দৈনিক হাডুডু | আজব দেশ

দৈনিক হাডুডু | আজব দেশ

An unofficial investigation on Mummy-Titanic Mystery-1

On the 12th April 1912 the Titanic on her way to New York on her first voyage. All seemed to be pleased on the voyage. A group of eight people gathered in the first class smoking room to discuss the meaning of life.

One of the group was William T Stead , the English journalist and Spiritualist. As the evening progressed Stead began to tell a ghost story which would open the flood gates to legends and myths surrounding the Titanic and her sinking.

He boasted that he was not superstitious as he pointed out that his story began before midnight on the 12th April and ended shortly after midnight.

The story concerned the finding of an Egyptian Mummy and the translation of the inscription on the Mummy's case. The inscription warned that whoever should verbally recite the inscription would meet a very violent death.

The others listened with sinister curiosity and became very confused. Could Stead have been serious? Was there such a curse? Where was the Mummy - surely not onboard the ship they were travelling on?

Seven men out of the eight went down with the ship, including Stead himself although he had already had a premonition about his death some time before. The only survivor from the group was Fred Seward , who later when asked about the Mummy story told them that he would never dare retell it.

Over the years there have been many different accounts of the Mummy's curse but after careful research the answer seems quite clear.

Before I can conclude it is important to retell the Mummy's curse as frequently told from various sources.

The course of Mummy

The Princess of Amen-Ra lived some 1,500 or 1600 years before Chris in Egypt. After her death she was laid in an ornate wooden coffin and buried deep in a vault at Luxor, on the banks of the River Nile.

In the late 1890s, four rich young Englishmen visiting at Luxor were invited to buy an exquisitely fashioned Mummy case containing the remains of Princess of Amen-Ra. Some people think the mummy to be a priestess.

Among them one was Douglas Murray paid several thousand pounds and had taken it to his hotel. A few hours later, he was seen walking out towards the desert and never returned.

The next day, one of the remaining 3 men was shot by an Egyptian servant accidentally.

The third man in the foursome found on his return home that the bank holding his entire savings had failed. The fourth suffered a severe illness, lost his job and started selling matches in the street.

Nevertheless, the coffin eventually reached England (causing other misfortunes along the way), where a London businessman bought it.

After three of his family members had been injured in a road accident and his house damaged by fire, the businessman lately donated it to the British Museum.

As the coffin was being unloaded from a truck in the museum courtyard, the truck suddenly went into reverse and trapped a passer-by. Then as 2 workmen were lifting the casket up the stairs, 1 fell and broke his leg. The other, apparently in perfect health, died unaccountably two days later.

Once the Princess was installed in the Egyptian Room, trouble really started. The Museum's night watchmen frequently heard frantic hammering and sobbing from the coffin. Other exhibits in the room were also often hurled about at night. One watchman died on duty. Other watchmen wanted to quit. Cleaners refused to go near the Princess too. When a visitor derisively flicked a dust cloth at the face painted on the coffin, his child died of measles soon afterwards.

Finally, the authorities had the Mummy carried down to the basement figuring it could not do any harm down there. Within a week, one of the helpers was seriously ill, and the supervisor of the move was found dead on his desk.

By now, the papers had heard of it. A journalist photographer took a picture of the Mummy case and when he developed it, the painting on the coffin was of a horrifying, human face. The photographer was said to have gone home then, locked his bedroom door and shot himself.

Soon afterwards, the museum sold the Mummy to a private collector. After continual misfortune (and deaths), the owner banished it to the attic.

A well-known authority on the occult, Madame Helena Blavatsky , visited the premises. Upon entry, she was sized with a shivering fit and searched the house for the source of an evil influence of incredible intensity; She finally came to the attic and found the Mummy case.

Can you exorcise this evil spirit? Asked the owner. There is no such thing as exorcism. Evil remains evil forever. Nothing can be done about it. I implore you to get rid of this evil as soon as possible.

But no British museum would take the Mummy; the fact that almost 20 people had met with misfortune, disaster or death from handling the casket, in barely 10 years, was now well known.

