- Four decades ago, in response to North Korean military provocations, the U.S. developed contingency plans that included selected use of tactical nuclear weapons against Pyongyang’s military facilities and the possibility of full-scale war, according to recently declassified documents. Astonishingly, casualty estimates ranged from a low of 100 or so civilian deaths, up to “several thousand.”

Newly-elected President Richard Nixon and his key advisors, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and JCS Chairman Earle Wheeler, considered a menu of possible military actions against North Korea, from carefully targeted attacks on North Korean military facilities, to a plan codenamed FREEDOM DROP for limited nuclear strikes (with surprisingly limited casualty expectations), to all-out war using nuclear weapons. The Pentagon drew up these plans as the result of North Korea’s downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan in April 1969 -- just one in a long set of military provocations by Pyongyang that continues to the present.

Yet, in another pattern that would be repeated in the years since then, Nixon and his advisors were forced to heed the Pentagon’s warnings that anything short of massive attacks on North Korea’s military power would risk igniting a wider conflagration on the peninsula, leaving diplomacy, with all its frustrations, as the remaining option, coupled with the deterrent posed by U.S. conventional and nuclear forces. These vexing issues confront the Obama administration today as it seeks to forge an effective response to North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean warship last March.

The National Security Archive obtained the documents posted today through multiple Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests to the U.S. government. They are part of a major new collection consisting of almost 1,700 documents, The United States and the Two Koreas, 1969-2000, which the Archive is publishing through ProQuest, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korea War on June 25th, 1950.

Key points illustrated by these documents include:

* The early recognition that military strikes against North Korea, regardless of the provocation, carried serious risks of inciting retaliation by Pyongyang and the threat of escalation.

* The growth in the list of available options from limited strikes on selected North Korean airfields to, by the fall of 1969, at least two dozen plans, which targeted the full spectrum of North Korea’s military forces, and covered a wide range of scenarios to provide flexibility to the president in confronting future North Korean provocations.

* The emphasis on the need to neutralize North Korea’s air power, in any response to a provocation greater than the downing of the U.S. reconnaissance plane, in order to minimize the risks of retaliation and escalation. To this end the JCS drew up a plan codenamed FRESH STORM to take out Pyongyang’s military air power, but warned that carrying it out would carry some risk of sparking a major war on the Korean peninsula.

* The development of a nuclear contingency plan, codenamed FREEDOM DROP that called for “pre-coordinated options for the selective use of tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea…” The available options included limited attacks on North Korean command centers, airfields, and naval bases with atomic weapons ranging from .2 to 10 kilotons, delivered by air or Honest John/Sergeant missiles, as well as at the upper end an attack with 10 to 70 kiloton weapons geared to take out North Korea’s air power and diminish the country’s overall military capability. Depending on the size of the attack, the estimated “friendly losses” would be “Less than 10 percent,” and civilian deaths would range from “approximately 100 to several thousand."

* Kissinger’s assessment that, given the range of options available and the uncertainties surrounding possible North Korean responses, Nixon would respond to a similar provocation by North Korea in the future by either doing nothing or selecting an option toward the “extreme end of possibilities.”

As these documents show, Kissinger repeatedly pressed the Pentagon to develop a range of effective and calibrated military strike options that the President could draw upon in the event of future such North Korean actions. Despite the impressive array of alternatives, Nixon and Kissinger came to realize that none of these limited options could provide acceptable assurance against North Korean counter-attacks and escalation of the conflict. The only viable political choices were non-military responses combined with diplomacy, or a military strike, possibly involving nuclear weapons, that would eliminate North Korea’s ability to launch air strikes -- in effect declaring war on Pyongyang....

Research illuminating an ancient language connection between Asia and North America supports archaeological and genetic evidence that a Bering Strait land bridge once connected North America with Asia, and the discovery is being endorsed by a growing list of scholars in the field of linguistics and other sciences.

The work of Western Washington University linguistics professor Edward Vajda with the isolated Ket people of Central Siberia is revealing more and more examples of an ancient language connection with the language family of Na-Dene, which includes Tlingit, Gwich'in, Dena'ina, Koyukon, Navajo, Carrier, Hupa, Apache and about 45 other languages.

In 2008, Vajda aired his hypothesis at a Dene-Yeniseian Symposium in Alaska organized by James Kari of the University of Alaska Native Language Center....

Archaeologists from the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program have found a potential colonial shipwreck buried under the sand about a mile off the coast and north of the St. Augustine Beach pier.

The scientists found a cauldron, thousands of lead shot, a glass base and a second cooking vessel about 400 meters from the site of where the ship the "Industry" sank in 1764.

