A ship that was deliberately sunk might have blocked Napoleon from entering a Middle Eastern port on his quest to conquer the British Empire in Egypt and India, and sent the future emperor retreating back to France.

A new study of the ship's excavated cargo will help marine archaeologists analyze the role of sunken ship and reconstruct the 61-day battle between the British and Napoleon's army at the entry to the Israeli city Akko, known then as Acre, more than 200 years ago.

Over the past 40 years, notable marine archaeologists have examined the wreck, yet no one has come to any agreement as to why the 30-meter-long ship entered the shallow waters of the harbor.

"The origin of the wreck and its place in the maritime history of Akko remain a mystery," said Debbie Cvikel from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies and the Department Of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. "One of the possibilities is that She was scuttled by [Royal Navy officer] Sidney Smith in 1799, in order to block the harbor against Napoleon Bonaparte."

A map drawn by a British soldier in 1799 depicts the British navy in combat with Napoleon's ships. In the illustration, a symbol of a sunken ship marks the exact location of the wreck.

Cvikel and colleagues have found the wreck well-preserved, including lead shots and cannon balls [image]. The angle and precise spot of one cannon ball lodged into the bottom of the hull appears to have been shot on purpose.

Six of the Seven Wonders of the World have long since gone with the wind. The Giza pyramids of Egypt are the sole survivor — and now they are threatened by modern Cairo's rapidly spreading urban sprawl.

But the reliability of the original Seven Wonders list, drawn up by the architect Philon of Byzantium in about 200 B.C., was suspect anyway. Did the hanging gardens of Babylon ever exist? The Tower of Babel? The Colossus of Rhodes? No traces remain.

Philon kept within his known world — the Mediterranean basin — so manmade constructions like the Great Wall of China and Angkor Wat in Cambodia never made the grade.

Today our world is so loaded with wonders that, uncomfortable with the gaping lacunas in Philon's legacy, a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker, Bernard Weber, is conducting a popular vote on the Internet to update the list. He says his project is the world's first global ballot on any subject.

Weber has spent the past six years drumming up interest and is now in the home stretch. On July 7 (that's 07/07/07) he will announce results of the vote for the world's favorite "New Seven Wonders" at a ceremony in Lisbon. His stated aim is to celebrate and protect the greatest man-made monuments on the planet.

Not everyone thinks this makes sense, notably the Egyptians, who bristle at what they see as a challenge to the international standing of the pyramids. A few weeks ago the country's culture minister, Faruq Hosni, denounced the competition as "absurd," and Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he stands by the ancient listing. "It's ridiculous. They don't need to be put to a vote," he said.

BEIJING -- China and Japan, holding divergent views about history, will jointly study the subject in an attempt to improve ties strained over the past, especially Japanese occupation of China during World War II.

China hopes the first-ever joint effort between the two countries on history can proceed well, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

China and Japan have each appointed a 10-member team to conduct the research.

"I hope the experts from the two countries can do the study on the basis of principles of the three political documents and face history in a correct manner," Qin said.

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PERUGIA, Italy -- An Italian expedition plans to retrace the route that Marco Polo took to China, using the same type of horses on the Silk Road.

"We'll face the same kind of challenges our illustrious predecessor did, traveling over extremely varied terrain: plains, valleys, high mountain tracks and deserts," Piero Lapiana, the expedition's leader, told the Italian news agency ANSA.

Veterinarians from Perugia University will be in the group to study how the horses perform. They will be prepared at the university to handle the rough conditions they can expect in Asia.

The horses to be used are of the "maremmana" breed, which are believed to be similar to the pack horses Marco Polo used.

Marco Polo's father and brother actually made the rough journey to the court of Kublai Khan in 1266. He joined them on a second trip in 1271.

The expedition is expected to take about 15 months.

Just weeks before the April opening of a new Greek and Roman antiquities exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum, the author of a new tell-all has discovered that some of the prize pieces set for display in the new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court may have been pillaged from Greece and Italy and smuggled over borders.

The potential scandal, unearthed by Michael Gross during research for his forthcoming book about New York's storied art mecca, is already raising hackles among museum insiders. Spurred on by the wealth of her late husband Levy (the Oppenheimer mutual fund kingpin), influential museum trustee White hopes to deed her collection to the Met free from the rising din that her treasured objects were stolen. But Gross reveals that several of the artifacts may have to be repatriated to Greece and Italy.

Though White declined to talk to Gross, the author did speak to former artifact smuggler Michel van Rijn, who says that the Met is in "frantic" negotiations with the countries in question over whether the items of "questionable provenance" must be returned. Until then, preparations for the gala opening of the new gallery on April 20 are proceeding apace. The Met did not return calls and e-mails for comment.

SEOUL -- South Korea plans to introduce history textbooks that include chapters rebutting historical claims by its neighboring countries, officials said Tuesday.

The Education Ministry officials said they will adopt textbooks that refute such historical assertions as Japan's denial of wartime sex slavery and China's claim over South Korea's ancient kingdoms.

