A collection of notes by the 17th century English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, that scientists thought had been lost forever, have been found
What has been claimed as Europe’s oldest civilisation has been discovered by archaeologists across the continent. The report says more than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming
Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in growing a date palm from a seed that is 2,000 years old. The seed was unearthed during an excavation of the ancient mountain fortress of Masada 30 years ago and is thought to be the oldest seed ever germinated
British explorer, Colonel John Blashford-Snell, has found an early submarine that he believes was the inspiration for Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s vessel in Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. She was built in 1864 by a visionary craftsman, Julius Kroehl, for the Union forces during the American Civil War. But the boat, called Explorer, was never used in the conflict and was subsequently taken to Panama where she was used to harvest pearls. She was ideal for this purpose because of a unique lock-out system, identical to the one in the Nautilus from Verne’s book, published in 1870
The future for pianolas in Australia looks grim, with the country’s only manufacturer of pianola music set to close down. A collapse in demand for the music is sending the unique business to the wall. For 45 years, Barclay Wright has operated the Master Touch Piano Roll Company in Sydney. It is one of only two companies in the world that makes the rolls that guide the keys on pianolas. He has now been forced to put his building on the market
The Washington Post today confirmed that W Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was Deep Throat, the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard Nixon. The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C Bradlee
Two WWII-era Japanese soldiers have been discovered living in a Filipino jungle. They knew the war was over, but they still saw no reason to come out of hiding for all these years. According to Japanese media reports, the pair had been living with Muslim rebel groups and at least one of them has married a local woman and had a family. It has been speculated there could be as many as 40 Japanese soldiers living in similar conditions in the Philippines — via BoingBoing
Pedro Luna, an archeologist from the Instituto Nacional de Cultura in the southern city of Cuzco has announced that builders have found the fossil of a giant armadillo — which lived up to 2 million years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle — in southern Peru — via Beyond the Beyond
John Gillatt of Bolton, Manchester, managed to get lost in the Malaysian rain forest for five days without a map or compass, or any other basic survival material. To cap it all he said that he did not realise there were leopards in the jungle, poisonous snakes and tarantulas
. Not bad for someone describes as an English biologist
— via Improbable Research
A Tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone fossil was reluctantly broken to fit in a transport helicopter, and inside soft tissue was found. It appears to include blood vessels and bone cells. Scientists hope to isolate proteins, and perhaps even DNA
Artefacts found in caves by the Red Sea, along with pottery, could put a name to a mysterious land which provided the ancient Egyptians with gold, ebony and incense
The legend that rice porridge was used in mortar to make robust ramparts has been verified by archaeological research in the north-western province of Shaanxi. During recent maintenance work on the city wall of the provincial capital Xi’an, workers found that plaster remnants on ancient bricks were quite hard to remove. A chemical test showed that the mortar reacted the same as glutinous rice to a reagent
Thirteen metres beneath the streets of Rome, archaeologists have discovered what people are calling a new Pompeii that has been buried for nearly two millennia. Using video cameras, a team of researchers has unveiled a mosaic, in almost perfect condition, showing a team of naked men at the time of Emperor Nero, trampling the grape harvest
Ah, geek love in sensible trousers.
It probably says more about the weirdness of Teen Beat magazine than anything, but someone has dug up a 1983 photo spread the magazine did on then up and coming Bill Gates.
I’m left wondering what they were thinking with the poses. Is this some strange 80s teen equivalent of the naked girl draped over a car?
Note the Mac behind him in the first shot.
The discovery of two ancient devils
has challenged the traditional view of our distant ancestors as rat-sized creatures that scurried around the feet of dinosaurs. That view is now challenged after the discovery of two beautifully preserved fossils of related 130-million-year-old mammals, both bearing a resemblance to the Tasmanian Devil. They were found preserved in rock composed of volcanic and former riverbed sediments in north-eastern China’s Liaoning Province
Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs. But the inventor of the underlying technology won’t make a cent. Today, Jim Russell does consulting from a lab in the basement of his Bellevue home to keep in the game and supplement a modest pension from Battelle
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has hundreds of free MP3s of Sherlock Holmes radio plays from the 1930s — via boingboing
Lee Harvey Oswald-wannabes will be able to simulate the assassination of President John F Kennedy when Traffic Games releases the $9.99 JFK Reloaded to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy’s murder in Dallas. It is despicable
, said a spokesman for Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the late president’s brother
An amateur palaeontologist has unearthed the biggest dinosaur to be discovered in the British Isles — and possibly Europe — from a cliff overlooking an Isle of Wight beach. Scientists who have just finished analysing the dinosaur’s two neck bones believe it grew to about 66 feet long and weighed up to 50 tons. It lived around 130 million years ago when Britain was subtropical and still connected to Europe and North America
American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus
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