Wonderful news from the northbound platform of the Northern Line at Embankment Tube station. London Underground have reinstated the original Mind the Gap announcement — just so that the widow of the man who said it can go and hear his voice — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A crystal found in a shipwreck could be similar to a sunstone — a mythical navigational aid said to have been used by Viking mariners, scientists believe.
The team from France say the transparent crystal may have been used to locate the Sun even on cloudy days.
This could help to explain how the Vikings were able to navigate across large tracts of the sea — well before the invention of the magnetic compass.
However, a number of academics treat the sunstone theory with scepticism — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Say the name Kathleen Suckley to Corpus Christi Police Captain Tim Wilson and his response is immediate: 8 April 1993
.
He never met her, but he thinks about her often. He checks the file he has checked a million times before, looking for something, anything, to solve the homicide cold case he first responded to 20 years ago.
Suckley was 29 when her throat was slashed and she was stabbed about 40 times inside her rented duplex, while her two sons, ages 4 and 1, were home.
I haven’t forgotten,
Wilson said. It’s just a tragic incident; she was a young girl, she had a good life before her, she had two infants, she had a nice family. To me it seemed like such a useless crime.
The Department of Public Safety last week unveiled a new Web page dedicated to unsolved cold case homicides. It will rotate through the Texas Rangers Top 12 Cold Case Investigations
, and Suckley is among the first 12 to be featured. Like Wilson, DPS spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said the goal of the new website is to make sure the victims are not forgotten and to try to catch a break in even the coldest of cases — via redwolf.newsvine.com
KindredCoda’s 1080p, frame-for-frame re-creation of Marv Newland’s 1969 short film Bambi Meets Godzilla
, with newly restored picture and sound. This project is in no way directly involved with Marv Newland or with International Rocketship Limited
Igor Sikorsky and Orville Wright, 1942 — via Awesome People Hanging Out Together
Housed in the 600,000 square-foot former International Shoe Company, City Museum in St Louis, Missouri, is an eclectic mixture of children’s playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel made out of unique, found objects. At one time, these were chutes in a factory for sending shoes down to lower floors — via Neatorama
A new tool has been developed that can reconstruct long-dead languages.
Researchers have created software that can rebuild protolanguages — the ancient tongues from which our modern languages evolved.
To test the system, the team took 637 languages currently spoken in Asia and the Pacific and recreated the early language from which they descended.
The work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Archaeologists in Peru say they have discovered a temple at the ancient site of El Paraiso, near the capital, Lima.
Entry to the rectangular structure, estimated to be up to 5,000 years old, was via a narrow passageway, they say.
At its centre, the archaeologists from Peru’s Ministry of Culture found a hearth which they believe was used to burn ceremonial offerings.
With 10 ruins, El Paraiso is one of the biggest archaeological sites in central Peru.
The archaeologists found the structure, measuring 6.82m by 8.04m, in the right wing of the main pyramid — via redwolf.newsvine.com
18 September 1961. New York. Helena Rubinstein, 655 Fifth Avenue. Hair dryers.
This looks as regimented as anything the Army had to offer, although I do spy one nonconformist wearing flats. Photo by Samuel H Gottscho — via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive
The body of an unidentified man recovered from the sea off north Wales 30 years ago will be exhumed this month in the hope that it can be returned to his family.
The exhumation, from an unmarked grave at Menai Bridge cemetery, on Anglesey, is part of a nnationwide attempt by police forces around Britain to put names to more than 1,100 unidentified bodies dating back to the 1950s.
The national Missing Persons Bureau, which is the driving force behind the work, has established a website containing images and identifying features of the individuals who have remained nameless for so many years, in the hope of closing some of the cases. The site is one of only a few such facilities in the world.
As well as 1,029 men and women, the site contains details of 105 babies in unmarked graves, unclaimed by families, sometimes for decades — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has facilitated the purchase of the David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix, Arizona, through an LLC owned by an anonymous benefactor. The transaction closed on 20 December for an undisclosed price. The property will be transferred to an Arizona not-for-profit organization responsible for the restoration, maintenance and operation of the David Wright House.
