The face in the sepia photograph is taut and strained, the glare fixed and defiant – for who knows the trials Mary Morrison had already undergone in life before her conviction at Manchester assize courts on 16 July 1883? Nearly 130 years on, her portrait, attached to her prison record, is one of hundreds of Victorian female prisoners placed online for the first time by a genealogy website.

Morrison, 40 and a servant, was convicted of throwing acid in the face of her estranged husband after she had confronted him at his workplace in Ancoats in the city, demanding that he pay her her weekly allowance.

The tale is told in a single newspaper paragraph pasted next to her photograph: "He promised to give it to her in a day or two but she said that would not do for her and, taking from under her shawl a jug containing undiluted sulphuric acid, she threw [it] at her husband saying: 'Take that. I'll make you worse than you are'."

The Ancestry.co.uk website is publishing 4,400 parole records with 500 photographs of some of the prisoners sentenced in the mid-19th century. They sit demurely in their uniforms, with white pinafores, some wearing mob caps, hair parted in the middle, hands spread in front of their stomachs: murderers and thieves, some of the latter sentenced to savage prison terms for the most minor of crimes....

To the casual observer, the visiting Europeans at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial in the hills above Jerusalem, looked like any other foreign delegation. In the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations, where Gentiles who protected Jews are honored, they laid a wreath and posed for a photo before signing the visitors’ book with the solemn promise: “We will want to make sure that ‘never again’ really means never again.”

But these were no ordinary travelers with Zionist sympathies. Rather, on this trip to Israel were a Belgian politician known for his contacts with SS veterans, an Austrian with neo-Nazi ties, and a Swede whose political party has deep roots in Swedish fascism—unlikely visitors to pay their respects at Yad Vashem, perhaps, unless one considers the political currents in Israel and Europe, and the adage that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend.

Only a few years ago, many of Europe’s far-right politicians were openly anti-Semitic. Now some of the same populist parties are embracing Israel to unite against what they perceive to be a common threat.

Over the past few years, Europe’s right-wing political leaders have tapped into rising worries over immigration from Islamic countries to predominantly secular and Christian Europe, where the number of Muslims has grown from 29.6 million in 1990 to 44.1 million in 2010, or up to 10 percent of the population in countries such as France. Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam firebrand whose Party for Freedom last July gained a record 24 seats in the Netherlands’ Parliament, likens the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and has called Muhammad a “devil” spreading a “fascist ideology,” and has vowed to stop Muslim immigration. In Switzerland, 57 percent of voters banned the construction of minarets in a popular referendum in late 2009. In poll after poll, large majorities of Europeans say they worry about the spread of Islam and that Muslims have not properly integrated....

Two years ago this month, President Obama met with the families of Sept. 11 victims and other victims of terrorism at a special meeting in Washington, D.C., and promised “swift and certain justice” for the perpetrators. But the high expectations of that meeting have given way to frustration for many who met with Obama.

But with no timetable for a trial for those charged with being behind the attacks, Hamilton Peterson, who lost his father and stepmother on 9/11, says the families feel betrayed.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the complaints of the victim’s families. But outside groups say that part of the problem for the administration has been the ongoing legal and political fight over the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The president wants to close it, but a bipartisan coalition in Congress has adamantly refused to allow him to bring the inmates to facilities inside the U.S....

Archaeologists succeeded in thwarting a looting attempt of a 160-ton colossus of the 19th dynasty king Ramses II.

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the statue of king Ramses II


the statue of king Ramses II
the statue of king Ramses II

Last night looters sneaked into the southern quarry of the upper Egyptian city of Aswan in an attempt to cut and remove the statue of King Ramses II. The statue is half buried in the sand as it was originally cut in red granite and left in situ. Following an immediate report from the quarry’s security guards, archaeologists along with security personal headed directly to the site where they caught the thieves red handed.

Zahi Hawass, minister of state for antiquities affairs, described the statue as beautifully carved although it does not bear any engravings. The statue is six meters high, 175 centimeters in width and eight centimeters thick. It depicts king Ramses II in the shape of the god Osiris.

Mohamed El-Beyali, director general of Aswan and Nubia antiquities, told Ahram Online that the statue is in a very well preserved condition and is one of the quarry’s landmarks. He added that it remains unknown why ancient Egyptians carved the statue and left it in the quarry. The site also includes several unfinished artefacts, which explains the quarrying and sculpting system used by ancient Egyptians at the time. Other unfinished statues and huge basins from the Graeco Roman era are also located there. The quarry was used by ancient Egyptian to cut granite blocks and for the constructions of temples and carving colossi....

