21]
Joseph and Aseneth
Main article: Joseph and Aseneth
In 2014, Simcha Jacobovici and fringe religious studies historian Barrie Wilson suggested in The Lost Gospel that the eponymous characters in a 6th-century tale called "Joseph and Aseneth" were in actuality representations of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.[22] The story was reported in an anthology compiled by Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, along with covering letters describing the discovery of the original Greek manuscript and its translation into Syriac. In one of these, translator Moses of Ingila explained the story "as an allegory of Christ's marriage to the soul".[23] Jacobovici and Wilson instead interpret it as an allegorical reference to actual marriage of Jesus, produced by a community holding that he was married and had children.
Israeli Biblical scholar, Rivka Nir called their work "serious-minded, thought-provoking and interesting", but described the thesis as objectionable, [24] and the book has been dismissed by mainstream Biblical scholarship, for example by Anglican theologian, Richard Bauckham.[25] The Church of England compared The Lost Gospel to a Monty Python sketch, the director of communications for the Archbishop's Council citing the book as an example of religious illiteracy and that ever since the publication of The Da Vinci Code in 2003, "an industry had been constructed in which 'conspiracy theorists, satellite channel documentaries and opportunistic publishers had identified a lucrative income stream'."[26] The Lost Gospel was described as historical nonsense by Markus Bockmuehl.[27]
Early Mormon Theology
Early Mormon theology posited not only that Jesus married, but that he did so multiple times. Early leaders Jedediah M. Grant, Orson Hyde, Joseph F. Smith and Orson Pratt stated it was part of their religious belief that Jesus Christ was polygamous, quoting this in their respective sermons.[28][29] The Mormons also used an apocryphal passage attributed to the 2nd-century Greek philosopher Celsus: "The grand reason why the gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ was because he had so many wives. There were Elizabeth and Mary and a host of others that followed him".[30] This appears to have been a summary of a garbled or second-hand reference to a quote from Celsus the Platonist preserved in the apologetics work Contra Celsum ("Against Celsus") by the Church Father Origen: "such was the charm of Jesus' words, that not only were men willing to follow Him to the wilderness, but women also, forgetting the weakness of their sex and a regard for outward propriety in thus following their Teacher into desert places."[31]
Jesus as ancestor of a bloodline
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln developed and popularized the idea of a bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene in their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (published as Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States),[32] in which they asserted: ". . . we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children."[32] Specifically, they claimed that the sangraal of medieval lore did not represent the San Graal (Holy Grail), the cup drunk from at the Last Supper, but both the vessel of Mary Magdalene's womb and the Sang Real, the royal blood of Jesus represented in a lineage descended from them. In their reconstruction, Mary Magdalene goes to France after the crucifixion, carrying a child by Jesus who would give rise to a lineage that centuries later would unite with the Merovingian rulers of the early Frankish kingdom, from whom they trace the descent into medieval dynasties that were almost exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, leaving a small remnant protected by a secret society, the Priory of Sion.[33][34] The role of the Priory was inspired by earlier writings primarily by Pierre Plantard, who in the 1960s and 1970s had publicized documents from the secretive Priory that demonstrated its long history and his own descent from the lineage they had protected that traced to the Merovingian kings, and earlier, the biblical Tribe of Benjamin.[35] Plantard would dismiss Holy Blood as fiction in a 1982 radio interview,[36] as did his collaborator Philippe de Cherisey in a magazine article,[37] but a decade later Plantard admitted that, before he incorporated a group of that name in the 1950s, the very existence of the Priory had been an elaborate hoax, and that the documents on which Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln had relied for inspiration had been forgeries planted in French institutions to be later "rediscovered".[38][39][40] The actual lineage claimed for the portion of the Plantard and Holy Blood bloodline that passes through the medieval era received highly-negative reviews in the genealogical literature, being viewed as consisting of numerous inaccurate linkages that were unsupported, or even directly contradicted, by the authentic historical record.[41]
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, a 1993 book by Margaret Starbird, built on Cathar beliefs and Provencal traditions of Saint Sarah, the black servant of Mary Magdalene, to develop the hypothesis that Sarah was the daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.[4] In her reconstruction, a pregnant Mary Magdalene fled first to Egypt and then France after the crucifixion.[3] She sees this as the source of the legend associated with the cult at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. She also noted that the name "Sarah" means "Princess" in Hebrew, thus making her the forgotten child of the "sang réal", the blood royal of the King of the Jews.[42] Starbird also viewed Mary Magdalene as identical with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus.[3] Though working with the same claimed relationship between Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Saint Sarah that would occupy a central role in many of the published bloodline scenarios, Starbird considered any question of descent from Sarah to be irrelevant to her thesis,[4] though she accepted that it existed.[43] Her view of Mary Magdalene/Mary of Bethany as wife of Jesus is also linked with the concept of the sacred feminine in feminist theology. Mary Ann Beavis would point out that unlike others in the genre, Starbird actively courted scholarly engagement over her ideas, and that "[a]lthough her methods, arguments and conclusions do not always stand up to scholarly scrutiny, some of her exegetical insights merit attention . . .," while suggesting she is more mythographer than historian.[3]
In his 1996 book Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed, Laurence Gardner presented pedigree charts of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the ancestors of all the European royal families of the Common Era.[44] His 2000 sequel Genesis of the Grail Kings: The Explosive Story of Genetic Cloning and the Ancient Bloodline of Jesus is unique in claiming that not only can the Jesus bloodline truly be traced back to Adam and Eve but that the first man and woman were primate-alien hybrids created by the Anunnaki of his ancient astronaut theory.[45] Gardner followed this book with several additional works in the bloodline genre.
In Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-Le-Chateau and the Dynasty of Jesus, published in 2000, Marylin Hopkins, Graham Simmans and Tim Wallace-Murphy developed a similar scenario based on 1994 testimony by the pseudonymous "Michael Monkton",[46] that a Jesus and Mary Magdalene bloodline was part of a shadow dynasty descended from twenty-four high priests of the Temple in Jerusalem known as Rex Deus – the "Kings of God".[47] The evidence on which the informant based his claim to be a Rex Deus scion, descended from Hugues de Payens, was said to be lost and therefore cannot be independently verified, because 'Michael' claimed that it was kept in his late father's bureau, which was sold by his brother unaware of its contents.[47] Some critics point out the informant's account of his family history seems to be based on the controversial work of Barbara Thiering.[48]
The Da Vinci Code
Main article: The Da Vinci Code
The best-known work depicting a bloodline of Jesus is the 2003 best-selling novel and global phenomenon, The Da Vinci Code, joined by its major cinematic release of the same name. In these, Dan Brown incorporated many of the earlier bloodline themes as the background underlying his work of conspiracy fiction. The author attested both in the text and public interviews to the veracity of the bloodline details that served as the novel's historical context. The work so captured the public imagination that the Catholic Church felt compelled to warn its congregates against accepting its pseudo-historical background as fact, which did not stop it from becoming the highest-selling novel in American history, with tens of millions of copies sold worldwide. Brown mixes facts easily verified by the reader and additional seemingly-authentic details that are not actually factual, with a further layer of outright conjecture that together blurs the relationship between fiction and history. An indication of the degree to which the work captured the public imagination is seen in the cottage industry of works that it inspired, replicating his style and theses or attempting to refute it.[49]
In Brown's novel, the protagonist discovers that the grail actually referred to Mary Magdalene, and that knowledge of this, as well as of the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary, has been kept hidden to the present time by a secret conspiracy.[49] This is very similar to the thesis put forward by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in Holy Blood and the Holy Grail though not associating the hidden knowledge with the Cathars,[4] and Brown also incorporated material from Joyce, Thiering and Starbird, as well as the 1965 The Passover Plot, in which Hugh J. Schonfield claimed that Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea had faked the resurrection after Jesus was killed by mistake when stabbed by a Roman soldier.[50] Still, Brown relied so heavily on Holy Blood that two of its authors, Baigent and Leigh, sued the book's publisher, Random House, over what they considered to be plagiarism. Brown had made no secret that the bloodline material in his work drew largely on Holy Blood, directly citing the work in his book and naming the novel's historical expert after Baigent (in anagram form) and Leigh, but Random House argued that since Baigent and Leigh had presented their ideas as non-fiction, consisting of historical facts, however speculative, then Brown was free to reproduce these concepts just as other works of historical fiction treat underlying historical events. Baigent and Leigh argued that Brown had done more, "appropriat[ing] the architecture" of their work, and thus had "hijacked" and "exploited" it.[51] Though one judge questioned whether the supposedly-factual Holy Blood truly represented fact, or instead bordered on fiction due to its highly conjectural nature,[52] courts ruled in favor of Random House and Brown.[51]
Bloodline documentary
Main article: Bloodline (documentary)
