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Hundreds of people flocked to a yard sale in Kingston, Ont., on Saturday after hearing a nine-year-old boy wanted to raise money to buy a headstone for his dead father. "I just felt bad because there was no gravestone, so I wanted raise money to buy a gravestone," said Blake McGinness. Blake's father, Rick Lees, who died last year of a stomach aneurysm, is buried at the Wilmer Cemetery just outside Kingston. His gravesite is currently marked only by some of Blake's toys, as the family couldn't afford a gravestone. News of Blake's yard sale spread, prompting hundreds of people...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday. The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006. "The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed...

A Dallas man was arrested early this morning when he was found carrying a foot stolen from a Pleasant Grove graveyard, police said. Daniel Wayne Staley, 18, is accused of digging up a grave and removing a foot from a body at a Jewish cemetery near the 3100 block of Buckner Boulevard. "I dug it up from a nearby grave and took it from a Jew girl just because I wanted a foot," he told officers, according to a police report.

Pfc. De'Angello Robinson, 19, traveled seven hours by bus to place a single wreath on the tomb of a soldier whom he'd never met. For him, and the other Marines who took the trip from Camp Johnson in Jacksonville, N.C. to Arlington National Cemetery to decorate graves, the day was about paying tribute to men and women who once stood in their shoes. "In a few months, from where we are getting shipped out, this could be us," said Robinson of the fallen soldiers. "If it is us, I would want somebody to do the same for me so I'm...

video clip ALSIP, Ill. (AP) -- Three gravediggers and a cemetery manager unearthed hundreds of corpses from a historic black cemetery south of Chicago, dumping some in a weeded area and double-stacking others in existing graves, in an elaborate scheme to resell the plots, authorities said Thursday. All four were charged with felonies. Frantic relatives of the deceased descended on Burr Oak Cemetery - the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington - in hopes someone could tell them their loved ones' remains were not among the pile of bones that...

Photo of communist guard with gun and General Draza Mihailovich from the archives of the Military Museum in Belgrade. BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbia's government has formed a special commission to try to locate the grave of a World War II guerrilla leader executed as a traitor by the Communists, officials said Monday. The location of Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic's grave has been unknown since postwar Communist authorities executed him in 1946 for collaboration with the Nazi occupiers. For decades, the issue has fueled divisions in Serbia, where many believe that Mihailovic was a hero who was killed for his loyalty to...

California's increasingly severe and largely self-inflicted economic crisis will deepen on May 19 if, as is probable and desirable, voters reject most of the ballot measures that were drafted as part of a "solution" to the state's budget deficit. They would make matters worse. ... Under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the best governor the states contiguous to California have ever had, people and businesses have been relocating in those states. For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California's business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state's. In the last decade,...

The heirs of an Apache chieftain whose remains are rumored to be held inside Yale's oldest secret society filed a lawsuit today demanding the return of their ancestor's skull. Twenty descendants of the legendary Apache chieftain Geronimo are suing the federal government, the University and the society Skull & Bones in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to seek the return of his remains as well as punitive damages. One hundred years ago today, Geronimo died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Okla., but the suit alleges members of the society exhumed his remains in 1918 or 1919 and...

The disturbance of human remains in burial grounds is to be allowed for the first time since the early Victorian era to deal with a shortage of graves, The Times has learnt. Under a test scheme to begin in the new year, local authorities across the country will be allowed to exhume remains and rebury them deeper to create space for further burials on top. In some cases, new inscriptions will be added to the existing headstone to ensure that the heritage of the grave is not destroyed. Damaged or insignificant headstones would be removed and replaced with only the...

LONDON -- Plans to transfer the remains of 19th-century Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman from a humble country graveyard to a posh marble sarcophagus have been abandoned because gravediggers could not find his body. When church officials sought to exhume his bones from his grave in a rural English cemetery on Thursday (Oct. 2), all they found were a brass plaque and a scattering of red tassels from his cardinal's hat. The Catholic Church had wanted to shift Newman's remains to Birmingham Oratory, the Midlands edifice that he established in Victorian England, in preparation for his expected beatification as...

Archaeologists excavating north of Jerusalem have found a piece of a sarcofagus - a stone coffin - belonging to a son of a High Priest. The visible inscription reads, "the son of the High Priest" - but the words before it are broken off. It thus cannot be ascertained which High Priest is referred to, nor the name or age of the deceased. Many other findings in the excavation are from the late Second Temple period, and archaeologists assume that the High Priest in question lived between 30 and 70 C.E. Yoli Shwartz, Spokesperson for the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes...

