Australian anthropologists have discovered a new human species that could rewrite the history of human evolution. They unearthed the skeleton of what is believed to be a fully-grown female, barely a metre tall, on the Indonesian island of Flores
On a shelf in a locked basement room underneath the British Museum, are kept 11 wooden tablets; they are covered in purple velvet. And no one among the museum’s staff — including Neil MacGregor, the director — is permitted to enter the room. The tablets — or tabots — are sacred objects in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and are regarded as representing the original Ark of the Covenant, which housed the Ten Commandments and the Orthodox Church has been lobbying for their return — or at least easy access to them — for more than 50 years — via Pagan Prattle
The British Library is creating an archive to store the e-mails of the nation’s top authors and scientists, as the written word is replaced by electronic messages. A spokeswoman says it welcomes e-mails from prominent people in all walks of life
A US District Judge rejected the government’s arguments to keep the secret records of John Lennon sealed. The FBI argued that releasing the last ten pages would pose a risk to national security as a foreign government secretly gave information to the US Government. Looks like another big step in the Freedom of Information Act
University of Washington scientists plan to infect monkeys with a killer flu virus grown from tissue exhumed from victims of the 1918 epidemic. They hope the insight they gain will unravel the mystery of why tens of millions of people worldwide died from the virulent flu strain and lead to development of better vaccines and drugs that may save lives in the future
A burial site of six Viking men and women, with swords, spears, jewellery, fire-making materials and riding equipment, has been found in England. The site, discovered near Cumwhitton in northwestern England, is believed to date to the early 10th century
Anthropologists stepped into a hornets’ nest after revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia. The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today’s native Americans who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first
On 1 January 2005, Elvis Presley’s That’s All Right
— a 50-year-old tune currently enjoying the #3 chart spot in Great Britain — will enter the public domain. Anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master or the performer’s heirs. BMG will start losing a significant piece of its catalogue income in Europe. As That’s All Right
is being hailed by some as the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, the implications are that every year after 2005, more recordings that defined the genre will fall into public domain
When construction workers in Oslo dug a drainage ditch around a church in the Old City
district, they uncovered a slew of skeletons little more than a foot below the surface. According to an Aftenposten Norway article, the skeletons likely belong to the former tenants of a Dominican monastery located in the area from 1240 until 1537 — via BoingBoing
Before the Reformation the most blessed resting spots were awarded hierarchically and could be bought. The best plots lay under the holy water that drained off the church roof and dripped onto the ground below… The skeletons also bear witness to medieval times as an age of violence. Many of the bones reveal notches that must have resulted from brutal force
The legendary island nation Atlantis, the existence of which has sparked debate for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson
US researchers have unearthed what they say may be the oldest known brewery in the Andes, a pre-Incan plant at least 1000 years old that could produce drinks for hundreds of people at one sitting. The University of Florida said its archaeologists and researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago found the brewery at Cerro Baul, a mountaintop religious centre of the Wari empire that ruled what is now Peru hundreds of years before the Incas
Revelations on the ABC-TV program Media Watch last night that the national broadcaster has taken a policy decision to require documentary makers to seek permission from politicians who feature in news reports prior to selling or licensing the clips reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of copyright
70-year-old Aldo Busato, a retired Italian farmer, died on Saturday when a World War One bomb, part of his collection of military memorabilia, exploded while he was showing it to a friend in his garden
Two mines thought to date from the Second World War were found off the Spanish coast after a swimmer spotted one device nestling on the seabed. Bomb disposal experts cordoned off the beach to deactivate the first mine which measured some 20 inches in diameter
Makers of the revived Zeppelin airship delivered their first helium-filled craft to a commercial user Saturday, a Japanese company that plans to use the 12-seat craft for sightseeing trips and advertising. The granddaughter of the original airship’s inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was on hand as Japan’s Nippon Airship Corporation took delivery of the 247-foot ship, destined for sightseeing and advertising flights in Japan and a starring role at the 2005 world’s fair in the city of Aichi
Approximately a million news stories from the 19th century are going online. The project will cost roughly £$2 million and include 100 years of news and images from publications that are no longer copyright protected, and currently only available at the Newspaper Library in Colindale, North London. 52,000 newspapers and magazines will be included and the project should take 18 months to complete
The German inventor who pioneered the technology behind the Sony Walkman has won a multimillion-pound payout nearly 30 years after dreaming up his invention. Andreas Pavel’s original 1970s concept of the stereobelt
revolutionised portable listening and Sony’s version — the Walkman — became a global hit. Now the 57-year-old stereo enthusiast, who works in Milan, is threatening to use his payout to sue Apple Computer, whose iPod portable music player is the digital successor to the Walkman. He is believed to be considering cases in Italy and Canada, where his patents were filed later and may still be valid
In celebration of D-Day, Colossus, one of the earliest electronic code-breaking machines, has been rebuilt after ten years of effort by computer conservationists. Colossus was used to break the Lorenz cipher. Remarkably, the use of parallel processing (five tape channels) and short gate delay time (1.2µs) allows the Colossus to match the speed of a modern PC
The BBC appears to be delivering on its promise of releasing its material to the public — they’re modelling their licensing on Creative Commons. Lawrence Lessig is very excited and so I imagine, will a lot of other people be — rightly
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