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This video explores some of the Byzantine ruins hidden beneath the streets of modern Istanbul. I'd like to thank the management of the Ring Stone Hotel and Alp Watmough for making my filming possible. YT Summary: toldinstone explores the architectural palimpsest of Sultan Ahmed, tracing remnants of the Great Palace of the Byzantine emperors hidden within modern structures. From repurposed cisterns and sarcophagi to surviving ramp towers, the narrative uncovers how historical layers continue to shape the fabric of daily life in contemporary Istanbul. Istanbul's Hidden Byzantine Ruins | 9:34 toldinstone | 645K subscribers | 19,389 views | August 15,...

France is in the middle of the month of its deepest summer slumber. The juilletistes are back from their summer vacations but the aoûtiens are still enjoying theirs, and with them many of the businesses outside major cities and those who don't rely on tourists. Much of the country – and certainly everywhere near the water or the scenic hot spots – will appear to be running at half speed if at all, until La Rentrée kicks in at the beginning of September. It's a tradition going all the way back to the Middle Ages, when Pope Gregory IX gave...

One person’s trash dramatically turned into another’s treasure as workers in Belgium happened upon a gold hoard worth more than $10 million while installing a sewer line in a building they were renovating. “Our first reaction was actually disbelief,” Kobe, an 18-year-old student worker, told Belgium outlet VRT. “Of course, we hadn’t expected to find gold.” At the time, the construction crew was renovating a building in the city center of the Flemish community of Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, located about 40 miles from Brussels. During the building rehab, workers were removing the foundation to make way for a sewer pipe when they...

A Tennessee teacher who was named Teacher of the Year has quit after accusing the school district of directing her to change a failing student’s grade. Samira Hardcastle, named the 2025-2026 Teacher of the Year at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Antioch, Tenn., submitted her letter of resignation in May after eight years teaching art in Metro Nashville Public Schools. “District leaders asked me to fabricate grades for a parent who sat in the office for hours until her daughter’s failing grades were changed,” Hardcastle said in an impassioned speech at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “It creates false entitlement....

I asked Grok how the red states and blue states performed economically between 2000 and 2026. It only gave me up until 2024, but if trends continued, the red states have continued to close the gap and may actually be higher income economies than blue states. Approx. Real GDP CAGR 2000–2024 Yearly Red-leaning group ████████████████ ≈ 2.3–2.6% Blue-leaning group ██████████████ ≈ 1.9–2.2% U.S. overall ███████████████ ≈ 2.1% Approximate cumulative real GDP growth (total multiplicative increase) These are simple compounds of representative average annual rates over 24 years: Red-leaning group (~2.4% average annual): Growth factor ≈ 1.77 → ~77% total cumulative...

Americans should not fear the past. I remember the first time I came across a “trigger warning.” I was on a university campus in the ‘90s, attending the first lecture of a new history professor. As I perused her course syllabus, I was impressed with the reading list and organization. Then I spotted an incongruous “warning” to women and African Americans suggesting that they might find some of the material offensive. At first, I thought it was an inappropriate joke. I asked someone about it, and I was informed that “trigger warnings” had become increasingly common in the classrooms of...

Scorching summer heat and prolonged drought have dramatically lowered the Tiber River in central Rome, revealing the long-submerged stone remains of a nearly 2,000-year-old bridge once known as Nero’s Bridge. According to a report from CNN, the rare sight has drawn locals and tourists to the riverbanks for a fleeting glimpse of the ancient structure that normally lies completely underwater. The Tiber’s flow, fed by tributaries from the northern Apennine Mountains, has dropped below 80 cubic meters per second—roughly half the seasonal average—according to Rome’s civil protection coordinator Giovanni Giganti.

The feds are probing a shadowy nonprofit’s $100 million anti-Israel “war chest” allegedly amassed by a glamorous ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a racecar-driving billionaire and a Texas private equity mogul, The Post has learned. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating a UK-based outfit known only as PFF, scrutinizing whether it illegally funneled donor funds to Al-Haq, a Palestinian group sanctioned by the US in September, sources said. Two sources with direct knowledge said federal agents are investigating more broadly whether the fund’s organizers employ opaque UK corporate entities to obscure cross-border financial flows. One insider said the “linchpin”...

Alaska Democratic Senate hopeful Mary Peltola rejected support this week from former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the state by double-digits in her failed 2024 presidential campaign. “Alaska is a must-win Senate seat for Democrats to retake control of the Senate,” Harris wrote in a fundraising email, urging the public to “help Mary Peltola get the support she needs” by splitting a donation between Peltola’s campaign and the ex-veep’s Fight for the People PAC. Harris continued, “So if there’s anyone who can flip Alaska and secure the Senate majority for Democrats – it’s Mary. But she cannot do it...