Land soon to become a new housing estate has yielded an unexpected treasure – a 2,000- year-old skeleton, believed to be that of a prince, a warrior or a priest. Planning permission has been granted for more than 600 houses in open fields at North Bersted near Bognor. But before the work could go ahead, an archaeological survey had to be carried out on the site to check if there was anything of historical interest under the topsoil. What the team from the Thames Valley Archaeological Services found was beyond their wildest dreams. After digging tirelessly for several months they...

Pardubice, East Bohemia, July 11 (CTK) - Archaeologists have uncovered a 4000-year-old grave in Mikulovice, east Bohemia, with remains of what might have been considered a vampire at the time, Nova TV has reported. The experts made the terrifying find within their research of a burial site from the Early Bronze Age. One of the graves was situated somewhat aside. The skeleton in it bears traces of unusual treatment. When buried, the dead man was weighed down with two big stones, one on his chest and the other on his head. "Remains treated in this way are now considered as...

A party is being held at the grave of a 7/7 bomber in what is being described as an insult to the 52 London commuters murdered three years ago today. The family of Shehzad Tanweer and 400 guests will "celebrate his life" and "remember him as a martyr" at a village in Pakistan today. Tanweer, 22, Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Hasib Hussain, 18, and 19-year-old Jermaine Lindsay also died when they detonated rucksack bombs on three crowded Tube trains and a No30 bus. Tanweer's uncle, 42-year-old property developer Tahir Pervez, is organising the celebration in which verses of the Koran...

Gold cup find led to graves discovery by Nick Evans AN important archaeological find by Broadstairs man Cliff Bradshaw prompted further excavations which uncovered centuries- old Anglo-Saxon graves. These later finds, thought to be the graves of women from the fifth and sixth centuries, were the subject of an inquest held last week by coroner Rebecca Cobb to decide if the finds should be declared treasure. She heard the excavations followed the discovery in 2001 by Cliff Bradshaw of what has since become known as the Ringlemere Cup, which was later declared a national treasure and is on show in...

Ancient grave markers found at the cathedral Archaeologist Dr Jackie Hall with a rare find of Anglo-Saxon grave markers discovered during repairs to a wall in the cathedral precincts.(8PF0228118) Picture: PAUL FRANKS EIGHT Anglo-Saxon grave markers belonging to ordinary folk have been uncovered in Peterborough Cathedral's grounds during restoration work. Workers at the site, who are repairing ancient stone walls in the precincts, alerted the cathedral's archaeologist to the find, which was discovered in the same wall as a medieval fireplace. Archaeologist Dr Jackie Hall analysed the pieces, and discovered they were 11th century grave markings which are believed to...

Druid Grave Unearthed in U.K.? Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Digging for History Feb. 11, 2008 -- Historical records tell of a mystical, priestly and learned class of elite individuals called Druids among Celtic societies in Britain, but there has been no archaeological evidence of their existence. Until, perhaps, now. A series of graves found in a gravel quarry at Stanway near Colchester, Essex, have been dated to 40-60 A.D. At least one of the burials, it appears, may have been that of a Druid, according to a report published in British Archaeology. Mike Pitts, the journal's editor and an archaeologist,...

"The family of a fallen Marine is dealing with another shock -- their son's new grave was vandalized. Lance Cpl. Jeremy Burris, 22, of Liberty, died in Iraq and was buried at Cook Memorial Cemetery earlier this week. The cemetery has a locked gate at the front and a fence around the perimeter, but vandals managed to get in sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, less than two days after the Liberty marine was buried, officials said. " "Tom Smathers, a Liberty resident said, "It's terrible. You can't believe someone would do something like that.""

Viking graves to be re-openedA worker welded together the aluminium casket in which the Vikings' remains were re-buried in 1948. The Viking graves that contained the famous ships Oseberg and Gokstad will be re-opened in September, in an effort to gain new knowledge from the remains of the two women and one man buried in them.Grave robbers plundered the Viking mounds centuries ago. This photo was taken in 1904. These leather shoes were found in the Oseberg ship and probably belonged to the older of the two women buried with the ship. The burial mound containing the famed Oseberg ship...

The 'grave slab code' baffles expertsApr 12 2007 By Tony Henderson Environment Editor, The Journal What could be a 900-year-old code is baffling archaeologist Peter Ryder. Over the last 30 years Northumberland-based Peter has recorded 700 ancient grave slab covers in the county, plus another 500 each in County Durham and Cumbria. But the carvings found on one 12th-Century slab, which had been recycled and used 300 years later in a church tower, have set Peter a puzzle. Three 12th-Century grave slabs were incorporated into the tower of St Michael and All Angels Church in Newburn, Newcastle. They have been...