The 121st annual meeting of the American Historical Association will be held January 4–7, 2007, in Atlanta at the Hilton Atlanta, Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Hyatt Regency Atlanta, and the Westin Peachtree Plaza Atlanta hotels. Download the Hotel reservation and meeting preregistration forms; both forms will also be included in the annual meeting Program (which will be mailed to members in October), and will be posted on the Association's web site.

Many of the profession's most distinguished members will be present to deliver papers at the 223 “official” sessions. More than 1,000 scholars, including 88 from 27 foreign countries, are expected to participate in the various sessions at the three and one-half day meeting. In addition, more than four dozen specialized societies will be meeting in conjunction with the AHA. Each society will be holding its own sessions, luncheons, and/or meetings, as well as some joint sessions with the Association.

On the evening of Friday, January 5, Linda K. Kerber of the University of Iowa will deliver the presidential address. President-elect Barbara Weinstein of the University of Maryland, College Park will announce the Association's book awards, Awards for Scholarly Distinction, the Troyer Steele Anderson Prize, the Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, the Beveridge Family Teaching Prize, the John E. O'Connor Film Award, the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award, and the 2006 Honorary Foreign Member.

Next month is the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the first popular revolt against Soviet domination in eastern Europe. Young Hungarians took to the streets of their capital on the Danube to raise their fist against communist rule before being crushed by Soviet tanks. Back then, in the midst of the uprising, the editors of Hungarian state radio announced to the country's stunned citizens that they had been lied to about the state of the economy and the activities of the government.

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany may not have recognized the historical parallels that he was invoking when he told a meeting of his party members in May essentially the same thing: that the government had been lying to Hungarians about the state of the economy and their own activities for the past two years. "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening," Gyurcsany said. "We screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have... Evidently, we lied throughout the last year and a half, two years."

While discussing Pope Benedict XVI's recent controversial comments about Islam, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan declared three times that Islam "is a fighting faith." During the discussion, which took place on the September 18 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough asked: "[D]espite the fact ... there are Muslim extremists ... do you not think that this pope should ... reach out to moderate Muslim regimes?" Buchanan replied, "How do you think Islam came out of Arabia, captured the Holy Land, all of North Africa, occupied all of Spain and Portugal ... except by the sword?" When Scarborough pleaded that he did not "want to refight the crusades," Buchanan declared Christians fought the Crusades "[t]o take back what we had lost!"

From a segment featuring Scarborough, Buchanan, and Huffington Post blogger Arianna Huffington on the September 18 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country:


SCARBOROUGH: Now, despite the fact, again, that we know that there are Muslim extremists across the world, I will ask again, do you not think that this pope should have done what the last pope did, bite his tongue, try to build a bridge, and try to say that, you know, maybe we can reach out to moderate Muslim regimes?

BUCHANAN: But look, look, he said what he said, Joe. Let me tell you something. How do you think Islam came out of Arabia, captured the Holy Land, all of North Africa, occupied all of Spain and Portugal and drove all the way to --

SCARBOROUGH: Well, I don't want, I don't want to refight the Crusades, Pat --

[crosstalk]

BUCHANAN: -- in a hundred years, except by the sword, Joe? This is a fighting faith!

[crosstalk]

HUFFINGTON: Joe, can I ask Pat something?

BUCHANAN: Its history is a fighting faith!

SCARBOROUGH: But hold on a second. I don't want to start a battle about the Crusades right now.

BUCHANAN: It's not the Crusades! How do you think Islam conquers? It is a fighting faith!

SCARBOROUGH: I understand that, but I also understand that Muslims would say that Christians launched the Crusades. There's violence --

BUCHANAN: To take back what we had lost!

SCARBOROUGH: There's violence on both sides.

HUFFINGTON: But you know, this is really a ludicrous conversation, frankly.

BUCHANAN: It is not! It's a historical conversation.

[crosstalk]

HUFFINGTON: Yes, it is. For now -- to be refighting the Crusades, when so much is at stake at the moment, and to be saying that what we did as Christians in the Crusades was justified because it was in reaction to what had happened is simply to perpetuate the cycle of action and reaction, where there is absolutely no reconciliation possible.

BUCHANAN: All right, I know that --

HUFFINGTON: And basically, the way you are talking makes me believe that you're actually endorsing the statement made by the 14th century emperor [cited by the pope] --

BUCHANAN: No, I'm not, what I'm saying --

[crosstalk]

SCARBOROUGH: Pat, hold on a second. Let me ask, Pat, are you endorsing the pope's statement?

