The corporate ads for Black History month have started. The special events are planned at schools, businesses and libraries.

And, once again, the debate in the black community has re-emerged about whether Black History Month should be celebrated or ditched because it has outlived its usefulness. Historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926 called for “Negro History Week.” He chose February because it coincided with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln, who both played key roles in freeing slaves.

In 1976, the week was expanded to a month and has been that way ever since....

Richmond National Battlefield Park has a Civil War story just as important as Gettysburg, in the eyes of Superintendent David Ruth, and now it's $4 million closer to generating Gettysburg-level attention.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Wednesday announced a $4 million grant from the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund at Glendale National Cemetery, site of the sixth of the Seven Days Battles that protected Richmond from capture in 1862.

The money will allow the park to add more than 300 acres to the Glendale property on Willis Church Road near state Route 5 east of Richmond. The land has been preserved by the Civil War Trust, whose president, James Lighthizer, said he recalled visiting the site as a student when only a single acre was preserved at Malvern Hill and at Glendale....

A handful of historical intelligence satellite images were declassified last month to coincide with a new display of the GAMBIT and HEXAGON spy satellites at the National Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites were formally declassified last September on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Reconnaissance Office.  At that time, the NRO released voluminous documentation on the development of those satellites.  But the associated imagery, which is held by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was not released.  Now a small number of satellite images have been made public.

However, the newly disclosed images are not originals, but are embedded in “posters” published by the NRO.  As such, they do not lend themselves to detailed analysis, complained Charles P. Vick of GlobalSecurity.org.  Nor are the original negatives of the declassified photos available for public inspection....

OK, they aren't exactly knee-slappers, but 3,500 years ago, the six riddles found on an ancient tablet in Iraq could well have been quite the howlers — and may even contain the oldest "Yo Mama" joke known to man.

The cuneiform chucklers, believed to be written by a Babylonian student circa 1,500 B.C., were carved on a damaged tablet, discovered in 1976 by an archaeologist, J.J. van Dijk. The tablet has since vanished, but van Dijk preserved what was written on it. Michael Streck and Nathan Wasserman studied the riddles and published their findings in the noted journal Iraq, published by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.

The riddles' subject matter is earthy - sex, beer, and, of course, humor at the expense of mom....

(Reuters) - Germany this week returned an ancient pre-Islamic sculpture looted during Afghanistan's civil war, giving hope to Kabul's cultural mavens that the rest of its stolen treasures will also make their way home.

Eight figures, one missing a torso and others without noses, make up the 30-cm high (12 inches) limestone antiquity from the second century AD, a reminder of Afghanistan's rich classical past as a confluence of cultures on the crossroads of Asia.

Faces turned to their left, they are believed to be audience members watching Buddha on his throne in the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, which stretched across part of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Foreign Ministry said....

NASA marked a trio of space tragedies with ceremonies at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday and at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, commemorating the astronauts who lost their lives in accidents.

Forty-five years ago, Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee climbed aboard their capsule for a routine pre-launch test. A fire broke out in the cabin, dooming the astronauts. The accident, traced to a design flaw, delayed America's foray to the moon for almost two years.

Saturday marks the 26th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Astronauts Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Greg Jarvis and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe died following the breakup of the space shuttle 73 seconds after liftoff on the cold winter morning of Jan. 28, 1986....

Tragedy struck again on Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle Columbia was destroyed 16 minutes before its scheduled touchdown in Florida following a 16-day research mission. The shuttle had been damaged by a piece of insulation that fell off the fuel tank during liftoff and damaged the ship's left wing....

George Washington wasn't only America's first president, he was also almost its first zombie. After Washington died from an illness in December 1799, his family nearly accepted an offer from a physician who believed he could bring America's first commander in chief back to life.

The website io9 writes that physician William Thornton is best remembered as the first designer of the U.S. Capitol. But he also proposed reviving George Washington's deceased body using a combination of blankets, an air pump and lamb's blood....

The Sheriff of Nottingham has said he is confident a £25m medieval village tourist attraction could still be built at the foot of Nottingham Castle.

Plans were put forward as part of the Sheriff's Commission two years ago.

The aim of the commission was to suggest how the city could make more of the legend of Robin Hood.

Several investors registered an initial interest in the plans but everything went on hold when the country entered a recession, Councillor Leon Unczer said....

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina said it doesn't seek another war over the Falkland Islands, and accused Britain of militarizing their sovereignty dispute by announcing Tuesday that it is sending an advanced warship to the islands along with Prince William "in the uniform of a conquistador."

The assignment of Prince William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, for a six-week military mission in the Falklands in February and March has been a sore point for Argentina. It has sought to reclaim the South Atlantic archipelago that it calls the Malvinas Islands ever since Britain seized the islands some 180 years ago.

