The CIA director revealed only a few details about the 21-year-old woman, a secretary among spies. In the agency’s annual memorial service for employees killed on the job, then-Director Leon E. Panetta announced that a new name had been inscribed with calligraphy inside the CIA’s Book of Honor: Barbara Annette Robbins, who had volunteered to go to Saigon during the Vietnam War and died in a 1965 car bombing at the U.S. Embassy.
The private ceremony inside the agency’s main lobby last year marked the first time the CIA publicly acknowledged Robbins as one of their own. But the slain secretary holds enough historic titles to make her an object of curiosity within the CIA. Robbins was the first woman at the male-dominated CIA killed in the line of duty. She is the youngest CIA employee ever killed. And, according to Panetta, she was also the first American woman to die in the Vietnam War....
Friday, May 11, 2012 - 12:11
A rare Nazi police report on the deportation of nearly 1,000 Jews from Düsseldorf has been unearthed in a London archive. It is only the second of its kind ever found, as most such records were destroyed towards the end of the war.
Police captain and SS member Wilhelm Meurin was responsible for guarding the deportation train which left Düsseldorf on November 14, 1941 in freezing temperatures, and travelled east for four days.
He said that although 300 of the people on the train were no longer capable of walking, “the unloading in Minsk could be conducted at the desired speed.”
He also reported that 8,000 Russian Jews had already been “removed and... shot” from the Minsk ghetto....
Friday, May 11, 2012 - 11:10
The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around." [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]...
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 16:29
ScienceDaily (May 10, 2012) — Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey.
Researchers working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan, believe that the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq.
In keeping with a policy widely practised across the Assyrian Empire, these people may have been forcibly moved from their homeland and resettled in what is now south-east Turkey, where they would have been set to work building the new frontier city and farming its hinterland....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 16:28
A new online tool, made by a team of historians and information technology specialists at Stanford University, shows just how long and costly it was to send people and wheat between cities in the Roman Empire. "It's Google Maps for the ancient world, complete with the 'Avoid Highways' feature," Scott Weingart, a doctoral student in library sciences at the University of Indiana, wrote in a blog-post review. Weingart was not involved in creating the tool, called ORBIS, but its creators asked him to preview and comment on it. His review appeared May 4 in the Editor's Choice column in Digital Humanities Now....
A new online tool, made by a team of historians and information technology specialists at Stanford University, shows just how long and costly it was to send people and wheat between cities in the Roman Empire. "It's Google Maps for the ancient world, complete with the 'Avoid Highways' feature," Scott Weingart, a doctoral student in library sciences at the University of Indiana, wrote in a blog-post review. Weingart was not involved in creating the tool, called ORBIS, but its creators asked him to preview and comment on it. His review appeared May 4 in the Editor's Choice column in Digital Humanities Now....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 16:26
PERRYVILLE, Ky. — A central Kentucky couple has sold 140 acres from the Civil War Battle of Perryville to the Civil war Preservation Trust for $725,000.
Perryville Battlefield State Historical Site specialist Joni L. House told The Advocate-Messenger (http://bit.ly/Kb6WFs ) that the acquisition gives the group an opportunity to keep a piece of history intact that otherwise might be developed.
The Civil War Preservation Trust is a national nonprofit supported by donors who believe like House does that such areas should be off limits to development and available for future generations....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:42
As a king with a well known weakness for wives, Henry VIII had no shortage of candidates lining up to be his next queen.
But for one of his six spouses, marrying the king proved to be her greatest regret.
A new exhibition about the life of Katherine Parr, Henry’s sixth and final wife, reveals how she felt obliged to marry the king against her “own will” and rekindled her romance with an old flame, possibly while Henry was still alive.
Katherine’s feelings for Sir Thomas Seymour, one of Henry’s closest courtiers, are included in letters on public display for the first time at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire where she is buried....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:41
He is remembered as an austere and pious figure, unconcerned with his appearance – even demanding that portraits show "warts and all".
But scientific research has shed new light on Oliver Cromwell, suggesting a more effete side to the republican ruler.
Chemical tests on the contents of a collection of mysterious pots which once belonged to the Lord Protector have revealed them to be luxurious, perfumed cosmetics.