The newly discovered ship could be older than the "Industry," said Chuck Meide, director of the archaeological program. If that's so, the shipwreck would be the oldest known one off the waters of St. Johns County, Meide said....

Vermont officials are preparing to seize a Civil War era cannon at the center of a longstanding and pitched battle between the state and a group of historic re-enactors.

The bronze, 12-pound Napoleon cannon paid for by the Proctor family is owned by the state but has been maintained, repaired and used for three decades by re-enactors from the 2nd Battery Vermont Light Artillery — named after the original unit that used the cannon.

That arrangement worked comfortably until the state ordered the re-enactors to stop firing the gun to both preserve it and protect the public from injury....

A 66-year-old Livingston man was burned when a man asked him for a light and, instead of lighting a cigarette as he thought, he lit a paper cartridge filled with gun powder.

Police said Joseph Princiotta, 42, of Jersey City, obtained the cartridge from his friend, a Civil War re-enactor, who had the tube of gun powder with some of his re-enactment gear....

When Queen Elizabeth II first visited New York City, in 1957, the glamorous young monarch was welcomed with a ticker-tape parade befitting war heroes or World Series champs. On Tuesday, as the 84-year-old royal addressed the U.N. General Assembly for the first time since then, there was hardly a well-wisher to be found outside U.N. headquarters.

The low-key welcome was largely by design, reflective of the rest of the queen's somber New York agenda: a visit to Ground Zero, and to a memorial garden honoring the 67 British victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. But the quiet reception also pointed to a monarchy whose popular appeal has perhaps crested.

"I suppose the British monarchy was a bigger deal in 1957 than now," said Sir Brian Urquhart, a former high-ranking U.N. official from Britain who met the queen during her visit five decades ago....

The queen spoke as the titular head of state of 16 countries, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and the nominal representative of 54 governments in the British Commonwealth. But in reality, she holds virtually no political authority and played no significant role in the United Nations' history, according to Stephen Schlesinger, a historian who wrote a book on the founding of the United Nations.

Still, Schlesinger said he was "a little surprised it's taken this long to come back to the United Nations, considering she does come to this country with some frequency, at least to go to a horse race" -- a reference to the queen's visits to the Kentucky Derby....

ARCHAEOLOGICAL finds from across Wales can now be explored at the touch of a button, thanks to a new online database being launched tomorrow.

The website, Archwilio – which means “to explore” – catalogues the historic environment records of Wales, allowing users to freely explore details of thousands of different archaeological sites dating back more than 100,000 years.

Created using information from the four archaeological trusts of Wales, the new service is being launched by Welsh heritage minister Alun Ffred Jones....

HISTORIANS are probing links between an ancient dugout canoe discovered on the banks of the Boyne and the landmark Newgrange site.

The canoe, which has an unusual design and is believed to be unique in Ireland, was yesterday removed from the river by experts from the National Museum.

It was discovered two weeks ago by two local fishermen, Ivan Murphy and Kevin Tuite, who immediately contacted the authorities....

Fifty years ago today, on Independence Day 1960, the United States officially adopted use of the 50-star American flag, increasing the star-count by one to recognize Hawaii's statehood. This, the 27th update to the star-spangled banner, became the U.S. flag to be longest used and the only one to represent the nation in space.

Despite having launched satellites for two-and-a-half years prior to the 50-star flag being unfurled, the country's first flag did not enter space until nearly a year after the banner was introduced.

The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, was launched on Jan. 31, 1958 without the stars and stripes adorning its or its Juno 1 rocket's body. Once it was confirmed Explorer was in orbit, its designers announced their success at a press conference, lifting a replica of the man-made moon above their heads....

Tibetans split off from the Han Chinese some 3,000 years ago and since then rapidly developed a unique ability to thrive at high altitudes and low oxygen levels, researchers have ascertained after comparing the genomes of 50 Tibetans and 40 Han Chinese.

The genome-wide comparison, carried out by evolutionary biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, uncovered more than 30 genes with DNA mutations that have become more prevalent in Tibetans than Han Chinese, nearly half of which are related to how the body uses oxygen. One mutation in particular spread from fewer than 10 percent of the Han Chinese to nearly 90 percent of all Tibetans.

Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, who led the statistical analysis, said: “This is the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans. For such a very strong change, a lot of people would have had to die simply due to the fact that they had the wrong version of a gene.”...

THE RECENT prolonged dry weather spell which put pressure on water supplies in the west has proven to be good news for archaeologists.

The low water table on the western lakes and rivers has yielded a number of significant finds in Connemara, according to archaeologist Michael Gibbons.

