They were lost to history, six Union soldiers from Massachusetts killed in battle just days before the famous First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Found in shallow graves in woods in Centreville, Va., the men's remains were traced to the First Massachusetts Infantry, after a decade of painstaking research.

Tomorrow, they will be buried at the National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne with an honor guard and a three-volley salute with Civil War-era rifles.

But not everyone will be celebrating a homecoming that is 145 years overdue.

The soldiers are being wronged, said Dalton Rector, a Civil War buff who helped discover the skeletal remains nine years ago and is credited with pushing researchers to determine where the soldiers hailed from.

Rector says he thinks he knows their names, and he argues they deserve better than to be buried in graves as unknowns without any descendants there to pay final respects.

``When I started this research, it was my main hope that they would be positively identified through DNA testing," Rector, a member of the Northern Virginia Relic Hunters Association, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

``These were some of the very first soldiers to die in the Civil War. . . . It is just heartbreaking to me. I came to know these soldiers personally. I came to know their names and their ages. It's so unfair. Just so unfair."

Researchers say they have found "compelling" new evidence of the earliest known forms of life on Earth in ancient rock in Australia.

Australian and Canadian scientists say they have found new varieties of stromatolites, rock formations left 3.43 billion years ago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

If the researchers are right, and the stromatolites represent the fossilised remains of early microbes, this could cause scientists to revise estimates of when life began on Earth; some estimates are as recent as 1.9 billion years ago.

Early in 2005, as you may recall, there was a ripple of press interest in nineteenth-century author Emma Dunham Kelley Hawkins.

For years, Hawkins had been considered an African American author, and her novels were spotlighted in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. But on February 20, 2005, Holly Jackson, a graduate student at Brandeis University, published an article in the Boston Globe revealing that Hawkins never identified herself as an African American, and was consistently identified as white in contemporary census records. Hawkins' inclusion in the black literary canon now seemed to hinge on a single piece of evidence: a photograph in the frontispiece of her first novel, Megda, in which she appeared to have a dark complexion. Pressured by Jackson's findings, Gates readily conceded that a mistake had apparently been made regarding Hawkins' identity....

Now Dr. Katherine Flynn has the goods to prove by census records that Hawkins wasn't black. Flynn has traced more than four generations of Hawkins' family through census, probate, and newspaper records, definitively establishing that there is no evidence to believe that Hawkins ever identified as an African American or had ancestors who did.

Controversy in the press surrounding "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown, just beginning to fade, will likely revive later this week when the July issue of Vanity Fair hits the stands. According to an advance copy, the magazine's contributing editor Seth Mnookin alleges -- in a massive article titled "DaVinci Clone?" -- two new instances of possible plagiarism in Brown's past. Two textual analysis experts also tell him they believe Brown borrowed the plot for his book from Lewis Perdue's "Daughter of God."

Some 27,000 pages of Central Intelligence Agency records regarding operational relationships between the CIA and former Nazis following World War II were disclosed yesterday at the National Archives.

The release was announced by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Nazi War Crimes, which was created by a 1998 law. The IWG, which has previously overseen the declassification of eight million war crimes-related records, is chaired by former Information Security Oversight Office Director Steven Garfinkel.

The latest release almost failed to occur due to CIA recalcitrance.

"In 2002, the CIA declared that it was no longer going to follow the criteria observed since 1999 for all the participating agencies in the IWG declassification project [and that] henceforth it would produce files relating only to individuals whom we could prove had personally engaged in war crimes," recalled IWG member Richard Ben-Veniste.

"For 18 months the IWG tried to persuade CIA that its unilateral redefinition of its obligation was erroneous and unacceptable," he said.

This obstacle was eventually overcome thanks to the intervention of the sponsors of the original legislation -- Senators Mike DeWine
(R-OH) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
-- and the effective support of Porter Goss, who had just become the new CIA Director.

CIA spokesman Stanley Moskowitz said the Agency was now committed to full disclosure regarding the historical record of CIA's connections to Nazis.

He said that when the declassification process is completed at the end of this year, "we will have withheld nothing of substance."