The research was carried out by scientists at Exeter University and has been presented in an academic journal. Their analysis showed the contents to be soft soap, most likely made from olive oil....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:40
A wind farm is to be built at the site of one of the most important battles ever fought on English soil, despite officials admitting that the scheme will “harm the setting” of the historic location.
They say that the damage the project will cause is outweighed by the need to meet renewable energy targets, and that despite their adverse impact the turbines can go ahead because they would only last for 25 years.
Proposals for an array of 415ft turbines overlooking the site of the Battle of Naseby, the decisive clash of the English Civil War, have been opposed by heritage groups and nearby residents as well as the area’s MP and the local council, which refused permission for the project....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:39
The German War Graves Commission launched a campaign on Tuesday, the 67th anniversary of the end of World War II, to promote its online database as a way for relatives to trace missing soldiers. Some 40,000 are located and reburied each year across Eastern Europe and Russia -- where its teams still encounter hostility from locals who remember the murderous occupation.
Some 3 million German soldiers died in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in World War II, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of them remains unknown to their relatives and descendants.
On Tuesday, May 8, the 67th anniversary of Nazi Germany's capitulation and the end of the war in Europe, the German War Graves Commission launched a campaign inviting people to consult its online database, which contains information on 4.6 million soldiers killed or missing in action.
"People are still looking for missing relatives today. But many have given up hope. Maybe they don't know that the commission can provide answers," Martin Dodenhoeft, head of communications at the organization, said in a statement. "That is why we have started a radio campaign to tell a broad audience about this possibility offered by the Internet."...
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:37
Since the sensational 1994 discovery of James Fort, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, excavations have revealed palisade walls and numerous buildings, along with remarkable clues about the Anglo-American culture that started with the landing of colonists on Virginia’s Jamestown Island in 1607.
But because much of the original fort is buried underneath a Confederate earthwork called Fort Pocahontas, these discoveries forced a painful historical and archaeological trade-off. To reveal James Fort, nearly half of Fort Pocahontas has been removed.
In the process, invaluable traces of America’s founding have been discovered right next to remains from the Civil War. “It’s probably the only place you would have a story like that,” says Colin Campbell, president of Colonial Williamsburg, citing the conjunction of two pivotal moments in U.S. history. “I think it’s absolutely fascinating.”...
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:36
Seventeen of the of the 6,000 documents documents seized from the compound of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 were released May 3, 2012. The documents – provided by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), and totalling 175 pages in the original Arabic and 197 pages in the English translation:
* Original Arabic (.zip) باللغة العربية
* English Translations (.zip) باللغة الانجليزية
نشرت يوم الخميس، 3 أيار/مايو، 17 وثيقة من أصل آلاف الوثائق التي عثر عليها في مجمع أسامة بن لادن في أيار/مايو 2011، بعد يوم على الذكرى الأولى لمقتل زعيم القاعدة
وتصف الوثائق التي نشرها مركز مكافحة الارهاب، ويبلغ عددها 175 صفحة باللغة العربية و197 صفحة مترجمة إلى الانجليزية، آليات عمل التنظيم الداخلية ومنها خلافات داخلية ونصائح للجماعات المرتبطة بالتنظيم ومخاوف لقادة بارزين فيه
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point website has provided the following summary:
This report is a study of 17 de-classified documents captured during the Abbottabad raid and released to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). They consist of electronic letters or draft letters, totaling 175 pages in the original Arabic and 197 pages in the English translation. The earliest is dated September 2006 and the latest April 2011. These internal al-Qa`ida communications were authored by several leaders, most prominently Usama bin Ladin. In contrast to his public statements that focused on the injustice of those he believed to be the “enemies” of Muslims, namely corrupt “apostate” Muslim rulers and their Western “overseers,” the focus of Bin Ladin’s private letters is Muslims’ suffering at the hands of his jihadi “brothers”. He is at pain advising them to abort domestic attacks that cause Muslim civilian casualties and focus on the United States, “our desired goal.” Bin Ladin’s frustration with regional jihadi groups and his seeming inability to exercise control over their actions and public statements is the most compelling story to be told on the basis of the 17 de-classified documents. “Letters from Abbottabad” is an initial exploration and contextualization of 17 documents that will be the grist for future academic debate and discussion....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:35
Members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have desecrated a saint’s tomb in the fabled city of Timbuktu, an act condemned by Malian authorities as “unspeakable.”
