Canada's long wait for a first Olympic gold medal on home soil is over after Alexandre Bilodeau won the men's moguls event in Vancouver.

Bilodeau, 22, finished ahead of Australia's reigning champion Dale Begg-Smith and American Bryon Wilson.

It ended a 34-year wait and sparked wild celebrations at Cypress Mountain.

Canada had never won an Olympic gold medal in their homeland, failing to capture any at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games or the 1988 Calgary Winter Games.

"I don't think I really realise it," said Bilodeau. "It's too good to be true."

A day after his moguls team-mate Jennifer Heil failed to live up to expectations and win Canada's first gold medal, Bilodeau stepped up and flew down the course in a speedy, near flawless run.

After qualifying with the second best time, Bilodeau was the penultimate skier.

He then blazed through the slushy moguls, tore down the course in 23.17 seconds and posted a score that was 0.17 points better than Canadian-born Begg-Smith, who won gold for Australia in Turin four years ago.

When the final skier, Guilbaut Colas of France, had his sixth-place score flashed on the board, the Canadian crowd went wild.

"It's been a dream since I was a little kid and it's come true," said Bilodeau.

"I can't think. There are more golds to come for Canada. It's just the beginning of a good party in Canada."

It is a moment that will be played and replayed for the next two weeks and beyond - one that will be celebrated again come Monday, when Bilodeau receives the Olympic gold in a ceremony downtown in Vancouver.

He and Wilson were the only two men in the finals who dared try a backflip with two twists on the top jump.

And bronze medallist Wilson said: "A year ago, I would've been just happy to make the Olympics, that was my first goal.

"When I got down to the bottom, I saw the score, I hoped it would hold out and it did. And it was pretty amazing."

Archaeology professors have discovered in Illinois what they said appears to be a coppersmiths' workshop from the American Stone Age.

Ancient Mississippian-era hammered-copper decorations, including headdress ornaments, jewelry and clothing embellishments, have been unearthed near the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, the Belleville News-Democrat reported Tuesday.

The site was the location of Cahokia, a large, prehistoric city of perhaps 20,000 inhabitants, the News-Democrat said.

A self-taught archaeologist, Greg Perino, who died in 2005 at age 91, originally found the workshop in the 1950s. Perino had mapped the area of the site, but his mapping was crude and made it difficult to locate the site, the newspaper said.

France deliberately exposed its soldiers to nuclear explosions in Algeria in the 1960s to study the effect of radiation on humans, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing confidential documents.

The French government promised last year to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria, carried out between 1960 and 1966, recognizing a link between the explosions and veterans' illnesses such as cancer.

While the government has said the tests were conducted as safely as possible, newspaper Le Parisien quoted an official defense report from the period as saying that the army deliberately sent its soldiers on risky maneuvers on April 25, 1961....

One of the world's oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon (England) after lying on the seabed for almost 3,000 years. The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank. Experts say the 'incredibly exciting' discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain's links with Europe in the Bronze Age as well as the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 900 BCE, as being a 'bulk carrier' of its age. The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze. Archaeologists believe the copper - and possibly the tin - was being imported into Britain and originated in a number of different countries throughout Europe, rather than from a single source, demonstrating the existence of a complex network of trade routes across the Continent.

Academics at the University of Oxford are carrying out further analysis of the cargo in order to establish its exact origins. However, it is thought the copper would have come from the Iberian peninsular, Alpine Europe, especially modern day Switzerland, and possibly other locations in France, such as the Massif Central, and even as far as Austria. It is first time tin ingots from this period have ever been found in Britain, a discovery which may support theories that the metal was being mined in the south west at this time. If the tin was not produced in Britain, it is likely it would have also come from the Iberian peninsular or from eastern Germany.

William Ward Warren was 15 when his dad dropped him off at Dallas Love Field to see President John F. Kennedy arrive in the city, on the same day JFK was assassinated.

Students in Dallas, Texas, had November 22, 1963, off from school in recognition of the visit. Warren decided to take along his 8mm camera.

The result was "the best home movie known to exist of the Kennedy arrival," according to Gary Mack, curator of the The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

The color film offers new glimpses of the president and Mrs. Kennedy, wearing a pink Chanel suit, coming down the steps from Air Force One and greeting well-wishers.

