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Microcontinent found in Indian Ocean

Evidence of a drowned "microcontinent" has been found in sand grains from the beaches of a small Indian Ocean island, scientists say.A well-known tourist destination, Mauritius (map) is located about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) off the coast of Africa, east of Madagascar. Scientists think the tiny island formed some nine million years ago from cooling lava spewed by undersea volcanoes.But recently, researchers have found sand grains on Mauritius that contain fragments of the mineral zircon that are far older than the island, between 660 million and about 2 billion years old....

Crimean War cemetery uncovered

The din of machinery mingled with the echo of the 19th century Crimean War when an excavator bucket stumbled upon the yellowed remains of long-dead French soldiers at a construction site in a southern Ukrainian port city.The haunting find at Sebastopol's Cane Bay beach in December revealed the site of a large cemetery of French soldiers who died in the war against the Russian Empire during the 1854-1856 Crimean War. The discovery has highlighted how many bodies could still be lying under the ground from the brutal conflict where an alliance of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire fought against Russia in what many see as one of the world's first modern conflicts....

9-11 families upset with Zero Dark Thirty

 "Zero Dark Thirty" took just one minor award at the Oscars last night. There was a lot of debate about the way the film depicted torture during the hunt for Osama bin Laden.Turns out that wasn't the only controversy.The film starts with actual voices of victims of September 11, recorded as they made their last phone calls. For Mary and Frank Fetchet, it brings back painful memories. One of those voices was their son Brad, who worked on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower.

Bones found in Turkey are probably those of Cleopatra's half-sister

Long-buried bones and a missing monarch. Add some historical notoriety and modern technology and you have a heck of a captivating, science-driven story. Just this month, it was announced that bones found under a parking lot in Leicester, England, belonged to King Richard III. DNA evidence, according to the lead archaeologist at the excavation, proved this “beyond a reasonable doubt.”...

Tornado shutters black history museum

 

Shards of south Louisiana's ancient history found

An archaeological project arising out of Hurricane Katrina's floods has turned up bits of pottery fired about 1,300 years before the first French colonists slogged into south Louisiana swamps. The project also has turned up artifacts from later Native Americans, Spanish and American fortifications, as well as a hotel and amusement park near the mouth of Bayou St. John, once an important route from Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans....

Anti-communist oaths persist despite court rulings

It has been just shy of 50 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Washington state law barring members of the Communist Party from voting or holding public-sector jobs is unconstitutional.Evidently, that is not enough time to remove it from the books.Washington is one of a handful of states with similar laws still in existence despite their having been declared unconstitutional decades ago.With few exceptions - most notably Georgia, where an anti-communist oath was administered to incoming Dunwoody City Councilmembers as recently as last year - the laws are treated as part of a bygone era, not unlike state statutes prohibiting interracial marriage, the last of which was removed from Alabama's books in 2001 even though the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in 1967.

Mussolini’s ‘most secret’ bunker discovered beneath historic Roman structure

Workers in Rome have stumbled across a top-secret bunker once belonging to former Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, hidden underneath the historic Palazzo Venezia. The discovery is the 12th such bunker as is said to have been the “most secret” of the former strongman’s hideouts, according to the Italian publication La Stampa....

Abraham Lincoln: President, Emancipator, Corporate Pitchman

For almost a century, Lincoln Motor Company paid homage to our 16th president in name only – hoping the mere mention of the man who saved the Union and abolished slavery would somehow cast an aura of prestige and integrity over their product and resonate with potential car buyers.In December, however, the automaker began using Lincoln’s likeness in its advertising for the first time. The motor company says the move was not tied to the release of Steven Spielberg’s epic film Lincoln – even though parts of the ad for the new MKZ, in which the president’s likeness emerges dramatically from layers of fog, look as if they could’ve been pulled from the cutting room floor.Instead, the automaker told The New York Times, it’s trying to connect its vehicles to Lincoln’s “fortitude and elegant thinking” — and that the timing with the film’s release was just good luck....

Israelis upset with Chevy "SS" car

The recently introduced 2014 Chevrolet SS muscle car has been welcomed in NASCAR country with open arms, but GM’s latest halo car isn’t getting as warm of a response in The Holy Land.It’s not the performance of the 415 hp V8-powered sedan that’s at issue, but the name: SS.It’s short for Super Sport, but an official at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem says the name evokes memories of Nazi Germany’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel organization, infamously known as the SS, which was the primary force behind the Holocaust that killed over 6 million Jews in Nazi occupied lands....

