History - still with us

…"Sunshine Superman" from singer/songwriter Donovan… fifty years ago that it was released… Donovan announced a fiftieth anniversary tour to take place in September and October, celebrating the album. …

In late antiquity, the religion split the Mediterranean world in two. Now it is remaking the Continent.… “all European history has been a great emigration toward the North.” … European unity began with the concept… of a Christendom in “inevitable opposition” to Islam… Europe must now find some other way to dynamically incorporate the world of Islam without diluting its devotion to the rule-of-law-based system that arose in Europe’s north…

This is so sublime and funny - especially for those who have lived with Germans for years - I don't even know where to start.…

Thirty-one rolls of undeveloped film, all shot by the same American soldier during World War II were passed along to developers at The Rescued Film Project. There, they carefully worked to develop photos taken seventy years ago.…

…de Löwenmensch, the Lion Man… a foot tall, carved out of a single mammoth tusk… found in a cave in Germany in 1939 and, owing to some little distractions in the country at the time, forgotten for thirty years. …forty thousand years old, the oldest undisputed representational sculpture found to date.…

The animation was created by the Imperial War Museum to mark the re-opening of the American Air Museum. It shows the progress of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against the Germans from 1939 to 1945 …

…It is intricately made with polished green stone and is thought to have adorned a very important woman or child on only special occasions. Yet this is no modern-day fashion accessory and is instead believed to be the oldest stone bracelet in the world, dating to as long ago as 40,000 years.

Unearthed in the Altai region of Siberia in 2008, after detailed analysis Russian experts now accept its remarkable age as correct.

New pictures show this ancient piece of jewellery in its full glory with scientists concluding it was made by our prehistoric human ancestors, the Denisovans, and shows them to have been far more advanced than ever realised.…

…Denisovans… were known as homo altaiensis, an extinct species of humans genetically distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans… not clear yet how the Denisovans could have made the bracelet with such skill.…

Denisovans… dated back as early as 600,000 years ago…

…Professor Eleanor Dickey travelled around Europe to view the scraps of material that remain from ancient Latin school textbooks, or colloquia, which would have been used by young Greek speakers in the Roman empire learning Latin between the second and sixth centuries AD. The manuscripts, which Dickey has brought together and translated into English for the first time in her forthcoming book Learning Latin the Ancient Way: Latin Textbooks in the Ancient World, lay out everyday scenarios to help their readers get to grips with life in Latin. Subjects range from visiting the public baths to arriving at school late – and dealing with a sozzled close relative.…

The wreck of a World War One German U-boat has been found… lying about 55 miles (90km) east of Caister-on-Sea. U-31 went missing in January 1915, struck a mine in the North Sea and sank. All 35 men on board died. …As an official military maritime grave, the wreck of U-31 will remain in its final resting place.…

…U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn reduced the 40-year racketeering sentence being served by Gregory Scarpa Jr. as he blasted prosecutors and the FBI for their handling of the reduction request. The 10-year reduction means Scarpa could be eligible for release in 2025, though the judge said he could die before that because of cancer and generally poor health.

In a written ruling, the judge said that the son of an infamous Colombo crime family enforcer reached out to the government in 2005 while Scarpa and Terry Nichols were serving time together. The judge noted that Scarpa told the FBI Nichols had told him there was a secret cache of explosives in the house where he lived at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

An FBI agent interviewed Scarpa, and a polygraph examination was conducted, but the FBI did not conduct the search until it was prodded to do so by a congressman who was contacted by a private forensic investigator Scarpa had contacted, the judge said.…

Some went to work as hospital orderlies. Others picked cotton, baled hay, or tilled soil, living in accommodations near farmland. They ate dinner with families and caught the eyes of single women, running off with them whenever and however they could.

The only thing separating the visitors from the locals of Hearne, Texas was the “PW” insignia stitched into their clothing—that, and the fact many couldn't speak English. …

…Galgal Refaim (Hebrew for “wheel of ghosts”) is the largest and oldest stone structure in the Middle East, containing 42,000 basalt stones and dating back 5,000 years – making it a contemporary of England’s Stonehenge.

But curiously, the archaeological site remains shrouded in mystery and experts cannot agree on what it was used for. Situated on the Golan Heights, the structure is comprised of concentric circles in the form of a labyrinth with walls reaching some eight feet high. …

…The Nazi soldiers made their orders very clear: Jewish American prisoners of war were to be separated from their fellow brothers in arms and sent to an uncertain fate.

But Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds would have none of that. As the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer held in the German POW camp, he ordered more than 1,000 Americans captives to step forward with him and brazenly pronounced: “We are all Jews here.”

He would not waver, even with a pistol to his head, and his captors eventually backed down.

Seventy years later, the Knoxville, Tennessee, native is being posthumously recognized with Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during World War II. He’s the first American serviceman to earn the honor.…

Underwater archaeologists have discovered 22 shipwrecks around a small Greek archipelago, revealing what may be the ancient shipwreck capital of the world.…