Both countries have engaged in a war of words in recent weeks ahead of the 30th anniversary of Argentina's failed attempt to take the islands back. Its invasion ended with more than 600 Argentine soldiers killed and 200 British dead in an international humiliation for Argentina's military junta....

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service says it will re-authorize a permit for a 57-year-old statue of Jesus that had been facing eviction from a northwestern Montana ski resort.

The agency faced a firestorm of criticism from religious groups, the state's congressman and residents after it decided last fall to boot the Jesus statue from its hillside perch in the trees....

The president of the Gainesville Tea Party said she "would probably disagree" with the Tennessee Tea Party's push to remove slavery from textbook references that make the Founding Fathers look bad.

"If they're asking for an accurate rendition of what happened, then yes, I'll support what they have to do, but I do not support a whitewash," said Laurie Newsom, president of the Gainesville Tea Party.

According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Tennessee Tea Party wants to remove material from textbooks so "no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers."

Steven Noll, a UF American history professor, said he believes calling for the removal of slavery from textbooks is disparaging, dismissing and disrespectful....

The persuasive power of President Lyndon B. Johnson is the stuff of Washington legend. Selling ice to Eskimos is nothing. As the Senate majority leader and again as president, LBJ sold civil rights legislation to a Senate controlled by Southern segregationists.

But 40 years ago, in the winter of Johnson's life, when he had returned to his beloved Texas, he couldn't sell the Longhorns to one of the top recruits in the state. The running back went to Texas' archrival and fulfilled the potential that had prompted Longhorns coach Darrell K. Royal to enlist LBJ in the first place.

Recorded in the files of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin is the story of how the recruit, Joe Washington of Port Arthur, and his family refused an invitation from Johnson to go to the famed LBJ Ranch and meet the former president. Washington, a 5-foot-9 scatback, went to Oklahoma, where he became an All-American and, as a junior, finished third in the 1974 Heisman Trophy vote. After 10 years in the NFL, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame....

Wherever Newt Gingrich goes these days – stumping in Florida, arguing on televised debates with fellow Republican presidential hopefuls, jotting down notes for his umpteenth book – he carries with him a scary but useful ghost: Saul Alinsky.

The radical community organizer (gone now these 40 years) is the specter on which Barack Obama has modeled his life, Mr. Gingrich warns. It’s no coincidence, he says, that both Alinsky and Mr. Obama were from Chicago or that the president passed up far more lucrative possibilities to become … a community organizer....

Born in Chicago in 1909 to Russian immigrant parents, Alinsky worked his way through the University of Chicago, then dropped out of grad school to organize the poor in the city’s slums, demanding better working and living conditions. He went on to do the same thing in other US cities.

Published the year before he died in 1972, Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals” has been compared with the writing of Thomas Paine, and it inspired many young idealists (including, apparently, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who wrote her Wellesley College senior thesis on Alinsky)....

Obama has spoken nostalgically of his grandparents’ generation and said he hopes to “restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Economists have come to call that period, following World War II, the “Great Compression,” because inequality dramatically declined as middle-class wages surged. It lasted until the 1970s.

Some economists today are skeptical about whether that could happen again.

The economy often achieved growth of nearly 4 percent per year in the decades after World War II, and much of the gains accrued to middle-class workers. Over the past 30 years, it has grown at an annual pace of less than 3 percent.

In 1960, there were more than five workers for every retiree. Today, there are fewer than three. And in 1960, the U.S. economy represented about 40 percent of the world economy. Today, it represents less than a quarter of the world economy.

“It’s a very different world and I don’t think it’s going to come back close,” said James Heckman, a Nobel winning economist at the University of Chicago.

Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison’s laboratory, just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax cylinder phonograph records has been brought back to life after more than a century of silence.

The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Two preserve the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, a venerable German military strategist, reciting lines from Shakespeare and from Goethe’s “Faust” into a phonograph horn. (Moltke was 89 when he made the recordings — the only ones known to survive from someone born as early as 1800.) Other records found in the collection hold musical treasures — lieder and rhapsodies performed by German and Hungarian singers and pianists at the apex of the Romantic era, including what is thought to be the first recording of a work by Chopin.

Officials at Edison’s old laboratory in West Orange, N.J., now the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, unveiled the newly identified recordings on Monday....

A medieval barn described by the poet John Betjeman as the ‘cathedral of Middlesex’ has been rescued from decay and neglect for the nation, English Heritage said today.

Grade I-listed Harmondsworth Barn in west London joins the likes of Stonehenge, Osborne House and parts of Hadrian's Wall in the national collection of historic sites and monuments under the guardianship of English Heritage.

