Free Republic

British satellite historians claim to have discovered the true location of an iconic American revolutionary ship which defeated the Royal Navy off the Yorkshire coast. The famous vessel, the USS Bonhomme Richard, was the first US ship to beat the Royal Navy in British waters before she sank on September 24, 1779. The location of the wreck has long been a mystery, but now a British satellite historian from Harrogate claims to have found it. Tim Akers, 60, used pioneering satellite radar techniques alongside British satellite firm Merlin Burrows to track down the buried vessel.

NEW YORK — When members of the local historical society in Berwick found a dusty, long-ignored copy of Benjamin Franklin’s 18th-century “Poor Richard” almanac on their shelves a few months ago, they decided to find out whether it could be real. The answer was yes — emphatically confirmed on Tuesday at the Sotheby’s auction house, where an anonymous bidder paid $556,500 for the 1733 edition, the second highest price ever for a book printed in America. That was big news in Berwick, an old manufacturing city of 10,000 residents, where Franklin, using the pseudonym Richard Saunders, printed thousands of copies...