Adults, accustomed to the harsh truths about our presidents revealed in newspaper accounts and best-selling biographies, can no longer perceive the glory of George W. Bush's Vietnam military service or admire the "marriage" of Bill and Hillary Clinton. But children labor under no such disillusions. So long as they stick to the thin books with the fat type, students may safely study our illustrious leaders, protected from harmful references to Watergate, Iran-Contra, or a certain president's taste for threesomes. Children's biographies of presidents show our leaders as role models even as youngsters. For Presidents Day, we've culled some quotes from presidential biographies written for children—and then compared the quotes to see how much more inspiring these versions are than their adult counterparts.

The Holy See is planning to publish on the Internet, free of charge, several documents from the Vatican Secret Archives in relation to World War II.

The initiatives is partially in response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between religions.

The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicizing, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from the period of March 1939 to May 1945.

Gary Krupp, the foundation's president and founder, told ZENIT that "the 'Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs a la Seconde Guerre Mondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War],'" which were "previously published and mostly ignored," will "shortly be available for worldwide scrutiny and study online, free of charge."

He explained that these documents will be available on the Web site of his foundation as well as that of the Vatican.

This project is part of the mission of the foundation, a non-sectarian organization that works to remove obstacles between religions, foster cooperation and to end the misuse of religion for private agendas.

The organization's president, who is from New York but of Jewish decent, stated, "In the furtherance of our mission we have recognized the papacy of the war time Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) as a source of friction impacting over one billion people."

A plot

"Controversy abounds on whether he did enough to prevent the slaughter of Jews at the hands of the Nazis," Krupp affirmed.

He continued: "Our research has revealed that five years after Pius XII's death, the KGB hatched a plot to discredit their enemy, the Roman Catholic Church, called 'Seat 12.'

"A dirty trick, which condemned Pope Pius XII for his 'silence' during the Holocaust in the form of Rolf Hochhuth's fictitious 1963 play 'The Deputy.' The result was the worst character assassination of the twentieth century."

Based on his foundation's research, Krupp stated that in 1964, Pope Paul VI asked a team of three Jesuit historians, Father Pierre Blet, Father Burkhart Schneider, and Father Angelo Martini, to "conduct intensive research to identify relevant documents from the war years from the closed section of the Vatican Secret Archives."

He added: "A few years later Father Robert Graham joined the group. The first volume was published in 1965, the last in 1981."

Krupp explained that in 1999, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, at that time the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, called for a special commission of Jewish and Catholic scholars to come together to study these documents.

"This positive advance unfortunately ended July 21, 2001 in failure," he added, "partly because the scholars simply did not read the languages of the collection."

"They issued a list of 47 questions and demanded the opening of the yet un-catalogued archives" from the 1939-1958 period, the foundation president said.

He stated that his foundation "sought to gain permission to digitize this collection, making it broadly available for study" so as to further "our mission to publicly disclose as many documents as possible to help to move this obstacle between Jews and Catholics into the light of documented truth."

Black legend

Krupp explained that "this effort is simply to show clear evidence of Pope Pius XII's efforts to mitigate suffering during the war and that the 'black legend,' which besmirched his name, is simply not true."

He added that this initiative is "not meant to be a substitute for the full access" to the archives, "but will absolutely show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and the dangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Nazi regime."

"Ironically," he said "the Vatican Secret Archives [from the period prior] to 1939 were opened over two years ago," and they showed that "65% of Pacelli's ministry has simply been ignored by the critics who call for the war years to be opened."

On behalf of the foundation, the president expressed gratitude to the Pope's Secretary of State and the Libreria Editrice Vaticana "for their confidence in us by allowing us this unprecedented privilege."

He continued: "We sincerely hope that international historians will carefully scrutinize these records. We expect the digitization process of over 9000 pages will take about four weeks to complete [at which time] we will announce their posting on Internet."

In the meantime, the foundation already has thousands of documents and eyewitness videos available on their Web site for study.

Krupp concluded by requesting that "French, Italian and German scholars consider helping us by translating documents into English and forward this work to Pave the Way Foundation so that we can make the information available to more scholars for research."

He added, "We also would like to receive any comments, positive or negative, relative to the content of these documents."

At the time it went down in 1,500 feet of frigid water five miles off the Point Sur coast, the USS Macon was among the largest airships ever built.

Now, after 75 years, the crash site has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday.