A Georgia financial advising CEO was sentenced Friday to 20 years behind bars for masterminding a $380 million Ponzi scheme to fund his lavish lifestyle of yachts, private jets and luxury shopping. Todd Burkhalter, the founder of Atlanta-area Drive Planning LLC, orchestrated one of Georgia’s largest schemes and stole millions from over 2,000 investors in the years-long con. Burkhalter, 59, was ordered to serve two decades in federal prison by US District Court Judge Tiffany R. Johnson, while two of his executives were sentenced to less than five years for their roles this week. Burkhalter’s attorneys had asked for a...

...at the Carrarzu Iddia archaeological site in Bortigali, a short distance from the town of Macomer. The monument still preserves its burial chamber and exedra and provides new insights into Nuragic civilization...The monument, which had long been completely hidden by vegetation, was rediscovered thanks to survey activities...The tomb is located on the southern slope of Crastu Littu, at an elevation of approximately 740 meters...The funerary monument is constructed of trachyte blocks... the burial chamber and the monumental semicircular exedra preceding the entrance...are still clearly visible......the space is divided into two levels near the entrance -- a construction solution that has...

A young man who once wondered if he would live past 1941 will be turning 105 years old Saturday. James (Pat) Bollich grew up in Louisiana. He trained at Fort Polk and arrived in the Philippines in November, 1941, less than a month before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Jamie Bollich wrote, “U.S. and Filipino forces retreated to the Bataan Peninsula when the Japanese invaded the Philippines, but after four months their food and ammunition ran out and the 70,000 troops were forced to surrender.”

A Pablo Picasso painting stolen while on loan from the Guggenheim Museum more than six decades ago has resurfaced, and the museum has gone to court to get it back. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation filed suit in New York State Supreme Court this week, according to Hyperallergic, against Massachusetts residents Lawrence Jay Handler and Wendy Cohen Handler, who the museum says currently possess Femme dans un fauteuil (Woman in an Armchair), a small 1918 painting that disappeared from the University of Pittsburgh in 1961. The story begins on February 5 of that year, when a graduate student and dormitory...

You said:H.Res.414 calculates slavery reparations for the years of 1619 up to 1865. What is the argument for why the United States should pay on behalf of the British Empire?ChatGPT said:There is an important distinction here: H.Res. 414 does not actually argue that the United States should compensate people for slavery because Britain committed it. Its argument is that the United States, after independence, inherited and continued the institution and therefore assumed responsibility for its own conduct and its continuing consequences.The key passage is unusually explicit. It says that, beginning with the nation's founding in 1776, federal policies "produced and...

Fighting in the Second World War went on until the very end. WWII: The Last Day | 20:41 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.64M subscribers | 14,619 views | August 14, 2026

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin defended his organization’s fundraising record despite a massive Republican advantage and implored allies to help raise more funds in the final few months before the November midterm elections. “While we’ve raised a record amount of money, and it is a record in the 198-year history of the DNC, there’s no chair or no team of officers that’s raised more money without the White House in [its] team, but the reality is we need more,” Martin said during an executive committee meeting on Friday. “I don’t want folks to think, well, we’re OK. We need...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Sheryl Williams Stapleton, a former New Mexico lawmaker, was convicted Friday morning on all 37 federal charges, including money laundering, bribery, and mail fraud. Stapleton did not respond to questions from reporters walking out of federal court Friday afternoon. According to the federal indictment, Stapleton conspired with her longtime friend Joseph Johnson to steal millions in federal money. Prosecutors said she used her position at Albuquerque Public Schools as an educational director to receive $1.2 million in kickbacks while funneling a total of $3.2 million to Johnson's company, Robotics. Johnson's company had supplied a computer program called...

Dazzling new images taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope show an astronomical object known for its striking resemblance to a lion’s face. NGC 2392, more commonly called the Lion Nebula, received its nickname from its hazy dust “mane” and the dying star at its center, which resembles a “button nose,” according to NASA. The images were taken by Webb, using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) The agency previously captured images of the feline-themed planetary nebula in 2000 using the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb’s higher-resolution images show that...

A New Jersey thief who bilked investors out of more than $650 million has been named one of the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters — the first Garden State resident to make the dubious list. Fugitive Rey E. Grabato II is accused of participating in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded some 2,000 investors, hundreds of whom were located in New Jersey, out of more than $650 million between February 2018 and January 2022, according to the FBI. The agency is offering a reward of up to $150,000 for information that leads to Grabato’s arrest and conviction. Federal authorities issued an arrest...

Liberal Democrat Governor Maura Healey signs bill allowing babies to be aborted all the way up to birth. Fox News says, “Democratic Gov. Maura Healey was met with applause and smiles as she signed away Massachusetts’ gestational limits on abortion, making the deep-blue state the 10th to permit the procedure up to birth. Under the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, health care workers will have greater discretion in determining whether to perform an abortion later in pregnancy, without facing legal penalties under the state’s previous restrictions. Massachusetts is now the tenth state to allow this kind of de-humanizing law.”...