BUCHANAN: I am not endorsing what the 14th century emperor said because I do believe Islam has created great beauty and a great civilization, quite frankly. But I am saying this. Appeasement and constant apologies are not the way to go! There's no reason why we have to apologize for the Crusades, any more than they have to apologize for --

When the Macon was launched in 1933, the giant dirigible was more than just the biggest object ever to sail through the skies. To a nation laid low by the Depression, it was a symbol of hope. "Floating majestically in the sky, the Macon is a sight thrilling to every American and an impressive symbol of our Navy's airpower," crackled a newsreel of the day. Newspapers called the Macon "the queen of the airways."

Thousands would gaze skyward when the Macon's immense shadow passed slowly over their towns. Millions were saddened when it crashed off Big Sur on Feb. 12, 1935, killing two of its 83 crewmen. Today all that remains of the Macon and the four warplanes carried in its massive belly are ruins scattered on the seafloor -- a historic site that is being intensively explored for the first time in a five-day expedition that started Sunday.

Embarking from Moss Landing aboard the research vessel Western Flyer, scientists dropped an unmanned submarine to the wreckage more than 1,000 feet underwater, guiding it with cutting-edge computer technology supplied by Stanford University aerospace experts. In a twist that would seem like science fiction to the crew members aboard the Macon that day, the public can view streaming video of the exploration from their home computers.

"We're really excited," said Robert Schwemmer, a shipwreck expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "There are more than 400 shipwrecks and ditched aircraft in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, but this is far and away the most iconic."

Kept aloft by helium, the 785-foot-long Macon was just 97 feet shorter than the Titanic. It was more than three times as long as a 747 jet. It could carry a crew of 100. Its huge hangar at Moffett Field, north of San Jose, is visible not just from U.S. 101 but also from space.

The expedition is a collaboration between the sanctuary, which is run by the NOAA, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, with help from several other institutions.

It has been a long time coming.

Days after the crash in 1935, Navy crews scoured the waters off Big Sur for clues to the Macon's demise. Her sister ship, the nearly identical Akron, had crashed into the Atlantic two years earlier, killing 73 of the 76 men aboard. Although only two men were lost in the Macon's crash, it still was seen as a national tragedy and demanded answers, especially with plans for even larger airships being discussed in Washington, D.C.

Although the Macon's descent was witnessed by a lighthouse keeper at Point Sur, nobody could find the wreckage, which had been pushed south in churning seas.

It wasn't until 1990 that a clue surfaced in the unlikeliest place: on a plaque at a now-defunct Moss Landing restaurant called Jenny B's. Hanging on the wall was an odd, foot-long chunk of aluminum -- a piece from one of the girders that formed the Macon's frame -- along with a newspaper clipping about the dirigible.

"It had been there for years," said Chris Grech, a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. "It had a very distinctive shape."

So distinctive, in fact, that it was recognized by a woman who happened into the restaurant after an afternoon of birding in the marshes nearby. She was the daughter of Lt. Commander Herbert Wiley, the Macon's skipper, and as a child had made a number of jaunts aboard the Macon with her dad.

When she let searchers know about the find, they did some detective work and located the fisherman who had pulled up the telltale piece of metal in his nets. Relying on the meticulous records he had kept about his fishing grounds, scientists in a three-person sub discovered what was left of the Macon in 1990.

A crew last year did sonar mapping of the site, preparing for this week's extended dives by the Volkswagen-sized robotic submarine Tiburon.

"The billowing cloth material is gone, but you can see some aspects of the ship pretty clearly," sanctuary spokeswoman Rachel Saunders said. "Much of the frame is intact, but portions are covered with silt and encrusted by organisms."

The trip to the Macon will be the first archeological expedition in the 5,300-square-mile marine sanctuary, where known shipwrecks date to 1834.

One goal is to document the wreckage so the site can be named to the National Register of Historic Places. Another is to raise public awareness of an era in 20th century history now recalled mostly by historians, aviation buffs and people who were around when the Macon and three other huge dirigibles used by the Navy floated overhead.

Even today, Schwemmer said, he runs into old-timers who talk excitedly about childhood moments when "the flying aircraft carrier" blocked the sun as it hovered above.

Planned as crucial links in the nation's defense, the dirigibles were as avidly followed as today's space shuttle. In 1933, a Times reporter rhapsodized about the Macon, writing that it "gave a party to the Southland yesterday, condescending to cast her costly shadow over a region to which she has been assigned by the Navy to act as a sort of guardian angel."

Known technically as a "rigid airship" for its internal structure of girders and catwalks, the Macon was to be an eye in the sky for troops and ships below. While lumbering through the clouds at just 80 mph, the Sparrowhawk biplanes carried within could fly 300 miles, to spy and to attack. To launch, they were lowered from the Macon's belly on a gigantic hook. To return, they'd slow to near-stalling, fly beneath the ship, hook onto a "trapeze" and be hoisted back inside.

