‘It’s the coldest of cold cases, and yet it keeps warming to life. Seventy years after Amelia Earhart disappeared, clues are still turning up. Long-dismissed notes taken of a shortwave distress call beginning, “This is Amelia Earhart…,” are getting another look.
The previously unknown diary of an Associated Press reporter reveals a new perspective.
A team that has already found aircraft parts and pieces of a woman’s shoe on a remote South Pacific atoll hopes to return there this year to search for more evidence, maybe even DNA.
If what’s known now had been conveyed to searchers then, might Earhart and her navigator have been found alive? It’s one of a thousand questions that keep the case from being declared dead, as Earhart herself was a year and a half after she vanished.’
‘Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.
It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades – where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem – because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.’
‘When Adolf Hitler was awarded German citizenship, he abruptly brushed off the congratulations: “You should congratulate Germany, not me!”
It was Feb. 25, 1932 and Hitler had just been naturalized after being appointed as a civil servant in the then-free state of Braunschweig — a crucial step for the continuation of his political career.
Three quarters of a century later, Isolde Saalmann, a Social Democratic member of Lower Saxony’s regional parliament, would like nothing better than to rescind this momentous bureaucratic act. [..]’
‘In 1982, operatives from the USSR’s Committee for State Security– known internationally as the KGB– celebrated the procurement of a very elusive bit of Western technology. The Soviets were developing a highly lucrative pipeline to carry natural gas across the expanse of Siberia, but they lacked the software to manage the complex array of pumps, valves, turbines, and storage facilities that the system would require. The United States possessed such software, but the US government had predictably turned down their Cold War opponent’s request to purchase the product.
Never ones to allow the limitations of the law to dictate their actions, the KGB officials inserted an agent to abduct the technology from a Canadian firm. Unbeknownst to the Soviet spies, the software they stole sported a little something extra: a few lines of computer code which had been inserted just for them.’
‘A French architect says he has cracked the 4500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt’s Great Pyramid – it was built from the inside out.
Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu’s tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.
But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3-D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10 to 15 metres beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.’
‘What exactly went on between gorillas and early humans? No one knows for sure, but scientists say one thing, at least, seems certain: The big apes gave us pubic lice.
Researchers made the uncomfortable discovery during a DNA study reconstructing the evolutionary history of lice in humans and our primate relatives.
The transfer occurred about 3.3 million years ago, said study leader David Reed, of the University of Florida in Gainesville. That’s when the gorilla louse and the human pubic louse separated into distinct species, the research revealed. [..]
Pubic lice are spread most commonly through sexual contact, but that’s not necessarily how our ancestors acquired the parasite from gorillas.
“Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure,” Reed said. [..]’
‘In January 1992, while at a formal dinner in Japan, then president George Bush became ill, vomiting on the Prime Minister of Japan, Kiichi Miyazawa, then fainting. Earlier in the evening, Bush had told his physician he was feeling unwell. This all happened at a presidential news conference and dinner in Tokyo. It was later famously parodied by Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live.’
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An illustration of the evolution of man.
‘A fossil unearthed in northeastern China has middle ear anatomy somewhere between more primitive and modern mammals, confirming for the first time transitional steps in the evolution of the important structure.
Scientists suspected the malleus or hammer, incus or anvil, and stapes or stirrup, split off from a location at the hinge of the lower jaw to become separate structures.
The new find, 125 million-year-old Yanoconodon allini, has middle ear bones that are partly separated from the jaw, but remain connected by a bridge of ossified cartilage. [..]
As Dr. Luo put it: “We have now a clear case documenting why a very elaborate and very delicate and very sophisticated ear structure came about and how it came about.”‘
He has a banjo and he has a goiter.
The goiter is bigger than the banjo.
‘A quarter of a century on, the Commodore gaming PC is ready for relaunch this month. Wipe those nostalgic tears away.
Many of us remember with (possibly misplaced) fondness, the Commodore 64 gaming PC released in 1982. As a follow up to the VIC-20 the C64, which was, pretty much, all keyboard went on to sell 22 million units. [..]
“25 years ago, Commodore launched the best selling personal computer of the late 20th Century, the C64, and defined the early computer games experience for millions of people worldwide,” said Bala Keilman, CEO for Commodore Gaming. “We are privileged and excited to bring the Commodore brand back to the gaming community and mark a new chapter in its history with this exceptional machine. We’re sure that it will deliver what gamers need and want.”‘
‘I met god the other day.
I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?
Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.
Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!
It all started on the 8.20 back from Paddington. Got myself a nice window seat, no screaming brats or drunken hooligans within earshot. Not even a mobile phone in sight. Sat down, reading the paper and in he walks.’
‘Antony and Cleopatra — one of history’s most romantic couples — were not the great beauties that Hollywood would have us believe, according to British academics.
A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen, famously portrayed by a sultry Elizabeth Taylor, had a shallow forehead, pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose.
On the other side, her Roman lover, played in the 1963 movie by Richard Burton, Taylor’s husband at the time, had bulging eyes, a hook nose and a thick neck.