Japan has been slammed for refusing to apologize for its exploitation of about 200,000 "comfort women" in army brothels during World War II after taking them from neighboring nations including South Korea and the Philippines. It has also maintained that Dokdo, a set of islets in South Korea's East Sea, belongs to Tokyo.

China has been increasingly involved in a historical row with South Korea over its five-year project aimed at laying claim to Korea's ancient kingdom of Koguryo and its successor. The Koguryo kingdom controlled the upper part of the Korean Peninsula and most of northeastern China from 37 B.C. to A.D. 668.

International organisations have provided US $2.3 million and 400 cubic metres of iron wood for repairs and restoration of the historical relics in the former imperial city of Hue since its system of temples and palaces were recognised as World Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO in 1993...

Under a project to preserve and promote the value of Hue’s historical relics during the 1996-2010 period, more than VND 266 billion (roughly US $16.62 million) has been spent on restoring the monuments. As a result these monuments are no longer dilapidated and their value can be fully appreciated.

Phung Phu, director of the Centre for Preservation of Historical relics in Hue, said that of more than 100 of over 300 projects in and around Hue have been restored, upgraded and preserved. Many of them, including the Ngo Mon Gate (Noon-time Gate), the Thai Hoa Palace (the Palace of Supreme Peace), the The To Temple, Dien Tho Palace, Hien Lam pavilion, Tomb of Gia Long, Sung An, Minh Lau and Bi Dinh shrines, Tomb of Minh Mang, Ngo Mon Square, Thien Mu Pagoda), An Dinh Palace, and gates of Hue Citadel, have opened for visitors.

ACOMA PUEBLO, N.M. -- “The Pueblo of Acoma tribal community is honored to enter into this important partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation,” said pueblo Governor Jason Johnson on the naming of Sky City as the 28th National Trust Historic site.

The trust describes the site, “Overlooking a vast desert and mountain sweep of northern New Mexico and dating back to 1150 A.D., Acoma Sky City is a vibrant community characterized by its adobe houses, plazas, walkways and the San Esteban del Rey Mission Church, completed around 1640. Today approximately 15 families live year-round atop the 70- acre mesa. It is the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America.”

Evidence suggests life was less stressful in the Stone Age than it is today.

Sure, there were the challenges of surviving climatic change, scrounging for shelter and putting food on -– er, over -– the fire.

However, the modern businessman could learn a lot from the life of an early hunter-gatherer, archeological anthropologist Jonathan Haas said.

“[Back then], once you gathered the food you needed for the day, you were done for the rest of the day,” Haas said. “There was not the sense of ‘Let’s put some money away in an IRA.’ You went and got the resources you needed for that day. If you didn’t get the resources, you went hungry.”

Haas, lead curator of the Field Museum’s new “Ancient Americas” exhibit, believes there is a lesson in that.

“That is what we have done as humans for 98 percent of our existence on the planet,” he said. “‘I have to hunt until I get enough food for the day. Then I’m done.’”...

Rather than tell the story chronologically, Ancient Americas’ galleries revolve around the innovations people used to meet day-to-day challenges. Learn how hunting and gathering evolved to meet a changing environment; how societies cultivated wild plants, like squash, for food and tamed wild animals; and how different forms of leadership led to the formation of hierarchical governments...

More than 20 distinct cultural groups are represented in the new exhibit, including the pueblo-building tribes of the American Southwest; the mound-building Hopewell and Mississippian cultures which flourished in the Midwest; the Taíno of the Caribbean; the South-American Incas and Mesoamerican civilizations like the Zapotec, Maya and Aztec. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec’s capital city in what is now Mexico City, once boasted more than 200,000 people.

ACCRA, Ghana -- Fifty years of independence, four republics, three successful military coups, several failed attempts, five civilian governments, three military governments and nine leaders -- that is the chequered history of Ghana, which celebrates its golden jubilee on Tuesday, March 6.

Now, however, the country believes it is on autopilot on a smooth super highway towards democracy.

When Ghana achieved independence from Britain in 1957, there were high hopes for the West African state as it blazed the trail. The country's flag of red, gold and green with a black star in the middle was the pride of Africa.

Being the first country south of the Sahara to be free, its first president Kwame Nkrumah told his countrymen that they had to work hard and show that Africans were capable of managing their own affairs.

Nkrumah, a Pan-Africanist to the marrow, embraced the continent, and Ghana became the Mecca for freedom fighters who sought to achieve independence for their countries.

Historians describe him as an anti-colonial, anti-neo-colonial, and anti-imperialist leader who emerged as one of the most influential Pan-Africanists of the 20th century...

WASHINGTON -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed in parliament Monday that his government would not apologize for military brothels that enslaved women during World War II, even if the U.S. Congress urges him to do so.

But Abe's provocative comments Monday and similar remarks last week may boomerang, and boost the chances for passage of a House resolution calling on Japan to make an official, formal apology for the kidnapping and imprisonment of up to 200,000 women in Asia during the war.

The measure is sponsored by Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat and Japanese-American.

One Capitol Hill staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Abe's comments had given the resolution a boost, and that some members -- including House leaders -- may push to take up the measure before Abe visits Washington, a trip tentatively set for late April.