After the Akron disaster, one of the three survivors was named to command the new Macon. Herbert Wiley was at the helm as the ship fought stiff winds all the way up the coast from routine maneuvers over the Channel Islands on Feb. 12, 1935.

Wiley had as much experience on huge airships as anyone, recalled his son, retired Navy Capt. Gordon "Scroggy" Wiley in a videotaped reminiscence. When the family lived near the dirigible base in Lakehurst, N.J., the elder Wiley would veer low over his house, drop his hat in the yard and yell to his wife, "Bring the car! I'll be home in half an hour," his son recalled.

In the rugged Big Sur area where the ship went down, a wind shear ripped off a tail fin that had been damaged in an earlier trip. Flying shards of metal caused even more damage. Wiley managed to keep the Macon aloft for 25 minutes, but, after ordering an SOS sent to Navy vessels in the area, he was forced to lay the dirigible into dark, rough waters.

About a week later, Lt. Harold Blaine Miller, a naval aviator who later headed Radio Free Europe, wrote his uncle in Iowa about the ordeal.

"By dropping the remaining ballast, the Skipper was enabled to slow up the rate of fall sufficiently to give us the gentlest of landings -- just like a feather pillow."

Even so, gasoline that spilled from the Macon's engines ignited on the water. Men slid down on ropes into bobbing lifeboats as the dirigible upended and started to sink. Fog blanketed the chilly sea and help was still miles away.

"We could hear the ship breaking up and she would groan most ferociously," Miller wrote.

A panel convened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded that Navy officials had played a large part in the Macon's demise. Insistent that he prove the dirigible's value to the government, they had refused Wiley's request for time to repair the damaged fin.

The government spent no more on aircraft like the Macon. Three of its four rigid airships had been destroyed in fatal accidents. The era of the Navy dirigible was over.

The Toyama No. 5 apartment block is quiet at midday - laundry flapping from balconies, old people taking an after-lunch stroll. But the building and its nearby park may be sitting on a gruesome World War II secret.

A wartime nurse has broken more than 60 years of silence to reveal her part in burying dozens, perhaps hundreds, of bodies there as American forces occupied the Japanese capital.

The way experts see it, these were no ordinary casualties of war, but possible victims of Tokyo's shadowy wartime experiments on live prisoners of war - an atrocity that has never been officially recognized by the Japanese government, but is well documented by historians and participants.

The neighborhood on the west side of Tokyo is deeply troubled.

"I feel sorry for remains with such a sad history," said Teppei Kuroda, a college senior who lives there. "I think they should be dug up and mourned properly."

Their first burial was anything but dignified.

GEORGETOWN, S.C. ˜ Two miles off a deserted beach, the research vessel C-Hawk, its course plotted by satellite navigation signals, makes a 180-degree turn and heads back the way it came. One mile and it will turn again, recording the ocean floor's magnetic profile as systematically as if it were a tractor plowing a field. In the past month, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology research vessel has surveyed 6 square miles of the ocean bottom outside the mouth of Winyah Bay, searching for the 500-year old flagship of the expedition that established America's first colony ˜ on the Georgia coast."If the Spanish had this kind of navigation gear in the 16th century, we probably wouldn't be out here looking for this ship now," grins archaeologist Jim Spirek, looking up from the computer screen in the cabin of the C-Hawk.

In August 1526, as Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon's fleet of six ships plied these waters, depths were determined by dangling a lead weight overboard at the end of a line. The method had its limitations. Ayllon's flagship ran aground ˜ and the first European effort to colonize the mainland of North America began to go horribly awry.

American history brims with accounts of Jamestown, Plymouth Rock and Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony of Roanoke. But there isn't much said about Ayllon's effort to establish a colony of 600 people nearly a century earlier.

One reason is that the colony, San Miguel de Gualdape, was an abject failure. The other is that no trace has ever been found of Ayllon's initial landing on the Carolina coast or the short-lived colony he established later in Georgia.

At a closed door meeting of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said that with better intelligence the South would have won the Civil War, today's Roll Call is reporting.

Conflicting reports have emerged about what was said, one from a source to Roll Call's “Heard on the Hill” column, the other from a spokesperson for Chambliss.

According to Roll Call's source, Chambliss said, “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.”

A spokesperson for Chambliss said the story wasn't correct and that what the Senator actually said said was, “If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.”

Indonesian authorities have launched a criminal investigation into a group of historians and education ministry officials over new school texts offering an alternative version of events surrounding the failed 1965 coup that led to the rise of former President Suharto.

