Rare 13th-century wall paintings have been uncovered after months of painstaking conservation work at a parish church in London’s East End
From the beginning, the heads of the American Central Intelligence Agency followed a plan to use the work of agents posing as human shields
. The CIA chiefs used peace activists in America carefully and systematically
The 70th anniversary wasn’t noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago — 27 February 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilised citizens all across the world
The Australian Defence Force’s $1.23 billion Jindalee over-the-horizon radar network has made its official debut after 40 years of development
Swiss banking giant UBS said it will hand over to the US government some Iraqi assets that had been frozen since 1990. Now if only the Catholic Bank would hand over stolen Nazi assets from WWII
Egypt’s legendary library of Alexandria boasted that it had a copy of every known manuscript in the world. The directors of the new Alexandria Library have joined with an American artist and software engineers in an ambitious effort to make virtually all of the world’s books available online
The last secret of one of the greatest historical hoaxes in the history of the West has finally been revealed — it was a joke pulled on an eminent UC Berkeley professor by members of E Clampus Vitus, which describes itself as either a historical drinking society or a drinking historical society. It involves the mysterious Plate of Brasse
supposedly left by Sir Francis Drake in Marin County 424 years ago when he claimed what he called New Albion for England
The construction of one of Britain’s most famous ancient landmarks, the towering megaliths at Stonehenge, might have been supervised by the Swiss, or maybe even the Germans
Paul Lawton, a submarine buff, sifted through disparate accounts of a WWII ship’s demise in New England waters to get history rewritten
Antoni Gaudí, the Barcelona visionary who was the greatest Spanish exponent of the Art Nouveau style, has had his luscious 1908 design for a New York hotel submitted for the World Trade Centre site
Hunting skills may not after all have triggered the tremendous burst of human evolution at the beginning of the ice ages nearly two million years ago. Instead of man the hunter, the driving force behind this evolutionary surge may have been woman the gatherer, with both mother and grandmother playing a vital role
The Denver police have gathered information on unsuspecting local activists since the 1950s, secretly storing what they learned on simple index cards in a huge cabinet at police headquarters. Among those the police spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organisations.
Lurking in the heart of the Melbourne Museum is the 50 year old CSIRAC computer, and it’s still functional. Sporting a whopping 2K of RAM and screaming along at a blistering 300kHz it proves the adage that they really don’t make ’em like they used to
A banner hanging in United Record Pressing‘s shipping room gives a peek at what the Nashville company hopes for its future: Vinyl Rules! Pure analogue, anti-digital revolution
Take a tour of London Underground stations that have been abandoned during the more than a century history of the commuter system. It’s all very Neverwhere
Consumer Reports magazine’s vintage photo gallery is a fun site in which you can see photos from when the magazine reviewed electric toasters in 1956, in-car record players in 1961, radio sunglasses in 1966, and other good stuff. Don’t forget about the flaming Nerf ball — via Slashdot
Relatives of Ray Wallace, the man behind the legend of Bigfoot, which became the US equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster, have finally confirmed it was a hoax after his death at the age of 84
The Digital Domesday project which had become unusable has now been revived thanks to the successful emulation of a 1980’s era Acorn computer. Folks at Leeds University and University of Michigan did the emulation work. This is just one early indication of how difficult it will be to maintain our digital heritage. Note that the printed Domesday Book, on which the digital project was modelled, is still quite accessible after almost 1000 year
The Miskovic family in the town of Danilovgrad, Montenegro thought a World War II artillery shell was the ideal replacement for a broken table leg — until it exploded, injuring eight people as they were about to eat a meal
In a unique crackdown on illegal file-sharing, a Danish anti-piracy group mailed invoices to alleged pirates demanding compensation for downloading copyrighted materials off the Internet
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