Curious City: What's the story behind Dunning Insane Asylum?
Curious Citizen Michael Dotson asked Curious City: What's the history behind Cook County's former Dunning Insane Asylum and the people buried near there? Full story:
We visit the Read Dunning Memorial Park with Michael and some local activists who want to raise more awareness about the park and the 38,000 victims of the Civil War, the Chicago Fire, orphans and Dunning Insane Asylum residents who are buried in the area.
For more info on Curious City, visit curiouscity.wbez.org
The Khatt Shebib — The Mysterious Wall in Jordan
The Khatt Shebib — The Mysterious Wall in Jordan
The existence of the wall was first reported in 1948 by Sir Alec Kirkbride, a British diplomat in Jordan, who had seen the structure overhead while in an airplane and noticed a mysterious stone structure. It was a wall , known as the Khatt Shebib. During a recent study, scientists found that the length of the wall, which stretches from north-east to south-west, is 106 km, according to Live Science. If we consider its branches and parallel sessions, its total length is about 150 km. Currently, the construction of only the ruins. According to scientists, initially the wall was not big. Its height was only about a meter, and its width is half a meter.
The wall could have served as a demarcation between the desert and the area in which farming was possible. Ancient towers in a mysterious landscape. The wall is dotted with hundreds of small towers, each measuring two to four meters in diameter.
Kennedy suspects that some were built after the wall was constructed. The towers likely had a variety of uses. Some may have been places of refuge — a secure place to overnight. Others may have been used as watch posts. Some, perhaps, were places in which hunters could hide until browsing fauna was close enough to try and bring down, Kennedy told Live Science. Kennedy believes they did not serve a military purpose. The small towers along the wall remind him more of small shelters from sandstorms for hunters in the deep desert. Or they could have been used to store food. He admits that all these possibilities are just guesses. Since the wall was built of loose field-stones, it is impossible to tell who first constructed it. But it was a huge effort. Even if the wall was only one meter high or so, gathering the heavy stones and constructing them into a wall was no easy task, and could be indicative of central organization, archaeologists say.
So far, the only dating information the scientists have comes from pottery found in the towers and other sites along the wall, Kennedy said. Based on the pottery found to date, the wall was likely built sometime between the Nabataean period (312 B.C.–A.D. 106) and the Umayyad period (A.D. 661–750), Kennedy said.
Specialists are also inclined to believe that the wall was not a defensive building. There is a version that the Hutt Shebib served as a border between the ancient farmers and nomadic peoples to cultivate the land. The purpose of the wall is also a mystery.
Like us and Join us at Xtreme Collections for more fun and knowledge.
Highland Drove Inn, Great Salkeld, Cumbria CA11 9NA. Tel: 01768 898349
At the Highland Drove we have a passion that is driven by a belief in the quality of our food, our beers, our wines, our staff and our service.
Cumbria rightly has a growing reputation for the excellence of its produce and we source as much as we can locally; knowing and having faith in our farmers and other producers is part of the key to our success.
We believe that the English Country Pub is the hub of the community and we have proven that you can provide top quality original food without destroying the traditional inn as a place where locals and visitors alike can come for a pint, a chat and something to eat.