Free Republic

It is since 2012 that the Vatican, under Pope Benedict XVI, spoke of the “State of Palestine” in its official documents. So the decision of the Holy See to recognize this non-existent state should not be a surprise. But the treaty is the first legal and bilateral document in which the Vatican speaks of the “State of Palestine” and no more of the “Organization for the Liberation of Palestine” (PLO): it is, in fact, an official recognition. A symbolic and historic breakthrough. When the Vatican recognized Israel, at the beginning of the Nineties, it happened within the framework of Oslo...

William Ellison's fascinating story is told by Michael Johnson and James L. Roark in their book, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. At his death on the eve of the Civil War, Ellison was wealthier than nine out of 10 white people in South Carolina. He was born in 1790 as a slave on a plantation in the Fairfield District of the state, far up country from Charleston. In 1816, at the age of 26, he bought his own freedom, and soon bought his wife and their child. In 1822, he opened his own cotton...

I just thought this was beautiful and thought it would do us good to remember what a good man Reagan was.

The good news for my generation is that we finally make up a controlling portion of the working population. The bad news is, that there probably aren't enough blankies and nap rooms to accomodate all of us as we graduate into the real world. At least, as some of us graduate into the real world. Others of us have too many things to do to take time out of our day to cuddle stuffed animals and gripe to each other about the cultural appropriation and microagressions typically associated with the Patriarchy. Thankfully, college students have no such demands on their...

Yogi Berra may not be uttering his famous “Yogi-isms” anymore, but the Yankee icon summed up this day best years ago when he said, “I want to thank you for making this day necessary.” Lawrence Peter Berra, best known as Yogi — or Yog by his close friends — celebrated his 90th birthday on Tuesday at the New Jersey museum that bears his name, surrounded by close family and such New York baseball luminaries as Joe Torre, Ralph Branca, Willie Randolph and Mickey Rivers, to name a few. And he even received a call from former mayor Rudy Giuliani wishing...

The people have spoken — at least, the people who cast ballots in an unofficial "Women on 20s" campaign — and more than 100,000 voters want to see Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill instead of Andrew Jackson. Tubman, the abolitionist who helped free slaves on the Underground Railroad, on Tuesday was declared the winner of an online poll, part of a petition aimed at convincing the Treasury Department to put a new face on the $20 — and specifically a female one.

For over two hundred years, whenever a debate has broken out in the United States, political cartoons have been there to take part in the argument—and sometimes to push it to its limits. Beginning in 1754, when Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” cartoon appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, political cartoonists have long used their skills to praise, attack, caricature, lampoon, and otherwise express their opinions on the most urgent political issues of the day. Political cartoons began as a street-level phenomenon. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they were often posted on walls or passed from person to...

With the 25th anniversary of The Hubble Space Telescope fast approaching, Brady and Keith look at a priceless artefact - Sir Isaac Newton's very own reflecting telescope.

Brady and Keith look at some of The Royal Society's collection of standard weights and measures - including a particularly special one that even Keith had never unpacked before!

Link only due to copyright. WWII vet flies Spitefire for first time in 70 years

WORLD WAR II - THE BATTLE OF OKINAWA - Discovery History Military (full documentary)

By the middle of 1940, with Europe prostrate at the Nazis’ feet, Russia allied with Germany, and the United States still out of the war, Britain’s leaders were focused more on survival than on victory. Neville Chamberlain had reached the point where he was contemplating a peace for Great Britain secured at the expense of the sovereignty of her allies. But after the loss of Belgium and the invasion of France, members of Parliament were demanding a new government. Lord Halifax was the leading choice to lead the new cabinet, but a number of MPs were dissatisfied with his proximity...

... Easter had a top-secret job offer. If Moseley accepted, he would have to commit for four years, he couldn't tell anyone about the job and he would have to accept the job before knowing what it was. "And he said, 'You've got 30 seconds and if you don't say yes, this conversation never happened.' Well, that was just too intriguing to turn down," Moseley says. "So I said, 'Absolutely.' And he'd given me a telephone number and an intersection." ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel walk to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin walls in Moscow, Russia, May 10, 2015.

Remains from three prehistoric periods were found in the dig. The oldest have been dated to about 7,000 years ago. during the Pottery Neolithic period. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority also found a fired ceramic clay figurine of a full-figured woman. The discovery brings the number of sites at which similar figures from the period have been found to nine, mostly around Sha'ar Hagolan. Of the 163 such figurines found so far, two were found elsewhere -- one in Lod and the other at Horvat Ptora, a site near Kiryat Gat and the one found now as said, in...

The archaeological park is located at the mouth of a river where wild parsley (selinon) grows, which was the origin of the name of the waterway. The city was founded by Megara Hyblaea residents in Sicily in the seventh century BC near two port-canals, now sanded over, and engaged in intense maritime trade. ''It was due to this expert use of the geographical role of Selinunte,'' historians say, ''that their inhabitants, in the space of just over two centuries, achieved an economic prosperity unrivaled in the Greek world or in that of Sicily/Magna Grecia.'' A city of grandiose size was...

Events are being held in many countries to mark 70 years since the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945, but in fact the last large-scale engagement of the conflict began three days after the Nazi capitulation. More than a thousand people, mostly German soldiers, were killed in a largely forgotten battle against U.S. and Soviet troops plus Czech irregulars on May 11-12, 1945. (RFE/RL)

The burial of the so-called Red Lady, dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic, was discovered in El Mirón cave (Cantabria) in 2010. The Journal of Archaeological Science has devoted a special edition to all the studies conducted at this unique burial site, because there are hardly any Palaeolithic tombs like this one which is intact and which has not been contaminated. One study is the research led by the UPV/EHU's Ikerbasque lecturer Mª José Iriarte, who analysed the remains of fossilised pollen dating back more than 16,000 years ago and which appeared on the tomb. "They put whole flowers on...