The Macon was designed to serve as a reconnaissance dirigible in the Pacific Theater during World War II. She stretched 785 feet and carried four biplanes, which were released through a T-shaped opening on the Macon’s underside. The ship also carried a crew of 83 men, and with eight 560-horsepower engines, could cruise along at 80 miles per hour.

Additionally, the Macon came equipped with a “spy car,” a small compartment designed to hold a crew member and be lowered below cloud cover. The spy car and four biplanes served as the airship’s eyes.

On Feb. 12, 1935, the Macon was returning to its home base at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale when a massive tailwind hit, shearing off sections of tail that had been previously damaged but not yet repaired. The tail dropped as the pilot lost control. All but two men managed to escape as the Macon sank to the bottom of the ocean. The ship had been in service for less than two years and was on its 54th voyage.

For decades, the Macon languished undiscovered. In 1990, however, fishermen discovered the wreckage, prompting an expedition by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the U.S. Navy.

In 2006, scientists from Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, the National Marine Sanctuary Program, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Stanford University, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the University of New Hampshire used a submersible research vehicle to get a closer look at the site.

At two debris fields, the scientists found the biplanes, five of the Macon’s engines and several items from the kitchen, including the stove.

Because there are no known examples of wartime dirigibles that can be studied on land, the USS Macon is considered to be an important link to aviation history.

“The USS Macon and its four associated Sparrowhawk biplanes are not only historically significant to our nation’s history, but have unique ties to our local communities, where public museums highlight the airship’s history,” Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary superintendent Paul Michel said. “The National Register listing highlights the importance of protecting the wreck site and its artifacts for further understanding our past.”

Opposition is mounting to plans for a casino near one of the country's best known historical sites, Gettysburg National Military Park.

The park preserves most of the Gettysburg battlefield where the Union and Confederacy clashed in the summer of 1863 in a pivotal civil war battle.

"It was a turning point in the nation to end slavery," says Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "To put a gambling casino there would be wrong."

Adams County, Pa. businessman David LeVan, owner of Battlefield Harley Davidson, wants to convert the Eisenhower Inn and Conference Center into a casino with gaming tables and slots. The hotel is along Emmitsburg Road, very close to the former president's farm and a half mile from the battlefield....

Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.

Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats.

Even more intriguing, the archaeologists who found the tools on Crete noted that the style of the hand axes suggested that they could be up to 700,000 years old. That may be a stretch, they conceded, but the tools resemble artifacts from the stone technology known as Acheulean, which originated with prehuman populations in Africa.

More than 2,000 stone artifacts, including the hand axes, were collected on the southwestern shore of Crete, near the town of Plakias, by a team led by Thomas F. Strasser and Eleni Panagopoulou. She is with the Greek Ministry of Culture and he is an associate professor of art history at Providence College in Rhode Island. They were assisted by Greek and American geologists and archaeologists, including Curtis Runnels of Boston University.

Dr. Strasser described the discovery last month at a meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. A formal report has been accepted for publication in Hesparia, the journal of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, a supporter of the fieldwork.

While reading the Anabasis Alexandri (Robson translation) at the Ancient History Sourcebook at Fordham, I came upon a curious passage. It reads as though Alexander's men, in the course of the invasion of India, fought a pitched battle with a tribe of Yeti! Very strange but it is indeed in the account from antiquity. Here is the passage that suggests Yeti's, "Those captured were hairy, not only their heads but the rest of their bodies; their nails were rather like beasts' claws; they used their nails (according to report) as if they were iron tools; with these they tore asunder their fishes, and even the less solid kinds of wood; everything else they cleft with sharp stones; for iron they did not possess. For clothing they wore skins of animals, some even the thick skins of the larger fishes." Maybe they were just strange hairy men...

Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass, at 62, still bubbles with excitement whenever he announces the latest discovery of a tomb or relic, his eyes lighting up under the brim of his trademark Indiana Jones-style hat.

Aside from his love of the media limelight, Hawass is locked in battle to assert Egypt's sovereignty over its heritage, even if that means crossing swords with the world's most prestigious museums.

His style and patriotism will be on show again on Wednesday when he holds a press conference to announce the DNA results on the mummy of boy-king Tutankhamun, the pharaoh whose origins have mystified scholars.