“Members of AQIM, supported by (the armed Islamist group) Ansar Dine, have destroyed the tomb of Saint Sidi (Mahmoud Ben) Amar. They set fire to the tomb,” an official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that they had pledged to destroy others too.
Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site and cradle of Islamic learning, has been under the control of AQIM and Ansar Dine since the groups took advantage of a March 22 coup to take control of northern Mali....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:33
This weekend we begin to make amends for a century of lost history. A two-day observance of Robert Smalls' life and work will be held in Charleston, marking the 150th anniversary of his heroic feat aboard the Planter. A historic marker will be placed on the Battery near the spot where Smalls seized the boat. It will be one of the few historical markers in the Holy City dedicated to an African American.
There is no final draft of history. Each generation must come to grips with its past in its own way. It must determine for itself what is important, what is real, and what is bogus....
Today, a new generation of historians is not content to challenge the old narrative of race and conflict, but is intent on a new and more inclusive narrative that will better define who we are and where we have been.
Perhaps the individual most responsible for the way Charleston is telling its story today is Michael Allen, community partnership specialist for Fort Sumter National Monument, the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, and the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 12:20
ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) — George Washington University Professor Jeffrey P. Blomster's latest research explores the importance of the ballgame to ancient Mesoamerican societies. Dr. Blomster's findings show how the discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of the region in the iconography and ideology of the game, a point that had not been previously documented by other researchers.
Dr. Blomster's paper, Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico, is featured in the latest issue of Proceedings in the National Academies of Science (PNAS).
Dr. Blomster, GW associate professor of anthropology, has spent 20 years researching the origin of complex societies in Mesoamerica. The participation of early Mixtec societies in ballgame imagery is a new aspect of his research. For the journal publication, Dr. Blomster worked with undergraduate students Izack Nacheman and Joseph DiVirgilio to create artistic renditions of the figurine artifacts found in Mexico....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:53
Around the world Wednesday, searchers were stumbling upon a gilt- and sepia-toned artifact of the Internet age—a Google doodle heralding the 138th birthday of Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the ancient Egyptian tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922.
The King Tut find brought Carter overnight—and lasting—fame, but it was anything but a stroke of luck, experts say.
When talking about the tomb discovery, "everyone likes to use the phrase 'stumble upon,' and that always ticks me off a little bit," said Yale University Egyptologist John Darnell....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:52
Barack Obama became the first US president Wednesday to say publicly he was in favor of same-sex marriage, in a high-stakes intervention in a pre-election debate roiling American politics.
In what supporters will hail as a historic moment in civil rights history, Obama changed his stance, after previously saying he was "evolving" on gay marriage, a fiercely divisive issue in US politics.
"I've just concluded, for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Obama said in an interview with ABC News....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:49
The Ministry of Defence is facing a legal battle and parliamentary questions after letting a US company excavate a British 18th-century warship laden with a potentially lucrative cargo.
Lord Renfrew is among leading archaeologists condemning a deal struck over HMS Victory, considered the world's mightiest ship when she sank in the Channel in 1744.
In return for excavating the vessel's historic remains, which may include gold and silver worth many millions of pounds, Odyssey Marine Exploration is entitled to receive "a percentage of the recovered artefacts' fair value" or "artefacts in lieu of cash"....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:48
Syracuse’s only remnant of the War of 1812 – we’re now observing its 200th anniversary – lies hidden in a grove of trees off of the East Seneca Turnpike hill in the Valley neighborhood.
The Onondaga Arsenal is a neglected relic of a forgotten war in a patch of woods behind a row of homes on Arsenal Drive, just off the turnpike. It’s been there since 1812, crumbling away. Only one section of limestone wall, the northeast corner, remains. The rest fell down or was pulled down over time....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:48
VIENNA – They were starved, tortured, and killed because they were considered inferior to the Aryan ideal set by Adolf Hitler. Then their organs were put in jars and displayed for research by the doctors accused of causing their deaths under the Nazis.
Shutting the books on one of Vienna's darkest chapters, black-clad workers on Wednesday placed a small metal urn into the ground at the city's Central Cemetery. It contained what municipal officials say were the last known unburied remains of victims "treated to death" on the Austrian capital's psychiatric wards during the Hitler era.
