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Irish potato famine mystery solved: After 170 years, biologists identify pathogen that led to mass starvationThe Irish potato famine of the 1840s was caused by a plant-pathogen strain that was unknown until now, scientists said after examining dried leaves that were as much as 170 years old.[John Miller/AP file photo]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/90860832b3316dc5f1e489bed964e267/tumblr_mn62exgF5u1s0oiwfo1_1280.jpg)
Irish potato famine mystery solved: After 170 years, biologists identify pathogen that led to mass starvation
The Irish potato famine of the 1840s was caused by a plant-pathogen strain that was unknown until now, scientists said after examining dried leaves that were as much as 170 years old.
[John Miller/AP file photo]
Pint-sized history
Shakespeare’s Pub sorts through tall tales and famous names to soak up English culture’s single most defining institution natpo.st/1a23jJc
Graphic: The Dambuster Raid Anniversary
Operation Chastise was a daring attack on German dams carried out on May 16-17, 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, flying modified Avro Lancasters, known as “The Dambusters,” the aircraft dropped a bomb specially developed to skip along the surface of a reservoir, over the anti-torpedo netting, and into the dam wall before detonating at a preset depth.
‘The buck stops at my desk’: Builder behind destruction of 2,300-year-old Mayan pyramid defends bulldozing
The owner of a road-building company in Belize that has been blamed for the near destruction of one of the country’s biggest Mayan pyramids said Thursday that the landowner gave permission to extract the material.
Businessman Denny Grijalva said the landowner had allowed excavations on his property for more than a decade.
In 1998, then businessmen Alfredo Martinez extracted stones from the same area also to build a road. Martinez is now Belize’s ambassador in neighbouring Guatemala.
Archeologists in Belize and around the world expressed outrage at the demolition of the Nohmul complex in northern Belize to extract crushed rock. (Jules Vasquez / AFP / Getty Image)
‘Nerdy’ teen finds over 365 Viking artifacts including 60 historic coins while exploring with metal detector
Danish museum officials say that an archaeological dig last year has revealed 365 items from the Viking era, including 60 rare coins.
Danish National Museum spokesman Jens Christian Moesgaard says the coins have a distinctive cross motif attributed to Norse King Harald Bluetooth, who is believed to have brought Christianity to Norway and Denmark.
Sixteen-year-old Michael Stokbro Larsen found the coins and other items with a metal detector in a field in northern Denmark. Stokbro Larsen, who often explores with his detector, said friends find him “a bit nerdy.” (AP Photo/Polfoto/Stokke Brothers)
Disbelief’ as ancient 2,300-year-old Mayan pyramid is bulldozed and used for road fill in Belize
A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize’s largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.
The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial centre dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.
“It’s a feeling of incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” Awe said. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.” (Jaime Awe / AP Photo)
Some of America’s first settlers turned to cannibalism, ‘powdered wife’ to survive, scientists say
Scientists revealed Wednesday that they have found the first solid archaeological evidence that some of the earliest American colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, survived harsh conditions by turning to cannibalism.
For years, there have been tales of people in the first permanent English settlement in America eating dogs, cats, rats, mice, snakes and shoe leather to stave off starvation. There were also written accounts of settlers eating their own dead, but archaeologists had been skeptical of those stories.
But now, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and archaeologists from Jamestown are announcing the discovery of the bones of a 14-year-old girl that show clear signs that she was cannibalized. Evidence indicates clumsy chops to the body and head of the girl, who appears to have already been dead at the time. (The Bettman Archive)
Hitler’s food tester opens up about screening meals in the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ after 68 years of secrecy
They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler’s food taster.
Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler’s food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his “Wolf’s Lair,” the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.
“He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there,” Woelk said of the Nazi leader. “And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him — that’s why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself.” (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber; AP Photo/US Army Signal Corps from Eva Braun’s album)
Minaret of landmark 12th century mosque destroyed at Syria UNESCO World Heritage site
The minaret of a landmark 12th century mosque in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed Wednesday, leaving the once-soaring stone tower a pile of rubble and twisted metal scattered in the tiled courtyard.