Despite all of the commotion made about ridding the name of notorious anti-Semite Austin Corbin from the streets of Manhattan Beach, only about fifty people showed up at Kingsborough Community College Monday night to talk about the future of Corbin Place at a special Community Board 15 hearing.

Still, based on the impassioned speeches that were made, it was almost guaranteed that the man of the hour – Austin Corbin – was smiling from the hereafter, happy with the knowledge that he is still being remembered after all of these years and considered by some, to be an “acolyte of a tyrant,” the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

“When I think of Corbin Place, I think of Swastika Place,” said Michael Geller, the male Democratic District Leader for the 45th Assembly District, who claims that Corbin’s name is a symbol just like the skull and cross bones.

“Austin Corbin and Hitler and Stalin should be remembered, but not by raising him to a place of honor,” said Geller. “We must not make them the guardians of our streets and let them be the first sites the eyes of our friends and families. Why is this founder of the American Society of the Suppression of Jews given the same honor reserved for our friends and fallen leaders like Assemblywoman Lena Cymbrowitz and 9-11 hero Jimmy Quinn?”

Geller was one of about twelve speakers who pawed at the issue of renaming Corbin Place, an idea that was sparked just over a month ago when Daily News columnist Denis Hamill decided to write about the history of the Manhattan Beach block.

In his piece, he noted that very few people living on Corbin Place, home to many Jews, a synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Park and the Babi Yar triangle, which also honors victims of the Holocaust, was named after railroad magnate Austin Corbin – who, by most historical accounts – was a raging anti-Semite.

While doing his research, Hammil dug up a wealth of Corbin quotes from many of his speeches for the American Society for the Suppression of the Jews, which he was president.

Corbin, apparently, wasn’t shy when he declared, “If America is a free country, why can't we be free of the Jews?” and took pride in stopping all Jews and blacks from entering the tony hotels he built in Manhattan beach.

State Senator Carl Kruger wasn’t shy either when he said in a statement read at the hearing that “it was time for Corbin’s name to slink quietly out of town.”

Neither was City Councilman Michael Nelson when he began calling for Corbin Place to be renamed – possibly in honor of late State Senator Donald Halperin, an old high school friend.

“I feel we have a historic opportunity, an opportunity to rid from our area the name of someone who had been so insidious,” said Nelson. “[Corbin’s] words and writings were precursors to Mien Kampf. It was talk like that led to the holocaust.”

But, Nelson’s case was a hard sell to all of the people who felt that changing the name of the street would do nothing but create more heartache.

Armed with speeches and petitions, just over half of the speakers spoke out against the name change, claiming it would do more harm than good. They cited potential problems with mail delivery, changes to maps and some fears that the deeds to their homes wouldn’t mean much if the name of the street their houses stood on was suddenly changed.

“Corbin Place is my home and my life and I would not like it changed,” said Sherry Falcone, a long time resident, who stood with the Brighton Neighborhood Association Founder Pat Singer, who read most of Falcone’s statement from a letter she wrote. “I do not know who the street is named after, but I know who I am and who I stand for.”

“You can’t change history,” added Singer, armed with signatures from over 100 Russian residents of Corbin Place. “You can learn from it and go forward. And the Jewish people of Corbin Place have gone forward.”

During the course of the hearing, there were those who found a middle-of-the-road solution to the problem.

Speaker Gary Medovoy and noted Brooklyn historian Ron Schweiger recommended that the street be renamed, but to another Corbin – Margaret Corbin, who defended New York City against a British onslaught during the revolutionary war.

“She was America’s first woman soldier, and was also the first woman soldier to be injured in battle,” Schweiger noted. ...

Today's technology has proved to be a double-edged sword: There's no dispute that it has improved our lives, but it also has caused us to lose history as fast as we make it.

Correspondence is by e-mail; hit delete and it's wiped out. Thousands of photographs are taken; few are printed. Official records are increasingly digital.

With our fingers poised over the delete button, what will be left of our culture for historians?

Scientists say we have to take steps now to preserve our footprint, so that future generations will know how we evolved.

"Are we losing history? Every day," said Rob Spindler, university archivist and head of Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University Libraries. "The loss of history is a matter of neglect."

The problem is twofold: scarcity and abundance....

North Carolina-Even as the U.S. Department of Justice was announcing a fresh look at unsolved civil rights-era killings around the South, a Mississippi Delta prosecutor was closing the books on perhaps the most notorious of those cold cases - the brutal 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

To some, the Leflore County grand jury's decision not to return an indictment in the case following an exhaustive three-year federal investigation was a sign that not much has changed in Mississippi in the last 52 years.

But others, including the prosecutor herself, felt it showed the opposite - a maturing of racial justice in this part of the South.

"It would have been very easy for that grand jury to have returned a true bill based solely on emotion and the rage they felt. And I commend them for not doing that," says Joyce Chiles, the black district attorney who directed the case in which the grand jury declined to charge 73-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham - the object of Till's infamous wolf whistle.

If the grand jurors had acted on the basis of hate, not evidence, Chiles says, that would have been more like the Jim Crow justice of 1955.

Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

"The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well educated and well paid are interested in," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.