Schoolchildren were taught throughout Mr Suharto’s 32-year rule that the then-general led a successful campaign to eliminate the Indonesian Communist party, or PKI, after a failed communist coup on September 30 1965.

That version has been challenged since Mr Suharto’s May 1998 fall, with education officials in 2004 introducing a new curriculum allowing discussion of alternative scenarios even as an official panel of historians set about trying to establish exactly what happened.

Also discussed more readily since Mr Suharto’s ousting has been the killing of between 500,000 and 2m suspected communists by the military and Muslim militias.

But Bambang Sudibyo, Indonesia’s education minister, said on Monday that the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former Suharto-era general, had now decided to abandon the 2004 curriculum. Mr Sudibyo said he had also asked the country’s attorney-general to investigate the historians and other officials responsible for textbooks derived from the 2004 curriculum that failed to blame the PKI for the coup.

A spokesman for the attorney-general’s office confirmed an investigation was under way into the publication of the history books, saying they had caused “restlessness amongst the people”.

The decision is likely to raise memories of Mr Suharto’s authoritarian rule. It will also prompt questions about the nature of Mr Yudhoyono’s government and the many Suharto loyalists present in his cabinet.

The 2004 curriculum stopped short of attributing blame to any one group for the events of 1965 and historians say it is unlikely Indonesians will ever know for sure what happened.

Taufik Abdullah, the prominent historian leading a government-appointed team formed to compile a definitive version of events, said his group hoped to publish a complete history of the attempted coup later this year.

But he said it had been impossible to determine exactly who was responsible. “For every source we find two or three counter-sources,” he said.

Juwono Sudarsono, the former education minister who advocated the initial revision of the history curriculum after Mr Suharto’s fall, said he was concerned the 2004 curriculum went too far in removing any blame from the PKI.

But Mr Sudarsono, the defence minister in Mr Yudhoyono’s cabinet, also said the launching of a formal investigation “is a bit worrying”.

Mr Suharto and his family have been accused of amassing a fortune of up to $35bn (€27.6bn, £18.6bn) during his rule, prompting Transparency International in 2004 to dub him the most successful kleptocrat of the 20th century.

Mr Yudhoyono’s government dropped efforts to prosecute Mr Suharto for corruption after he was taken ill in May.

Nearly four decades after the Gee's Bend ferry stopped running, a new vessel is once again crossing the Alabama River, connecting the mostly black residents of Gee's Bend to Camden, the seat of Wilcox County.

For 78-year-old Willie Quill Pettway, it's long overdue.

"Yeah, I want it to come back. That's what you call winning," Pettway says. "It didn't last. Treating me wrong don't last."

The "wrong" that Pettway is talking about was shutting down the ferry in 1962, stranding most of the poor voters who didn't own cars back then. to drive the 40 miles around a peninsula that is locked in by the river's muddy waters. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used the water's divide as a civil rights rallying point.

After Ellsberg revealed the Pentagon Papers -- top-secret government documents which showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War -- in 1971, the Nixon White House indicted him for a possible 115-year sentence, used the White House"plumbers" to burglarize his doctor's office, conducted warrentless wiretaps against him and attempted to physically assault him at a Capitol Hill rally.

He has just authored a piece in the forthcoming issue of Harper's magazine,"The Next War," in which he writes about his regret over not having leaked such documents in his possession in 1964, before the Johnson administration's escalation of the war. He now believes such a course of action could have averted the war.

Similarly, he writes that officials in the Bush administration, like Richard Clarke, had they leaked documents showing the duplicity of the Bush administration during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, could well have prevented the war -- though he notes the personal cost could have been tremendous.

Now, Ellsberg urges U.S. government officials to disclose internal controversy concerning an attack on Iran. While several government officials are anonymously voicing their concerns in some media outlets about what the Bush administration is planning on Iran, Ellsberg urges disclosure on a scale that would likely reveal the identity of a source.

Ellsberg said today:"Many officials are asking themselves: 'How much can I put out without being found out?' They should consider going beyond that and think of what they could achieve by massive disclosure that would sacrifice their clearance and career -- but save many lives."

Ellsberg emphasized that"What is needed is not leaking operational war plans, but rather the full internal controversy, the secret estimates of costs and prospects and dangers of war and nuclear 'options' -- the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East."

[He has been joined by Katharine Gun.] Shortly before the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq, in early 2003, Gun was a British government employee when she leaked a U.S. intelligence memo indicating that the U.S. had mounted a spying"surge" against delegations on the U.N. Security Council in an effort to win approval for an invasion of Iraq. President Bush continues to claim, as he claimed then, that"We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq." (March 8, 2003).

