In November 1827 William Hare began a new career when an indebted lodger died on him by chance. He was paid £7.10/- (seven pounds & ten shillings) for delivering the body to Knox. Now Burke and his accomplice Hare set about murdering tramps and drunks on a regular basis. After 16 more transactions, in what became known as the West Port Murders, on 2 November 1828 Burke and Hare were caught. The whole city were convulsed with horror, fed by ballads, broadsides and newspapers, at the terrible deeds of Burke & Hare. Hare turned King's evidence, and Burke was hanged, dissected and displayed.
Knox was not prosecuted, which outraged many in Edinburgh. His house was attacked by a mob, and windows were broken. A committee of the Royal Society of Edinburgh cleared him of blame, but there was no forgetting his part in the case, and many were wary of him.
The last victim was Marjory Campbell Docherty. Burke lured her into the lodging house by claiming that his mother was also a Docherty. He had to wait to kill her because the lodgers James and Ann Gray were present. The Grays left for the night and neighbours heard the sounds of a struggle.
The next day Ann Gray, who had returned, became suspicious when Burke would not let her approach a bed where she had left her stockings. When the Grays were left alone in the house, they checked the bed and found Docherty's body under it. On their way to alert the police, they ran into McDougal who tried to bribe them with an offer of £10 a week. They refused.
Burke and Hare had removed the body from the house before the police arrived. However, under questioning, Burke claimed that Docherty had left at 7:00 a.m., while McDougal claimed that she had left in the evening. The police arrested them. An anonymous tip-off led them to Knox's classroom where they found Docherty's body, which James Gray identified. William and Margaret Hare were arrested soon there after. The murder spree had lasted twelve months.
Kronberger 61
Kronberger 61, also known as the "soccer ball", is a Nebula discovered by an amateur astronomer in January 2011. Newer images of this nebula were taken by the Gemini Observatory. The nebula was discovered by Austrian Mattias Kronberger, a member of the amateur group "Deep Sky Hunters". They found it while searching near the northern constellation of Cygnus.
Australian Aboriginal mythology
Australian Aboriginal myths, also known as Dreamtime stories and Songlines, are the stories traditionally performed and told by the indigenous people of Australia. Each of the language groups across Australia has its own stories.
All the myths explain important features and meanings within each Aboriginal group's local landscape. They give cultural meaning to the Australian physical landscape. People who know these stories have access to the wisdom and knowledge of Australian Aboriginal ancestors back beyond the reach of memory.
David Horton wrote in the "Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia" that:
"A mythic map of Australia would show thousands of characters, varying in their importance, but all in some way connected with the land. Some emerged at their specific sites and stayed spiritually in that vicinity. Others came from somewhere else and went somewhere else."
"Many were shape changing, transformed from or into human beings or natural species, or into natural features such as rocks but all left something of their spiritual essence at the places noted in their stories."
Australian Aboriginal myths have been described as parts of a catechism, a liturgical manual, a history of civilization, a geography textbook, and to a much smaller extent a manual of the world and the universe.
An Australian linguist, R. M. W. Dixon, collected many Aboriginal myths in their original languages. He discovered some landscape details in myths were the same as scientific discoveries being made about the same landscapes. For example, on the Atherton Tableland, myths tell of the origins of Lake Eacham, Lake Barrine, and Lake Euramo. Geologists have dated the volcanic explosions which formed the lakes, and were described by Aboriginal myth tellers, as having happened more than 10,000 years ago. Pollen fossil sampling from the bottom of the craters agrees with the Aboriginal myth-tellers' story. When the craters were formed, the area was eucalyptus forest, not the current wet tropical rain forests.
Dixon said that Aboriginal myths about the origin of the Crater Lakes might be accurate back to 10 000 years ago. Further investigation by the Australian Heritage Commission led to the Crater Lakes myth being listed on the Register of the National Estate, and included within Australia's World Heritage nomination of the wet tropical forests. It is an "unparalleled human record of events dating back to the Pleistocene era."
Since then, Dixon has found many similar examples of Australian Aboriginal myths that accurately describe landscapes of an ancient past. He particularly noted many myths telling of previous sea levels, including:
There are at least 400 Aboriginal groups across Australia. Each group has its own name, its own language and often their own dialects. Each group had its own myths, and the words and names of individual myths come these language groups.
With so many different Aboriginal groups, languages, beliefs and practices, it is not possible to describe under a single heading, the full range and diversity of all myths across the entire continent.
"The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia" does however note that "One intriguing feature [of Aboriginal Australian mythology] is the mixture of diversity and similarity in myths across the entire continent."
The similarity in Aboriginal myths and mythology includes:
"..they generally describe the journeys of ancestral beings, often giant animals or people, over what began as a featureless domain. Mountains, rivers, waterholes, animal and plant species, and other natural and cultural resources came into being as a result of events which took place during these Dreamtime journeys. Their existence in present-day landscapes is seen by many indigenous peoples as confirmation of their creation beliefs.."
"..The routes taken by the Creator Beings in their Dreamtime journeys across land and sea.. link many sacred sites together in a web of Dreamtime tracks criss-crossing the country. Dreaming tracks can run for hundreds, even thousands of kilometres, from desert to the coast [and] may be shared by peoples in countries through which the tracks pass.."
Australian anthropologists describe Aboriginal myths still being performed across Australia by Aboriginal peoples as having an important social function. The myths explain the order of their daily lives; helping shape peoples' ideas; and assisting to influence others' behaviour. Also the performance often adds and "mythologises" historical events in the service of these social purposes in a rapidly changing modern world. As R.M. W. Dixon writes:
"It is always integral and common.. that the Law (Aboriginal law) is something derived from ancestral peoples or Dreamings and is passed down the generations in a continuous line. While...entitlements of particular human beings may come and go, the underlying relationships between foundational Dreamings and certain landscapes are theoretically eternal...the entitlements of people to places are usually regarded strongest when those people enjoy a relationship of identity with one or more Dreamings of that place.
This is a central strong feature of Aboriginal identity. It is more than just a matter of believing. The Dreaming existed, and continues to exist, while humans are only temporary.
Aboriginal myths across Australia are a kind of unwritten (oral) library. From this library, Aboriginal people learn about the world and see an Aboriginal 'reality' with concepts and values vastly different from those of western societies: