When Dan Brown tasted mega-success with his book The Da Vinci Code (selling upwards of 80 million copies), he did so on the back of seminal research by the team of Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, with their book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. But at that time, Brown was just the most recent of a number of authors and artists who had used this book - based on original research by Henry Lincoln in the 1960s - as their inspiration. The entire topic of the Priory of Sion and the mystery of Rennes le Chateau would likely have never 'caught fire' in the English language speaking world without the groundwork laid by Lincoln.

But with Henry now in his 80s, plans are now being made to archive and preserve the original research and documentation related to this influential body of work. For those who would like to assist in this goal, an IndieGoGo fund-raising project is now underway to help set this archive up:

From its inception, one man has been intimately involved in the extraordinary research which has led to changes in the world’s thinking about Christianity, the role of women and … even more importantly … the realization that we have much still to learn about the beliefs, the knowledge and the skills of our remote ancestors.

Now in his ninth decade, the necessity to preserve Henry Lincoln’s archive has become a priority.

Documents, photographs, recordings, books, films, diagrams, scripts, maps and manuscripts demonstrate the growth of the hypotheses and the many detours and stumbling blocks, which have led to new ideas and new attitudes. Future scholars will find that the contents of this archive can help in the understanding of many of the changes in society, which came in the second half of the twentieth century.

Whether Henry Lincoln’s arguments are accepted or not, their effect has been undeniable.

While it would be nice to see someone like Dan Brown chip in for such a worthwhile project, I'm sure there's enough interest in the wider community to get this project to it's goal.

Link: The Henry Lincoln Archive Project on IndieGoGo

Filling in for G.C. this week, who's too busy at the moment. Something about going up North in search of 'his true origins' or something...

• Kepler probe finds 2 potentially habitable exo-planets.
• ...But NO, you can't buy the right to name these new planets --Besides, 'planet Kardashian' sounds too B-movieish.
• Moore's law is so successful, why not use it to predict alien life?
• NASA: Antares debut launch date moved to Saturday.
• My homies of Mysterious Universe interviewed Stephen Bassett, about his upcoming Citizen Hearing on Disclosure.
• Fresh Prince's son Jaden Smith sez Obama confirmed aliens are real —or did he?
• The chupacabras returns to Puerto Rico —even cryptids can get homesick, yo.
• Finding Bigfoot: One limb at a time.
• When visiting Spain, beware of the crocodiles.
• Yosemite & The Epic Sierra: a gorgeous time-lapse video to help you finish the week (h/t Bad Astronomy)
• The 'Game of Thrones' approach to vetting TED talks. Watch out Chris: Winter *is* coming.
• Trailer: Tanks for the Memories, a documentary on sensory deprivation tanks.
• The secret of the great artists: Burning the midnight oil.
• First building powered by algae unveiled in Germany. So ugly, it might deserve to be under the sea...
• The risks of armchair vigilantism.
• Red Pill of the Day: The incest prevention app.

Quote of the Day:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

~Marcel Proust

In times like these, the Paranormal stories are the saner ones.

• Damned if you do, damned if you don't: Predicting the Boston bombs.
• ODD: Obsessive Debunking Disorder. Treatable --with the aid of red pills.
• It's the BADAStronomer VS Stan 'The Man' Friedman, fighting on the Saucer arena. Let's get ready to rumbleeeeeeeeee!!!
• Atacama alien mummy not a human foetus, but a 6-8 year-old humanoid, according to Sirius filmmakers. So I guess Chile was the preschool of the Reticulans back then?
• Gordon Novel, the CIA, and the Potus Briefing Bus, by Grant Cameron.
• Blast from the Space-Brotherly past: A vintage TV interview between George Van Tassel & a fabulous Scottish skeptic.
• The Necedah apparitions: The Virgin Mary, UFOs & the Hollow Earth.
• Stephen Hawking offers a solution to the Big Bang, sans Big Bearded Dude in the Sky.
• Holy escargot, Batman! these giant snails infesting Florida are the stuff of nightmares.
• To the animal kingdom Nature is one big, free, open pharmacy.
• The genome sequence of a "living fossil" --No, I'm not talking about THAT study...
• Brewing for Bigfoot?
• The gelada monkey hints at the evolution of human speech --and the evolution of Don King's hairdo.
• Many Neuroscience studies may be based on bad statistics. Nothing the Million Dollar Challenge couldn't settle, amirite??
• Looking for Consciousness in all the wrong places.
• Red Pill of the Day: Unfortunate names for Funeral homes.

Thanks to Susan & the Justified and Ancient Mystics of MuMu.

Quote of the Day:

"And era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted."

~Arthur Miller

When the only option is success: Alexander Polli drops from a hovering helicopter and flies - using a wingsuit - through a narrow gap in a cliff-face at a speed of around 250 km/h (155 mph). Insanity.

Time stops for the Daily Grail News Briefs

• Moore's Law thought experiment concludes life is older than Earth.
• Psychic visit to haunted chamber under Edinburg's Royal Mile earns £40k for children's hospital.
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon Nineveh.
• Cracking the Voynich code.
• Why doctors should give you LSD (maybe).
• Transparent brains. Do you see what I'm thinking?
• Computer modelling of the Easter Island statue Hoa Hakananai'a unlocks the story of the Island's birdman cult.
• Has Sir Walter Raleigh's missing 'El Dorado' ship been found?
• Deep-sea fossils yield traces of 2 million-year-old radioactive supernova debris.
• Are great scientists always heretics?
• A "Neolithic theme park" in Mid Wales?
• Cattle damage famous Bronze Age monument Mên-an-Tol.
• Who owns our genes?
• Feeling of being watched 'hardwired in brain'.
• Sonnengewehr, the Nazi Sun Gun.
• Iranian time machine report pulled.
• Massive geyser erupts in Russian parking lot.
• Shrinking proton mystery.
• A whale-like Loch Ness monster sighting.

Quote of the Day:

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you

David Foster Wallace

Welp, I got at least one thing right in my book Inside Dan Brown's Inferno. Today on the Wall Street Journal website:

When Dan Brown’s new thriller “Inferno” is published May 14, one thing his readers will look for are clues to solving the puzzles that he sprinkles inside his book and on his dust jackets...

Here’s one tip: it appears certain that Professor Langdon will need to draw upon his old algebra lessons. In a mystery yet to be deciphered, it turns out that the book’s publication date wasn’t chosen by random.

“It is written 5-14-13, which read backwards 3.1415 – the value of pi,” said Suzanne Herz, a Doubleday senior vice president. Ms. Herz declined to reveal how the value of pi relates to the book’s storyline, saying that would be for readers to discover.

Scooped! I posted the video at the top of this story on February 21, and wrote about it in my book (indeed, the fictional 'introduction' to Inside Dan Brown's Inferno is built around this hidden code), after getting the tip from one of the fantastic commenters on The Cryptex ('RalphK').

The inclusion of pi may be related simply to Dante's circles of hell in his Inferno. However, there's other more likely ways that it might be included - notably, the secret history of the ancient sage Pythagoras and his veneration by some of the drivers of the Renaissance. You can find out the full details in Inside Dan Brown's Inferno (did I mention it's only $2.99?).

Click on the cover below to go get a copy:

The University of Chicago Press is currently offering Stephen Braude's book The Gold Leaf Lady and other Parapsychological Investigations as a free ebook download.

For over thirty years, Stephen Braude has studied the paranormal in everyday life, from extrasensory perception and psychokinesis to mediumship and materialization. The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations is a highly readable and often amusing account of his most memorable encounters with such phenomena. Here Braude recounts in fascinating detail five particular cases—some that challenge our most fundamental scientific beliefs and others that expose our own credulousness.

Braude begins with a south Florida woman who can make thin gold-colored foil appear spontaneously on her skin. He then travels to New York and California to test psychokinetic superstars—and frauds—like Joe Nuzum, who claim to move objects using only their minds. Along the way, Braude also investigates the startling allegations of K.R., a policeman in Annapolis who believes he can transfer images from photographs onto other objects—including his own body—and Ted Serios, a deceased Chicago elevator operator who could make a variety of different images appear on Polaroid film. Ultimately, Braude considers his wife’s surprisingly fruitful experiments with astrology, which she has used to guide professional soccer teams to the top of their leagues, as well as his own personal experiences with synchronicity—a phenomenon, he argues, that may need to be explained in terms of a refined, extensive, and dramatic form of psychokinesis.

Heady, provocative, and brimming with eye-opening details and suggestions, The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations will intrigue both adherents and detractors of its controversial subject matter alike.

For all you old-schoolers, the hardcover of The Gold Leaf Lady is available from Amazon.com (I have it, and it's excellent).

You might also like:

• Stephen Braude and the Gold Leaf Lady.
• Paranormal Investigator Profiled.

Would you like to be the owner of this face-carving insect robot when the (inevitable) robot rebellion occurs?

Take the latest news from around the world, put it through the Daily Grail filter, et voila!

• Well that didn't take long: Alex Jones says Boston explosions were a government conspiracy.
• Margaret Thatcher and UFO secrets.
• General Zod and the Ashtar Command.
• Shhh. We're hunting dawk matter.
• Astronomers: we think we're about to find 100 billion Earths.
• Inside Dan Brown's Inferno, Boing Boinged!
• Is the Loch Ness Monster just a tourist conspiracy?
• 12,000 year-old intact giant mammoth skeleton uncovered near Mexico City. And here's some video!
• The invisible hand.
• Clairvoyant chemistry.
• We've been looking for consciousness in the wrong place.
• On Free Will: Do we think, therefore we do - or is it the other way around.
• Why your brain craves music.
• Refugees of a technological world: ‘electrosensitives’ move to a cellphone-free town. But is their disease real?
• When the robot rebellion eventually comes, would you like this creature carving your face?
• Former KGB agent reveals Soviet UFO studies.
• UFO 96 - the UFO world of 50 years ago.
• Are great scientists always heretics?
• Image of the Day: with the greatest of respect to everybody touched by today's tragedy, let's remember it's a big, round planet. My heart goes out to *everyone* around the world touched by tragedy.

Thanks RPJ.

Quote of the Day:

The terrible thing about terrorism is that ultimately it destroys those who practice it. Slowly but surely, as they try to extinguish life in others, the light within them dies.

Terry Waite

Over at his blog, UFO researcher David Clarke says "the death of ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher has deprived UFOlogists of an answer to an enduring question: what did she really know about Britain’s Roswell incident?"

Thatcher, who died on 8 April aged 87, was 19 months into her first term as Prime Minister in 1980 when US airmen at the nuclear-armed twin airbase RAF Bentwaters-Woodbridge reported ‘unexplained lights’ (UFOs) hovering above Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk.

The ‘Rendlesham Forest’ incident happened at the height of the Cold War when tensions in Poland – then behind the Iron Curtain -were reaching crisis point. In the years that followed, the Ministry of Defence drew up secret plans to base US cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common and US airbases in eastern England and was keen to avoid drawing attention to a persistent story about a UFO landing near one of them.

...Georgina Bruni revealed that she had quizzed Thatcher face-to-face about her knowledge of UFOs and Rendlesham.

The bizarre conversation took place in London at a charity cocktail party during 1997, shortly after the former Prime Minister had returned from an engagement in Washington DC. At the time Bruni was working on a book that she hoped would expose ‘the truth’ about Britain’s Roswell.

Seizing the opportunity, Bruni asked her opinion on UFOs and claims that world leaders knew about the existence of alien technology. She received this response:

Head to David Clarke's blog to find out what Lady Thatcher said, and how people have attempted to explain it.