Free Republic

Conservators from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts labored in the chill and snow for hours today to unearth what is believed to be the oldest unopened time capsule in the country, buried under the Golden Dome of the Massachusetts State House in 1795 by then-Governor Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, according to state records. The 219-year-old capsule is made of cowhide and was initially discovered during State House renovations in 1855. When the repairs were complete, the state’s 23rd governor, Henry Gardner, re-buried it in the granite cornerstone of the historic building, adding new items, including coins. Four coins...

Leonardo da Vinci may have had an Arab heritage, according to Italian researchers who have isolated and reconstructed the Renaissance master's fingerprint. The fingerprint represents the only biological trace of the Florentine genius, said Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist at Chieti University. "It is actually the first evidence of Leonardo's corporeality," Capasso told Discovery News. Indeed, nothing is left of the painter, engineer, mathematician, philosopher and naturalist. The remains of Leonardo, who died in 1519 in Amboise, France, were dispersed in the 16th century during religious wars. The research began in 2002, following the discovery of hundreds of fingerprints in the...

Paleontologists have uncovered a 25-million-year-old whale fossil with a monstrous set of teeth and enormous eyes on the coast of Australia.The discovery has researchers rethinking whales’ evolutionary history.Scientists were surprised to find that the vicious-looking specimen is an ancestor of modern baleen whales, gentle giants of today’s seas. The fossil suggests a creature that grew to a little more than 11 feet with teeth about an inch-and-a-half long. Baleen whales, which include the blue and humpback, feed by filtering plankton and small fish from seawater through hair-like fibers in their jaws. Their ferocious forebears, on the other hand, appear to...

RIPON, Wis. (AP) - Republicans celebrated the 150th anniversary of their party Saturday by returning to the one-room schoolhouse where some historians believe the GOP was born. The schoolhouse was the centerpiece of a daylong celebration in Ripon that included a display of political buttons at the city's library and an evening banquet featuring remarks by former Wisconsin Gov. Lee Dreyfus. "This is the day," said Tom German, 54, of Brillion, as he walked through the schoolhouse, a national landmark that now serves solely as a museum. The schoolhouse is outfitted with photos from every Republican president from Abraham Lincoln...