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No next-of-kin was around to claim the frozen 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman when it was found in the Italian Alps in 1991, but researchers now report that there are at least 19 genetic relatives of Ötzi living in Austria's Tyrol region. "These men and the 'Iceman' had the same ancestors," Walther Parson, a researcher at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck, told the Austrian Press Agency last week. The relatives may not know they're related, however. The Austrian researchers haven't told them. They found the 19 genetic matches by looking through the DNA records of 3,700 Austrian...

Berlin antiquities museum wants Holocaust survivor's family to return ancient gold tablet A Holocaust survivor's family urged New York's highest court Tuesday to let them keep an ancient gold tablet that their late father somehow obtained in Germany after World War II. Attorney Steven Schlesinger argued that the estate of Riven Flamenbaum has a legal claim, whether the native of Poland bought the relic from a Russian soldier or simply took it to compensate for losing his family at Auschwitz, the concentration camp where he spent several years. "Under the Soviet rules at the time, there was permission to pillage...

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Capturing the essence of the 1940s and 50s in modern times is getting harder and harder for photographers. While there are plenty of hot rods out there to shoot these days, fewer and fewer “factory” vehicles can be found. But that’s not the only trouble. With modern construction, vintage buildings are also becoming scarcer by the day. This leads to a whole lot of hassle for those set on bringing back memories of the past through modern photography. But as photographer and car enthusiast Michael Paul Smith, who posts his work on Flickr, discovered, recreating the past may actually be...

If you happen to do anything other than sleep in a cave today, chances are you have Ada Lovelace to thank for it. She is responsible for the first ever computer program. And she came up with it long before the computer even existed. Today is the fifth annual Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating the achievement of a Victorian mother-of-three who would change the world. Let’s travel back through time for a moment. Before the ZX Spectrum and before the Atari 2600, there was a thing that historians like to call the 19th century. The computer may have existed as a...

In “Hitler’s Furies,” recently placed on the long list for the National Book Award, Wendy Lower presents the harrowing evidence of crimes committed by German women during the Holocaust. Dwight Garner wrote that previous books “have offered up poster girls of brutality and atrocity” and “Ms. Lower’s revisionist insight is to track more mundane lives, and to argue for a vastly wider complicity.” In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Lower discussed the changing view of women’s role in the Nazi regime, the challenges of writing for a non-academic audience, what she found most shocking in her research and more. Below...

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In honor of Columbus Day, enjoy this clip from Drive Thru History.

In Columbus’s day, the Moon was often used to get a rough fix of a ship’s longitude at sea. Columbus was especially intrigued with the idea of using lunar eclipses to determine longitude. If you can note the position of the Moon in the sky from one location versus a known longitude during an event— such as first contact of the Moon with the Earth’s umbra during an eclipse —you can gauge your relative longitude east or west of the point. The sky moves 15 degrees, or one hour of right ascension overhead as we rotate under it. One of...

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The last surviving stretch of German autobahn built under Hitler is set to disappear, almost 80 years after it was first constructed. The four-kilometer stretch of road on the A11, northeast of Berlin in the state of Brandenburg, dates from 1936 and was part of Hitler’s massive motorway-building program of the Reichsautobahn.Newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that the road survived Nazism and Communism and, despite some repair work, is still the original stretch from the 1930s. …

Late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was concerned by the United States’ lean to the left after President Barack Obama took office in 2009, authors of a recently released book about “The Iron Lady” claim. Thatcher never commented publicly on President Obama’s leadership, though the Obama administration’s big government agenda runs counter to everything she believed in, former Thatcher aide Niles Gardiner and writer Stephen Thompson, authors of “Margaret Thatcher on Leadership: Lessons for American Conservatives Today”, told The Daily Caller. But even though Great Britain’s first female prime minister didn’t speak out publicly about Obama, she was privately concerned...

I think we know the fix is in! We all know most Republicans have no balls and will sell the American people short once again. How can we blame them? I am sure they are being coerced, wined and dined, bribed and god knows the NSA info is ripe for blackmail. It is broken, two parties have become big fat pigs, sucking off the trough so much, us peons no longer have a chance. Together they ignore our needs and pass laws that just do us harm. They are in actuality corporations, neither pay taxes and they have control of...

The findings of Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, bring into question two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and the stereotyped image of Celts as barbarous, superstitious tribes... "They had their own road system on which the Romans later based theirs," Mr Robb said, adding that the roads were built in Britain from around the 1st Century BC. "It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way, which goes from Exeter to Lincoln. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn't conquer that part of Britain...