History has depicted Cleopatra as a great beauty, befitting a woman who as Queen of Egypt seduced Julius Caesar, and then his rival Mark Antony.
But the coin, which goes on show on Wednesday at Newcastle University for Valentine’s Day, after years lying in a bank, is much less flattering about both famous faces.’
‘On the 75th anniversary of the Lindbergh kidnapping, TIME looks back at the notorious crimes of the past hundred years’
‘Declassified documents reveal that Japanese ultranationalists with ties to U.S. military intelligence plotted to overthrow the Japanese government and assassinate the prime minister in 1952.
The scheme — which was abandoned — was concocted by militarists and suspected war criminals who had worked for U.S. occupation authorities after World War II, according to CIA records reviewed by The Associated Press. The plotters wanted a right-wing government that would rearm Japan. [..]
Two CIA documents said the plot reportedly had the support of 500,000 people in Japan, and that the group planned to use a contact who controlled a faction inside the National Safety Agency — a precursor to the Defense Ministry — to help launch the coup.’
‘A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.
“I found a bomb in the potatoes,” Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
“I went to the market to buy some potatoes and that’s where the bomb was. But this bomb was covered in dirt, and I put it in water and got all dirt off. And then I realized ‘It’s a bomb’!”‘
‘The highest U.N. court cleared Serbia on Monday of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war, but said Belgrade had violated its obligation to prevent and punish the mass killing.
Bosnia had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on whether Serbia committed genocide through the killing, rape and ethnic cleansing that ravaged Bosnia during the war, in one of the court’s biggest cases in its 60-year history.
It was the first time a state had been tried for genocide, outlawed in a U.N. convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust.’
‘One of the elephants, Topsy, was known for having a bad temper, and had killed three people in the last three years. After the last killing, it was decided that she had to be destroyed by hanging. Note, I am making none of this up. New York’s ASPCA protested that hanging was cruel, citing the fact that it had been replaced by electrocution in the NY penal system. Luna Park’s owners took the protest in stride, and decided that electrocution would be the kindest solution, and one that they could sell tickets for! They enlisted the willing Thomas Edison to help with technical matters.’
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‘On 17 July 1962, a caravan of scientists, military men, and dignitaries crossed the remote desert of southern Nevada to witness a historic event. Among the crowd were VIPs such as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and presidential adviser General Maxwell D. Taylor who had come to observe the “Little Feller I” test shot, the final phase of Operation Sunbeam. The main attraction was a secret device which was bolted to the roof of an armored personnel carrier, a contraption called the The Davy Crockett Weapon System.’
‘Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you ‘The Titanic’ is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he’s sinking is Christianity. [..]
Let’s go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem. The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.’
‘Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the hand-crafted tools to hunt small mammals — the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multi-step spear-making practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees’ trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.
The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females — the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps — tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.’
‘A window said to be the one through which Lee Harvey Oswald shot US president John F Kennedy in 1963 has been sold for $3.8 million on eBay, the Internet auction house says.
The description of the window and frame sold to a person in the Netherlands says it was the one that stood in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, from which Oswald killed Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
The window had been on display for 10 years at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, until its owner, Caruth Byrd, claimed it back.’
‘The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”
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‘Deep in the dusty, unlit corridors of Kenya’s national museum, locked away in a plain-looking cabinet, is one of mankind’s oldest relics: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found.
But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm — one pitting scientists against Kenya’s powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism — once largely confined to the United States — has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind.
“I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it,” says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya’s 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. “These sorts of silly views are killing our faith.”‘
‘Researchers who wanted to find out why it is not only taboo to kiss your sister, but also disgusting, said on Wednesday they have discovered why in a discovery that challenges some basic tenets of Freudian theory.
The instinct evolved naturally and cannot be taught, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California Santa Barbara wrote in their report in the journal Nature. [..]
“This data shows that the degree to which we feel those things is governed by these cues that, for hunter-gatherers, predict whether somebody is a sibling. And it works regardless of your beliefs — who you are told who your siblings are,” she said.’
‘Former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, the outspoken proponent of polarising immigration policies, has discovered she is of Middle Eastern heritage.
Ms Hanson said she was “amazed” and “mystified” to learn of her ancestry.
A recent DNA swab, taken with Ms Hanson’s permission by The Sunday Mail, has revealed the controversial former MP’s genetic makeup is drawn from a rich multicultural background, with 9 per cent originating in the Middle East, 32 per cent from Italy, Greece or Turkey and 59 per cent from northern Europe.
When told of the results, the former fish and chip shop owner appeared flustered, making references to “rape and pillage” in ancient times, adding: “All I can think of is that probably down the track it eventuated from some war.’
‘With unbelievable restraint, Captain Eric Moody addressed British Airways flight 009 as his Boeing 747 drifted inexorably down towards the Indian Ocean.
Displaying the stiff-upper-lip spirit that built an empire, he uttered the words that are every air passenger’s worst nightmare: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