Gun faced two years imprisonment under the British Official Secrets Act, but charges were dropped. She has written the article"Iran: Time To Leak," which encourages government officials to leak documents to prevent war.

AMERICAN benefactors have paid to restore a North Yorkshire church's 14th-century stained-glass window, the design of which is thought to have been the model for the Stars and Stripes.

The window at Selby Abbey was donated by the English ancestors of George Washington, the first president of the United States. It shows the coat of arms of his forebears, the de Wessyngtons, which depicts three spiked spur wheels above two red bars across a white shield. Washington is known to have used the heraldic device on two of his personal seals and a bookplate.

Officials at the abbey used the link with America to raise funds across the Atlantic as part of a long-running campaign to raise pounds 6 million for restoration work.

Three donors, including a charitable trust and British American Tobacco, agreed to donate pounds 100,000 for specialist cleaning and re-leading of the medieval glass.

Brig Jeremy Gaskell, the director of the appeal, said: "We are really pleased to have got the Washington Window project fully funded by American donors. Visitor numbers have doubled since we started the appeal almost six years ago.''

Wessyngton, which had various spellings until it evolved into Washington, comes from the Anglo Saxon Hwaes, a Saxon chief's name, inga, meaning "family of'', and tun, an estate.

Historians believe the coat of arms was probably included in the window to commemorate John Wessington, a medieval Prior of Durham.

He also decorated the battlements of the tower with a frieze of washing tubs or tuns, a rebus - or visual pun - on his name.

The Stars and Stripes, with 13 stars arranged in a circle and 13 red and white stripes representing the original 13 colonies, became the official flag of the United States on June 14, 1777.

In the past month, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology research vessel has surveyed 6 square miles of the ocean bottom outside the mouth of Winyah Bay, searching for the 500-year old flagship of the expedition that established America's first colony --- on the Georgia coast.

"If the Spanish had this kind of navigation gear in the 16th century, we probably wouldn't be out here looking for this ship now," grins archaeologist Jim Spirek, looking up from the computer screen in the cabin of the C-Hawk.

In August 1526, as Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon's fleet of six ships plied these waters, depths were determined by dangling a lead weight overboard at the end of a line. The method had its limitations. Ayllon's flagship ran aground --- and the first European effort to colonize the mainland of North America began to go horribly awry.

American history brims with accounts of Jamestown, Plymouth Rock and Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony of Roanoke. But there isn't much said about Ayllon's effort to establish a colony of 600 people nearly a century earlier.

One reason is that the colony, San Miguel de Gualdape, was an abject failure. The other is that no trace has ever been found of Ayllon's initial landing on the Carolina coast or the short-lived colony he established later in Georgia.

Christopher Amer, South Carolina's state underwater archaeologist, hopes to change that. Other archaeologists have looked for the ephemeral remains of the failed Georgia colony, which is thought to have been located somewhere in the vicinity of Sapelo Sound, south of Savannah, and found nothing.

Amer is betting that sea floor sediments, which would have quickly buried the wreck, have preserved Ayllon's ill-fated Chorruca and its cargo.

Ayllon's "tubby little vessel," a wide-beamed class of ship that Amer says was known for "sailing like a truck," was the Mayflower of its time.

"This was the earliest known shipwreck in North America," he says. "It carried a complete toolkit for starting a colony in a strange land --- containers of food, tools, weapons, everything they needed. If the ship is buried in sediment, these things can last a long time. It won't be easy to find, but that's what makes it exciting."

Amer has no illusions of instant success. This summer's initial four weeks of surveying with the C-Hawk's torpedo-shaped magnetometer --- an instrument that detects masses of iron or steel --- have yielded five "interesting" targets.

But magnetic readings can't distinguish between a rusty refrigerator and a 16th-century Spanish anchor. They also don't reveal whether the object is lying on the seabed or buried beneath thick sediment. To find out, Amer and his team will return to the most promising targets this month, use side scan sonar to examine them and then don wet suits to investigate firsthand.

"There are lots of shipwrecks in the area, including at least three Civil War blockade runners. But we believe there weren't any other 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks, so if we find any artifacts from that period, it will be pretty interesting. If we don't find anything, we'll keep looking."

The historical accounts that Amer used to narrow his search to 45 square miles of ocean off the entrance to Winyah Bay are a frustrating blend of ambiguity, supposition and incomplete data.

History duly records that Ayllon left Hispaniola, the island now shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, in July 1526 and headed for North America with six ships carrying 600 men, women and children, including doctors, clergymen, sailors and slaves.