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House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, the late former first lady Betty Ford and Title IX advocate Bernice Sandler were among the nine women inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame Saturday. The ceremony, attended by about 700 people, was held in Seneca Falls, the western New York village where the first known women’s rights convention was held in 1848. “Our mission is to share the stories of these women with the general population and to inspire future generations to their own greatness,” the hall’s deputy director, Amanda Bishop, said after the ceremony. …

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Self-proclaimed Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill has written a book in which he claims that Jesus was fabricated by a little-known group called the Flavians. He also claims he has some sort of “smoking gun” type of “confession” from these ancient people that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they entered into a conspiracy with the Roman government of the time to fabricate a character called Jesus as a “gentle Messiah” figure to wage psychological warfare on, and control, the masses so they would pay Caesar taxes without complaining. He is apparently going to present this evidence at a...

Three-quarters of handprints in ancient cave art were left by women, study finds.Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints. Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma. Archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, Snow determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female. "There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time," said Snow, whose research was...

(Reference: E.F. Lincoln's The Medieval Legacy, London, Macgibbon & Kee; c1961.) The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" stated: "William set aside a vast deer preserve and imposed laws concerning it, so that whoever slew a hart or hind was to be blinded. He forbade the killing of boars, even as the killing of harts, for he loved the tall deer as if he had been their father...The rich complained and the poor lamented, but he was so stern that he cared not though all might hate him." (at 135). William established as forest or game preserve large tracts that embraced villages and wastelands...

Join us on October 23, 2013 as we celebrate the Pritzker Military Library’s 10th Anniversary and honor our many supportive members. The celebration will begin with a reception and recognition those who have been members of the Library for five or more consecutive years. The unveiling of James Dietz’s new painting, The Crossing: The 132nd Infantry Regiment at Guadalcanal, will also take place during the celebration. Commissioned by Col (IL) J.N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired) in 2010, Dietz’s painting documents the role of the Illinois National Guard in the pivotal Battle of Guadalcanal. Dietz worked closely with the Library staff...

Culpeper (United States) (AFP) - There was no mistaking the muscular roar of the big radial engine as the most famous trainer to come out of World War II soared above this rural Virginia town. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the North American T-6 Texan, the big tandem-seat warbird in which countless pilots from dozens of countries honed their flying skills. This weekend, some 30 Texans will set off from Culpeper, 70 miles (115 kilometers) outside Washington, and fly up the Potomac River, over the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery, to mark a unique aeronautical milestone.

"None of the dynamic changes we observed could have been inferred from modern-day genetic data alone, highlighting the potential power of combining ancient DNA studies with archaeology to reconstruct human evolutionary history."

The Internet we each see every day is an infinitesimally tiny sliver of the whole—the parts we have curated for ourselves, the parts our network of friends and family sends to us, and the sites that we have made parts of our routines. But beyond this micro-level editing, there are also macro forces at work: The Internet largely exists for and is created by the people who are on it. The map above gives a rough idea of who those people are—or, at least, where they are. The map, created as part of the Information Geographies project at the...

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The dilapidated offices where plans for the Titanic were drawn up are to be re-opened as part of a £5 million regeneration project. The future of the historic building that used to house the headquarters and design studios of Harland and Wolff shipbuilders in Belfast has been secured by the Heritage Lottery Fund award. While the drawing offices will be opened for public use, the majority of the landmark structure is set to be transformed into a luxury Titanic-themed boutique hotel. The listed building is only yards from where the doomed liner was built and then launched more than a...

A team of scientists claims to have found the first-ever definitive evidence of a comet striking Earth. After conducting a series of analyses, the researchers determined that a mysterious black pebble discovered years ago in the Egyptian desert is a piece of a comet nucleus — the first ever discovered. "It’s a typical scientific euphoria when you eliminate all other options and come to the realization of what it must be," study lead author Jan Kramers, of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, said in a statement. [Best Close Encounters of the Comet Kind] The pebble, which the team...

[Summary: The Education Establishment likes to pretend that new digital options mean kids don’t need traditional skills. That is a non-sequitur and probably dishonest. ] A new development in education is deciding what “literacy” should be in the 21st century.  With a swirl of technological breakthroughs all around us, elite educators are gaga at the plethora of excuses for pooh-poohing subjects routinely taught in the dark age known as the 20th century.  The National Council of Teachers of English recently announced: “Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change,...

"Pop quiz - who said the following – Che Guevara or Adolf Hitler?- -“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.” -“The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!” -“Hatred is the central element of our struggle! Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him a violent and cold- blooded killing machine.” -“We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.” -“Youth should learn to think and act as a...

Clues to Lost Prehistoric Code Discovered in Mesopotamia By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | October 10, 2013 07:44am ET Researchers studying clay balls from Mesopotamia have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented. The clay balls may represent the world's "very first data storage system," at least the first that scientists know of, said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, where he presented initial findings.

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Liberals don't just indulge in magical thinking - the entire point of liberalism is to live inside magical thinking. As a result, liberals allow themselves to believe that their chosen method of power, namely soft-totalitarian socialist-communism, is not just powerful, but infinitely powerful. Because magical thinking is not just a partial break from personal responsibility, it is an absolute break that requires an absolute power to protect them from every having to come out of it. So, when the limits of their power finally are broken by the realities of the actual world they live in, they literally cannot grasp...