The Nazis called them "unworthy lives" — those deemed too sick, weak or handicapped to fit the Fuehrer's image of the master race....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:45
(Reuters) - Mist clears to reveal white marble images from classical Greece culminating in Myron's celebrated statue of an athlete poised to launch a discus in the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl's remarkable documentary film "Olympia".
The statue rotates and melts into an identical image of a contemporary discus thrower. It is succeeded by further paeans to the sculptured Greek ideal of physical beauty with pictures of a shot putter, a javelin thrower and rhythmic gymnasts.
Finally, flame floods the screen followed by a bare-chested runner embarking on the first torch relay of the modern Olympics....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 11:43
Through help from genealogy and local historians, the descendants of a gravely injured Civil War army captain and a freed African-American slave who aided him met at the historic Hoag House on 127 Donaldson Ave. in Rutherford on May 5. Stanley Baxter, the great-great grandson of African-American Lafayette Hoag, and Arthur N. Mabbett, the great adopted grandson of Union Army Captain Alonzo Lorenzo Mabbett, traveled from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts to meet for the first time.
"Rutherford didn't witness any of the battles of the American Revolution or the Civil War. Nevertheless, Rutherford [a.k.a. Boiling Spring] has had an interesting, colorful history because of some of the people that moved here," Borough Historian Rod Leith said at a ceremony commemorating Historic Preservation Month held at Borough Hall....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 10:38
A Second World War aeroplane that crash landed in the Sahara Desert before the British pilot walked to his death has been found almost perfectly preserved 70 years later.
The Kittyhawk P-40 has remained unseen and untouched since it came down on the sand in June 1942 and has been hailed the "aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun's Tomb".
It is thought the pilot survived the crash and initially used his parachute for shelter before making a desperate and futile attempt to reach civilisation by walking out of the desert.
The RAF airman, believed to have been Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, 24, was never seen again....
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 10:29
Horses were domesticated 6,000 years ago on the grasslands of Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, a genetic study shows.
Domestic horses then spread across Europe and Asia, breeding with wild mares along the way, research published in the journal PNAS suggests.
The work, by a Cambridge University team, brings together two competing theories on horse domestication....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 16:04
ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) — Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced May 8 the discovery of objects that for the first time shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of King David. During recent archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in Judah adjacent to the Valley of Elah, Garfinkel and colleagues uncovered rich assemblages of pottery, stone and metal tools, and many art and cult objects. These include three large rooms that served as cultic shrines, which in their architecture and finds correspond to the biblical description of a cult at the time of King David.
This discovery is extraordinary as it is the first time that shrines from the time of early biblical kings were uncovered. Because these shrines pre-date the construction of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem by 30 to 40 years, they provide the first physical evidence of a cult in the time of King David, with significant implications for the fields of archaeology, history, biblical and religion studies.
The expedition to Khirbet Qeiyafa has excavated the site for six weeks each summer since 2007, with co-director Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The revolutionary results of five years of work are presented in a new book, "Footsteps of King David in the Valley of Elah," published by Yedioth Ahronoth....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 13:00
Leonardo da Vinci's 500-year-old illustrations of human anatomy are uncannily accurate with just one major exception: the female reproductive system.
That's probably because Leonardo had a tough time finding female corpses to dissect, explains Peter Abrahams, a practicing physician at the University of Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom.
Abrahams, a clinical anatomist, has lent his knowledge to an audio tour of the exhibit of Leonardo's anatomical drawings that opened May 4 in Buckingham Palace.
The Italian Renaissance artist learned anatomy as a way to improve his drawings of the human form, but he also brought a scientist's eye to the discipline....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 12:49
WASHINGTON – Washington National Cathedral is preparing to dedicate a new carving of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in a section of the church devoted to human rights.
The Episcopal cathedral formally installs the new sculpture Thursday with a ceremony of evening prayer songs. The carving of Parks will join others on the cathedral's Human Rights Porch that celebrates those who struggled to bring equality and social justice to all people. Other figures include former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 12:13
Adolf Hitler may have believed he could divinely dictate the weather, startling new evidence has suggested.
A secret psychological report, unearthed by the University of Cambridge, has found evidence of Hitler’s outlandish beliefs, including his illusion of “divinity”.