In addition to 100 horses and livestock, the ships carried stores of corn, bread and olive oil. Ayllon attempted his initial landing about 10 miles north of what he had, on a previous reconnaissance of the area, named "the River Jordan" on Aug. 9, 1526.

All hands survived the loss of his flagship, suggesting that it wasn't far offshore, but the colonists quickly concluded that the location was unsuitable for a colony.

Ayllon had the colonists build a vessel to replace his flagship and then sent the women, children and sick south while he led the remaining men on a grueling overland march that ended with the two groups reconvening somewhere on the Georgia coast. There, in September 1526, Spain founded the first, albeit short-lived, colony in North America.

It didn't last long. By mid-November, more than half the colonists, including Ayllon, were dead of disease, starvation and Indian attacks.

The survivors called it quits, burned the settlement and departed for Hispaniola. En route, the ships were struck by a late-season hurricane and only 150 people returned. Maps of North America would continue for some time to refer to the Southeast as "the land of Ayllon."

But the colony's location has intrigued and baffled archaeologists for years.

Until recently, historians thought the initial landing occurred somewhere near Cape Fear, N.C., about 100 miles north of where Amer is searching.

But new translations of a Spanish document called the Chaves Rutter --- a compilation of information and geographic descriptions from pilots who sailed along the Atlantic coast in the 16th century --- convinced later historians otherwise.

"The Santee River has the highest probability of being the River Jordan, and Winyah Bay is the most likely location where Ayllon's ship was lost," says Amer. "We may be looking for a needle in a haystack, but I think we are in the right haystack."

There are abundant shoals outside the entrance to Winyah Bay that could easily have snagged Ayllon's ship, which had a draft of about 15 feet.

But Amer says the search for Ayllon's ship won't be as simple as checking out every bump on the ocean floor that's 15 feet deep or less. Sea level has risen nearly 5 feet since Ayllon's time and the shoreline has undergone dramatic changes too.

North Island, the sandy finger of land guarding the northern side of the bay entrance, has advanced as much as four miles to the south in the last 500 years. South Island, across from the entrance, has advanced and retreated several times.

"With all the changes that have occurred, it's possible that the wreck is now buried under those sand dunes," Amer says. "If it's there and it's not in the water, we're going to need a whole new approach to finding it."

The project is funded by the University of South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and the privately funded Archaeological Research Trust, but Amer is also seeking funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for future survey work in the remaining 39 square miles of the prospective search area.

How long might it take to find America's oldest shipwreck? It's a small ship. And a big ocean.

Amer, who was part of the team that discovered and raised the celebrated Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley in Charleston Harbor, isn't making any promises.

"Let's just say that I'm planning on retiring in 10 years or so," he says.

"And this project might take every one of them."

FORT EDWARD, N.Y. When colonial soldiers had some down time, they often occupied themselves with two of the few diversions from frontier duty -- drinking and smoking.

Along the banks of the upper Hudson River, an archaeology project has uncovered 250-year-old evidence of a site where soldiers did plenty of both during the French and Indian War.
Numerous artifacts -- including bottles and clay pipes -- have been found at what's believed to be the site of a sutler's store that stood outside Fort Edward, once home to the largest British military outpost in North America.
That's according to archaeologist David Starbuck, who's overseeing the excavation work.
Sutlers were military contractors who sold items -- including alcohol and tobacco -- sought by soldiers but not provided by the army.

In June of 1662, Mary Sanford was convicted of "familiarity with Satan." She was one of several people caught in a witch hunt in Hartford, Conn., that was set off by a young woman and an 8-year-old girl. The two, according to witness accounts, blamed their "strange fits" and sicknesses on several local women.

Rebecca Greensmith, a contemporary of Mrs. Sanford who admitted to being a witch, testified that she and three other women, including Mrs. Sanford, had met in the woods. She also described meeting some people "under a tree in the green" by her house, where they "danced and had a bottle of sack," or sherry.

The historical record on Mrs. Sanford stops there. Historians surmise, based on other documents, that she was hanged for her crimes. Researchers guess that she was about 39 years old at the time, with five children at home. Records show that her husband later moved to another town and remarried.

Nearly 350 years later, Mrs. Sanford's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, Debra Avery, wants to right what she believes is a historical wrong: the execution of Mrs. Sanford. Ms. Avery thinks her ancestor may have been prosecuted for religious reasons or for just having a good time. Mrs. Sanford was part of a "group of friends that hung around and danced and drank and stepped outside of acceptable behavior," says Ms. Avery, a 47-year-old resident of New Preston, Conn. "If I was living then, I would be hanged, too."

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Thousands of faithful on Sunday attended the beatification of a Hungarian nun who helped save the lives of dozens of Jews during World War II.