The 2008 documentary Bloodline[53] by Bruce Burgess, a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, expands on the Jesus bloodline hypothesis and other elements of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.[54] Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist codenamed "Ben Hammott" relating to his discoveries made in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château since 1999; Burgess claimed Ben had found the treasure of Bérenger Saunière: a mummified corpse, which they believe is Mary Magdalene, in an underground tomb they claim is connected to both the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion. In the film, Burgess interviews several people with alleged connections to the Priory of Sion, including a Gino Sandri and Nicolas Haywood. A book by one of the documentary's researchers, Rob Howells, entitled Inside the Priory of Sion: Revelations from the World's Most Secret Society - Guardians of the Bloodline of Jesus presented the version of the Priory of Sion as given in the 2008 documentary,[55] which contained several erroneous assertions, such as the claim that Plantard believed in the Jesus bloodline hypothesis.[56] In 2012, however, Ben Hammott, using his real name of Bill Wilkinson, gave a podcast interview in which he apologised and confessed that everything to do with the tomb and related artifacts was a hoax, revealing that the 'tomb' had been part of a now-destroyed full-sized movie set located in a warehouse in England.[57][58]
Jesus in Japan
Claims to a Jesus bloodline are not restricted to Europe. An analogous legend claims that the place of Jesus at the crucifixion was taken by a brother, while Jesus fled through what would become Russia and Siberia to Japan, where he became a rice farmer at Aomori, at the north of the island of Honshu. It is claimed he married there and had a large family before his death at the age of 114, with descendants to the present. A Grave of Jesus (Kristo no Hakka) there attracts tourists. This legend dates from the 1930s, when a document claimed to be written in the Hebrew language and describing the marriage and later life of Jesus was discovered. The document has since disappeared.[59]
www.wikiwand.com/en/Jesus_bloodline
The sanctuary of Sainte-Baume, also known as the grotte de Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, is a sanctuary erected within a cave in the Sainte-Baume massif, in the commune of Plan-d'Aups-Sainte- Baume, in the Var, which would have served as a hermitage for Saint Mary Magdalene after she evangelized Provence.
According to Tradition, Mary Magdalene was expelled from Palestine with several disciples during the first persecutions against Christians after Pentecost. Embarked on a boat without a sail or a rudder, they miraculously landed on the Provençal shores, at a place which was later named Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and became the first evangelizers of Provence. "Marie Madeleine preached in Marseilles in the company of Lazarus then she established herself in this steep mountain, in the cave which has since been named after her. Like the beloved of the Song of Songs, "dove hidden in the hollow of the rock, in steep retreats", she was able to devote herself to prayer and contemplation in solitude "1.
Timeline for
In pre-Christian times, Sainte-Baume was the sacred mountain of the Marseillais: a high place of worship of fertility, and in particular of the Artemis of Ephesus. Around 60, Lucain, a Latin poet, mentions a certain “sacred wood” near Marseille, although nothing allows him to be associated with it.
Around 415, Saint John Cassien, founded a first priory on his return from Egypt and from the fifth century, the presence of monks from the Saint-Victor abbey in Marseille is attested.
The cave of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine becomes a famous place of Christian pilgrimage. In 816, Pope Stephen IV, then, in 878, Pope John VIII went there. As on July 22, 1254, Saint Louis visited Sainte-Baume 2 on his return from the Crusade.
Reliquary of the tibia of Mary Magdalene.
Statue of Mary Magdalene.
In 1279, Charles II of Anjou, King of Sicily and Count of Provence, carried out the excavations which led to the discovery at Saint-Maximin of the relics of Mary Magdalene, in a crypt buried under the small Benedictine priory dedicated to the saint. A marble tomb is identified there as that of Mary Magdalene. In addition, a scroll of parchment explains that the relics were buried at the beginning of the 7th century in order to protect them from the Saracen invasions which raged in the Country3. After six years of detention in Barcelona, Charles II can implement in 1288 his project to build a basilica to house the relics. Finally, on June 21, 1295, he obtained from Pope Boniface VIII a papal bull, which entrusted the young order of the Dominicans with the charge of the holy places: the basilica of Saint-Maximin and the cave of Sainte-Baume.
In 1332, the same day Philippe VI of Valois, King of France, Alfonso IV of Aragon, Hugh of Cyprus, and John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, gathered in the cave.
Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, popes, kings and princes made pilgrimages to the cave, one of the most famous in Christendom.
