China on Tuesday claimed to have unearthed a large cache of explosives, abandoned by Japanese troops during World War II, from the base of a hill in Dunhua City in northeast China's Jilin Province.

The 3,500 bombs, still lethal and weighing more than 40 tonnes, were found buried in a rectangular pit at the foot of the hill in Dunhua's Shaheyan Township, which was once the site of a Japanese military airport, police said.

The bombs were discovered by three local farmers from Daqiao Township on June 3 using a metal detector to find scrap iron left by the Japanese troops, which they hoped to sell for money, the police said.

In July 1941, newly drafted Army Pvt. Masaji "Gene" Uratsu received an unusual request during basic training: Report to division headquarters. There, a captain pulled him into a room and asked the farm boy to translate a Japanese textbook and Japanese military field guide. Nervously, Uratsu -- who was born in the United States but had studied in Japan as a child -- stumbled through the translation. He read aloud, feeling like a mouse cornered by a cat. After Uratsu finished, the captain said to tell no one -- or face a court martial.

Months later, Uratsu was told to report to San Francisco's Presidio along with three other Japanese American privates. At the military post, rumors abounded among the dozens of Japanese American rank-and-file soldiers. Organized to fight a suicide mission? Assigned to wash dishes and do menial jobs?

On Nov. 1, they learned the truth: They were enrolled in a secret Japanese language school to train military interrogators and translators. Though Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was more than a month away, deteriorating relations between the two countries had prompted the War Department to comb the Army ranks for potential linguists. They were known as nisei, the American-born children of immigrants.

A fund set up by the German government to compensate Nazi-era forced laborers has finished its last payments to victims. The remaining money in the fund will be used for reconciliation projects.

The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future foundation to compensate Nazi-era forced laborers paid 1.7 million people more than 4.4 billion euros ($5.8 billion) in recent years.

The money has been paid and everything has run its course without a problem," Otto Graf Lambsdorff, a German politician and the fund's vice chair, said in a radio interview on Monday.

Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Horst Köhler are expected to make official announcements about the successful end of the payments on Tuesday.

The fund was conceived as a way to compensate victims of Nazi-era forced labor policies. The money is intended for those who were sent to Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz in which they were forced to work in rough conditions and take part in sadistic medical experiments. Six decades later, many of those who survived the camps still bare the physical and emotional scars.

Money from the fund also went towards victims and their descendants who currently live in Europe including the former Soviet Union, Israel and the US. The largest group of recipients are non-Jews in Poland and the Ukraine, who survived the war.

Instructions on how to build a nuclear reactor have been revealed from five sealed envelopes that have lain hidden for almost 70 years.
The documents were sent to the UK's Royal Society for safekeeping by James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron, during World War II.

He felt their contents, which described cutting-edge science, were far too sensitive to publish at the time. The envelopes were recently discovered in the science academy's archives.

They were opened on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of the neutron's discovery. The publication of James Chadwick's paper, The Existence of a Neutron, kick-started the field of nuclear physics.

Keith Moore, head of library and archives at the Royal Society, said: "The papers have only recently been discovered as part of our ongoing programme to catalogue the Society's archives.

AN ANCIENT training manual for Roman athletes — carved in marble almost 2000 years ago — prescribes far worse punishments than a sending off or a week's docked pay if they performed badly in the Colosseum.

The manual recommends a flogging to get them to perform better. And the same went if they drank too much mead or behaved disgracefully with the local maidens.

The marble tablet was found in 2003 in the town of Alexandria Troas in Turkey, and deciphered only recently by academics at the University of Muenster in Germany. Applied to professional football players today, the whip would undoubtedly replace the half-time talk as the favoured discipline of choice.

The 1.8-metre-high, 90-centimetre-wide tablet was inscribed with the name of Hadrian, the emperor who built a wall in northern England. He sought to get the best out of his athletes.

The tablet, according to research leader Professor Elmar Schwertheim, also listed entry fees to games such as discus and javelin throwing.

A DNA testing company and a genealogy enthusiast say they're trying to achieve what archaeologists have so far failed to do: find out what happened to the Lost Colony, the 1587 settlement on Roanoke Island that disappeared without a wisp of evidence.

"The Lost Colony story is the biggest unsolved mystery in the history of America," said Roberta Estes, owner of DNA Explain, a private DNA analysis company based in Brighton, Mich. "I don't know what we'll find in the end. Part of the big question for me is, did the Lost Colony survive? Who is their family today? And where did they go?"