The beatification proclamation for Sara Salkahazi, issued by Pope Benedict XVI, was read out by Cardinal Peter Erdo, Hungary's Primate and Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, during a Mass held outside St. Stephen's Basilica.

"She was willing to assume risks for the persecuted ... in days of great fear," Erdo said. "Her martyrdom is still topical ... and presents the foundations of our humanity."

Salkahazi was killed by the Arrow Cross — the Hungarian allies of the Nazis — on Dec. 27, 1944, for hiding Jews in a Budapest building used by her religious order, the Sisters of Social Service.

MASHANTUCKET, Conn. (AP) - A long-held theory about the migrations of ancient inhabitants of eastern Connecticut might change in light of an archaeological dig that has unearthed homes built into a hillside. Researchers had long believed that the native people who lived in the region about 9,000 years ago were nomadic hunters who moved frequently and did not create permanent living spaces.

But an archaeological dig taking place near a Foxwoods Resort Casino parking garage has uncovered dozens of pit houses, structures built into a hill and supported by timbers.

Elizabeth Chilton, chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts, said the find is prompting archaeologists to dig in places, like hillsides, they once thought pointless.

Oilsands activity has uncovered vast wealth of a different kind -- a 10,000-year-old quarry rich with tools and weapons from some of the first Albertans, including a pristine spearpoint still smeared with the blood of a woolly mammoth.

"It's got this echo of the Ice Age world," said Jack Ives, Alberta's provincial archeologist, who described the find in a hearing before the province's energy regulator yesterday.

"There's quite a rich concentration of artifacts."

The so-called Quarry of the Ancestors, which scientists suspect may be one of the first places where humans put down roots in northern Alberta after the retreat of the glaciers, is found on an outcrop of hard, fine-grained sandstone adjacent to the Albian Sands oilsands lease about 75 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.

Citing what they called a rapidly deteriorating collective memory of Sept. 11, 2001, a 9/11 family group that includes several Staten Islanders announced yesterday that it has partnered with educators to create a nationwide school curriculum on the subject. The World Trade Center United Family group is seeking to overcome a dearth of teaching resources on 9/11.

While details of the proposed curriculum were somewhat limited, the plan centers on an oral history project that calls for interviewing as many as 80 survivors, family members and eyewitnesses to serve as a factual and emotional base for classroom discussions.

"I want [students] to know that these were not just names or statistics, but these were people, these were innocent people who were killed and that their loss is a great void in so many lives of the people they left behind," said Patricia Reilly, 45, of New Dorp, a chairwoman of the World Trade Center United Family group.

Full funding for the curriculum has yet to be secured, but the group
hopes to complete its National 9/11/01 Civic Education Program in time
for the 2007-08 school year.

Peru celebrated the return Friday of a prized 1,300-year-old embossed gold headdress looted from an ancient tomb nearly 20 years ago.

With a feline face at its center and eight curving tentacles, the artifact — which collectors say could be among Peru's most valuable treasures and worth close to $2 million — was recovered last month in a raid on a London lawyer's office.

The golden headdress was made in the image of an ancient sea god and dates back to around 700 A.D., making it a prized example of artwork by the Mochica civilization that inhabited northern Peru.

MYTH or main course? The idea of cannibalism has divided anthropologists for decades but for one Australian expert, there's no doubt human flesh has been consumed with gusto in many parts of the world in recent years.

Australian National University historian and anthropologist Chris Ballard said ritual cannibalism had been practised in parts of the Pacific and Central America, and most recently in Papua and PNG, where human flesh had been eaten within living memory.

''If you hunted single-mindedly, you could probably find someone who has eaten someone in New Guinea,'' he said. Yet the practice had almost certainly ceased, he added, largely because of the influx of missionaries into remote areas.

Other anthropologists scoff at the very idea of cannibalism, saying it is a legend of Western culture, often constructed to justify conquering primitive peoples and grabbing their land.

Dr Ballard is undeterred. Eating an enemy's corpse, or the body of a loved relative, was a traditional ritual among some Papuan tribes, he said, including the Miyanmin, the Fore, Asmat, and Citak peoples.

The Fore people's practice of eating human brains had led to the flowering of a disease called kuru, which has been likened to mad cow disease. ''The Fore saw it as an act of great piety,'' Dr Ballard said. ''If you absolutely loved a relative, you consumed part of his brain.''

The Kombai people have referred to other tribes as ''jungle pigs'', according to some reports, and the notable Australian scientist Tim Flannery has said he lived with a reputedly cannibal tribe -- the Miyanmin -- in PNG, where the village chief referred to another tribe as his ''fridge''.