President Bashar Assad’s regime and anti-government activists traded blame for the destruction to the Umayyad Mosque, which occurred in the heart Aleppo’s walled Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
It was the second time in just over a week that a historic Sunni mosque in Syria has been seriously damaged. Mosques served as a launching pad for anti-government protests in the early days of the country’s 2-year-old uprising, and many have been targeted. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC)
Don Jail has done its time: After 150 years of controversy, notorious Toronto facility to be shut down
The Don Jail is full of ghosts. Ghosts of the executed, of the murdered, of the suicides; ghosts of their countless victims, whose legacies are forever tied to these men. The terrible history hangs heavy in the hallways, reveals itself in the etchings on cell walls, still preserved beneath layers of thick paint.
But after casting its shadow over east-end Toronto for a century and a half — surviving a raft of controversies and repeated calls for reform — the city’s most notorious jail is preparing to ship out its final inmates and shut down for good. The oldest section, featuring the iconic limestone image of Father Time above its entrance, has already morphed into administrative offices for the new Bridgepoint hospital next door, which begins treating patients this weekend. The rest of the Don, attached to the east end of the original building, will be decommissioned and torn down once the province opens its replacement, the Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke, this fall. (Tyler Anderson/National Post; Illustrations: Richard Johnson/National Post)
Archeological dig beneath Bloomberg’s future London headquarters reveals ancient Roman ruins dubbed ‘Pompeii of the north’
Archeological digs on the site of Bloomberg LP’s future London headquarters have revealed Roman building remains and some 10,000 well-preserved objects that have led the site to be dubbed the “Pompeii of the north.”
Museum of London archeologists have discovered good-luck charms, coins, drains and even leather shoes — dating from the mid-40’s A.D. (when the Romans founded London) to 410 A.D. The objects are in good condition because a now-lost river, the Walbrook, kept the ground wet and prevented their decay.
“What we’ve found is essentially a slice through the entire history of Roman London,” said Sophie Jackson, project manager for the Bloomberg Place excavation. “We’ve got, in one corner of this site, the whole sequence: every year of Roman occupation, represented by buildings and yards and alleyways — places where people lived and worked for 350 years, one layer above another.” (Museum of London Archeology)
Graphic: Rise of the mobile phone
Forty years ago this week, reporters watched amazed as Motorola electrical engineer Martin Cooper made the first public mobile phone call — to his competitor at Bell Labs, no less, reports Kristopher Morrison. It took 10 years before Motorola went from demo in New York to producing the first model for retail. Since then the technology has surged and this week Mr. Cooper said he believes the best is yet to come. “Technology has to be invisible. Transparent. Just simple. A modern cellphone in general has an instruction book that’s bigger and heavier than the cellphone. That’s not right,” Mr. Cooper told CBS.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stands in a British tank during a visit to British forces in Fallingbostel, some 120km (70 miles) south of Hamburg, Germany. on Sept. 17, 1986. Thatchers former spokesman, Tim Bell, said that the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died Monday morning, April 8, 2013, of a stroke. She was 87. (AP Photo/Jockel Fink)
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Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher dies at 87
Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990, died this morning following a stroke.
A statement from her spokesman, Lord Bell, said that her children, Mark and Carol, announced that she had died “peacefully.”
Baroness Thatcher, 87, had been increasingly ill in the last few year and was rarely seen in public.
She transformed Britain by privatizing state entities, battling trade union power, and carrying out a brand of conservatism that would eventually be called “Thatcherism.”
She was admired on the right and despised on the left. (AFP PHOTO/Suzanne Plunket/PoolSUZANNE PLUNKETT/AFP/Getty Images; AFP / Getty Images)
Archaeologists unearth ‘breathtaking’ 4,000-year-old complex at Iraqi home of Abraham
British archaeologists said Thursday they have unearthed a sprawling complex near the ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq, home of the biblical Abraham.
The structure, thought to be about 4,000 years old, probably served as an administrative center for Ur, around the time Abraham would have lived there before leaving for Canaan, according to the Bible.
The compound is near the site of the partially reconstructed Ziggurat, or Sumerian temple, said Stuart Campbell of Manchester University’s Archaeology Department, who led the dig.
“This is a breathtaking find,” Campbell said, because of its unusually large size – roughly the size of a football pitch, or about 80 metres on each side. The archaeologist said complexes of this size and age were rare. (Stuart Campbell / The Associated Press)