As director of DNA research for the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research, Estes will manage a multidisciplinary approach to tracking roots from a "most-wanted list" of people who might have connections to the Roanoke colonists or to the 16th century American Indians - or to both.

Estes said the team includes a professional genealogist, an anthropologist, a geneticist and a family tree DNA expert...

A statue modeled on the "Goddess of Democracy" paraded during the bloody Tiananmen Square protests 18 years ago was unveiled Tuesday as a memorial to victims of communism worldwide. The memorial, located near the Capitol Hill site of the US Congress, pays homage to the "more than 100 million people" who have died under communism since Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
US President George W. Bush Tuesday likened the Cold War to today's struggle against terrorism at the unveiling of a new memorial that mourns the tens of millions killed under communism.

"And like the communists, the followers of violent Islamic radicalism are doomed to fail," said Bush, who has often compared Islamist extremists to Germany's Nazis or Soviet communists."By remaining steadfast in freedom's cause, we will ensure that a future American president does not have to stand in a place like this and dedicate a memorial to the millions killed by the radicals and extremists of the 21st century," he said. The memorial near the US Congress resembles the papier-mache statue raised by pro-democracy demonstrators on Beijing's Tiananmen Square before they were massacred by Chinese troops in 1989. Accusing the West of having a"moral blind spot" to communism, backers of the Washington tribute said:"We cannot allow the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro to fade into the background of history." The non-profit Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was created by an act of Congress in 1993 with the aim of emulating memorials to victims of Nazi totalitarian rule. The foundation's honorary chairman is the first president George Bush, and its principal officers include conservative luminaries such as historian Lee Edwards and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist."While the horrors of Nazism are well known, who knows that the Soviet Union murdered 20 million people? Who knows that China's dictators have slaughtered an estimated 60 million?" the foundation said."Yet, until now, our nation's capital had no monument to the victims of imperial communism, an ideology that took the lives of an estimated 100 million innocent men, women and children," Bush said."So it's fitting that we gather to remember those who perished at communism's hands, and dedicate this memorial that will enshrine their suffering and sacrifice in the conscience of the world." The foundation's website recounts how Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin"destroyed hundreds of thousands of Cossacks" before his successor Joseph Stalin"starved more than six million in Ukraine." Ukraine's government hopes that by the 75th anniversary of the 1932-33 famine in 2007-2008, the United Nations will recognize the disaster as a"genocide" against the Ukrainian nation. Mao Zedong"murdered tens of millions of Chinese peasants during his 'land reforms'" while Ho Chi Minh"sent 850,000 Vietnamese to their graves in 'education camps'," the foundation said. The ceremony was attended by nearly 1,000 people, organizers said, including members of the Czech and Hungarian parliaments, foreign ambassadors, and"survivors of communist oppression" like Chinese dissident Harry Wu. Wu has said that Mao, in his"lunatic" zeal to re-fashion China,"killed just as many people as (Adolf) Hitler, maybe even more." Along with World War II and Vietnam War memorials, Washington also has a national Holocaust museum dedicated to the approximately six million Jews murdered by Hitler's Nazis. Conservative commentators say that history is not buried for those still living under communist rule."To even contemplate inscribing the names of the victims on a wall or a pillar is incomprehensible," Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote in an opinion piece last week."How much room should be left on such a monument for the future generations of victims in Cuba, North Korea and China, where communism still exists, or in Russia, where it has not completely been eradicated?"

Award-winning marketing executive Chris Moseley has been appointed Senior Vice President of Marketing for The History Channel. The announcement was made today by Nancy Dubuc, Executive Vice President and General Manager, The History Channel.

In her new role, Moseley will spearhead all marketing, promotional and branding campaigns for The History Channel and its domestic networks including History International, The History Channel en espanol and Military History Channel across all content platforms as well as history.com. She will be responsible for the creative implementation of major marketing strategies, including advertising, on-air consumer marketing and branding. She will report directly to Ms. Dubuc.

DePaul University on Friday formally denied tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, who has taught political science there while attracting an international following — of both fans and critics — for his attacks on Israeli policies and the “Holocaust industry.”