Rotterdam archaeologists find old shoe stuffed with medieval money

Archeologists in Rotterdam have found an old shoe stuffed with 477 silver coins during excavations behind the town hall. Archaeologists say they have never before found a shoe filled with money, which ranges in dates from 1472 to 1592. On theory is that the owner of the shoe hid it under floorboards to protect it during the 80 Years War (1568-1648)....

Carter: Argo not accurate

 

National park cuts detailed in memo

The towering giant sequoias at Yosemite National Park would go unprotected from visitors who might trample their shallow roots. At Cape Cod National Seashore, large sections of the Great Beach would close to keep eggs from being destroyed if natural resource managers are cut.Gettysburg would decrease by one-fifth the numbers of school children who learn about the historic Pennsylvania battle that was a turning point in the Civil War.As America's financial clock ticks toward forced spending cuts to countless government agencies, The Associated Press has obtained a National Park Service memo that compiles a list of potential effects at the nation's most beautiful and historic places just as spring vacation season begins......Even Declaration House in Pennsylvania, the place where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, wouldn't be spared. Nor would comfort stations on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi...

German police return smuggled artifacts to Kosovo

Seven artifacts dating as far back as 4,000 B.C. have been returned to Kosovo after German police stumbled on them in an unrelated raid, the country's culture minister said Friday.The artifacts date to the Neolithic period and are believed to belong to the Vinca, a prehistoric culture that traces back to 5,500 B.C. in southern Europe. Police in central Germany found them in 2005 during a separate undisclosed investigation, discovering the pieces in a sports bag belonging to two Serbs...

Emory president's essay draws criticisms

In recent years, Emory University made a point to acknowledge how the school was once led by slave owners, but an essay by the school president has renewed debate about racial sensitivity on campus.Emory President James Wagner recently wrote about the three-fifths compromise on slavery in 1787 to talk about the value of finding common ground in politics. In the compromise, northern and southern states agreed that three-fifths of the slave population would count toward representation in Congress, giving southerners more power in the House of Representatives.A faculty group voted to censure Wagner and students planned a protest next week...

Amazing find in Dartmoor Bronze Age grave

A rare discovery dating back 4,000 years has been described as the most significant find on Dartmoor (Devon, England), and has given archaeologists a glimpse into the lives of the people who once lived there.  The undisturbed bronze age granite cist uncovered in 2011 in a peat bog on White Horse Hill revealed the first organic remains ever found on the moor, and a hoard of about 150 beads, including two amber beads. Previously only eight beads in total had been found on the moor.... 

To Move Wright House to Italy, All It Takes Is a Buyer

Paolo Bulletti has a dream. The Italian architect wants to transport a house built by the distinguished U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright from its current site in New Jersey to the hills of Fiesole, near Florence....Everyone acknowledges that the timing is poor. The economic situation in Italy means public and private funds are in short supply and, with the general election campaign under way, no mayor would lend his name to such an extravagant project.Nonetheless, Fulvio Irace, a professor of history at Milan Polytechnic, thinks that public institutions in Florence or Fiesole or even Venice should consider buying the house....

Cumberland County battle field could soon become historical site

Some members of the Cumberland County community are seeking a grant that they say will shed light on the truth behind a suspected Revolutionary War battle site.Revolutionary War history is said to be rooted here in Port Norris, and some members of the Cumberland County community say they will stop at nothing to shed light on the truth."Get something going all the way back to the Revolutionary War era right here in Cumberland County would certainly an asset to our tourism and our economy."...

Canada still doesn't care about 1812

The year-long celebration of the War of 1812’s bicentennial is over, and Canada is $30-million poorer, but many Canadians say they feel no greater sense of affinity for their country as a result of the federally instigated hoopla.A recent survey conducted by Nanos Research for the Institute for Research on Public Policy asked what types of historic events Canadians believe the federal government should spend time and money marking. The War of 1812, which saw British troops thwart a U.S. attempt to overrun their territory, was not high on the list.Nor was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee or the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series – both of which took place last year. And the online poll of 1,000 Canadians, conducted Jan. 18 and 19, suggests there is only muted enthusiasm for glorifying the coming 200th birthday of Sir John A. Macdonald....

Northwestern to probe founder Evans and Sand Creek Massacre

Responding to pressure from a student alliance, Northwestern University has established a committee to investigate the history of John Evans, a university founder connected to one of the worst massacres of Native Americans in the country's history. The committee will consist of four Northwestern faculty members and three additional professors hailing from Yale University, the University of Illinois and the University of Arkansas. John Evans — the namesake of the city of Evanston — was territorial governor of Colorado in 1864 when a militia of about 700 men attacked a temporary village of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people at Sand Creek. According to the National Park Service, the soldiers killed 165 to 200 Native Americans, about two-thirds of them women, children and elderly....