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Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light Portland, Oregon -- So begins The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, one of the best-known poems in the world and perhaps the most famous piece of Persian literature. The several hundred quatrains that make up this enduring 11th century work have been translated into dozens of languages and inspired countless readers and scholars with their beauty. At least nine editions of The Rubaiyat are currently in print...

Derek Abbott, from the University of Adelaide, says the body of a man found on one of the city's beaches in 1948 belonged to Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born in Melbourne in 1905. Last May, South Australia police responded to Abbott's calls to exhume the Somerton man's body and experts at Forensic Science SA started work to try to find the best way to analyze his DNA. But in the end, Abbott, a professor in the Adelaide University School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, claims it was strands of the man's hair trapped in a...

On 1 December, 1948, the man’s body was found on Somerton Beach in South Australia with the circumstances of his death remaining an open police investigation. The Somerton man was first found by passers-by who noticed him slumped against a seawall. The cause of death remains unknown and many theories have been advanced over his identity, ranging from a jilted lover to a Cold War spy. An initial police investigation and coronial inquest left the matter unresolved, with the case particularly mystifying because of a number of items found with the body. They included a suitcase, items of clothing with...