(Mr. Moskowitz himself was once the object of unwanted disclosure when, to the dismay of Agency officials, he was publicly identified as the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv. See "CIA Station Chief in Israel Unmasked," Secrecy & Government Bulletin, Issue 75, November
1998.)

"The relevance of today's disclosures [on Nazi war crimes] to the issues this Nation faces today is striking," suggested IWG member Thomas H. Baer.

The question the documents raise, he said, is: "To what extent, and under what circumstances, can our Government rely upon intelligence supplied by mass murderers and those complicit in their crimes?"

Initial assessments of the new disclosures were prepared by four historians for the Interagency Working Group, each of which includes several of the newly declassified documents. See:

"New Information on Cold War CIA Stay-Behind Operations in Germany and on the Adolf Eichmann Case" by Timothy Naftali, University of
Virginia:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/naftali.pdf

"Gustav Hilger: From Hitler's Foreign Office to CIA Consultant" by Robert Wolfe, former archivist at the U.S. National Archives:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/wolfe.pdf

"Tscherim Soobzokov" by Richard Breitman, American University:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/breitman.pdf

"CIA Files Relating to Heinz Felfe, SS Officer and KGB Spy" by Norman J.W. Goda, Ohio University:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/goda.pdf

For more information on the Interagency Working Group on Nazi War Crimes see:

http://www.archives.gov/iwg/

$500,000 is what the Smithsonian will receive first year, but the guaranteed annual minimum increases each year so that at the end of the 30 year contract period $99 million is guaranteed.

The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its original users' manual, written in Latin. The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.

Tehran, 8 June 2006 (CHN) -- Discovery of some Mithraism symbols such as cypress, a goat and an inscription in Sassanid-Pahlavi language and Mithraism architectural style in Kangelou Fortress all have strengthened the theory that this historical monument was used as a worship place during the ancient times.

“In Avesta, Zoroastrian’s holly book, Mithra means promise and faith. Mehr (literary meaning love or sun) was one of the creators of Ahura Mazda, God in Zoroastrianism. He was the protector of promise and faith and was lord of light and brightness. We have found some symbols of this religion in Kangelou Fortress,” said Saman Sourtiji, member of academic assembly of Iran’s Archeology Research Center and head of excavation team in Kangelou Fortress.

The Central Virginia Battlefields Trust has made a major financial commitment in the effort to purchase a Spotsylvania County farm that played a key role in the Battle of Fredericksburg.

The local preservation group that has saved hundreds of acres of important Civil War land here over the past decade has pledged $1 million toward the $12 million purchase price, said Mike Stevens, CVBT president.

In March, the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust announced that it would launch a national fundraising campaign to purchase the 205-acre Pierson farm. The land, known during the war as Slaughter Pen, is on Tidewater Trail just east of Shannon Airport.

A Berlin-based history society Thursday unveiled an information sign at the site of Hitler's underground bunker, marking for the first time exactly where the Nazi leader took his life at the end of World War II.

Until now, Berlin had resisted giving an indication as to the location of the bunker for fear that it could become a symbolic gathering point for neo-Nazi groups.

Just 200 yards away from Germany's memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Berlin Underworlds Society has erected a sign giving details of the layout and construction of the bunker -- since buried under a parking lot.

"Visitors to this area ... have until now never received information about this site," Dietmar Arnold, head of the Berlin Underworlds, told reporters.

The society, which runs guided tours of Berlin's network of underground bomb shelters, said the plaque was designed to dispel myths about the underground shelter where Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945 -- hastening an end to World War II in Europe.

"Our visitors are told absolute rubbish. Myths are maintained about the Fuhrer's underground motorway running to the Tempelhof airport," Arnold said.

In dry, factual terms, the dual-language board explains the history of the shelter -- from the completion of construction by Hochtief AG in October 1944 to its present status as a carpark.

Until now, Berlin had resisted giving an indication as to the location of the bunker for fear that it could become a symbolic gathering point for neo-Nazi groups.

However, the city's attitude towards the site has changed and it now sees the site as an important counterpoint to the nearby Holocaust memorial.