The profile, which also reveals the leader “seriously contemplating the possibility of utter defeat”, discloses how he believed he was the “incarnation of the Spirit of Good”.
The author admits “one would think that even German credulity would be strained by such an assumption of divinity”, but concludes the evidence “might or might not represent an illusion of divine control over the weather.”...
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 12:10
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A rare book almost 270 years old has been found in the vault of the oldest library in the South, but after all this time the library won't be able to keep it.
The 1743 tome, "Dissertation Upon Parties" by Henry St. John Lord Bolingbroke, was one of 800 volumes that planter and diplomat John Mackenzie donated to the College of Charleston in the 1700s.
His library was housed at the Charleston Library Society, founded in 1748, until a proper library could be built at the fledgling college. But a devastating 1778 fire ripped through the Library Society and only 77 titles from the Mackenzie collection were thought to have survived.
The 78th, the Bolingbroke book, was found as part of a multi-year search through the Library Society vaults to record the thousands of volumes it contains. After centuries, the book about political parties, with Mackenzie's name embossed on it, will be returned to College of Charleston officials at a ceremony on Thursday....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 12:09
Eleven places in the Commonwealth are now on Virginia's most endangered historic sites list. The fear is that if these places are not preserved, it will be forgotten.
Libby Hill Overlook is one of a number of sites listed as endangered because neighbors have been told there are plans to build right in front of the river, but the developer says there are no plans right now to build.
The view from the Libby Hill Overlook in Church Hill is breathtaking and peaceful.
Carl Corley lives in the first house facing the overlook. He's called this place home for decades.
"It's a very historic site," he said. "You see that because people come here all day."...
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 12:08
America's historic lands are disappearing - and the rate of loss will continue accelerating without quick action, historians and federal officials say.
More than 100 "nationally significant" battlefields and historic sites from the American Revolution and War of 1812 are already gone, a survey by the National Park Service has found. An additional 245 are in poor condition or fragmented, and 222 are in danger of destruction in the next 10 years.
While Civil War sites have tended to receive protection, many from the earlier wars are at risk. Some are nearby, including the sites of George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776; the first Battle of Trenton on Dec. 26 of the same year; the second Battle of Trenton on Jan. 2, 1777; the Battle of Princeton the following day; and the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author David Hackett Fischer....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 12:05
Adolf Hitler farted uncontrollably, used cocaine to clear his sinuses, ingested some 28 drugs at a time and received injections of bull testicle extracts to bolster his libido.
The startling revelations come from Hiltler's medical records, now up for auction at Alexander Historical Auctions of Stamford, Conn. (full catalogues here and here).
Bidding for the documents -- which include ten X-rays of various views of the dictactor's skull, the results of several electroencephalogram (EEG) tests and sketches of the inside of his nose -- ends Tuesday and Wednesday....
Monday, May 7, 2012 - 22:22
VATICAN CITY -- Proponents of euthanasia and aborting chronically ill fetuses use the same arguments that were once used by the Nazis to promote their eugenics program of mass extermination, according to the Vatican's semiofficial newspaper.
The article appears on the front page of Saturday's issue of L'Osservatore Romano and is signed by Lucetta Scaraffia, an Italian historian who is a frequent contributor to the Vatican paper.
Scaraffia's article comes in the wake of the Italian translation of a 1920 book by two German scholars, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, that set the ideological foundations for the Nazi program of extermination of disabled and incurably sick people....
Monday, May 7, 2012 - 16:32
CHONGQING, China — Until recently, visitors who arrived at the urban planning exhibition hall here were greeted with a high-tech shrine to Bo Xilai, who served as the municipality’s charismatic Communist Party chief. A video recounting Mr. Bo’s “smash black” crackdown on organized crime featured mug shots of gangsters emblazoned on tombstones. Maoist revolutionary songs blared from speakers in the “red culture” wing. Lasers zipped across the “honest government” gallery....
...Today, the entire floor is cordoned off.
The sudden demise of the exhibit reflects the headlong race under way to expunge all traces of Mr. Bo and his political fingerprints from the city he spent five years governing. In seeking to airbrush Mr. Bo out of public life, party mandarins in Beijing have dusted off a strategy perfected during the Cultural Revolution and further tweaked during the political purges that followed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989....