In 1440, we deplore the fire in the cave and the destruction of buildings. In 1456 Louis XI, King of France richly endowed the cave and designed the plan of the dome he offered for the altar. And, on January 21, 1516, François Ier accompanied by his mother Louise of Savoy and his wife Claude of France comes to give thanks for his return from Marignan. He provided funds for the restoration of the cave, had the "Francis I portal" built (visible at the hostel), and built three royal chambers in the cave. Jean Ferrier, Archbishop of Arles, had the oratories of the Chemin des Rois erected.
Charles IX went there during his royal tour of France in 1564 in order to satisfy the Catholics4. But, in 1586 and 1592, we deplore looting of the cave (the second time despite the drawbridge erected following the looting that took place when the relics of Saint-Maximin had been transferred to the cave during the disturbances caused by the League).
Esprit Blanc had the so-called “Parisians” (or “of the dead”) chapel built in 1630 and, in 1649, Monsignor de Marinis offered the statue of the Blessed Virgin, the work of the Genoese sculptor Orsolino (still visible in the cave).
On February 5, 1660, Louis XIV, with Anne of Austria and Mazarin, went to the sanctuary.
The Revolution and the Empire endanger the site. In 1791, the Marquis of Albertas redeemed the property of the Dominicans which had been sold as national property. But, in 1793, Sainte-Baume was renamed "les Thermopyles", the interior of the cave and the large adjoining guesthouse (traces of which can still be seen in the cliff) were destroyed. Fortunately, Lucien Bonaparte, husband of Christine Boyer, daughter of the innkeeper of Saint-Maximin, saves the basilica and the forest of Sainte-Baume from revolutionaries. In 1814, Marshal Brune destroyed the cave and what had just been rebuilt there.
It was not until 1822 that Chevalier, prefect of the Var, restored the Catholic worship. In 1824, a community of Trappists was established on the plateau, opposite the current hotel, and in 1833 gave way to Capuchins who only stayed for two years.
The statue of Marie Madeleine on her rock comes from the tomb of Count Joseph-Alphonse-Omer de Valbelle who was in the Charterhouse of Montrieux [ref. desired].
In 1848, Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, famous preacher and restorer of the Dominican order in France since 1840, came to the cave and, in 1859, he bought the convent of Saint-Maximin to reinstall the preaching brothers there; with the help of the work for the restoration of the holy places of Provence that he had founded, he reinstalls on July 22, the brothers in the cave; he built the hotel in the plain of Sainte-Baume.
In 1865, the Dominican brother Jean-Joseph Lataste founded the congregation of Dominicans known as “of Bethany” which accommodates women released from prison (converted Madeleines); he set up a community near the church of Plan d'Aups in 1884. In 1889, some relics of Mary Magdalene were placed in the reliquary made by Lyon goldsmith Armand Caillat and placed in the cave.
Following the laws separating the Church and the State, the cave became the property of the commune of Plan d'Aups in 1910.
In 1914, with the centenary celebrations of the reopening of worship at Sainte-Baume, Father Vayssière restored the stairs leading to the cave (150 steps in memory of 150 Ave du Rosaire) and inaugurated the Calvary. Then in 1928, the Nazareth retirement home was inaugurated in front of the hostel (now occupied by the ecomuseum). In 1932, Marthe Spitzer5, a Jewish convert close to the Benedictines of the rue Monsieur and the entourage of Jacques Maritain, produced the Pietà which is on the forecourt of the cave (donated by the Basilica of La Madeleine in Paris).
In 1948, the architect Le Corbusier planned the construction of an underground basilica at Sainte-Baume (a utopian project never realized) then, in 1966 - Oscar Niemeyer carried out a project for a modern convent at the Hôtellerie instead of the west wing. In 1970, Thomas Gleb created the Saint-Dominique oratory at the hotel, between 1976 and 1981, the companion Pierre Petit ("Tourangeau, the disciple of the Light") made the stained glass windows in the cave.
In 1995 was celebrated the seventh centenary of the foundation of the basilica of Saint-Maximin and the installation of the Dominican friars in Saint-Maximin and in the cave of Sainte-Baume.
A community of four Dominican friars was re-established in the summer of 2002 (the date of the reopening of the cave after the work of purging the cliff), which welcomes pilgrims to the cave of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine. Since the summer of 2008, the number of Dominican friars has been increased to eight, and they ensure, in addition to the reception at the cave, the management of the Sainte-Baume hotel.