Finkelstein’s tenure bid has attracted an unusual degree of outside attention and his research has been much debated by scholars of the Middle East. In evaluating his record, DePaul faculty panels and administrators praised him as a teacher and acknowledged that he has become a prominent public intellectual, with works published by major presses. But first a dean and now the president of DePaul — in rejecting tenure for Finkelstein — have cited the style of his work and intellectual combat. Finkelstein was criticized for violating the Vincentian norms of the Roman Catholic university with writing and statements that were deemed hurtful, that contained ad hominem attacks and that did not show respect for others.

Given that line of criticism, the Finkelstein case is emerging as a test of whether a range of qualities grouped together as “collegiality” belong in tenure cases. Many colleges and universities consider collegiality — perhaps not surprising given that a positive tenure vote can make someone a colleague for the duration of a career. But many experts on academic freedom, as well as the American Association of University Professors, view skeptically the practice of treating collegiality as a major, independent factor in the tenure process. They fear that collegiality can provide cover for squelching the views of those who may hold controversial or cutting edge views or who just get on their colleagues’ wrong sides.

Adding to the tensions over the Finkelstein case is another element to it. His tenure bid was backed by his department and a collegewide faculty committee, and hit roadblocks when a dean weighed in against him. And the same day DePaul’s president denied Finkelstein tenure, he also denied tenure to another professor — who had backing from her department, the collegewide faculty panel, and the dean who weighed in against Finkelstein.

While most tenure processes are layered, several people at DePaul said it was unusual for tenure candidates there to advance several steps in the review process — only to be rejected — and that the cases raise questions about how much deference should go to a department.

The chief counsel to the Navy's Court of Inquiry into Israel's attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty in 1967 repeats in today's edition of the San Diego Union a charge he first made in 2004 that Lyndon Johnson ordered a cover-up of the truth.

The Liberty was attacked on June 8, 1967 during the Six-Day War. 34 died and 171 were injured. Israel claimed it was an accident. But in an op ed today Ward Boston Jr. says "I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity.' "

Ward goes on to say:

For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man, and when orders come in from the secretary of defense and president of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.

Adm. Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

I am outraged at the efforts of Israel's apologists to claim this attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”

Adm. Kidd told me that after receiving the president's cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Department of Defense and rewrite portions of the court's findings. He said, “Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It's a political matter, and we cannot talk about it.” We were to “put a lid on it” and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand-correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.

Ward's charges have been rebutted by Jay Cristol, the author of The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Cristol, a judge, concluded after 17 years of research that Israel did indeed attack the Liberty in error.

Related Links

HNN Hot Topics: The Attack on the USS Liberty

Ward's affidavit from 2004 in which he first charged there was a cover-up

Archaeologists have discovered the most ancient ruler's symbol on Bulgarian territory, what was once the kingdom of the Thracian tribes. The Bulgarian archaeologists Daniela Agre and Deyan Dichev, who are leading the Strandzha expedition, made the announcement for the exceptional finding on the Bulgarian National Radio on Monday.

The artifact was unearthed near the village of Golyam Dervent. Dichev and Agre were researching a dolmen (dolmens were the first Thracian tombs) when they noticed a frieze of intertwined zoomorphic and geometrical elements carved on the entrance of the tomb. The most interesting part of the discovery is the double-axe (labris) - a symbol of power in the Thracian society - placed inside a circle. The labris has lots of additional ornamentation on it, Dichev said. The frieze includes the images of snakes, which were the symbol of the king in the Thracian religious beliefs.

Tourists puzzled by the jumble of buildings in classical and modern Rome can now find their bearings by visiting a virtual model of the imperial capital in what is being billed as the world's biggest computer simulation of an ancient city.

"Rome Reborn" was unveiled on Monday in a first release showing the city at its peak in 320 AD, under the Emperor Constantine when it had grown to a million inhabitants.

Brainchild of the University of Virginia's Bernard Frischer, Rome Reborn (www.romereborn.virginia.edu) will eventually show its evolution from Bronze Age hut settlements to the Sack of Rome in the 5th century AD and the devastating Gothic Wars.

In 1943, 17-year-old Eberhard Fuhr was taken out of his high school classroom in Cincinnati, arrested by FBI agents, and sent off to an internment camp for "enemy aliens" in Texas, where he spent the next 4 1/2 years with his family.

The stories of the Germans have gotten little attention so far, but the Senate took a step toward changing that last week, voting to look into the treatment of Germans and other Europeans in the U.S. during World War II.

The legislation's status is uncertain because it was passed as an amendment to the immigration bill, which stalled in the Senate last week.

Still, just getting a vote on the issue was an accomplishment for Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who represents a large German population. For the last six years, a hold placed by an anonymous Republican senator had kept it from coming up for a vote.