Eventually, a hard headed American archaeologist, William T. Stead paid a handsome price for the Mummy and arranged for its removal to New York. In Apr 1912, the new owner escorted its treasure aboard a sparkling, new White Star liner about to make its maiden voyage to New York.

On the night of April 14, amid scenes of unprecedented horror, the Princess of Amen-Ra accompanied 1,500 passengers to their deaths at the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of the ship was of course, the R.M.S. TITANIC ."

Some accounts of the story go on to say that the American collector bribed the crew of the Titanic to put the Mummy in a lifeboat and was smuggled onboard the Carpathia when she picked up the Titanic survivors and landed safely in New York.

In America the Mummy continued to bring tragedy to those that handled the coffin and so it was shipped back to Europe on the Empress of Ireland which then sank with the loss of 840 passengers on the 29th May 1912.

Somehow, the Mummy was saved again. The collector decided to ship the coffin back to Egypt on a third ship, the Lusitania. The ship was torpedoed by a German submarine. What happened after that is not known.

To be continued............................................

Lonesome George, living legend lost

Most of you may already know the news of Lonesome George. Many of you may know more then me  but I am deadly feeling to write something about this remarkable tortoise. If I get anything wrong please let me know.

It was Ecuador where this beautiful rare species of tortoise lived. The thing which made him famous  was that he was the last one of his subspecies. Galapagos is a famous island of Ecuador. It’s famous for Sir Charles Darwin. He wrote his evolutionary book “The Genesis of Species’’[1859] seeing the different types of animal species here. On the 100 years of this book ‘’Charles Darwin Research Station’’  was built in this island.

Lonesome George was found in December1, 1971 in Penta island.  He spent the last 40 in a field on Santa Cruz Island. This 5ft-long animal showed little interest in either man or other tortoises. He almost ignored the female company provided to encourage him to breed, kept his 3ft scraggy neck down in the long grass, and only responded to his keeper, Fausto Llerena.

Over 30  years , scientists attempts at mating Lonesome George but unsuccessfully due to the absence of females of his own subspecies.

Until January 2011, George was penned with several females of the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra becki (from the Wolf Volcano  region of Isabela Island)and nearly, in the hope that his genotype would be retained in any resulting progeny. This subspecies was then thought to be genetically closest to George's; however, any potential offspring would have been intergrades, not purebreds of the Pinta subspecies.

In July 2008, George mated with one of his female companions. Thirteen eggs were collected and placed in incubators. But no egg produced any child.

On July 23, 2009, exactly one year after announcing George had mated, the Galápagos National Park announced one of George's female companions had laid a second clutch of five eggs. The park authority expressed its hope for the second clutch of eggs, which it said were in perfect condition. The eggs were moved to an incubator afterword it was announced the incubation period had ended and the eggs were unable to produce.

A reward of $10,000 was offered by the Ecuadorean government for the discovery of a suitable female to help save the subspecies.

On June 24, 2012, at 8:00 am local time, Director of the Galápagos National Park Edwin Naula announced that Lonesome George had been found dead by his caretaker of 40 years, Fausto Llerena. Naula suspects that the cause of death was heart failure consistent with the end of the natural life cycle of a tortoise. A necropsy is planned to determine an official cause of death. He was believed to be more than 100 years old.

In 1960, 11 of the Galápagos Islands' original 14 populations of tortoises remained, and most were on the point of extinction. Now around 20,000 giant tortoises of different subspecies inhabit the islands and most of the feral goats have been eradicated.

Some might think the extinction of a subspecies isn't a major loss, since the other tortoises are still around. But the giant tortoises' history showed that such losses can add up quickly to disaster.

For instance, captive breeding programs like George's have given hope for populations of the endangered California condor.

But similar efforts weren't enough to save the West African black rhinoceros, a subspecies that was formally declared extinct in 2011.

This is the time for us to think twice that the other animals around us are the child of earth like us. If we have the right to live then they also have. And if we think we are in power so we can do any thing then it’ll be a great inhumanity. Moreover millions years before Dinosaurs ruled the earth, we also may face such kind of thing. Signing out for now. Have a sound sleep.  

                              Lonesome George, may be last one from millions years.