"Their subject matters are closely related. I think is a very good addition. The one can only be understood with the other in the background," said Christine Wolf, a publicity officer for the state heritage authority in Berlin.

The bunker was blown up in December 1947 by Soviet troops, destroying much of the interior. The surrounding area was turned into park land in 1959 and later became part of the east Berlin border zone when the Berlin Wall was constructed.

In the 1980s, when the East German government constructed apartment blocks on the site, the roof of the bunker was removed and the interior filled with sand and gravel and turned into a carpark. The eight-storey apartments still stand.

A national education think tank has given Delaware a "D" in world history, but despite the low grade, the First State fared no worse than most others.

Most states aren't doing nearly enough to give students a grounding in world history, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said in a report released Tuesday that grades states on their world history standards. The standards outline what students are expected to know in the subject.

Delaware's "D" placed it 24th of 48 states ranked. Two-thirds of states were given a "D" or "F," while only eight states got an "A."

"At a time when the United States faces threats and competitors around the globe, and when our children's future is more entangled than ever with world developments, our schools ought not to treat world history so casually," Fordham Institute President Chester Finn said. "Nations that once were little more than curiosities to most Americans have transformed themselves into places of vital interest and concern."

The report criticized Delaware's world-history standards for lack of detail -- World War II receives only three lines -- and limited scope -- high school world history is limited to the period after the year A.D. 1500.

"Though the ancient world is taught in the early years, it's unreasonable to think that high school students launching into the Reformation and Renaissance will remember much of what was taught to them as youngsters," the report states. "If the state were to correct the lack of ancient history at the high school level, the state would have some of the better standards in the union."

The review was by historian Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Delaware is developing recommended curricula for schools, and will give special attention to global history when crafting the social studies curriculum, said Martha Brooks, associate secretary of education for curriculum and instructional improvement.

"We wouldn't argue with the general premise that we need to be broadening our thinking about living in the global world," Brooks said.

She characterized Delaware's history standards as broad and generic, not specifying what subject matter to teach.

Most decisions about content are made at the district level, Brooks said, and some schools are beginning to turn more attention to oft-neglected Asian and Middle Eastern history.

"If you went into the schools, you would see a fairly large focus on European and American history," she said. "That's the way it's been for a long, long time, but it's starting to change."

For years, Sotheby's auction house has tried to sell the papers, manuscripts and personal library of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But previous negotiations with various institutions came to naught, including a private sale in 2003 that was called off. Now, on June 30, Sotheby's will auction the King collection, hoping that an institution will step forward and pay from $15 million to $30 million for the lot of more than 10,000 items.

``It does set a challenge for American institutions to decide whether or not they want to save and preserve the King legacy for prosperity,'' David Redden, Sotheby's vice chairman, told The Associated Press Wednesday night. ``This is a very important story that needs a very appropriate conclusion.''

Sotheby's was to make a formal announcement about the sale today.

The money will go to the financially strapped King estate. Redden said the death of Coretta Scott King earlier this year helped speed up the decision to hold an auction.

``To be candid,'' Redden said, ``the passing of Mrs. King did require that the estate put their affairs in order.''

The papers span from 1946 to 1968, the most important years of King's life. They include 7,000 handwritten items, including his early Alabama sermons and a draft of the speech, ``I Have a Dream,'' which he delivered Aug. 28, 1963, at the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

King's personal library of approximately 1,000 volumes is also part of the compendium as well as 800 index cards from his days as a graduate student. On the cards, he wrote facts, aphorisms and biblical quotes. The entire collection will be on public view June
21-29, in anticipation of the sale on June 30.

Historians believe it is one of the greatest American archives of the 20th century in private hands and reveals a fuller portrait of King, the Nobel Prize winner who led the Civil Rights movement, helped dismantle segregation and was gunned down in 1968.

``King was at the center of one of the most important periods in American history and these documents illuminate the era,'' said Stanford history professor Clayborne Carson, who edited the ``The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.''

Carson said one the most memorable writings was a draft of King's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which he won at age 35. In his address, King said: ``Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time _ the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.''