"Congress and the U.S. government did the right thing by recognizing and apologizing for the mistreatment of Japanese Americans during World War II," Feingold said. "That same respect has not been shown to the many German Americans, Italian Americans, and European Latin Americans."

Feingold's "Wartime Treatment Study Act" would set up a commission to examine the treatment of German, Italian and other Europeans; and a second commission to look into how Jewish refugees fleeing persecution were treated.

Millions of people have marveled at the view of Bridalveil Fall since John Muir first spotted it from a mile away when he entered Yosemite Valley in the spring of 1868. Not nearly as many see the "dainty little fall'' quite the way Muir did.

Now, a Santa Cruz, Calif., couple are hoping to restore some popularity to one of the classic early views of Yosemite, reopening a 19th-century door on what Muir came to regard as a holy vista — the "sanctum sanctorum of the Sierra.''

Donna and Peter Thomas, a husband-and-wife team of artists who spend most of their time producing hand-bound fine-press books, have rewalked a long-forgotten trail from San Francisco to Yosemite that Muir took, also mostly on foot, for his first Sierra visit in 1868.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay - Friedrich Adolph, the last surviving sailor in Uruguay from the famed German battleship Admiral Graf Spee that sank off this country's coast at the outset of World War II, has died, his family said. He was 89.

Adolph died Friday and had been "very sick," according to his grandson, Tobias Friedrich AdolphThe Graf Spee was considered one of the most sophisticated battleships of its time.

The battleship prowled the South Atlantic, sinking as many as nine allied merchant ships before warships from Britain and New Zealand tracked it down and damaged it during the "Battle of the River Plate" that began on Dec. 13, 1939.The damaged Graf Spee limped into Montevideo harbor where injured and dead sailors were taken ashore. To prevent it from falling into enemy hands, the Graf Spree's German captain later dynamited it and sank it a few miles from Montevideo

Appearing last month before the state’s highest court, a lawyer representing eight same-sex couples led a spirited attack on Connecticut’s refusal to grant gay couples the freedom to marry. He also challenged the notion that civil union laws — like those enacted in Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and most recently New Hampshire — are a constitutionally adequate alternative.

The plaintiffs’ argument was laced with references to Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court’s notorious 1896 decision which justified racial segregation under a deplorable standard of “separate but equal.” Although startling, the analogy is apt. In establishing civil unions two years ago, Connecticut lawmakers created a separate and inherently inferior institution that continues to deny gay couples the equality they seek and deserve.

On June 7, the House Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education cleared its fiscal year (FY) 2008 budget for the programs under its jurisdiction.

The subcommittee approved $120 million for the Teaching American History grants program at the U.S. Department of Education. While this reflects level funding from FY 2007, the subcommittee rejected the Bush administration’s request that the program be cut by nearly 60 percent, to a level of $50 million.

Charlie Savage, Washington correspondent for The Boston Globe has won the twentieth annual Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. The $5,000 award recognizes journalists whose high standards for accuracy and substance help foster a better public understanding of the Presidency. This year, the award will be presented by Jack Ford, son of President Ford and chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, at a National Press Club luncheon on June 11th.

In selecting Charlie Savage for the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2006, the judges issued the following statement.

"As White House reporter for The Boston Globe, Charlie Savage exposed a persistent and unprecedented expansion of Presidential authority that infringed on the separation of powers imbedded in the Constitution. Compiling the record of President Bush's actions on new legislation, Savage recognized and reported a clear pattern: In public ceremonies the President would sign bills passed by Congress, then quietly add signing statements asserting the right to ignore provisions with which he disagreed. In six years as President, Savage reported, President Bush challenged some 750 statutes, far more than all previous Presidents combined. Broadening the impact of his articles, Savage quoted legal scholars on how the President's practice of approving bills only to defy them diminished the rule of law. Members of Congress, alerted by Savage's reporting, moved to counter the President's reach for greater power by demanding that the President execute all statutes duly debated and legislated into law.

German psychologist Gunter Kruse, who in recent years has been engaged in drawing up Lenin's family tree, maintains that one of the world proletariat leader's great-grandmothers was burnt at the stake as a witch.

"I went as far back as the middle ages and discovered one of Lenin's ancestor who lived in the 13th century", Kruse reported after spending several years in archives, drawing up the Western European branch of Lenin's family tree.

