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...Paul Revere, born in Boston in 1734... After the death of his father in 1754, Paul enlisted in the provincial army to fight in the French and Indian War... When the war was over, he returned to Boston to take over his father's silversmith business, only to fall into financial difficulties during the Stamp Act of 1765. Frustrated by this gave him cause to join the Sons of Liberty... On the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren sent Revere to send the signal to Charlestown that the British troops were on the move... His journey ended in Lexington where...

The Italian government on Wednesday said police had seized more than 5,000 ancient artefacts in a record 45-million-euro haul after dismantling a Swiss-Italian trafficking ring. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said it was the country's "largest discovery yet" of looted works and consisted of 5,361 pieces, including vases, jewellery, frescoes and bronze statues, all dating from the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. The archaeological treasures came from illegal digs across Italy and "will be returned to where they were found", the minister told reporters. Police said the items were worth around 45 million euros ($52 million) and were...

It is astonishing that scholars of religion refer so little to the Manichaean faith, which in its day -- roughly from the third century AD through the fourteenth century -- was a fully fledged world religion, which interacted with Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. At various times, its adherents could be found across the whole of Eurasia, from France to China. It also created a substantial body of scriptures and commentaries, most of which are now lost. Manichaeanism (Manichaeism) is, I believe, the only example of a world religion that has arisen and then vanished entirely, seemingly without trace....

Tonight on AHC (American Heroes Channel)will show Schindler's List at 8 pm. In addition AHC and Discovery will simulcast the one hour documentary ONE DAY IN AUSCHWITZ on Sunday, January 25 at 12 PM ET.

Groucho meets a single librarian and a young policeman, a television expert and a housewife, and an auctioneer and a square dance caller.

Traces of painted red numbers have been discovered during the ongoing restoration of the Colosseum, indicating various sectors of the amphitheatre similar to the seating system employed by today's stadiums. The numbers were painted on the arches of the Colosseum to guide visitors to their respective stands, according to their social class. Describing it as an "exceptional discovery", the monument's director Rossella Rea said that restorers had not expected the painted numbers to have survived. The director of the restoration project Cinzia Conti said the discovery proved the delicacy of the water-powered process, which removes dirt and smog residue but...

Consumer doggie DNA testing is old hat at this point, having been around since 2007. But cat-lovers who wish to decipher their pet's breed are out of luck -- no such tests exist for felines. That fact reflects the state of the underlying science. Since the first full dog genome was sequenced ten years ago, geneticists have identified hundreds of genes behind canine diseases and physical traits. By comparison, just a handful of such genes have been identified in cats. But a group of geneticists is working to close this gap by sequencing 99 domestic cats. This week the researchers...

A new study has used advanced imaging techniques to identify previously unknown tattoos on the ribcage of the 5300-year old man known as Ötzi, bringing his total number of tattoos to 61... Thanks to more than two decades of analysis, scientists arguably know more about Ötzi's health and final days than those of any other ancient human. He died at around 45 years of age after being shot in the back with a stone-tipped arrow and bludgeoned. In the 12 hours preceding his death he climbed into the mountains from an Italian valley, and ate a last meal consisting of...

This is the poignant moment when a man rescued from the hell he endured at the hands of the Nazis met his saviour and gave him a salute almost 70 years later. Joshua Kaufman first saluted his rescuer Daniel Gillespie. Then he kissed his hand and finally, he fell to his feet, exclaiming: 'I have wanted to do this for 70 years. I love you, I love you so much...'. Kaufman, now 87, was a 'walking corpse' on April 29 1945 when U.S. Army soldier Gillespie, 89, marched in with his comrades to liberate the charnel house that was the...

For thousands of years, the bow and arrow was used for war. Those days are long gone, and most people today only know of archery through TV and movies. However, as the Danish archer Lars Andersen has proved, Hollywood archery has very little to do with actual war archery. Lars Andersen originally started using bow and arrow to fight in pretend battles during Larps (live action role play) events, where he played a soldier in a medieval-inspired army. While Larps can be about anything – the Danish/Polish Harry Potter inspired larp College of Wizardry (cowlarp.com) recently got world-wide media attention...

Paul Specht and his Orchestra play "Ten Little Miles From Town." Recorded in New York on September 13, 1928.

http://metro.co.uk/2015/01/23/10-reasons-edinburgh-is-the-best-place-to-celebrate-burns-night-5029499/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk Danish archer Lars Andersen might be the most accomplished archer of our time. Not because of any awards or medals, but purely because of what he has accomplished by studying ancient texts and paintings. Andersen posted a video on Friday attempting to disprove the Hollywood myth of archery. Not only that, he explains how the art of archery is lost on today's archers because a majority of them stand still and aim at their target rather than be able to run, shoot, and hit their targets while also being able to shoot rapidly. Andersen says that the ultimate feat...