A terra cotta figurine unearthed from a late fourth-century tomb in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, is thought to be the oldest "haniwa" found yet, according to the local authority.

The figurine, which is holding a shield and appears to be smiling, was apparently meant to guard the Chihara Ohaka tomb, the Sakurai board of education said Thursday.

The earliest haniwa in human form had until now been dated to the first half of the fifth century, but the Sakurai figurine beats the record by several decades, the board said....

About 11,500 years ago, at a seasonal base camp in central Alaska, a 3-year-old child died. Its family burned the small body, perhaps ceremonially, in the house's central hearth, and then they moved on, never to use the home again.

Last year, archaeologists discovered the remains of the house and burial, providing a rare slice of life of the first Americans. Some aspects of the burial resemble those in both Siberia and North America, but in other respects the new find is completely unique. And it may ultimately reveal any genetic links between these early Alaskans and other so-called Paleoindians in North America.

At least 14,000 years ago, humans began moving from Siberia into Alaska, crossing a land bridge over what is now the Bering Sea and then colonizing both North and South America. But the bones and burials of these ancient Alaskans are vanishingly rare, as are the remains of their houses. While excavating at the site of Upward Sun River, near the Tanama River in central Alaska, archaeologist Ben Potter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and his colleagues discovered the outlines of the foundation of a circular house, including a scattering of stone tools and animal bones on the floor and traces of posts that may have held up the walls and roof. As the team reports in this week's issue of Science, the center of the house was taken up with a large circular pit containing the fragmented, partially burnt bones of the child. ...

Archeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs in the mountainous jungle of southeastern Peru they say is as important as the discovery of the lost city of Machu Picchu.

The tombs belonging to the Wari culture were found on the jungle-covered eastern slope of the Andes in Cuzco department at a long-abandoned city thought to be the last redoubt of Inca resistance to Spanish colonial rule.

The Waris, a pre-Inca civilization, had an enormous cultural impact in the Andean region between 600 and 1200. The Inca empire (around 1400 to 1532) was the largest pre-Columbian empire in the Americas.

"It is an impressive Wari find in the Cuzco jungle that opens a new chapter on archaeological research and forces us to re-write history," said Juan Garcia, the cultural director for the Cuzco region, as he announced the discovery late Wednesday.

"The discovery is one of the most important ever, and is comparable to Machu Picchu... and the Lord of Sipan," said Garcia, referring to the 1987 discovery of the tomb of an ancient Moche lord....

She left France 65 years ago, a war bride with a baby boy.

Speaking no English, with little money and only the clothes on her back, she found bad news waiting in the U.S.: Her GI husband wanted her to go home and leave the infant behind.

Even though the soldier offered to pay for the trip, Josette Laney, then 23, knew there would be more opportunity in America.

In Gaston County, where her husband was from, she built a new life as a single parent. She worked in textiles and raised her son, Jim. They supported each other, and she helped put him through college.

At 88, Laney recently came under the care of Gaston Hospice, where staff heard about her experiences.

Officials with the nonprofit - celebrating its 30th anniversary this year - put Laney's story on the front of its winter newsletter. As the face of hospice, she helps call attention to the soon-expanding program....

Ken Wild knew that somewhere in Virgin Islands National Park's tangle of mango, lime, and tamarind trees, intertwined with various palm species and thick, cloaking pockets of Sansevieria, was an ancient carving in rock. An old roll of film confirmed as much.

But where?

The images, taken from the roll that had itself gotten overlooked for an unknown period of time -- in the park's archives, not within its lush tropical forests -- included some of the well-known Taino carvings in a rock above a pool of water along the Reef Bay Trail. But then there was the other curious image, one without any water in sight and with a different, vertical, orientation of rock palette.

Several times Mr. Wild, the park's archaeologist, had searched on his own for the missing petroglyph without success. Then in late January he recruited a group of volunteers from Friends of Virgin Islands National Park to help with the hunt and they all set off down the Reef Bay Trail for the Taino petroglyphs, which would serve as the starting point....

The town of Stepina in the south-eastern Poland hides one of the best preserved fortified shelters built by Germans during the WWII. The concrete complex was supposed to protect Nazi trains as well as the special train of Adolf Hitler called ‘Amerika’. Similar fortification can be also found in nearby Strzyżów where Hitler had one of his headquarters.