Built by Winchester College in 1426, the barn would have been used to store grain from the surrounding manor, owned by the Bishop of Winchester, with profits from the produce used to pay for the school....

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — “I’ll take you to see Mulberry Street,” said Guy McLain, the director of the Museum of Springfield History.

He meant the real Mulberry Street, the one that inspired the first of Dr. Seuss’ 44 children’s books.

I started to think what I might see on Mulberry Street. Truffula trees? Gerald McGrew? Gertrude McFuzz? A Once-ler or two?

That’s the thing about Dr. Seuss. He gets in your head and stays there.

I was listening to the radio last week when I heard an announcer say that this year is the 75th anniversary of the publication of “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.”...

A 150-year-old loop of rope, knotted into a hangman's noose, sits in a climate-controlled case in the underground archives of the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

Some say it should be burned, buried or returned to the hands of the Dakota people.

Others argue it should be displayed, like piles of shoes at Holocaust museums, as a powerful artifact to help people confront the grim story of the U.S.-Dakota War, which erupted in Minnesota in 1862 and ended with the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

The noose, and just what to make of it, is one sign of the historical reckoning looming this year as Minnesotans wrestle with how to mark the 150th anniversary of one its ugliest, yet often overlooked, episodes.

"This will be a very challenging year -- the wounds are still deep," said Republican state Rep. Dean Urdahl, a longtime history teacher whose Grove City home is three miles from where the war broke out. His great-great-grandfather buried some of its first victims. "It was our state's greatest tragedy."...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" to declare U.S. independence from Britain, yet he was also a lifelong slave owner who freed only nine of his more than 600 slaves during his lifetime.

That contradiction between ideals and reality is at the center of a new exhibit opening Friday as the Smithsonian Institution continues developing a national black history museum. It offers a look at Jefferson's Monticello plantation in Virginia through the lives of six slave families and artifacts unearthed from where they lived.

The exhibit, "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty," was developed with Monticello and will be on view at the National Museum of American History through mid-October. It includes a look at the family of Sally Hemings, a slave. Most historians now believe she had an intimate relationship with the third president and that he fathered her children....

Archaeologists excavating what they claim is Britain's oldest house have secured more than £1m in funding.

The circular structure at Star Carr near Scarborough was found in 2008 and dates from 8,500BC.

Archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and York say the site is deteriorating due to environmental changes.

The European Research Council has given them £1.23m to finish the work before information from the site is lost....

Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. At his feet are the dripping remains of a vase that moments earlier had been resting on the sea floor, its home for more than a millennium. “It's our best day so far,” he says of his dive that morning. “We've discovered two ancient shipwrecks.”

Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens have spent the day diving near the cliffs of the tiny island of Dia in the eastern Mediterranean. They have identified two clusters of pottery dating from the first century BC and fifth century AD. Together with other remains that the team has discovered on the island's submerged slopes, the pots reveal that for centuries Greek, Roman and Byzantine traders used Dia as a refuge during storms, when they couldn't safely reach Crete.

It is a nice archaeological discovery, but Foley was hoping for something much older. His four-week survey of the waters around Crete last October is part of a long-term effort to catalogue large numbers of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. And the grand prize would be a wreck from one of the most influential and enigmatic cultures of the ancient world — the Minoans, who ruled these seas more than 3,000 years ago.

Some researchers believe that quest to be close to impossible. But Foley and a few competitors are using high-tech approaches such as autonomous robots and new search strategies that they say have a good chance of locating the most ancient of shipwrecks. If they succeed, they could transform archaeologists' understanding of a crucial period in human history, when ancient mariners first ventured long distances across the sea....

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Almost half of American Indians and Alaska Natives identify with multiple races, representing a group that grew by 39 percent over a decade, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday.

Of the 5.2 million people counted as Natives in 2010, nearly 2.3 million reported being Native in combination with one or more of six other race categories, showcasing a growing diversity among Natives. Those who added black, white or both as a personal identifier made up 84 percent of the multi-racial group.

Tribal officials and organizations look to Census data for funding, to plan communities, to foster solidarity among tribes and for accountability from federal agencies that have a trust responsibility with tribal members....

A survey carried out two days before Holocaust Memorial Day shows more than a fifth of young Germans do not know the name of Auschwitz or what happened there.

Twenty one per cent of people aged between 18 and 30 quizzed about the most notorious Nazi extermination camp had not heard of it, the survey revealed.

And almost half of all those canvassed by the Forsa research institute said they had never visited a concentration camp despite the fact Germany has made all of those on its soil permanent memorials to the dead....