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via .ORGWorld News

via .ORGWorld News

via .ORGWorld News

Watching this was interesting.... One of the last great mysteries of the Titanic has been solved – and the woman who claimed she was a child survivor has been exposed as a fraud by DNA tests.Two-year-old Loraine Allison was first reported to have died along with her parents when the tragic liner sank, but no body was ever recovered. In the years that followed the 1912 disaster a woman by the name of Helen Kramer came forward and claimed that she was in fact Loraine Allison.Kramer launched a legal bid to be considered part of the wealthy Allison family and entitled to part of their fortune.Before her death in 1992, she contended that she was entitled to the vast majority of the Allison family’s wealth in Canada. Her family had maintained her legal right to the Allison wealth in recent years in an increasingly bitter dispute, according to a report carried by the Irish Independent.The report says the row has seen restraining orders taken out, accusations of harassment made and even security patrols set up to stop a family burial plot being interfered with. But now, more than a hundred years after the sinking, the mystery has been solved and Kramer exposed as a fraud.The Loraine Allison Identification Project, established by a group of Titanicologists, has revealed the results of DNA tests involving members of the Kramer and Allison families. They prove that Helen Kramer was not the little girl who was lost on the Titanic. No genetic link was found between descendants from both sides of the dispute. The report says that the ruling means Loraine will keep the unhappy status of being the only child from first or second class to die in the sinking in 1912.Lorraine traveled on the Titanic with her parents, Hudson, a Canadian entrepreneur, and Bess, her seven-month-old brother Trevor and an entourage of servants. The report says that when the ship struck the iceberg, Trevor was taken to a lifeboat by a maid, Alice Cleaver. Hudson, Bess and Loraine remained on board and apparently turned down many opportunities to be saved, possibly because they were searching for their son. Hudson’s body was the only one to be found found.In 1940 Helen Kramer, now styling herself Loraine Kramer, first claimed to be the missing child. She told a radio show that she had been saved at the last moment when her father placed her in a lifeboat with a man whom she had always thought was her father. The man, whom she called Mr Hyde, raised her as his own in England before moving to the US. She claimed he told her the ‘truth’ shortly before his death. Kramer also claimed that Hyde disclosed his real identity as Thomas Andrews, Titanic’s designer who was thought to have died on board.Some distant relations of the Allisons were taken in by her story, but immediate family members did not accept her.The claims appeared to have died with Kramer, but the centenary of the sinking in 2012 saw Kramer’s grand-daughter, Debherrina Woods, from Florida, restate the claim on a series of online forums. Woods then tried to contact the Allison family in Canada, a move which prompted the intervention of their lawyers to ask her to cease. A restraining order was taken out to stop Woods scattering her grandmother’s ashes over the Allison family plot in Chesterville, Ontario and extra security measures put in place when she visited the area.The debate then led to the founding of the identification project by Tracy Oost, a forensic scientist at Laurentian University, Ontario, and Titanic expert. The report says Oost asked both sides to take part in the DNA screening. Woods declined but her half-sister Deanne Jennings and Sally Kirkelie, the great-niece of Bess Allison, agreed to take part. Professor Oost said, “It is good to have a resolution here, but we mustn’t forget that this is all about one of the more tragic tales to come from the Titanic. The only mystery that remains is: who was Helen Kramer?”David Allison, the grandson of Hudson’s brother Percy Allison said, “I would like to thank Deanne Jennings and Sally Kirkelie for offering their DNA to stop this harassment. This was a courageous, selfless act, and I will remain forever indebted for their act of kindness.”

via .ORGWorld News

Intentionally sunk for the insurance money, to offset prior mistakes.