One of the largest wine presses ever revealed in an archaeological excavation in the country, which was used to produce wine in the Late Byzantine period (sixth-seventh centuries CE), was recently exposed in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The excavation was carried out in a region that will be the farmland of Ganei Tal, a new community slated to be built for the evacuees from Gush Katif.

The impressive wine press is 1,400 years old and measures 6.5 x 16.5 meters. It was discovered southwest of Kibbutz Hafetz-Haim and was partly damaged during the installation of the infrastructure there.

According to Uzi Ad, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "What we have here seems to be an industrial and crafts area of a settlement from the sixth-seventh century CE, which was situated in the middle of an agricultural region. The size of the wine press attests to the fact that the quantity of wine that was produced in it was exceptionally large, and was not meant for local consumption. Instead it was intended for export, probably to Egypt, which was a major export market at the time, or to Europe. An identical wine press was previously exposed north of Ashkelon, about 20 kilometers from the wine press that was just found in Nahal Soreq and we can assume that the two installations were built by the same craftsman." Ad adds that "The wine press' collecting vats were neither circular nor square as was the custom, but octagonal. And since this method of construction is far from being practical because sediment would accumulate in the corners of the vats, it seems that they were built in this manner for primarily aesthetic reasons."

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, once suggested that we "remember that our nation's first great leaders were also our first great scholars."

Case in point: Five of our first six U.S. presidents received a college degree, and the sixth, George Washington, received a surveyor's certificate from The College of William and Mary.

Lyndon B. Johnson earned his teaching certificate from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1930 (now Texas State University-San Marcos) and worked as a teacher before and after graduation.

Woodrow Wilson served as president of Princeton University and worked as a teacher prior to becoming President of the United States. John Adams taught before he went into politics, as did Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland (who landed an assistant teacher position through the help of his brother William).

Most of our presidents - 34 to be exact - have earned a bachelor's degree.

Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover studied engineering in college and earned bachelor's of science degrees. They are the only two presidents to have found work as engineers.

Ronald Reagan studied sociology and economics at Eureka College in Illinois, becoming an actor and sportscaster before launching his career in politics.

More than half of our 44 presidents (23 total) have been lawyers, including Obama, which is a trend that began with John Adams, our second president.

For decades she has been seen as a decorative companion to Adolf Hitler, an apolitical "dumb blonde" whose attentions served as an occasional diversion for the Führer. But the first academic biography of Eva Braun draws a different picture of the dictator's long-standing girlfriend, claiming historians have hugely underestimated the role she played in his life.

Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker reveals her as a politically committed woman who won ­Hitler's affections, enjoyed a healthy sex life with him, sympathised with Nazi politics and gave him psychological support. Görtemaker spent three years researching her book, Eva Braun: Life With Hitler, due out this month from the prestigious CH Beck publishing house. She was able to draw on previously unseen or little-known documents, letters, diary entries and photographs.

"Eva Braun features in films, plays, novels and historical memoirs," Görtemaker told the Observer, "but is always portrayed as the dumb blonde who had the misfortune to fall in love with a devil, and this is an image that needs to be ­corrected. She was capricious, an uncompromising advocate of unconditional loyalty towards the dictator who went so far as to die with him, and he adored her."

[Russell Shorto is a contributing writer for the magazine. His most recent book is ‘‘Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason.’’]

...This year’s social-studies review has drawn the most attention for the battles over what names should be included in the roll call of history. But while ignoring Kennedy and upgrading Gingrich are significant moves, something more fundamental is on the agenda. The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation’s Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn’t merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders....

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

There was a religious element to the American Revolution, which was so pronounced that you could just as well view the event in religious as in political terms. Many of the founders, especially the Southerners, were rebelling simultaneously against state-church oppression and English rule. The Connecticut Baptists saw Jefferson — an anti-Federalist who was bitterly opposed to the idea of establishment churches — as a friend. “Our constitution of government,” they wrote, “is not specific” with regard to a guarantee of religious freedoms that would protect them. Might the president offer some thoughts that, “like the radiant beams of the sun,” would shed light on the intent of the framers? In his reply, Jefferson said it was not the place of the president to involve himself in religion, and he expressed his belief that the First Amendment’s clauses — that the government must not establish a state religion (the so-called establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause) — meant, as far as he was concerned, that there was “a wall of separation between Church & State.”...