"New technology that allows scientists to remove the glue from the masks of mummies without damaging the ink on the paper used to make the mask has yielded an exciting discovery: a piece of papyrus that may contain the oldest known copy of one of the gospels. The finding, a fragment of the Gospel of Mark, which dates back to the year 90, is one of several fascinating texts that archaeologists are discovering in the masks of mummies. This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn...

The Gospel of Mark has been discovered written on a tiny fragment of ancient papyrus, found within a mummy mask. During the era when the mask was created, papyrus was expensive, and the religious text was reused to create the decorative wear for the mummy. This discovery could represent the oldest gospel text ever found by archaeologists. The oldest samples of Christian scripture date from the Second Century of the Common Era. Pharaohs and wealthy individuals were often adorned with mummy masks made of gold and precious materials. Masks for people from lower economic classes were often manufactured from papyrus,...

North Korea seized the USS Pueblo and accused the crew of spying. The crew was released 11 months later. NK, however, kept the vessel.

On January 23, 1975, in a courthouse in Portland, OR, I sat with many other grateful immigrants and listened as a local judge, himself the son of immigrants fron Eastern Europe, congratulated us and expounded on our new responsibilities as American citizens. He was as teary eyed as we were. Among our group was an 80 year old Jew from Poland. She had escaped with her family during the 1930s and had raised her children in America to be good citizens and to prosper. She cried and kept saying "Thank you" and we cried with her. Her attorney grandson explained...

EXCLUSIVE: An illegal immigrant, warring parents and a bitter rift with the father she did not see for 40 years – extraordinary story of Columba Bush as her husband bids to make her the first Hispanic first lady Columba Bush was born and raised in Leon, 250 miles outside Mexico City, where she met Jeb Bush and married him when she was 20 Her father was born to a peasant family and entered America illegally to work He had a stormy marriage to her mother and the couple divorced – but Columba's account differs from his and his relatives' in...

The blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with epoxy, damaging the relic after it was knocked during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo said Wednesday. The museum is one of the city's main tourist sites, but in some areas, ancient wooden sarcophagi lay unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds, mounted on walls, crumble from behind open panels of glass. Tutankhamun's mask, over 3,300 years old, and other contents of his tomb are its top exhibits. Three of the museum's conservators reached by telephone gave...

Since 1790, every president has made an annual report to Congress, highlighting the challenges and opportunities facing the nation. Presidents from Jefferson to Taft dispatched lengthy written addresses; since Wilson, most have emulated Washington’s example and delivered shorter remarks in person. Using the Bookworm platform for text analysis, we’ve combed through the full texts of all 224 State of the Union addresses and ranked the frequency with which each president used each word. We invite you to explore these speeches. Click on any individual word and observe how frequently each president employed it. Sort by DATE to see how the...

I’ve long been skeptical of claims that justices in religious freedom cases — and especially devoutly Christian justices, such as Justice Antonin Scalia — are biased in favor of Christians in religious exemption cases. To be sure, justices are people, and people have biases, usually in favor of their own groups. But justices also know quite well that their opinions will affect many more cases, including cases brought by other religious groups. I’m also skeptical of trying to prove such biases simply by counting cases. Different cases involve different legal issues, and — especially when you have only a few...

Wow how far we’ve come. In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Obama, who has supported abortion on demand as the most radically pro-abortion president to date tried to tone down his rhetoric by saying, “We still may not agree on a woman’s right to choose, but surely we can agree it’s a good thing that teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows, and that every woman should have access to the health care she needs.” VIDEO ON LINK By health care for women, Obama is referring to abortion. Obama 2015 Reagan 1984 STate of the Union abortion VIDEO...

Many of my fellow conservatives love Ayn Rand. And many of my liberal friends love to hate her. You can understand why progressives enjoy blasting Rand's presumably nefarious influence on the conservative movement. She makes for a convenient punching bag for progressives, because she embodies the caricatured version of what progressives imagine conservatives really think: that egotism and greed are good and that the parasitic weak deserve to be trod upon by the capitalistic powerful. And then there are people like me: Conservatives who view themselves as Christians first. To us, Rand's worldview is repellent, and the fact that her...

Why Hitler wished he were a Muslim (WSJ)From The Wall Street Journal, a book review of two new books on Nazi Germany, ATATÜRK IN THE NAZI IMAGINATION by Stefan Ihrig and ISLAM AND NAZI GERMANY’S WAR by David Motadel. : ‘It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler complained to his pet architect Albert Speer. “Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?” Islam was a Männerreligion—a “religion of men”—and hygienic too. The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise” with “houris” and “wine flowing.” This, Hitler argued, was...

A team of archaeologists are discovering new finds on a tiny island just off the Black Sea coast near Sozopol, Bulgaria -- finds that may shed additional light on the location and features of a lost temple to Apollo erected by Archaic Greeks in the late 6th century BCE. Epigraphic sources document that a temple to Apollo was raised on an island near the ancient Greek colony of Apollonia Pontica, which is located near present-day Sozopol. But there has been no evidence to suggest where the temple was actually located -- until recently, when an archaeological team under the direction...

On Tuesday we ran a story detailing how much new regulations issued by the Obama administration in 2014 were going to cost the economy this year (and beyond). The figure was hardly insignificant – $181.5 billion in new compliance costs imposed on several industries that will ultimately be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services. Add these new costs to the $2 trillion annual cost of earlier regulations, and you begin to see how compliance costs reduce productivity, cut down on employment and curb business expansion. But there is more to these regulations...

Although M. tuberculosis probably first emerged some 40,000 years ago in Africa, the disease did not take hold until humans took to farming... A previous analysis by his team had shown that the common ancestor of all the M. bacterium strains circulating today began spreading around 10,000 years ago in the ancient Fertile Crescent, a region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Nile Delta that was a cradle of agriculture... 4,987 samples of the Beijing lineage from 99 countries... the information to date the expansion of the lineage and show how the strains are related... the Beijing lineage did indeed emerge...

Does anyone recall an accord that states that every nation importing oil from opec, the bulk of which comes from the middle east, must allow a certain number of muslim immigrants into their nation. I first read of this maybe 8 to 10 years ago. I do not know if it was true. That is why I am seeking it now, to verify.

This month is the forty-second anniversary of the legal decision, Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court eliminated the abortion laws of all 50 states. Here are five facts about the plaintiff behind the case that transformed America: 1. “Jane Roe” was the legal pseudonym for Norma McCorvey the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade. McCorvey filed court documents against Henry WADE, the district attorney of Dallas County from 1951 to 1987, who enforced a Texas law that prohibited abortion, except to save a woman’s life. 2. In 1969, McCorvey was 22 years old, divorced, homeless, and pregnant for the...

Despite multiple attempts by the US Air Force to retire the A-10 Warthog, the aircraft has carried out 11% of all airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since Operation Inherent Resolve began in August.

Seven decades after thousands of “balloon bombs” were let loose by the Imperial Japanese Army to wreak havoc on their enemies across the Pacific, two forestry workers found one half-buried in the mountains of eastern British Columbia. A navy bomb disposal team was called and arrived at the site Friday in the Monashee Mountains near Lumby, B.C. “They confirmed without a doubt that it is a Japanese balloon bomb,” said RCMP Cpl. Henry Proce. “This thing has been in the dirt for 70 years .... There was still some metal debris in the area (but) nothing left of the balloon...

For the first time, words have been read from a burnt, rolled-up scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius in AD79. The scrolls of Herculaneum, the only classical library still in existence, were blasted by volcanic gas hotter than 300C and are desperately fragile. Deep inside one scroll, physicists distinguished the ink from the paper using a 3D X-ray imaging technique sometimes used in breast scans. They believe that other scrolls could also be deciphered without unrolling.

Germany launched its first ever aerial blitz on Britain exactly 100 years ago tonight when two Zeppelins were sent on a bombing mission which killed four. On the nights of January 19 and 20, 1915, two of the airships were heading for Humberside but were blown further down the east coast by strong gusts. Heralding a new era of warfare, their first two targets - King's Lynn and Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk - were chosen purely by the direction of the wind.

On Martin Luther King Day, 2015, how stand race relations in America? Selma, a film focused on the police clubbing of civil rights marchers led by Dr. King at Selma bridge in March of 1965, is being denounced by Democrats as a cinematic slander against the president who passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the movie, King is portrayed as decisive and heroic, LBJ as devious and dilatory. And no member of the Selma cast has been nominated for an Academy Award. All 20 of the actors and actresses nominated are white. Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains,...

A gigantic but fleeting burst of radio waves has been caught in the act for the first time, helping to narrow down the vast array of things that might cause them. Figuring out what these fast radio bursts are or where they come from could help answer some of the biggest cosmological questions. They last about a millisecond but give off as much energy as the sun does in a day, all seemingly in a tight band of radio-frequency waves. Their source is a mystery, but whatever causes them must be huge, cataclysmic and up to 5.5 billion light years...