Acclaimed oceanographer Robert Ballard says he has found evidence Claims massive flood happened in Black Sea region around 5600BC Waters cascaded down Turkey's Straits of Bospurus and into sea It is believed to have started story of Noah, which was then passed on By LEON WATSONPUBLISHED: 20:03, 11 December 2012 | UPDATED: 21:37, 11 December 2012A flood of Biblical proportions just like in the story of Noah's Ark may have actually happened, according to the oceanographer who found the Titanic.Acclaimed underwater archaeologist Robert Ballard claims his team of researchers have uncovered evidence that suggests The Great Flooddescribed in the Bible was actually based on real events.Mr Ballard told how he investigated a controversial theory proposed by two scientists from Columbia University that there was a massive flood in the Black Sea region. In an interview with ABC News, he said around 12,000 years ago much of the world was covered in ice and the Black Sea had been a freshwater lake surrounded by farmland. But when the glaciers began to melt during a warming period in the cycle of the Earth's temperature around 5600BC water rushed toward the world's oceans, Mr Ballard said. This, he claimed, caused floods all around the world and water cascaded through Turkey’s Straits of Bosporus towards the Black Sea. 'Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube,' he said. 'But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history. The questions is, was there a mother of all floods?' His research follows a 1997 study by William Ryan and Walter Pitman who, drawing on archaeological and anthropological evidence, claimed that 'ten cubic miles of water poured through each day', and that the deluge continued for at least 300 days. More than 60,000 square miles of land were flooded, they said, and the lake's level rose by hundreds of feet after merging with the Mediterranean, triggering mass animal migrations across Europe. According to their study, the force of the water was two hundred times that of Niagara Falls, sweeping away everything in its path. It also transformed the Black Sea from an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland into a saltwater inlet. The researchers, whose findings have been backed up by carbon dating and sonar imaging, claimed that the story of Noah's flood had its origin in this cataclysmic event. 'We went in there to look for the flood,' Mr Ballard toldABC News. 'Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under.' The team found an ancient shoreline which Mr Ballard believes is proof such an event did take place. He believes that, by using carbon dating shells found along the shoreline four hundred feet below the surface, it took place around 5,000 BC. 'It probably was a bad day,' he said. 'At some magic moment, it broke through and flooded this place violently, and a lot of real estate, 150,000 square kilometers of land, went under.' As the theory goes, the story of the disaster was passed down from generation to generation and eventually inspired the biblical account of Noah. Noah is described in the Bible as a family man, a father of three, who is about to celebrate his 600th birthday. 'In the early chapters of Genesis, people live 800 years, 700 years, 900 years,' said Rabbi Burt Visotzky, a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. 'Those are mythic numbers, those are way too big. We don't quite know what to do with that. So sometimes those large numbers, I think, also serve to reinforce the mystery of the text.' Mr Ballard's team has also found an ancient shipwreck, as well as ancient pottery. Although he does not think he will ever find Noah's Ark, he believes he may find evidence of an ancient community washed away. In the book of Genesis, God despairs of human corruption and decides to flood the Earth, instructing Noah to build an ark to save himself, his family and a pair of each animal species. The Ark is described in the Book of Genesis as 300 cubits long, or approximately 450ft (137m), but despite many rumours and claims of sightings, no scientific evidence of its existence has ever been found. 'The oldest shipwreck that we have discovered so far of that area is around 500 BC, classical period,' Mr Ballard said. 'But the question is you just keep searching. It's a matter of statistics.' Mr Ballard, who led the international team that located the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985, does not think he will ever find Noah's Ark. However, Mr Ballard does think he may find evidence of a people whose entire world was washed away about 7,000 years ago. He and his team said they plan to return to Turkey next summer. 'It's foolish to think you will ever find a ship,' Mr Ballard said, referring to the Ark. 'But can you find people who were living? Can you find their villages that are underwater now? And the answer is yes.' According to Genesis 8:4, it came to rest 'in the mountains of Ararat'. Experts have agreed that these mountains are to be located in present-day Armenia and eastern Turkey. Many biblical scholars believe the story of Noah and the Ark was inspired by the legendary flood stories of nearby Mesopotamia, in particular 'The Epic of Gilgamesh.' These ancient narratives were already being passed down from one generation to the next, centuries before Noah appeared in the Bible. 'The earlier Mesopotamian stories are very similar where the gods are sending a flood to wipe out humans,' said biblical archaeologist Eric Cline. 'There's one man they choose to survive. He builds a boat and brings on animals and lands on a mountain and lives happily ever after? I would argue that it's the same story.' Catastrophic events of this kind are not unique to the Bible. Some contemporary examples include the 2004 tsunami that wiped out villages on the coasts of 11 countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There was also Hurricane Katrina, described as the worst hurricane in United States history. Scholars aren't sure if the biblical flood was larger or smaller than these modern day disasters, but they do think the experiences of people in ancient times were similar to our own. 'If you witness a terrible natural disaster, yes, you want a scientific explanation why this has happened,' said Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God. 'But you also need to something that will help you to assuage your grief and anguish and rage. And it is here that myth helps us through that.' Regardless of whether the details of the Noah story are historically accurate, the author believes this story and all the Biblical stories are telling us 'about our predicament in the world now.' Source

¡Despertad! 22 de abril de 1982.pdf