Monday, May 7, 2012 - 10:05
Before Savannah, Ga., realizes its dream of becoming a world-renowned tanker port, it’s having to deal with tough reminder of its past, in the form of a scuttled Civil War battleship rotting in the Savannah River.
The dredging of the Savannah River has become one of the biggest economic and political footballs in the South, pitting Georgia and South Carolina interests against each other over how to deepen the river that splits the two states where the lowcountry meets the Atlantic’s tidal estuaries....
The CSS Georgia is now complicating the $653 billion project further, as the project will have to become a fullscale, $42 million underwater archeological dig before massive dredgers can begin deepening the port.
Built with money raised from a local women’s club, the CSS Georgia became a testament to the South’s industrial weakness compared to the North – its steam engines were too weak to push the prow through the river’s current. Meanwhile, it was the approach of an icon of that industrial superiority – General William Tecumseh Sherman – that caused Confederates to quickly scuttle and sink the CSS Georgia upon the Union Army’s approach....
Sunday, May 6, 2012 - 14:35
Bamako, Mali (CNN) -- Elderly men were keeping watch Saturday over Timbuktu's main library after Islamists burned a tomb listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The attacks Friday were blamed on Ansar Dine, a militant group that seeks to impose strict Sharia law.
The ancient city in Mali was captured by at least two separatist Tuareg rebel groups -- one of which is Ansar Dine -- in an anti-government uprising in the northern part of the country that began in January.
The rebels burned the tomb of a Sufi saint where people come to pray, said Sankoum Sissoko, a tour guide familiar with the place. He said the library and other heritage sites remained under threat....
Sunday, May 6, 2012 - 10:56
The very first interns weren’t carrying luggage around New York City. Instead, they were anesthetizing, bloodletting and vaccinating. Between the mid-1800s and World War II, interns were only found in hospitals. Medicine was considered a unique field that could only be learned through observing and hands-on practice. Those internships are now the medical field’s modern-day residencies.
Around the 1930s, education and business leaders started advocating for a more seamless transition from school to the workplace in areas other than medicine. Internships began spreading into other fields, first in public administration and later publishing, marketing and banking.
As more internships sprouted across the country, Congress passed a number of laws regulating them, including the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1947, which specifically lays out a 6-point test, still in use today, for hiring unpaid interns....
The real intern boom didn’t occur until the 1970s and 1980s. That’s when two big shifts occurred, says Perlin. The first was a move from the traditional norm of holding on to one job and working there your entire life to multiple forms of “contingent labor.” It’s what sociologist Andrew Ross has called the “casualization” of the U.S. labor force. Employers soon realized the benefits of part-time employees, independent contractors and temporary workers. By hiring contingent workers, employers could pay less in benefits, prevent workers’ attempts to unionize and initiate layoffs much more easily. That was coupled with the proliferation of Human Resource departments, which are now often solely responsible for hiring and bringing in new employees, many of whom often begin as interns through a company’s internship program....
Sunday, May 6, 2012 - 10:53
KENT, Ohio (Reuters) - Survivors of the shooting of 13 students by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in 1970 called on Thursday for a new probe into the incident that came to define U.S. divisions over the Vietnam War.
Four students were killed and nine wounded in the shootings on May 4, 1970 that followed days of demonstrations on the campus after disclosures of a U.S.-led invasion of Cambodia that signaled a widening of the war in Southeast Asia.
Kent State was shut for weeks after the shootings and student strikes closed down schools across the nation.
On the eve of the 42nd anniversary of the shootings, four students wounded that day asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate digitally enhanced audio evidence they believe proves an officer ordered the guardsmen to fire on the unarmed students....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 14:16
BALTIMORE (AP) — A doctor says stress, family medical history or possibly even poison led to the death of Vladimir Lenin, contradicting a popular theory that a sexually-transmitted disease debilitated the former Soviet Union leader.
UCLA neurologist Dr. Harry Vinters and Russian historian Lev Lurie reviewed Lenin's records for an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference that opens Friday on famous people's deaths.
The conference is held yearly at the school, where researchers in the past have re-examined the diagnoses of figures including King Tut, Christopher Columbus, Simon Bolivar and Abraham Lincoln.
The 53-year-old Soviet leader suffered several strokes before dying in 1924 and what caused them isn't clear....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:54
The mastodon was old, its teeth worn to nubs. It was perfect prey for a band of hunters, wielding spears tipped with needle-sharp points made from bone. Sensing an easy target, they closed in for the kill.
