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baseball's uk heritage confirmed

local historians in surrey (south east of england) have confirmed evidence that baseball was played in the uk more than 20 years before american independence.

a diary that documents a game being played in guildford in 1755 has been verified by surrey history centre.

william bray, a surrey diarist and historian from shere, wrote about the game when he was still a teenager.

major league baseball, the governing body of the game in the us, has been informed of the discovery.

julian pooley, surrey history centre manager and william bray expert, said the diary showed the game was a well-established sport in the 18th century and was played by men and women.

tricia st john barry, who owns the diary, dug out the documents last year after watching a report on bbc south today which said the sport began in the 1790s.

ms st john barry remembered the old manuscript, which she had had for many years, and responded to an appeal to viewers for more information on the subject.

william bray lived from 1736 to 1832 and worked as a solicitor, a steward of surrey manors and a surrey historian.

mr pooley said: "he kept lots and lots of diaries that we have in the surrey history centre but last year a new one was discovered in a garden shed and it contains his diary from 1754 to 1755.

"it contains a reference to him playing baseball. what intrigued me is he is playing it with a load of young ladies."

the diary states they had tea after the game on easter monday and also played cricket.

kevin sullivan, the washington post's london bureau correspondent and an avid boston red sox fan, told bbc radio four's today programme: "it's a great american tradition to take things from other places and improve them.

"we've always known that baseball evolved - it wasn't invented like basketball."

there was a later historical reference to the game being played in england in jane austen's northanger abbey, written between 1797 and 1798.

source

i... don't know why i found this interesting. i hope at least one other person does too :/

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Video:

police confirmed ufo sighting

at first, police mocked the 911 call about the ufo sighting--but then they saw it too.

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Video:

mystery ocean-glow confirmed

the mystery begins

mariners have long told of rare nighttime events in which the ocean glows intensely as far as the eye can see in all directions.

fictionally, such a "milky sea" is encountered by the nautilus in jules verne classic "20,000 leagues under the sea."

scientists don't have a good handle what's going on. but satellite sensors have now provided the first pictures of a milky sea and given new hope to learning more about the elusive events.

the newly released images show a vast region of the indian ocean, about the size of connecticut, glowing three nights in a row. the luminescence was also spotted from a ship in the area.

"the circumstances under which milky seas form is almost entirely unknown," says steven miller, a naval research laboratory scientist who led the space-based discovery. "even the source for the light emission is under debate."

the leading idea

scientists suspect bioluminescent bacteria are behind the phenomenon. such creatures produce a continuous glow, in contrast to the brief, bright flashes of light produced by "dinoflagellate" bioluminescent organisms that are seen more commonly lighting up ship wakes and breaking waves.

"the problem with the bacteria hypothesis is that an extremely high concentration of bacteria must exist before they begin to produce light," miller told livescience. "but what could possibly support the occurrence of such a large population?"

one idea, put forward by the lone research vessel to ever encounter a milky sea, is that the bacteria are not free-living, but instead are living off some local supporting "substrate."

"this previous excursion reported the presence of bioluminescent bacteria, which were found to be living in association with an algal bloom," miller explained.

"so, our best working hypothesis is that we are witnessing bioluminescence produced by bacteria that are colonizing some kind of organic material present in the water," he said. "satellite detection will hopefully allow us to target milky seas with properly equipped research vessels that will then be able to answer all these questions definitively."

the mysterious seas

the event occurred in 1995 and was finally analyzed and reported last week in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences.

the mystery highlights how little scientists know about the ocean. milky seas appear to be most prevalent in the indian ocean, where there are many trade routes, and near indonesia.

"but there could be other areas we simply don't know about yet," miller said. "in fact, we're already beginning to receive feedback from additional witnesses of milky seas. some of these accounts occurred in regions we had not thought to look before, and we're currently working to find matches with the satellite data."

you can view the satellite image here

this is out of this world. any thoughts on the matter?