According to Kruse, the witch who was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition is the most intriguing member of the Ulyanovs family, though almost no information about her has survived.

A strip of the past runs not far from the southern corporate limits of this northern Lee County city.

The 300 feet or so left of the first concrete road built in Mississippi, stands as a reminder of the work that has pushed Lee County forward in so many ways.

Bobby Smith, District 2 supervisor, knew that when he had to pave most of what is now known as County Road 681. But he left the strip for posterity, notified the state Department of Archives and History and wants to see the patch of roadway marked with a sign that will give itss history and significance. Smith has yet to hear from the state.

"Obviously, saving a piece of our history is important," he said, "from the standpoint of our children, when they grow up, can ask questions and understand the history of Saltillo, the history of this area."

[It's the oldest concrete road in the state and second oldest in the South.]

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and the Computer History Museum (CHM), based in Silicon Valley, today announced that the museum has acquired a new collection of rare computers and related items, made possible by a $250,000 donation from SAP. Determined to be of high quality and historical importance, this collection was found in a remote warehouse in northwestern Germany and was scheduled for destruction before CHM intervened. The donation, managed by the Corporate Social Responsibility team within SAP Global Communications, funded the shipping, logistical support and storage required to move the collection from Germany to CHM's facility in Mountain View, California. The announcement was made during SAP's Silicon Valley Week, being held in Palo Alto, California, June 6-8....

Based in Mountain View, California, the Computer History Museum is home to the world's largest collection of computer artifacts. With more than three decades of collecting efforts, CHM preserves a comprehensive view of computing history, encompassing the machines, software and social implications of the computer. The museum's holdings include nearly 50,000 objects, photographs and films, as well as 4,000 linear feet of documentation and several hundred gigabytes of software.

It was appropriate that the NAACP's 29th annual Freedom Fund & Awards Banquet include a talk about Frenchtown.

Local historian Ann Roberts spoke of the history of the community that started in the 1700s as a 6-by-6-mile stretch of land that developed into a prominent black enclave, full of thriving business up until the end of segregation.

Later, the area became a magnet for crime, drugs and prostitution.

But don't despair, Roberts said. “The best is yet to come."

Frenchtown is the future home for the headquarters of the Tallahassee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Publishing houses cannot afford to forget anniversaries. Their dates with history are marked by glossy, sepia-tinted hardbounds and gala launches. The year 2007-that marks the 150th anniversary of the 1857 Uprising and the 60th year of independent India- is just the right time to package nationalism and sell history.

The sexagenarian country has spawned quite a few books, including historian Ramachandra Guha's magnum opus India After Gandhi and India 60, an anthology of 30 articles and two photo essays edited by Ira Pande. "An anniversary celebration is a nice way to introduce the side of India that few know of," says Guha.
The publishers' sense of history -and profits-is extremely keen. Pramod Kapoor, publisher of Roli Books, says, "We normally chart out the calendar two-three years in advance to release books on anniversaries." Like India Remembered: Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power by Pamela Mountbatten and India Hicks.

Roli will also be rolling out books on the 1857 Revolt-Boria Majumdar's 1857 Revisited will be launched next month, and Rudrangshu Mukherjee's Dateline 1857 will be out in July. Roli will also come out with a book on the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar's court proceedings.

A Cirby School third-grade teacher is proving books and documentaries aren't the only ways to learn about the history of Roseville.

Students in Lisa Wegsteen's class last week staged several performances of an original play shedding light on the city's history. But in a unique twist, students' hands did all the acting.

Using specially decorated hand puppets, actors played a group of contemporary Cirby School students who want to learn more about their area's past.

So they jump inside a magic tree house that takes them back in time.

Helen Fairfax Holmes was a fire cat.

That's how Eastern Kentucky University visiting scholar and Frankfort resident Karen McDaniel describes her late friend.

Once, when the two were getting out of a car at Holmes' house, McDaniel tried to help the feeble woman to the door.

"She smacked my arm and said, "I don't need no help,'" McDaniel said. "I never tried to help her again like that. She was independent."

Holmes, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Frankfort chapter, helped organize the 1964 March on Frankfort in support of civil rights legislation before the Kentucky General Assembly. The march drew 10,000 protesters and appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson and musical group Peter, Paul and Mary.

She also organized a boycott of taxi stations, organized sit-ins at Kentucky State University where she was an English professor, and got students involved in equal rights demonstrations during the civil rights era.