Given the historical significance of the papers, Redden believes a major institution, aided by a donor, will buy the lot. He said the estate doesn't want King's work to fall into private hands.

``The estate very much wants this to go to an institution,'' he said.

Redden declined to name a possible buyer. But it's likely that a top university, the Smithsonian Institution or the Library of Congress would bid on the collection.

``If our institutions can't afford it, then something is intensely wrong,'' Redden said.

Redden said the King scenario is similar to the National Library of Ireland which bought previously unseen manuscripts of James Joyce's ``Ulysses'' in 2002 for $15 million.

Newly released CIA documents show that the US kept mum about Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts to protect a high-ranking German official with a dubious past.

The United States learned the location and alias of fugitive Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann two years before Israel captured him but kept the information secret as part of its efforts to combat communism in post-war West Germany, according to a historian who reviewed 27,000 pages of newly declassified documents.

The Central Intelligence Agency knew that senior Gestapo officer Eichmann was hiding in Argentina in 1958 under an alias, but left it up to Germany to deal with him, said University of Virginia historian Timothy Naftali, who reviewed thousands of documents on CIA ties to Nazis from the US National Archives released Tuesday.

The papers also show that from 1952, West Germany knew that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina under an assumed identity, but kept quiet about it fearing the fugitive might talk about Hans Globke, a former Nazi was a top national security advisor to then-chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Related Links

C.I.A. Knew Where Eichmann Was Hiding, Documents Show (NYT)

Documents Shed Light on C.I.A.'s Use of Ex-Nazis

The Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed Federal Bureau of Investigation officials about their interest in the papers of the late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson, which are now held at George Washington University, at a hearing on Tuesday. The session had its share of fireworks, with senators butting heads with a Department of Justice official.

But, to borrow from the parlance of journalism, the lede was buried. An intriguing nugget of information could be found in the written testimony of Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the university.

Although the topic was never mentioned aloud at the hearing, the printed testimony says that the FBI's interest in the Anderson archive may have been spurred by a tip from a former Anderson assistant who Mr. Feldstein says was once imprisoned for child sodomy. Mr Feldstein says he told FBI agents this and that the man had admitted having a history of mental illness and fabricating stories.

In his testimony, Mr. Feldstein writes that when FBI agents visited him, they named the former Anderson assistant. They "implied," Mr. Feldstein says, that the assistant had told them that Jack Anderson collected secret documents related to a current espionage case against two pro-Israel lobbyists.

Recently, the FBI sought access to the Anderson archive to find those documents. The agency has also said it wanted to review the entire archive and remove any documents deemed confidential. The FBI's request has outraged journalists, librarians, and historians who believe that granting it would compromise the identity of sources and the integrity of the archive. Anderson, who died in December at age 83, wrote a syndicated column called "Washington Merry-Go-Round" from 1969 until 2004.

The FBI informant is unnamed in the testimony, and Mr. Feldstein would not elaborate when contacted by The Chronicle. "Was the FBI's rationale for conducting such a fishing expedition into the Anderson archives based on the word of this former prison inmate?" Mr. Feldstein muses in his written testimony.

Egyptologists are holding their breath over the mystery surrounding the first tomb discovered in Luxor's Valley of the Kings since that of the boy king Tutankhamun in 1922.

News of the surprise discovery in February by an American team from the University of Memphis has had repercussions far beyond this famous necropolis from the time of the pharaohs.

Could the small tomb, designated KV63, hold a royal mummy, perhaps that of Tutankhamun's widow or even his mother?

The theory is being openly discussed -- and argued over -- by American and native Egyptologists.

"It's very exciting, it's the joy of this unique discovery. But let's be very cautious," the director of the University of Memphis Archaeology Institute, Loreilei Corcoran , told AFP.

Mansur Boraik, director of antiquities at Luxor, is optimistic about the find.

Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Akaka thinks Hawaiians should be allowed to govern themselves as Native Americans and Alaskans do, and after seven years of pushing a bill to start the process, the Senate is expected to take it up this week.
Mr. Akaka says the bill is a way to give "indigenous" Hawaiians a sense of pride and a chance for sovereignty for the first time since 1893, when Queen Liliuokalani was deposed and lands were illegally seized by U.S. Marines and a cadre of sugar-plantation businessmen.
"For the first time, if it passes, Hawaiians will have parity and be able to form a government entity to address their concerns, since the overthrow," Mr. Akaka said.
Republican senators annually have blocked the legislation, saying it would violate the Constitution by establishing a sovereign race-based government. It is only coming up now through a deal worked out between Democratic and Republican leaders to move other bills.

Alabama may not have been the site of any major Civil War battles, but its place in history is secured as the birthplace of the Confederacy.

The spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America is one of many important locations in a new brochure that will be unveiled today by the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel.

Other attractions in the brochure include the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Fort Gaines, the Tannehill Ironworks, Marion Military Institute, the Tallassee Confederate Armory and many other sites.

Despite growing ties to the southern hemisphere, two-thirds of U.S. states have weak or non-existent standards for teaching the history and culture of Latin America and Mexico, a study released Tuesday found.

The study was conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham?Institute, a Washington-based non-profit organization dedicated to improving elementary and secondary education.

Renowned historian and foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead, who conducted the study, said he was "aghast" at what he found. While most states didn't make a passing grade in world history instruction, his report is especially critical of a lack of effective standards for teaching the history and culture of Latin America and Mexico. He found that many states overlooked these histories while excessively focusing on modern European history.

Texas received 97 out of a possible 170 points and an overall grade of C in the study, the first to evaluate states' academic standards for teaching kindergarten through 12th grade world history. These standards are what a student is expected to know on the subject.

For Latin American and Mexican history and culture, Texas scored a 5 on a scale of zero to 10.

"As a representative for a border district, and coming from the state of Texas, a state that's history is so connected to Mexico and Latin America, I am deeply troubled that the state ranked so poorly," Rep. Rub?n Hinojosa, D-Texas, chairman of the Education Task Force for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

"Clearly, this needs to change, especially as our economy and way of life becomes more and more international.? If we do not stress the importance of world affairs and other cultures with our children, they will fall behind."?

Colorado received 81 out of a possible 170 points and an overall grade of D in the study, the first to evaluate states' academic standards for teaching kindergarten through 12th grade world history. These standards are what a student is expected to know in the subject.

For Latin American and Mexican history and culture, Colorado scored a 4 on a scale of zero to 10.

Georgia received 156 out of a possible 170 points and an overall grade of A in the study, the first to evaluate states' academic standards for teaching kindergarten through 12th grade world history. These standards are what a student is expected to know in the subject.

For Latin American and Mexican history and culture, Georgia scored a 9 on a scale of zero to 10.

North Carolina received 64 out of a possible 170 points and an overall grade of F in the study, the first to evaluate states' academic standards for teaching kindergarten through 12th grade world history. These standards are what a student is expected to know in the subject.

For Latin American and Mexican history and culture, North Carolina scored a 3 on a scale of zero to 10.

Ohio received 67 out of a possible 170 points and an overall grade of F in the study, the first to evaluate states' academic standards for teaching kindergarten through 12th grade world history. These standards are what a student is expected to know in the subject.

For Latin American and Mexican history and culture, Ohio scored a 3 on a scale of zero to 10.

Eight states received an A and 33 received a D or an F.

Four states — Alaska, Idaho, Missouri and Montana — received zeros for standards that give "superficial or cursory attention" to Mexico and the Western Hemisphere.

Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada and Texas, which all have large Hispanic populations, were among 30 states to score between 1 and 5 for standards that cover Mexico and Latin America and have "significant gaps or shortcomings."

Fifteen other states, including other Hispanic population centers like Arizona, California and New Mexico, earned scores of 6 through 10 for having standards that "propose a coherent and thorough approach" to Latin American and Mexican history. Even so, these states do not require students to study world history.

Two states, Iowa and Rhode Island, did not receive grades because neither state has world history standards.

It is estimated that in the next three years, humanity will generate more data than it has in the past 1,000 years --- nearly all of it digital.

Many of the records that once allowed historians to study a society's history --- from personal correspondence to government documents --- may be slipping, irretrievably, into the digital ether.

