The Spiritual Practice Of Self-Mummification Shutterstock
By Richard Milner/Jan. 22, 2021 10:02 am EDT
When you think of mummies you might envision those ACE bandage-wearing guys pulled from sarcophagi in Egypt you know: all pharaonic, shrunken and distributing curses or maybe Universal Picture s miserably failed Dark Universe launch circa 2017 s Tom Cruise-led
The Mummy. (Actually, we re betting you didn t even remember that movie until right now, although you might remember Brendan Fraser s identically named 1999 movie.) But what you
don t probably think of is desiccated Buddhist monks hardened into a permanent, multi-hundred-year-old seated lotus position.
This is exactly the case, though, with members of Shingon, an ascetic, nondoctrinal sect of Buddhism that arose during Japan s Heian period (794-1185 CE), built from the tethers between Japan s native Shinto animism and Buddhism as it was imported from mainland China. Shingon monks followed Shugen
The Real-Life Story Behind Netflix s Rose Island
By Richard Milner/Jan. 21, 2021 10:52 am EDT
People who daydream are often said to be in their own world. Sometimes this claim is levied as a criticism, while other times it s a virtue to be creatively flighty and march to the beat of a different drummer. The line between admirably individualistic and irresponsibly out-of-touch is up for debate, and often depends on the consequences of actions: Did someone create an astonishing art installation or did someone land in jail? Even if all of us can t presume to be avant-garde artists in worlds of their own, everyone wants to escape now and then: a retreat into fiction movies, TV, books, etc., a vacation to a far-flung tropical paradise, or even just a savored meal at a favorite restaurant.
The True Story Behind The Pentagon Papers Shutterstock
By Richard Milner/Jan. 8, 2021 9:04 am EDT
A researcher blows the whistle on decades worth of covert U.S. government dealings to sow warfare in Indochina (the Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos peninsula) by passing along classified, photocopied documents to a
New York Times journalist. That journalist releases his informant s story without consent a fact revealed only as recently as January 7, 2021, after the journalist passed away and when President Nixon illegally retaliates, leads to one of the biggest scandals in modern presidential history: Watergate, as well as Nixon s impeachment.
This is the story of the Pentagon Papers in a nutshell, per History, dramatized as recently as 2017 in Stephen Spielberg s stellar tour de force
The Untold Truth Of Plymouth Rock Shutterstock
By Richard Milner/Jan. 1, 2021 10:43 am EDT
Even if you re hazy on the details, most people who made it through elementary school in the US can relate an overview of the now-mythologized Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock tale that constitutes part of the nation s early narrative. We ve got those Pilgrim guys in black, with buckles on their shoes, who were completely unfun at parties and are often confused with Puritans (we ll get back to that). We ve got their ship, the
, which landed on what is maybe an actual stone called Plymouth Rock. We ve got lots of people dying the first winter, and Native Americans teaching them what to do to survive in a harsh, new world, their generosity repaid by stealing their land bit by bit (another story). But before that, we ve got Thanksgiving, where everyone sat around a big picnic table and someone shot a turkey with a musket while posing next to a cornucopia full of squash and o