Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. Now, after 17 years, the mystery of who the Afghan girl is has been solved
An electronic version of the Domesday Book compiled in 1986 is now unreadable. The computers needed to read the discs of the £2.5 million BBC Domesday Project are now obsolete. While the original Domesday Book compiled in 1086 is in fine condition in the Public Record Office, Kew
Researchers in the US think they have solved a puzzle dating back to the days of the 17th century Dutch scientist, astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens
A team of Egyptologists from Sydney’s Macquarie University is the toast of the archaeological world after making significant new finds in an ancient burial ground on the outskirts of Cairo. The Australian team, led by Dr Christiana Kohler, has uncovered more than 20 tombs from Egypt’s archaic period, the First Dynasty
Science may rewrite history if bones found under an Italian church prove to be those of Cannibal Count Ugolino, one of the darkest historical figures to make an appearance in Dante’s Inferno
A secret group of developed nations conspired to limit the effectiveness of the UN’s first conference on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. The existence of this cabal, known as the Brussels group, is revealed in 30-year-old British government records that were kept secret until this week
A US astronomer claims he has found the first mention of the star of Bethlehem outside the Bible. The reference is in a 4th-century manuscript written by a Roman astrologer and christian convert called Firmicus Maternus
Italian archaeologists have discovered one of the world’s best-preserved prehistoric villages, a Bronze Age Pompeii that was buried in volcanic ash near the world-famous Roman city almost 4,000 years ago
Paintings of mythical animal-human hybrids are among the oldest surviving art ever produced. New research suggests that minotaurs, satyrs, the werewolves beloved of Hollywood and even Egypt’s animal-headed gods are latecomers to the art scene compared with the therianthropes carved by the earliest artists on bone and painted on stone
The modern technology of e-mail and laser printing speeded up the publication of complete volumes of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the archaeological finds of the 20th century
The largest complete fossil of a cockroach has been found in the United States. The insect, about the size of a mouse, lived 55 million years before the first dinosaurs walked the planet
A web site called the Wayback Machine last week opened a gateway to more than 10 billion archived web pages. But it also opened a can of worms. The site has been using software robots to record web pages since 1996. But these include pages that were later removed by site owners because they contained material that was pirated, illegal, or deemed too sensitive. Now where’s my pet boy Sherman
Farhad Azad is hoping to bring back Afghanistan’s cultural history. With his web site, he wants to archive what he believes to be a vital piece of Afghanistan’s history
Nearly a century ago, something exploded in the skies over the Tunguska region of Siberia with a force rivalling an atomic explosion. It left in its wake a scarred landscape littered with tens of thousands of felled trees, and a mystery that has plagued scientists for decades, defying explanation
A brief history of Ulughbek, a 15th-century Afghan astronomer-prince whose quest for knowledge led to his overthrow by religious extremists
When cartoon detective Dick Tracy first appeared 70 years ago, his wristwatch communicator was pure fantasy. This week IBM and Citizen announced they would recruit dozens of Dick Tracys on Japanese and US university campuses to trial a wristwatch computer early next year
The priestesses of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece may have been intoxicated on natural gases when they issued prophecies that helped shape the foundation of Western civilisation
Thirty years ago, a simple message launched a revolution in the history of human communications. That dispatch is now considered the first e-mail, or electronic message, to have been sent from one computer to another through a network. Devised by BBN Technologies scientist Ray Tomlinson, the system for sending e-mail was initially a demonstration of what ARPAnet — the Internet’s precursor — could do
Military and private satellite snapshots of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey reveal an anomaly that researchers say might be the remains of Noah’s Ark
A world-renowned Roman Catholic scholar says he has found evidence that the Catholic church sanctioned and blessed same-sex relationships from the Middle Ages to the 19th century
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