Planning has begun for the restoration of the house and grounds, and additional donations from the public will be sought for the costs of restoration at the appropriate time. The new owner will request that the City of Phoenix grant landmark designation to the house. The goal after restoration is to make the house available for educational purposes.
This purchase is a magnificent and generous action,
said Larry Woodin, president of the Chicago-based Conservancy. It is a gift to the people of Phoenix, a gift to the worldwide architectural community and to everyone that cares about the history of modern architecture. We are enormously grateful to this benefactor for making sure there will be a new chapter in the life of this important and unique Frank Lloyd Wright building
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
An encrypted World War II message found in a fire place strapped to the remains of a dead carrier pigeon may have been cracked by a Canadian enthusiast.
Gord Young, from Peterborough, in Ontario, says it took him 17 minutes to decypher the message after realising a code book he inherited was the key.
Mr Young says the 1944 note uses a simple World War I code to detail German troop positions in Normandy.
GCHQ says it would be interested to see his findings — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A piano that features in the classic 1940s film Casablanca has been sold for more than $600,000 (£370,000) at an auction in New York.
The upright piano appears in one of the film’s most iconic scenes, in which Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick utters the line: Here’s looking at you, kid.
It was sold to an unknown buyer at Sotheby’s in New York — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Milan’s Duomo cathedral is putting its gargoyles up for adoption in an attempt to raise money for renovations.
The cathedral is raising money for essential maintenance amid cuts to Italy’s culture budget.
Donors looking for a new idea for their charity dollars can now adopt one of the cathedral’s 135 gargoyles.
For $123,000 donors will have their name engraved under their very own gothic gargoyle — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A rare Enigma encoding machine has sold at auction in London for £85,250.
That is more than its £40,000-£60,000 estimate, but less than the £131,180 price an Enigma sold for last year.
The typewriter-like devices were used by the Nazis in World War II to encrypt and decode messages sent between the military and their commanders.
Interest has been high as this is the centenary year of Alan Turing’s birth — the British mathematician who played a key role in breaking the Enigma code — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered bracelets with snake heads, a tiara with animal motifs and a horse-head piece in a hoard of ancient golden artefacts unearthed during excavations at a Thracian tomb in the north of country.
The artefacts have been dated to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century BC. They were found in the biggest of 150 ancient tombs of the Getae people, a Thracian tribe that was in contact with the Hellenistic world. The hoard also yielded a golden ring, 44 female figure depictions and 100 golden buttons.
These are amazing findings from the apogee of the rule of the Getae,
said Diana Gergova, head of the archaeologist team and a researcher of Thracian culture with the Sofia-based National Archaeology Institute. From what we see up to now, the tomb may be linked with the first known Getic ruler, Cothelas.
The site is at the ancient Getic burial complex near the village of Sveshtari, about 250 miles north-east of Sofia. One of the tombs there, the Tomb of Sveshtari, is included in the Unesco world heritage list for its unique architectural decor showing half-human, half-plant female figures and painted murals — via The Guardian
Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio has applauded the likely $2.38 million-sale of the historic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Phoenix to an anonymous buyer, saying the transaction is the first of many more steps to come in order to permanently protect the property.
However, a planned city vote on designating the property as historic is likely to moved back because of the pending sale.
In a letter to his supporters Thursday, the day after the announcement of the Wright-home’s sale, DiCiccio said the property was one of the most important treasures in Phoenix
and the anonymous buyer’s intent to preserve the iconic home was fantastic news
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
A World War II German Enigma cipher machine is on the block at Bonhams, the London auction house, this month.
The 1941 oak model, described as an extremely rare example
, is expected to go under the hammer on 14 November for an estimated £40,000-£60,000.
In 2010, a 1939 Enigma fetched £67,250 at auction — that model was furnished with a modern power supply and had some restoration. The Bonhams machine is in working order, completely untouched and unrestored, Bonham’s Laurence Fisher, says — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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