"It's a major historical problem and presents, potentially, a major political problem," says Air Force historian Eduard Mark. "Someday it will erupt. There will probably be a major loss to history."

The nation's greatest institutions of record-keeping, the Library of Congress and the National Archives, have recently begun to create new electronic archives to catalog and preserve for posterity the billions of digital records they now receive.

But it's an overwhelming goal, one that, despite today's breadth of information technology, isn't quite possible to meet --- yet.

"We need to preserve digital information in such a way that it will be intelligible in 100 years," says Abby Smith, a consultant with the Library of Congress' digital preservation program. But she and others say that when it comes to preserving digital records, a solution has yet to be found.

"In retrospect, this will look like a period of the digital dark ages," she says. "There's information which we're producing now which we will not be able to save for the future."

'Very ephemeral'

The problem is that, compared to the sturdy format of paper and books, digital information is extremely fragile, disappearing as software becomes obsolete, hardware breaks down and viruses wipe out volumes.

"Digital media can be very ephemeral. They can decay," says Anne Okerson, of the Council on Library and Information Resources. "For example, will a Word or Word Perfect document still be readable in 10 years, several versions later? Mine aren't ... how about a CD? Doubtful."

Even if the media on which information is saved endure for years, what happens when the technology to extract and read it becomes obsolete?

Jon Prial, IBM's vice president of content management, asks, "If something is saved digitally now, the question becomes, can I save a CD somewhere for 1,000 years? If I can, will there be something to play it on?"

Obsolete formats

At the National Archives, staffers are already experiencing such problems. The government began storing key military records, such as flight details, on computers as early as the Vietnam War era, says Kenneth Thibodeau, director of its Electronic Records Archives program. Today, those records of every flight in Vietnam "are sitting in obsolete tapes in an obsolete format," says Thibodeau.

He cites another example: The National Archives has always preserved drawings of Navy ships.

"But there aren't drawings anymore. All the records are digital. For information on the structure of one ship, you're talking hundreds of millions of computer files," he says.

Since the average Navy ship is kept afloat for 50 years, there's a strong chance that engineers or anyone else needing structural information about the ships may be out of luck in a mere 20 years if those electronic files become corrupted or inaccessible, Thibodeau says.

"The Navy has a digital preservation problem. After all, what does the Navy know about what computer-assisted design programs will be used 20 years from now? They just know it will be different. The aerospace industry has the same problem. It's also true for designs of power grids and bridges."

James J. McSweeney, regional administrator for the National Archives Southeast Region in Jonesboro, worries that future historians will miss out on the experience of sifting through original physical records and that a palpable element of discovering history may be lost.

"In Atlanta we have 115,000 cubic feet of historically valuable documents, dating back to 1716. We've got everything from the Tuskegee syphilis records to Rosa Parks' original arrest records," McSweeney says. "Nothing can reproduce the experience, for researchers, of coming here and working directly, hands-on, with those records. That's the type of thing you're not going to get from a Google-type search."

Gaps possible

But the most chilling implications might be for the historical record.

"The difference between someone 25 years from now trying to sort out how we became involved in Iraq, vs. someone today studying the Cuban missile crisis, say, is that for the future historian, the records could be much less comprehensive, and there could be much fewer of them," says Mark, the Air Force historian.

The irony is that far more records are now being created --- another problem for those racing to save and archive them. Thibodeau compares the correspondence the National Archives received from the Nixon administration --- 40 million pages --- to the estimated 100 million e-mails alone it expects to receive from the Bush administration.

"We've got to build a system that never becomes obsolete, even though we assume that each separate piece of hardware within the system will eventually become obsolete," says Thibodeau. "[And] it's got to grow to accommodate new stuff that I don't even know about yet."

Despite the massive challenges, Thibodeau expects a first version of such a system to be online for the public by 2009. Even then, though, the Electronic Records Archive and similar systems will be works in progress for a long time, he says.

"There's a lot more information that's being captured than ever before," he says. "If we do figure out how to preserve this stuff, people will be in good shape to research the second half of the 20th century. But by and large, no one's yet been able to figure out how to preserve this stuff for the next 25 years."