Trains were one of the favourite means of transport for the Nazi commanders because they were fast and mobile. Since they were vulnerable however and had to be protected against air raids the wehrmacht had to build several shelters all around Europe including Poland.

The concrete tunnel in Stepina near Frysztak is a popular attraction for tourists interested in the history of WWII, reported Novinky.cz. The complex consists of seven reinforced concrete structures which makes it the biggest railway shelter in Poland. There were dozens of buildings, guard towers, and bunkers. As such the complex was completely self-sufficient with regards to fuel, water supply, heating, electricity generation and air filtering.

The tunnel is 386 metres long, 14.5 metres wide at the base and over 7 metres high. Its walls are three to four metres thick. During the war the tunnel was always kept ready to shelter the Hitler’s train or other Nazi trains any time. In 1941 the complex served as a meeting place of the Führer and the Italian leader Benito Mussolini. Besides that the shelter saw several high-profile meetings of the Nazi top-rank commanders.

When in June 1944 the Soviet troops approached the Germans ordered evacuation. The constrution served as a Soviet field hospital, then an evacutation shelter, and even a mashroom production complex. Today the tunnel is in very good condition because it has been used and maintained since the end of the war....

Last week, a rare, mint condition dagger was sold to the visiting American Rare Collectibles Association.

All over the world, collectors support the association and decide what to buy. Their representatives make the purchase.

The representatives didn't have the first name of the man who brought in the dagger. However, they were able to explain how it came to be in his father's - and then his - possession.

During World War II, Robert Vieregge was a soldier for the U.S. Army. He helped to seize German supplies waiting to be distributed. Among these supplies were brand-new daggers.

Naturally, soldiers took souvenirs home with them after the war. Many of these daggers surface frequently in collectors' shows but usually in poor condition. However, rarely does a dagger show up in its original packaging.

Thrilled to have it in his possession is senior buyer George McCurley.

"It's a very special piece," he said, showing it off next to other items that made the trip with the dagger....

Rescuers searching the ruins of Christchurch cathedral have made found a century-old time capsule under a status of the city's founder.

Two items – a glass bottle containing rolled-up parchment and a metal cylinder – were found in the plinth of a statue felled in last Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake in New Zealand, which is believed to have killed up to 240 people.

Rescuers combing the site made the discovery Tuesday morning and immediately called in local museum staff to examine the artefacts.

"It's very poignant, very poignant indeed," said Anthony Wright, the director of the Canterbury cathedral.

The items were in the base of a statue of John Robert Godley, the Irish founder of Christchurch, which was erected in 1867.

Two words were visible on the parchment "by" and "erected" but it would not be properly unfurled until the capsule had been examined by experts and opened in a humidity-controlled museum environment to protect it from damage....

German scientists said Monday it may be possible to reconstruct one of two giant 1,500 year-old Buddha statues dynamited by the Taliban in central Afghanistan 10 years ago, which prompted a worldwide outcry and left behind only towering cliff caverns.

Researchers have studied several hundred fragments of the sandstone statues that once towered up to 180 feet (55 meters) high in Bamiyan province, and found that they were once brightly colored in red, white and blue, said Erwin Emmerling of Munich's Technical University.

The professor of restoration and conservation science, who visited the UNESCO world heritage site about 15 times since 2007, says research has shown that the smaller one of the pair -- some 125 feet high (38 meters)-- could be reconstructed with the recovered parts even though there are "political and practical obstacles" to overcome.

"Conservation of the fragments would require the construction of a small factory in the Bamiyan Valley -- alternatively some 1,400 rocks weighing up to two tons each would have to be transported to Germany," the university said in a statement Friday.

Emmerling is to present the findings at a UNESCO conference on the Buddha statues' future starting Wednesday in Paris. The Afghan government, whose representatives are also attending the expert meeting, will ultimately decide on the statues' fate...

Charles Darwin considered the evolution of the human eye one of the toughest problems his theory had to explain. In “On the Origin of Species,” he wrote that the idea that natural selection could produce such an intricate organ “seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

But Darwin dispelled that seeming absurdity by laying out a series of steps by which the evolution could take place. Making this sequence all the more plausible was the fact that some of the transitional forms Darwin described actually existed in living invertebrates.

Now, a team of American and European researchers report that they have discovered an eye that could represent the first step in this evolution. They have found, in effect, a swimming eyeball....