...When did people start referring to a lopsided election as a landslide?

In the mid-19th century. While plenty of American politicians suffered crushing defeats before then, no one appears to have compared their fates to being buried in an avalanche until The New York Post enthused over the prospects of John Fremont's campaign for president in 1856....

Rare photos taken by a German soldier of the devastated beaches of Dunkirk after the evacuation have been found 70 years on by the family of a British war veteran.

The pictures were taken a few hours after 330,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from the beaches by an armada of little ships having been defeated by the Nazis.

The remarkable album was later taken from a German house as a memento by British serviceman Corporal Frank Smith.

It includes shots of the Germans surveying the wreckage of downed aircraft and scores of damaged trucks and tanks on the battle-scarred shores of Dunkirk.

One image shows a British warship washed up on the sand with a huge hole blown through the middle of it while another is of a huge pile of hundreds of rifles left behind.

The album of 200 photos and postcards was owned by an unknown German soldier.

Ironically, it was abandoned in a Nazi house on Luneburg Heath in northern Germany nearly five years later in 1945 as the Allied forces advanced towards Berlin....

Richard S. Lyons was a carpenter checking on the decrepit building that had fallen into the hands of the government. He was alone, and it was raining. He had gone to the vacant third floor of the structure in downtown Washington, when he heard a noise.

He looked around but found nothing. He heard it again - like something moving around - in another part of the warren of crumbling rooms. Again, he found nothing. Then, as he tells it, he thought he felt a tap on his shoulder.

He turned around. Glancing up, he spied an old envelope hanging from a hole in the ceiling. It was message from the past - an entree of sorts into a lost story of the famous Civil War nurse and Red Cross humanitarian Clara Barton.

Fourteen years later, the forgotten place that Lyons found that rainy day in 1996 might soon become a museum honoring the legendary war-time figure, in the building where she once lived and ran her Civil War "missing in action" office....

It's difficult to imagine such a monstrous figure as Adolf Hitler, Nazi dictator, eating a quaint breakfast of bread and marmalade every morning.

However, that is just one secret revealed courtesy of Britain's National Archives. Last week, it made public two previously classified archives. They add personal details to our portrait of Hitler and a fear the Allies had about a Nazi refuge to our World War II military history.

The breakfast tidbit comes from a 19-year-old Austrian deserter and prisoner of war identified as S.S. Schuetze Obernigg. Obernigg claimed to have spent time at Hitler's retreat in the Bavarian Alps between 1943 and 1944.

Obernigg reports that Hitler woke around 10 a.m., drank coffee and ate bread and marmalade. Visitors, including his doctor, were welcomed into the afternoon. He then worked late, sometimes not going to sleep until 4 a.m.

Obernigg also shared insight into Hitler''s dark personality. It hints at his fiery and paranoid persona....

The great waves of plague that twice devastated Europe and changed the course of history had their origins in China, a team of medical geneticists reported Sunday, as did a third plague outbreak that struck less harmfully in the 19th century.

And in separate research, a team of biologists reported conclusively this month that the causative agent of the most deadly plague, the Black Death, was the bacterium known as Yersinia pestis. This agent had always been the favored cause, but a vigorous minority of biologists and historians have argued the Black Death differed from modern cases of plague studied in India, and therefore must have had a different cause.

The Black Death began in Europe in 1347 and carried off an estimated 30 percent or more of the population of Europe. For centuries the epidemic continued to strike every 10 years or so, its last major outbreak being the Great Plague of London from 1665 to 1666. The disease is spread by rats and transmitted to people by fleas or, in some cases, directly by breathing.

One team of biologists, led by Barbara Bramanti of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and Stephanie Haensch of Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, analyzed ancient DNA and proteins from plague pits, the mass burial grounds across Europe in which the dead were interred. Writing in the journal PLoS Pathogens this month, they say their findings put beyond doubt that the Black Death was brought about by Yersinia pestis.