An aviation archaeologist discovered the lost wreckage of a World War II bomber in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

A military recovery mission is underway with the discovery of decades-old bones.

“It's very, very...it's an emotional experience,” said U.S. Marines Captain George Murphy. “Even though we didn't know these men personally, we share a common experience.”

On April 09, 1944, a B-24D Bomber went down during a training mission just southwest of the then Mojave Marine Corps Air Station.

The coroner issued death certificates to the families of all ten men on board. And, the cause of the crash was listed as pilot error.

Now, 60 years later, the site has been cleaned up and all but forgotten.

Until, amateur wreck chaser Don Jordan set out to find the site five years ago, and stumbled on it last summer.

Archaeologists have found two ancient engraved chessboards probably used by soldiers on the Great Wall more than 700 years ago at Qinhuangdao, North China's Hebei Province.

The two boards, one for Chinese chess and the other for the ancient game "Tiger Eats Sheep", were engraved on a stone in front of a Great Wall beacon tower possibly in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), said officials with the provincial department of cultural relics.

Archaeologists believe that soldiers from all parts of ancient China used to play chess to while away the time on the remote wall.

A new report released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute finds that at a time of rapid globalization, most states don’t even try to provide young Americans with a solid grounding in world history.

Renowned historian and foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, conducted this first ever review of states’ academic standards for K-12 world history—the blueprints that outline what students are expected to know in a given subject. Fully two-thirds of states earn a “D” or an “F,” while only eight (California, Massachusetts, Virginia, Indiana, Georgia, New York, Minnesota, and South Carolina) earn an “A.” Complete state grades, in rank order, can be found in Table 1.

“At a time when the United States faces threats and competitors around the globe, and when our children’s future is more entangled than ever with world developments, our schools ought not treat world history so casually,” said Institute president Chester E. Finn, Jr. “Nations that once were little more than curiosities to most Americans have transformed themselves into places of vital interest and concern. No one can be considered adequately prepared for life in the 21st century unless they understand the history and culture of the world’s major civilizations. The National Geographic Society recently reported that students don’t think learning about the world is all that important. Sadly, state officials don’t seem to think so, either. It’s as if Americans were wearing blinders—and happy about it.”

Mead finds that only a handful of states require students to pass a world history test to graduate or get promoted to the next grade. Given educators’ preoccupation with subjects tested under the No Child Left Behind Act, this only increases the chances that world history will be “narrowed” out of the curriculum.

“A working knowledge of world history is socially, politically, economically, and culturally indispensable for young Americans,” said Mead. “The failure of public schools to teach world history amounts to denying equal opportunity to our most vulnerable populations. Millions of low-income and minority students are being denied basic cultural and economic rights.”

Several problems were ubiquitous in the standards of poorly performing states:

¨ Little or no historical content;

¨ Alternatively, so much content that teachers couldn’t possibly begin to cover it all;

¨ An excessive focus on modern European history and neglect of significant non-Western cultures in Latin America and Asia;

¨ Alternatively, an extreme multiculturalism that treats all nations and cultures as equally significant;

¨ Standards that are buried in the murky non-subject of “social studies.”

¨ Standards that provide students with no logical timeline, relying instead on trendy “themes” without regard to the story of history.

Bolivar Who?

Mead notes that states get their lowest marks for their coverage of Latin America. (See Tables 2 and 3 attached.) Only 9 states directly reference Simon Bolivar, perhaps the most well-known figure in Latin American history. And only 6 states make mention of famed explorer Hernando Cortez.

“At a time when we’re in the middle of a great national debate about how to assimilate the massive influx of immigrants from Latin America, it’s unconscionable that the states would consider a student well-educated without knowing much of anything about the history of this region,” said Mead. “Today’s students will be critical players in working out terms of accommodation and assimilation between Latin-American culture and Anglo-American culture. They desperately need a firm grounding in the history of our hemisphere.”