Human flesh had also been consumed in Fiji, the Solomons and Vanuatu within the last couple of centuries, and in Mexico in the 16th century, Dr Ballard said, yet many experts scoffed at the evidence.

Since the 1980s, he added, cannibalism had been at the centre of a concerted anthropological debate between those academics who argued there was no direct proof of human flesh-eating, and those who believed there was adequate evidence to substantiate the practice.

Michael Stevenson, a social and cultural historian with Monash University, has written on cannibalism, and said he remained a confirmed sceptic.

Cannibalism was a myth, he said, perpetuated by the West to justify otherwise unjustifiable imperialism. ''The notion that human beings eat other is an ancient history, and it's actually an ancient fantasy,'' he said.

THE remains of Edinburgh's medieval tolbooth have been unearthed during road repairs on the Royal Mile.

Historians have always known the tolbooth was located somewhere between St Giles' Cathedral and the City Chambers, but until now had been unable to pinpoint its location.

The archaeological investigations, carried out as part of a GBP 1.5 million upgrade of the Royal Mile, have discovered a large section of the lost building's northern wall which they believe dates to the late 14th century.

The wall begins below the junction with George IV Bridge when heading down the High Street in the direction of Holyrood. Starting under the current road, roughly in line with the statue of David Hume, it continues down the Royal Mile for about 12 metres before turning right towards St Giles.

And John Lawson, the archaeology officer for the Edinburgh city council, believes more will be uncovered over the coming weeks at the site.

"The wall that we've found seems to be the foundation of the old tolbooth building. We think it dates back to 1386 when the tolbooth was rebuilt after being destroyed a year before," he said.

"It may well be that underneath the wall there is a cellar, which may have been used for different purposes during the various stages of the building's history.

"With further roadworks we hope to uncover the remaining part of the wall, which we believe continues right down to the entrance to St Giles' Cathedral and turns right into south side of the church. Obviously we can't dig that place up, but at least we have an idea where the exact location of the tolbooth is."

During its existence the tolbooth was used as the city's council chambers, the Scottish Parliament sat there and it was the site of the High Court.

Latterly it became the old town gaol, and among the notorious criminals imprisoned there was Deacon Brodie.

In 1817, the building was demolished to widen the road. To mark the area where prisoners had entered the gaol, the Heart of Midlothian stones were laid.

"The site will now be preserved by terra sheeting and then recovered. When the road is relaid, there will be copper setts to mark the location," Mr Lawson said.

Councillor Bob Cairns said: "It's tremendous that the works to restore the Royal Mile setts have provided us with an opportunity to learn more about our city's past and preserve it for future generations.

"The discovery of the exact location of the tolbooth is of particular significance on account of the important role it played in the city's history."

Work on the reconstruction of the road surface between George IV Bridge and North Bridge began in January. The archaeological work involved radar surveys in the hope of locating any historical buildings such as the tolbooth and Tyne Gaol.

The project is being undertaken to prevent further damage to the road and to avoid any future need for unplanned emergency repairs. The work will be completed by early 2007.

The reconstruction will involve relaying thousands of the existing traditional granite setts, or large cobbles. The setts were relaid in a GBP 5 million project finished in 1996, but within three years sections of the street began to give way, leading to emergency repairs - and the threat of a lawsuit against the contractor.

ABC-TV's miniseries "Path to 9/11" has ignited a new national dialogue on an old subject - the cinematic dramatization of real life. But unlike previous fact-vs.-drama arguments over the Vietnam War or episodes in the Nixon or Reagan presidencies, this week's just-ended series has raised the political stakes, say media critics and political pundits.

Because the war on terror remains central in the lives of Americans - and because the November elections may hinge on how people perceive its progress - the drama and its timing have unfurled charges of media bias, as well as concerns that voters might be swayed by a fictionalized and disputed account of events.

"The intensity of the controversy over the portrayals in ['Path'] is already ratcheted up because of the coming election, and when you add the currency of the war on terror, the whole issue becomes a very combustible commodity," says Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a media research organization in Washington. "When you have a piece of historical fiction competing for the historical record that is still forming in people's minds, that is dangerous terrain."

Historians working on a new curriculum for Australian high schools plan to weave the study of religion's influence into it.

That would include a study of Aboriginal beliefs on the Dreamtime, a look at the division between Catholic and Protestant Australians, which affected the country for decades, and reading the Koran and learning about Islam, the Brisbane Courier-Mail reported.

"Religion has played a key role in many aspects of society including the legal system, many charitable organizations, the education sector, government and much more," Education Minister Julie Bishop said. "It would not be possible to explain fully the development of Australian society without including religion in the history curriculum."