Christian activists argue that American-history textbooks basically ignore religion — to the point that they distort history outright — and mainline religious historians tend to agree with them on this. “In American history, religion is all over the place, and wherever it appears, you should tell the story and do it appropriately,” says Martin Marty, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, past president of the American Academy of Religion and the American Society of Church History and perhaps the unofficial dean of American religious historians. “The goal should be natural inclusion. You couldn’t tell the story of the Pilgrims or the Puritans or the Dutch in New York without religion.” Though conservatives would argue otherwise, James Kracht said the absence of religion is not part of a secularist agenda: “I don’t think religion has been purposely taken out of U.S. history, but I do think textbook companies have been cautious in discussing religious beliefs and possibly getting in trouble with some groups.”...

In the new guidelines, students taking classes in U.S. government are asked to identify traditions that informed America’s founding, “including Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law),” and to “identify the individuals whose principles of law and government institutions informed the American founding documents,” among whom they include Moses. The idea that the Bible and Mosaic law provided foundations for American law has taken root in Christian teaching about American history. So when Steven K. Green, director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., testified at the board meeting last month in opposition to the board’s approach to bringing religion into history, warning that the Supreme Court has forbidden public schools from “seeking to impress upon students the importance of particular religious values through the curriculum,” and in the process said that the founders “did not draw on Mosaic law, as is mentioned in the standards,” several of the board members seemed dumbstruck....

One recurring theme during the process of revising the social-studies guidelines was the desire of the board to stress the concept of American exceptionalism, and the Christian bloc has repeatedly emphasized that Christianity should be portrayed as the driving force behind what makes America great. Peter Marshall is himself the author of a series of books that recount American history with a strong Christian focus and that have been staples in Christian schools since the first one was published in 1977....

David Barton reads the “church and state” letter to mean that Jefferson “believed, along with the other founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination.”...

Mainstream scholars disagree, sometimes vehemently. Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College and writer of the documentary “Crusade: The Life of Billy Graham,” told me: “David Barton has been out there spreading this lie, frankly, that the founders intended America to be a Christian nation. He’s been very effective. But the logic is utterly screwy. He says the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ is not in the Constitution. He’s right about that. But to make that argument work you would have to argue that the phrase is not an accurate summation of the First Amendment. And Thomas Jefferson, who penned it, thought it was.” (David Barton declined to be interviewed for this article.)...

Ask Christian activists what they really want — what the goal is behind the effort to bring Christianity into American history — and they say they merely want “the truth.” “The main thing I’m looking for as a state board member is to make sure we have good standards,” Don McLeroy said. But the actual ambition is vast. Americans tell pollsters they support separation of church and state, but then again 65 percent of respondents to a 2007 survey by the First Amendment Center agreed with the statement that “the nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation,” and 55 percent said they believed the Constitution actually established the country as a Christian nation. The Christian activists are aware of such statistics and want to build on them, as Dunbar made clear. She told me she looks to John Jay’s statement that it is the duty of the people “of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers” and has herself called for a preference for selecting Christians for positions of leadership....

Before the January board meeting, one of the social-studies curriculum writers, Judy Brodigan, told me that she was very pleased with the guidelines her team produced. After the meeting, with its 10-hour marathon of amendments by board members, she spoke very differently. “I think they took a very, very good document and weakened it,” she said. “The teachers take their work seriously. I do believe there are board members on the ultraright who have an agenda. They want to make our standards very conservative and fit their viewpoint. Our job is not to take a viewpoint. It’s to present sides fairly. I thought we had done that.”

Regarding religion, the writing teams had included in their guidelines some of the recommendations of the experts appointed by the Christian bloc but had chosen to ignore most. I was led to expect that the January meeting would see a torrent of religion amendments, in which Don McLeroy would reinsert items that the team failed to include, just as he did with other subjects in the past. Last November, over dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant across the street from the Texas A&M campus, McLeroy vowed to do so, saying, “I’ll get the details in there.” At that time, he and others were full of information and bravado as they pushed toward the “Christian nation” goal. But at the January meeting, while there were many conservative political amendments, there were only a few religion amendments. When I talked to him afterward, he shrugged it off in an uncharacteristically vague way. “We’re basically happy with things,” he said.