At 9:30 p.m. on Saturday night, a packed theater in Franklin, Tenn., was completely quiet. As the credits rolled, some folks were filing out, but many more were standing, still looking at the screen, honoring the man whose life they’d just seen portrayed on the silver screen. Before the movie, I’d never seen the parking lot so crowded. I had to park more than a quarter-mile away, hidden in the corner of a restaurant parking lot (hoping I wouldn’t be towed), and watched in amazement as people were streaming into the theater from parking spaces scattered far and wide. It...

In June the world will celebrate 800 years since the issuing of Magna Carta. But 2015 is also the anniversary of another important, and far more radical, British milestone in democratic history, writes Luke Foddy. Almost exactly 750 years ago, an extraordinary parliament opened in Westminster. For the very first time, elected representatives from every county and major town in England were invited to parliament on behalf of their local communities. It was, in the words of one historian, "the House of Commons in embryo". The January Parliament, which first met on 20 January 1265, is one of the...

The funniest part about this video? Liberals are already complaining that voicing an MLK cartoon is "just like blackface!" Surpppriiiiiiiise!

Alice Kearns Geoffroy Bernard, the last known living Orphan Train rider in Louisiana, died Saturday (Jan. 17) in Lafayette. She was 98. The Orphan Train Movement from 1854 and 1929 was a social experiment in child relocation, in which more than 250,000 orphans and unwanted children were taken out of New York City and given away at train stations across the country and in Canada. The program stopped in large part due to growing measures by state legislatures to restrict or forbid the interstate placement of children, according to the Louisiana Orphan Train Society.Ms. Bernard, who lived most of her...

The culture ministry said research on the tomb's bones showed the buried woman was over 60 years old and about 1.57 metres tall while the two men were aged 35 to 45 years old. One of the men had cut marks in his left chest that were most likely from mortal injuries inflicted by a knife or small sword, the ministry said. The men had an estimated height of 1.62 to 1.68 metres. The few burned bone remains of the fifth interred person, who was cremated, could not reveal the person's gender and authorities said further testing would be carried...

Martin Luther King was never himself a Communist—far from it. But the FBI's wiretapping of King was precipitated by his association with Stanley Levison, a man with reported ties to the Communist Party. Newly available documents reveal what the FBI actually knew—the vast extent of Levinson's Party activities On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy believed that one of King's closest...

Sons of Liberty Three-Night Event Begins Jan 25 at 9/8c on the History Channel. Video at source link. Topics will include Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, and more.

I’ve been asked to give my thoughts on the highly publicized recent “events” in the media because of the pigmentation of my skin. Yes, I am “African American,” but I’d like to simply be referred to as an American. My ethnic background also includes white, black, and Native American. Now that that’s out of the way, here is where I stand: – 15 million children die each year from starvation. (A third of these children live in Africa) – A few months ago, we were all going to get Ebola. (My allergies did get a little crazy around that time.)...

Pondering the Problem with Saint Martin Luther King Jr.“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. On Monday, January 19, 2015, the U.S. will celebrate Martin Luther King jr. This man who sang along with his Baptist church at the premiere of Gone With The Wind in 1939, is known as the most famous American Civil Rights leader in history. The Reverend and Doctor, Martin Luther King jr. is celebrated every January as a hero and an icon. What does he mean today, however,...

The grant will allow the team to archaeologically survey the village using a variety of methods, with particular focus on the group of timber-framed buildings which are present on an estate map of 1631. Many of these buildings probably have their origins within the medieval period. Dr Nash said: "Based on place-name evidence, the village of Tilley probably has its origins during the Early Medieval (Anglo-Saxon) period. The 'ley' element of Tilley translates into 'leah', meaning wood clearing." The project, one of the largest of its kind, will include a dendrochronology survey of 28 buildings that stand within the Tilley...

Ninety percent of the fats found in Neolithic cooking pots from Ireland came from dairy products, according to a new study conducted at the University of Bristol. "We know from previous research that dairying was an important part of many early farming economies, but what was a big surprise was the prevalence of dairy residues in Irish pots. It looks to have been a very important food source," said Jessica Smyth of the School of Chemistry. The remaining ten percent of the residues came from beef or mutton fat, or a mixture of milk and meat. "People can obviously cook...

Archaeologists might have uncovered the site of the trial of Jesus. While excavating the floors underneath an abandoned building next to the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem, archaeologists came across the foundation walls and sewage system that lay beneath Herod the Great’s Jerusalem palace. According to scholars, this is most likely the place ...

Nearly two decades after the ancient skeleton called Kennewick Man was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River, the mystery of his origins appears to be nearing resolution. Genetic analysis is still under way in Denmark, but documents obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act say preliminary results point to a Native-American heritage.The researchers performing the DNA analysis “feel that Kennewick has normal, standard Native-American genetics,” according to a 2013 email to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for the care and management of the bones. “At present there is no indication he has a...

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