"She was at there in the forefront," McDaniel said. "She was just amazing in all the things she was involved with and all the things she did."

That's why McDaniel is including her friend as one of the hundreds of entries in the Kentucky African-American Encyclopedia she is working on.

McDaniel, one of three editors on the project, is a Kentucky native who has spent the last 30 years living in Frankfort.

The book, scheduled to be complete in 2011, is a way of filling gaps in Kentucky's written history where blacks have been missing, she said. It will serve as an authoritative reference on blacks in the state and document the state's diversity.

For those with a keen knowledge of Sonoma history, Gen. Mariano Vallejo's tombstone in Mountain Cemetery has been a long-standing point of contention. The reason: The general's birth date is incorrect on the large slab of marble.
Now a collection of interested citizens is working with the living descendants of Vallejo to attempt to get this error fixed.

"We can actually set the date straight," said Martha McGettigan, great-great-granddaughter of Vallejo. "I think it's an honor to be the ones to correct it."

By most accounts, the error was first publicized in 1959, when J.N. Bowman, a historian with the California State Archives, looked up Vallejo's baptismal record from the Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey, where the general was born.
The record clearly stated he was born July 4, 1807, not July 7, 1808, as the tombstone reads. Bowman released his findings in an article published in 1959 titled "Vallejo's Birth Date."

"The family, for years now, has tried to correct it," said Paula Vinson, who's aiding in the effort to correct the tombstone.

More than 140 people came to learn about a forgotten time in history Tuesday at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette — leaving many in the audience astounded at the stories they heard and read.

“Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment, 1941-48,” put on by the Traces Museum in St. Paul, Minn., told the story of 15,000 German-Americans who were forced into internment camps.

The exhibits were displayed in one of the museum’s two converted buses, called a “BUS-eum.” The BUS-eum includes exhibits in half of it and a 25-person seating area that shows two videos. A “Dateline NBC” documentary tells the story of more than 5,000 Latin American Germans and Japanese being forced into internment camps; a second film was from 1945 about the internment camps.

NORFOLK, Va. -- Their lightly armed spy ship was cruising the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt, watching and eavesdropping during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The sky was clear and the sea calm. Suddenly, Israeli war planes swooped down and ships approached, firing at the deck as sailors aboard the Liberty struggled to save the Norfolk-based ship.

The assault--40 years ago Friday--lasted as long as 75 minutes, killing 34 U.S. sailors and wounding 173 others.

Almost immediately, the Israeli government took responsibility and called it a grave error made in the fog of combat. The U.S. government agreed.

The battered Liberty crew believed then--and now--that the attack was deliberate and that their government covered up the truth. The sailors kept quiet at first, as the Navy commanded. But over the years, their doubt and candor festered.

Now, the veterans want the case reopened, and to know why they were attacked. ...

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s sale of the prized bronze statue “Artemis and the Stag” earned $25.5 million Thursday at Sotheby’s auction house in New York City, setting records as the most expensive sculpture and antiquity sold through auctions.

Final sales from Thursday’s auction of 25 antiquities from the gallery’s permanent collection totaled $35.8 million, bringing profits from the gallery’s recent series of auctions to more than $64 million, not including Sotheby’s commission.

The remains of seven American Indians unearthed by a home builder show several were shot point-blank in the head by Mormon settlers seeking revenge during a period of pitched violence in 1853, say scientists who plan to release their findings on Friday.

The bones were discovered by contractors digging in Nephi, about 70 miles south of Salt Lake City, last summer for a house that now stands over the site.

The victims, all males about 13 to 35 years old, are believed to have been Goshute Indians who were unwitting casualties of the Walker War, a nearly yearlong clash between Mormons and other Indian tribes under the leadership of Ute Chief Walkara.

She was a beautiful young Chinese nurse, fresh from a Hong Kong training college. He was the epitome of glamour in war-wracked China, an American "Flying Tiger", one of the select group of fighter pilots who defended the supply chain across the Himalayas for the troops fighting the Japanese.

Amid the carnage, they fell in love, and the pilot - known to this day only by his nickname, Panny - promised to return after the war was over to find her.

It took 60 years, and the arrival of a package containing his long-lost love letters, before Rita Wong learned how he had tried, but failed, to keep his promise.

The letters had reached a cousin but when he tried to forward them to her deep inside Communist China, they were ''returned to sender''. Now, after her death on Tuesday at the age of 95, her son has spoken of the love his mother won and lost in war and in China's post-war chaos.