It’s possible a wave of religion amendments will come in the next meeting, in March, when American government will still be among the subjects under review. But the change of tone could signal a shift in strategy. “It could be that they feel they’ve already got enough code words sprinkled throughout the guidelines,” Kathy Miller says. The laws of Nature and Nature’s God. Moses and the Bible “informing” the American founding. “The Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith” as America’s original purpose. “We’ve seen in the past how one word here or there in the curriculum standards gets seized upon by the far-right members at adoption time,” Miller says. “In the science debate, the words ‘intelligent design’ did not appear, but they used ‘strengths and weaknesses’ as an excuse to pitch a battle. The phrase became a wedge to try to weaken the theory of evolution, to suggest that scientists had serious problems with it. We’ve seen the board use these tiny fragments to wage war on publishers.”...

If there has been a shift in strategy, politics may have brought it about. The Christian bloc may have determined it would be wiser to work for this kind of transformational change out of the public gaze. Of the seven members of the Christian bloc, Ken Mercer is in a battle to keep his seat, Cynthia Dunbar recently announced she won’t run for re-election and after 11 years of forceful advocacy for fundamentalist causes on the Texas state board, during which time he was steadfastly supported by everyone from Gov. Rick Perry — who originally picked him as chairman — to tea-party organizers, Don McLeroy is now facing the stiffest opposition of his career. Thomas Ratliff, a well-connected lobbyist, has squared off against McLeroy in the Republican primary and is running an aggressive campaign, positioning himself as a practical, moderate Republican. “I’m not trying to out-conservative anyone,” Ratliff told me. “I think the state board of education has lost its way, and the social-studies thing is a prime example. They keep wanting to talk about this being a Christian nation. My attitude is this country was founded by a group of men who were Christians but who didn’t want the government dictating religion, and that’s exactly what McLeroy and his colleagues are trying to do.”

Ratliff has received prominent endorsements and has outraised McLeroy in the neighborhood of 10 to 1. But hard-core conservatives tend to vote in primaries. Anyone looking for signs of where the Republican Party is headed might scan the results of the Texas school-board District 9 Republican primary on the morning of March 3. If Don McLeroy loses, it could signal that the Christian right’s recent power surge has begun to wane. But it probably won’t affect the next generation of schoolbooks. The current board remains in place until next January. By then, decisions on what goes in the Texas curriculum guidelines will be history....

Researchers at Queen's University have helped produce a new archaeological tool which could answer key questions in human evolution.

The new calibration curve, which extends back 50,000 years, is a major landmark in radiocarbon dating -- the method used by archaeologists and geoscientists to establish the age of carbon-based materials.

It could help research issues including the effect of climate change on human adaption and migrations.

The curve called INTCAL09, has just been published in the journal Radiocarbon. It not only extends radiocarbon calibration but also considerably improves earlier parts of the curve.

Stonehenge may have been surrounded by a "Stonehedge" that blocked onlookers from seeing secret rituals, according to a new study.

Evidence for two encircling hedges—possibly thorn bushes—planted some 3,600 years ago was uncovered during a survey of the site by English Heritage, the government agency responsible for maintaining the monument in southern England.

The idea that Stonehedge was a shield against prying eyes isn’t yet firmly rooted, but it's archaeologists' leading theory. For instance the newfound banks are too low and unsubstantial to have had a defensive role.

The shallow earthworks—each runs inside a ring of known Bronze Age pits—are just visible to an expert eye, "but you need to get down on your hands and knees" to see them, Field added.

The archaeologists didn't find any physical evidence of vegetation, but the shallow features resemble former hedge banks that are seen around formerly hedged fields.

A prominent 17th-century nobleman, Greville was a renowned scholar, soldier, statesman and spy.

Like his dearest friend Sir Philip Sidney, he was also an accomplished author.

So talented, indeed, that some believe he was the true author of several of Shakespeare's works.

For years this has been little more than conjecture; fuel for the lively and often hostile debate between Anti-Stratfordians - those who deny that an ill- educated grain merchant and actor such as William Shakespeare could possibly have produced such a stunning oeuvre - and outraged traditionalists.

Now, however, the tantalising prospect of a definitive answer has been raised. More intriguingly still, the explanation, hidden in a series of clues scattered throughout his work and on the Warwick monument, is said to come from Fulke Greville himself.

In an echo of the themes in Dan Brown's blockbuster book and film, The Da Vinci Code, a historian has discovered what he claims to be powerful evidence that Greville had several manuscripts buried in his ornate memorial, including a copy of Antony And Cleopatra.