Musicians unlock Da Vinci Mystery Melody in Rosslyn Chapel

A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years.

A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel's arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them.

Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart, described the piece as "frozen music."

"The music has been frozen in time by symbolism," Mitchell said on his Web site (www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/rosslyn.html), which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel's code.

"It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to thaw out and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception."

The 15th Century Rosslyn Chapel, about seven miles south of the Scottish capital Edinburgh, featured in the last part of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" -- one of the most successful novels of all time which has been turned into a Hollywood film.

Stuart Mitchell said he and his father were intrigued by 13 intricately carved angel musicians on the arches of the chapel and by 213 carved cubes depicting geometric-type patterns.

"They are of such exquisite detail and so beautiful that we thought there must be a message here," he told Reuters.

Years of research led the Mitchells to an ancient musical system called cymatics, or Chladni patterns, which are formed by sound waves at specific pitches.

The two men matched each of the patterns on the carved cubes to a Chladni pitch, and were able finally to unlock the melody.

The Mitchells have called the piece The Rosslyn Motet and added words from a contemporary hymn to complete it.

They have also scheduled a world premiere at a concert in the chapel on May 18, when four singers will be accompanied by eight musicians playing the piece on medieval instruments.

Simon Beattie of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust said he was delighted to have the mystery finally solved, and was intrigued by the music itself.

"It's not something you would want to put on in the car and listen to, but it's certainly an interesting piece of music," he said. "It's got a good medieval sound to it."

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Superman "S" stands for Serbia?

Serb media responded on Wednesday with a sense of pride and patriotism that a new mineral had been found in Serbia closely resembling the makeup of fictional "kryptonite," which rendered Superman helpless.

Reacting to the discovery of the real new mineral in western Serbia, they pointed out that "kryptonite" was created from the remains of Superman's home planet Krypton, destroyed in a fireball.

"Superman is a Serb!" was the conclusion drawn in headlines favored by several newspapers. The daily Kurir said: "Finally we have scientific proof that we are God's own people!"

Even the staid pro-government daily Politika joined in the fun, speculating that the 'S' on the Man of Steel's blue costume really stood for 'Serbia'.

In the comics, Superman would do anything to avoid kryptonite, whose glowing green crystals sapped his powers.

The actual mineral found at a mine near Jadar does not glow, is not radioactive, has very tiny crystals and is white rather than green. It is to be named Jadarite.

While concluding an extensive examination of its unique chemistry, mineralogist Chris Stanley of London's Natural History Museum stumbled on a close match with 'kryptonite', as described in the movie 'Superman Returns'.

The museum quoted Stanley as saying he searched the Internet for the mineral's formula -- sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide -- and found the same scientific name written on a case containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor in the movie.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Ribena Exposed - Contains No Vitamin C & Sued $217,000

It is a household name which has become one of the world's best-known fruit drinks and is enjoyed by children in 22 countries across the globe.

But it took only two school pupils to tackle the might of the makers of Ribena in a court case which ended in the company being fined almost £80,000 for misleading advertising.

The case came to court in New Zealand after students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo challenged claims over levels of vitamin C in the blackcurrant drink.

Ribena is sold as a healthy drink by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), with advertisements stating that it has more vitamin C than orange juice.

But when the then 14-year-old classmates tested the syrup-based drink as part of a science project in 2004, they discovered that it contained almost no trace of vitamin C.

A lawsuit was filed by the Commerce Commission, the national consumer watchdog, and yesterday GSK admitted 15 charges of misleading advertising between 2002 and 2006.

The company was fined 217,000 New Zealand dollars (£80,000) and was ordered to run corrective adverts and post a message on its website.

Ms Devathasan, who was with Ms Suo in court, said the pair felt "quite proud".

She added: "If we hadn't done that science test three years ago, Ribena could have been promoted as vitamin C full for ever. We're just blown away that anything we could have started as a consumer could have blown up into something so huge."

Adverts in New Zealand claimed that Ready to Drink Ribena had 7mg of the vitamin per 100ml. The high school students found that the drink had almost no trace of vitamin C.

The Commerce Commission said that the company's behaviour was a massive breach of trust with the public.

GSK told the court that it had not deliberately set out to mislead consumers but that the fault lay with its testing methods.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Prisoner caught with grenade up where?

SAN SALVADOR - An inmate at an El Salvador jail was caught with a hand grenade stuffed up his backside -- a novel attempt to disguise his apparent escape plans.

Guards at the San Francisco Gotera prison outside the capital San Salvador found the V40 grenade, about the size of a golf ball, lodged up the man's rectum during a security clampdown, a prison spokesman said on Thursday.

They also caught another 16 inmates who each swallowed a mobile phone.

"We'll have to expel the objects and if they won't come out we'll have to perform surgery in hospital," said Alberto Uribe, a spokesman for the El Salvador prison service.

Last year, prison guards found an M67 grenade in the vagina of a female visitor at the overcrowded La Esperanza-Mariona prison on the northern fringes of San Salvador.

Prisoners in the Central American country use weapons to try to escape or attack fellow inmates and prison guards, and use cellular phones to order free gang members to commit crimes or smuggle narcotics.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Granny finds Grenade in Groceries

NAPLES, Italy - A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.

"I found a bomb in the potatoes," Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"I went to the market to buy some potatoes and that's where the bomb was. But this bomb was covered in dirt, and I put it in water and got all dirt off. And then I realized 'It's a bomb'!"

Police said the pine cone-shaped grenade, which had no pin and was still active, was the same type used by U.S. soldiers in Europe in World War Two. Authorities believe the mix-up happened at a farm in France, where the grenade was plucked from the ground along with potatoes.

To the woman's relief, police and explosives experts in the small town of San Giorgio a Cremano, near Naples, recovered the grenade and safely detonated it on Wednesday.

But Mauriello was still shaking off her close brush with death. It didn't look like a potato and it was heavier than one. But what if she had cooked it?

"If I hadn't felt its weight, I wouldn't even have realized that it was a bomb," she said.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]

Declaration of Independence for $2.48

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A rare, 184-year-old copy of the Declaration of Independence found by a bargain hunter at a Nashville thrift shop is being valued by experts at about 100,000 times the $2.48 purchase price.

Michael Sparks, a music equipment technician, is selling the document in an auction March 22nd at Raynors' Historical Collectible Auctions in Burlington, North Carolina. The opening bid is $125,000 and appraisers have estimated it could sell for nearly twice that.

Sparks found his bargain last March while browsing at Music City Thrift Shop in Nashville. When he asked the price on a yellowed, shellacked, rolled-up document, the clerk marked it at $2.48.

It turned out to be an "official copy" of the Declaration of Independence — one of 200 commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820.

He didn't know he had such a valuable piece until doing some online research and then having appraisers at Raynors' offer an opinion.

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[tags : unusual wierd bizzare]