Almost 14,000 years later, there is no way to tell how many hits it took to bring the beast to the ground near the coast of present-day Washington state. But at least one struck home, plunging through hide, fat and flesh to lodge in the mastodon's rib. The hunter who thrust the spear on that long-ago day didn't just bring down the mastodon; he also helped to kill off the reigning theory of how people got to the Americas.
For most of the past 50 years, archaeologists thought they knew how humans arrived in the New World. The story starts around the end of the last ice age, when sea levels were lower and big-game hunters living in eastern Siberia followed their prey across the Bering land bridge and into Alaska. As the ice caps in Canada receded and opened up a path southward, the colonists swept across the vast unpopulated continent. Archaeologists called these presumed pioneers the Clovis culture, after distinctive stone tools that were found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:41
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — A new look at a 425-year-old map has yielded a tantalizing clue about the fate of the Lost Colony, the settlers who disappeared from North Carolina's Roanoke Island in the late 16th century.
Experts from the First Colony Foundation and the British Museum in London discussed their findings Thursday at a scholarly meeting on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their focus: the "Virginea Pars" map of Virginia and North Carolina created by explorer John White in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since 1866.
"We believe that this evidence provides conclusive proof that they moved westward up the Albemarle Sound to the confluence of the Chowan and Roanoke rivers," said James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and author of a 2010 book about the Lost Colony....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:40
With a history steeped in battles and rebuilding, Mexico has earned every right to be proud. Today marks a Mexican holiday that more and more people every year celebrate in the United States, many not knowing the reason is: The "Batalla de Puebla" (Battle of Puebla) or "Cinco de Mayo" (Fifth of May).
While it may all seem like a huge fiesta now, the history of this holiday is covered in bloodshed and remembrance.
Contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not the celebration of Mexico's independence day. The El Grito de la Indepedencia (Cry of Independence) is held annually on Sept. 16 in honor of Mexico's independence from Spanish rule in 1810.
Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of freedom from a different oppressive European empire: France....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:39
An investigation worthy of a Dan Brown novel has shed new light on the voyages of John Cabot, the Italian navigator and explorer, revealing that he may have had knowledge of European expeditions to the "New World" that predated Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.
Although commonly credited with "discovering" America, Christopher Columbus would not reach the mainland of the New World until 1498, when he sailed to South America.
Farther north, Cabot became the first European since Leif Ericson and the Vikings to land on North American soil when he made three voyages for England's Henry VII between the summers of 1496 and 1498. The second of these expeditions, carried out in 1497, resulted in the European discovery of North America -- at Newfoundland....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:33
Humans lived alongside mammoths, mastodons and giant sloths 13,000 years ago in the area now known as Vero Beach, Florida, a new study indicates.
Researchers say the new evidence solves a longstanding debate on whether humans reached the Western Hemisphere during the last ice age and lived alongside giant mammals that are now extinct.
The study is published online today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:31
Robert Krulwich is a Science Correspondent for NPR.
...Why did guys stop wearing headgear in midcentury America?
...I am the son of a hat designer. And my father, Allen S. Krulwich, had a different explanation. The president who de-hatted America, he thought, was Dwight Eisenhower....
Before Eisenhower, many more people used public transportation. After Eisenhower, they used a car. That, my father thinks, created the critical Head-To-Roof Difference.
A person of average height standing in a bus, tram or subway car has, roughly, three feet between the top of his head and the roof....
Until cars became the dominant mode of personal transport, there was no architectural reason to take your hat off between home and office. With Dwight Eisenhower's interstate highway system came cars, and cars made hats inconvenient, and for the first time men, crunched by the low ceilings in their automobiles, experimented with hat-removal, and got to like it....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 13:15
May 30-June 1, 2012
Hyatt Regency, Tulsa, OK
In light of recent tragic events, Tulsa has become center stage in a national dialogue of racial tensions within our society. Yet, in all the talk of violence and justice, the idea of long-term reconciliation is often lost.
We all have a part to play in bringing racial reconciliation to our communities. But what are we doing about ittoday?
The John Hope Franklin Center’s 3rd Annual Reconciliation in America symposium will bring together the nation’s top thinkers, community leaders and activists to Tulsa to generate concrete solutions.