One Bright Spot: World History Exams

Mead also reviewed three major world history exams: the Advanced Placement (AP), the SAT II, and the New York Regents exam. In 2005, more than 64,000 students took the AP World History exam, and a stunning 220,000-plus took the New York Regents Exam in World History. (Some 15,000 took the SAT II World History test in 2004.) While the AP exam is the best, all three tests earned an “A” rating.

“National exams in world history can and should put pressure on the states to get their heads out of the sand and produce sound world history standards,” said Finn. “The number of young people taking these exams is soaring, and they deserve the chance to do well on them. States could go far toward improving their world-history standards if they modeled them on the syllabi of exams like these.”

Recommendations

States can take several actions to improve their world history standards, including:

¨ Follow the lead of high-scoring states, using the A-rated standards as a model;

¨ Emphasize the importance of world history by requiring students to pass a test in the subject to graduate, and/or hold schools accountable for their pupils’ performance in the subject; and

¨ Build the state’s high-school world history program around the excellent Advanced Placement syllabus in this subject.

Complete state and exam reviews, as well as the full text of the report, can be found at http://www.edexcellence.net. For more information about the report or its findings, please contact Jennifer Leischer, Communications Manager, at 202-223-5452 or via email at jleischer@edexcellence.net.

Related Links

HNN Hot Topic: Low History IQs

The size of a shoebox, a mysterious bronze device scooped out of a Roman-era shipwreck at the dawn of the 20th century has baffled scientists for years. Now a British researcher has stunningly established it as the world's oldest surviving astronomy computer.

A team of Greek and British scientists probing the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism has managed to decipher ancient Greek inscriptions unseen for over 2,000 years, members of the project say.

"Part of the text on the machine, over 1,000 characters, had already been deciphered, but we have succeeded in doubling this total," said physician Yiannis Bitsakis, part of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from universities in Athens, Salonika and Cardiff, the Athens National Archaeological Museum and the Hewlett-Packard company.

"We have now deciphered 95 percent of the text," he told AFP.

Scooped out of a Roman shipwreck located in 1900 by sponge divers near the southern Greek island of Antikythera, and kept at the Athens National Archaeological Museum, the Mechanism contains over 30 bronze wheels and dials, and is covered in astronomical inscriptions.

Probably operated by crank, it survives in three main pieces and some smaller fragments.

"(The device) could calculate the position of certain stars, at least the Sun and Moon, and perhaps predict astronomical phenomena," said astrophysicist Xenophon Moussas of Athens University.

"It was probably rare, if not unique," he added.

The rarity of the Antikythera Mechanism precluded its removal from the museum, so an eight-tonne 'body scanner' had to be assembled on-site for the privately-funded project, which used three-dimensional tomography to expose the unseen inscriptions.

The first appraisal of the Mechanism's purpose was put forward in the 1960s by British science historian Derek Price, but the scientists' latest discovery raises more questions.

A team of Greek and British scientists probing the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism has managed to decipher ancient Greek inscriptions unseen for over 2,000 years, members of the project say.

"Part of the text on the machine, over 1,000 characters, had already been deciphered, but we have succeeded in doubling this total," said physician Yiannis Bitsakis, part of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from universities in Athens, Salonika and Cardiff, the Athens National Archaeological Museum and the Hewlett-Packard company.

"We have now deciphered 95 percent of the text," he told AFP.

Scooped out of a Roman shipwreck located in 1900 by sponge divers near the southern Greek island of Antikythera, and kept at the Athens National Archaeological Museum, the Mechanism contains over 30 bronze wheels and dials, and is covered in astronomical inscriptions.

Probably operated by crank, it survives in three main pieces and some smaller fragments.

"(The device) could calculate the position of certain stars, at least the Sun and Moon, and perhaps predict astronomical phenomena," said astrophysicist Xenophon Moussas of Athens University.

"It was probably rare, if not unique," he added.

The rarity of the Antikythera Mechanism precluded its removal from the museum, so an eight-tonne 'body scanner' had to be assembled on-site for the privately-funded project, which used three-dimensional tomography to expose the unseen inscriptions.

The first appraisal of the Mechanism's purpose was put forward in the 1960s by British science historian Derek Price, but the scientists' latest discovery raises more questions.