Among them has been a new crannóg site which is part of a complex in the south Connemara area. It was located by Co Galway silversmith and archaeological student Ruairí O’Neill and a friend, John Foley, while exploring Lough Dhúleitir, north of Carna. Mr Gibbons, who lectures on Mr O’Neill’s course, said that it was a “fine example” of a small crannóg. The lake is overlooked by an abandoned 19th-century settlement....

In the last half century, air conditioning has joined fireworks, swimming pools and charred hamburgers as a ubiquitous ingredient of an American summer. It’s no exaggeration to say it has changed the way this country functions, shaping everything from where we’re willing to live (Las Vegas, anyone?) to the amount of sex we have (more: It’s never too hot to get it on when the A.C. is blasting). Nine out of 10 new homes in this country are built with central air conditioning, and Americans now use as much electricity to power our A.C. as the entire continent of Africa uses for, well, everything. It has so thoroughly scrambled our way of life that when the National Academy of Engineering chose its 20 greatest engineering accomplishments of the last century, A.C. not only made the list, it clocked in ahead of spacecraft, highways and even the Internet.

But as science writer Stan Cox argues in his new book, "Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)," the dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price. We stay inside longer, exercise less, and get sick more often — and the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming. The invention has also changed American politics: Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that’s transformed our electoral map in the last half century. Cox navigates all of these scientific and social angles with relative ease, providing a clear explanation of how A.C. made the leap from luxury to necessity in the United States and examining how we can learn to manage the addiction before we refrigerate ourselves into the apocalypse....

There have been plenty of attacks on Christianity over the years, but few claims have been more surprising than one advanced by an obscure Swedish scholar this spring.

The Gospels do not say Jesus was crucified, Gunnar Samuelsson says.

In fact, he argues, in the original Greek, the ancient texts reveal only that Jesus carried "some kind of torture or execution device" to a hill where "he was suspended" and died, says Samuelsson, who is an evangelical pastor as well as a New Testament scholar....

On July 4th, America's 300 million citizens will mark the 234th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The holiday weekend that's famous for fireworks, barbecues and apple pie is increasingly being used as an occasion for tens of thousands of Americans that identify as "hard-core" war reenactors to wear outfits made from 19th century fabric adorned with arcane military pins. For the July 4th holiday also marks another major American historical milestone — the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place from July 1st to July 3rd in 1863. For American war reenactors, the battle is the Gettysburg of their annual reenactment calendar.

"When you come to the fields of Gettysburg, you cannot help but feel the awe," said Andrea Di Martino, the media supervisor for Gettysburg Anniversary Committee. Di Martino, who moved to the southern Pennsylvania town fifteen years ago to be closer to the battleground site (and even has the number 1863 in her e-mail address) will help organize the weekend's reenactment festivities that runs from July 2nd to July 5th. Events are scheduled to run around the clock, and will include a reenactors' dance as well as live mortar-fire demonstrations. (In 2006, the U.S. National Park Service banned reenactment on actual battleground sites, saying, "Even the best-researched and most
 well-intentioned representation of combat cannot replicate the tragic complexity of real warfare.")...

"There is something deeply democratic, and republican, in the attempt to make history your own, rather than to leave it to the academics and the schools, television stations and politicians," says Wolfgang Hochbruck, a history professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, who was a one-time American Civil War reenactor. "Not that reenactment is necessarily progressive — a lot is politically backward at best."

more:

Once thought to be "evolutionary leftovers," new research has shown that ostriches in fact use their feathered forelimbs as sophisticated air-rudders and braking aids.

According to the researchers, wing-use and hindlimb function in ostriches may help palaeontologists in their quest to reconstruct locomotor techniques in bipedal (two-legged) dinosaurs.

The scientists present their research at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Prague on Thursday 1st July 2010.

Scientists have tended to disregard the use of wings in studies of ostrich locomotion, believing they were mainly for display and temperature-control purposes....

Near the terminus of a dead-end road, on a bulblike hill in the midst of a grassy meadow, a group of Temple University archaeology students and volunteers is excavating what may be one of the most important African American historical sites in New Jersey.

An entire village lies beneath the grassy hill near Rancocas Creek in Westampton Township outside Mount Holly - at least 18 houses, remains of a church, two roadways, an alley, a number of privies and wells, possibly schools, and large parts of a cemetery, where 13 graves of African American troops from the Civil War are marked by headstones - but where six times as many may lie in unmarked graves.

No African American site of this magnitude has been excavated in the region, and very few have been uncovered nationwide, according to archaeologists....