This year’s program includes:
· Dr. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi and an internationally known scholar and humanitarian, will speak on “Reconciliation and the American Dream: Pointers from Gandhi & King.”
· Town Hall: “Cityscape — Former Mayors Reflect on Reconciliation Efforts,” a panel of innovative, forward-thinking American mayors with Tulsa’s dynamic former mayors Kathy Taylor and Susan Savage, plus former Denver mayor Wellington Webb.
· Governor William Winter, former Governor of Mississippi.
· Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, President of Spelman College.
· Dr. George Henderson, creator of the Human Relations Program at the University of Oklahoma.
· Dr. Donald W. Shriver, Jr., an ethicist and President Emeritus of Union Seminary in New York City.
· Reverend Doug Tanner, Senior Advisor of the Faith & Politics Institute in Washington, D.C.
Register NOW to experience this unique symposium and become a part of the racial healing process.
Visit the John Hope Franklin Center website, www.jhfcenter.org for more information and a full agenda. Questions? Contact Jean Neal at the JHF Center, 918-295-5009.
This program is funded in part by the Oklahoma Humanities Council (OHC) and the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in the symposium do not necessarily represent those of OHC or NEH.
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 11:45
If you'd dined at the Sherman Square Hotel in New York City on May 31, 1937, you could have refreshed yourself with a sauerkraut-juice cocktail, moved on to cold soup in jelly, tucked into minced capon en crème or lamb's tongue with a side of potato salad, and finished off the meal with California figs in syrup or a nice slice of apple pie.
The Sherman Square no longer exists. It fell on hard times in the 1960s and was judged "tawdry" enough to raze in 1969 as part of the urban-renewal juggernaut. The dishes served up to the hotel's diners, however, live on at the New York Public Library, in a collection of 40,000 or so menus—many from New York City—that date from the 1840s to the present. Thanks to the power of crowdsourcing and a creative partnership between technology experts and curators, those menus are being posted online and transcribed for everyone to see and use.
The "What's on the Menu?" project is a powerful example of how a library can use technology to recruit members of the public to help it handle labor-intensive tasks, in this case transcribing thousands of dishes from digital copies of the menus posted on the project's Web site. But the benefits go far beyond free labor.
"It really is a proof of concept for making similar types of collections even more accessible," says Ann Thornton, the Andrew W. Mellon director of the New York Public Libraries. It's not just about "what fancy tools you can create," she says, "but how those tools facilitate knowledge and how to help the community use it."...
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 10:28
New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) is one of the world's premier destinations for artistic and historical exhibitions. But this epicenter of worldly culture is not above admitting the occasional mistake. Even when the correction comes from one curious 13-year-old boy.
The Hartford Courant reports that 13-year-old Benjamin Lerman Coady found an error in the Met's Byzantine Gallery during a recent visit. The seventh-grader is a fledgling history buff who recently studied the Byzantine Empire in school.
While checking some of the dates on the map, Coady noticed that sections featuring Spain and Africa were missing....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 10:09
CHARLES CITY, Va. — The Vermont Civil War Hemlocks will dedicate a marker honoring 11-year-old Willie Johnston, the country’s youngest Medal of Honor recipient, in June at 150th anniversary commemorations of the Seven Days Battles and the first playing of Taps.
The marker will be dedicated at Harrison’s Landing on Berkley Plantation during the weekend of June 23, 24 as part of the TAPS 150 event (see April issue story).
Johnston was born to English immigrants who settled in New York state in the 1840s. His mother died shortly after his July 12, 1850, birth. Father William Johnston moved the family to Montreal, Canada, where he remarried, and then moved to northern Vermont....
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 09:41
FRANKLIN Battlefield preservation group Franklin’s Charge is within striking distance of acquiring a strip mall anchored by a Domino’s Pizza to restore an area that was the epicenter of the 1864 Battle of Franklin.
The group has less than 60 days to raise more than $300,000 so they can begin work on the Carter Cotton Gin Interpretive Park.
An announcement today from the group explained what is at stake: “You can make great pizzas anywhere, but there’s only one epicenter of the Battle of Franklin, where nearly 10,000 casualties fell in five bloody hours and 11 medals of honor were won.”...
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 09:40