<p>Jews make up only 0.2% of the world population, yet comprise 22% of Nobel laureates. What's the deal?</p> <p>Jews have a reputation for being smart. The fact that all three recipients of this year's Nobel prize for Chemistry are Jewish is yet another brick in the wall of that long-lived perception.</p>

Lined up for a family photo these Victorian children look miserable as they stare sternly at the camera. But their grim expressions may be understandable after it becomes clear they are posing for a macabre photo with their dead younger sibling who is laid out on a chair. These remarkable pictures show the morbid way that the deceased were remembered in the late 19th century.

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From the Sony Walkman to the humble zip: The past century’s top 100 inventions that changed our lives (yet most of us take for granted) Does it make you feel old to know that Dyson’s dustbag-free vacuum is 20 this year? Or that the much-loved Sony Walkman and the world’s first ever laptop, the Epson HX-30, are both over 30 years old?These are just a few of the gadgets that have made it onto the 100 gadgets of the past century that we can’t live without, with technologies ranging from humble zip to the Playstation 4.

60 Minutes news program ran a segment entitled "Dangerous game of 'cosmic roulette'?" This segment highlighted the NASA program aimed at finding and tracking asteroids whose orbits cross Earth's thus placing them on a collision course with us. The NASA administrators at first bragged about how they knew with confidence about 95% of all the "major" threats to our planet and were currently tracking these threats. These administrators were clearly trying to convey to the public an attitude of "don't worry, we have it all under control." Yet as with most statements by government bureaucrats the devil is in the...

After many long days of painful, maddening, and sickening news, our family has been enjoying evening trips back to the thrilling days of yesteryear via the DVD time machine. Old TV shows have reinforced our remembrance of how America used to be, both during the times the shows were made and the stories of the wild west and America's "Manifest Destiny." It's been wonderful to go back in time, to re-visit stories of men who were for the most part valiant, courageous, honorable, full of integrity, law-abiding, and steadfast, and of women who were for the most part gracious, kind,...

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When it comes to the birth of America, most of us are working from a stew of elementary school history lessons, Westerns and vague Thanksgiving mythology. And while it's not surprising those sources might biff a couple details, what's shocking is how much less interesting the version we learned was. It turns out our teachers, Hollywood and whoever we got our Thanksgiving mythology from (Big Turkey?) all made America's origin story far more boring than it actually was for some very disturbing reasons. For instance ...

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Before South Dakota State University fans flocked to Coughlin-Alumni Stadium for Saturday’s homecoming game versus Southern Illinois, many spent the morning watching the Hobo Day Parade. It's a tradition dating back to 1912, when men attending the school grew out their beards for the month of homecoming and the students dressed like hobos for the football game. It became a success and the tradition has been taking place ever since. This year, the parade started at 9:30 a.m., and lasted about an hour. Onlookers, the marching band, and even the floats were covered in yellow and blue. They lined the...

When written, the United States Constitution took a step beyond other constitutions in how it defined the rights of the people. Most countries bestow rights onto its citizens and inevitably would take them away. The US Constitution went further to define liberty and its source. As such, the founders RECOGNIZED our Rights as preexisting naturally having been bestowed upon us by our Creator. This was a significant break from the established governing mindset. All of a sudden, people had Rights that the government could not control... as they didn't bestow them. The brilliance of the Constitution was to take the...

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Academics at Coventry University have uncovered complex social networks within age-old Icelandic sagas, which challenge the stereotypical image of Vikings as unworldly, violent savages. Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from the University's Applied Mathematics Research Centre have carried out a detailed analysis of the relationships described in ancient Icelandic manuscripts to shed new light on Viking society. In a study published in the European Physical Journal, Mac Carron and Kenna have asked whether remnants of reality could lurk within the pages of the documents in which Viking sagas were preserved. They applied methods from statistical physics to social networks...

Reports of missing objects from Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art A German-Egyptian excavation mission in the Nile Delta town of Tel-Basta unearthed today a life-size statue of the nineteenth dynasty king Ramses II carved in red granite. The statue, at 195cm high and 160cm wide, was found accidently during a routine excavation carried out by the joint mission. It was discovered in the so-called Great Temple area's eastern side, inside the temple of cat goddess Bastet in Sharkiya's Tel-Basta. Antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim explained that the newly-discovered statue depicts king Ramses II standing between the goddess Hathor and the god...

Tunnelers expanding London's Underground (Tube) stations have stumbled on a cache of more than two dozen Roman-era skulls. The skulls likely date from the first century A.D. and may possibly—just possibly—be victims of the famed Queen Boudicca's troops, decapitated during her uprising against Roman rule in 61 A.D.