Dr. Bramanti’s team was able to distinguish two strains of the Black Death plague bacterium, which differ both from each other and from the three principal strains in the world today. They infer that medieval Europe must have been invaded by two different sources of Yersinia pestis. One strain reached the port of Marseilles on France’s southern coast in 1347, spread rapidly across France and by 1349 had reached Hereford, a busy English market town and pilgrimage center near the Welsh border.....

AN archaeology conference is set to be held to discuss fieldwork and research being undertaken in the Lothians.

The Edinburgh, Lothians and Borders Archaeology Conference 2010 will take place at Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh on Saturday, November 20.

The full-day conference will see participants find out about the rare Roman altar stones discovered in Musselburgh.

There will also be a talk about the ongoing archaeology project at St Andrew's Kirk in Gullane, and the discoveries made by archaeologists in Edinburgh during the recent tram line excavations.

Protection from the Sahara's howling dust storms may have helped the Sphinx maintain its steady gaze over the millennia.

Newly discovered walls on the Giza plateau were part of an enclosure to protect the Sphinx from wind-borne sand, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities says.

According to some texts, the walls were built by King Thutmose IV (1400-1390 BCE) because of a dream he had during a hunting trip, the council's secretary general, Zahi Hawass, said Tuesday....

Since Abby Aldrich Rockefeller acquired it in 1935, an 18th century watercolor has stymied scholars, historians and art enthusiasts who hoped to identify its artist. Now, more than 200 years after placing brush to paper, John Rose has been identified as the painter.

Rose’s identity might never have been known if not for the digging of librarian Susan P. Shames. Shames, a decorative arts librarian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, used primary documents and existing scholarship to revisit “The Old Plantation,” which depicts slaves playing music and dancing....

BERLIN (Reuters Life!) – Six and a half decades after the Holocaust, the first Jewish publisher of children's books in Germany will issue its inaugural title on Monday.

Filmmaker and author Myriam Halberstam, a German-American Jew, said she set up "Ariella Books" in May 2010 because there was a lack of children's books on Judaism in Germany.

"A Horse for Hanukkah" -- a humorous story about a horse who wreaks havoc on a family's celebrations during Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights -- is Halberstam's first attempt to cater for Germany's 200,000-strong Jewish community....

On Sunday night, just two days before the Democrats were to be on the receiving end of what George W. Bush once called a midterm “thumpin’,” Bush was at Game Four of the World Series in Arlington. It felt like some prelapsarian time before Hurricane Katrina and 20-percent approval ratings. Perched on a motorized cart, Bush and his father drove in from the outfield like America’s relief pitchers, called in to get the country out of a jam. When W. hurled the first pitch, the crowd went nuts.

The publication of Bush’s memoir Decision Points, which hits stores November 9, is the key moment in what you might call the Bush Rehabilitation Project. Bush himself has long disdained grand, Nixonian plans to rescue his reputation. But his friends and former staff have spent the last two years using columns and cable microphones to do just that. And the release of the memoir—coming so close on the heels of Barack Obama’s repudiation—has led some Bushies to conclude that America is finally giving the Bush era a second look.

“His public rehabilitation is occurring much faster than I would have anticipated,” said Mel Martinez, a former U.S. Senator who was Bush’s first Housing and Urban Development Secretary....

Researchers are preparing to excavate the bones of some ancient animals found near Snowmass Village.

Crews from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science plan to start removing the bones Tuesday under an agreement reached with local officials.

A bulldozer operator discovered some rib bones while working on a construction project at Ziegler Reservoir last month. Since then, the museum said that at least one woolly mammoth and at least three mastodons have been found. Several other bones have also been discovered but researchers aren't yet sure what they are....

It’s a typical day at the Hatteras Histories and Mysteries Museum in Buxton, N.C., and Scott Dawson is buzzing around glass cases full of centuries-old arrowheads and broken pottery. Puzzled visitors listen as he explains for the gazillionth time the difference between fact and speculation. • He speaks with certainty in a voice tinged with more than a hint of frustration. • “Anybody who researches it knows that the colony came down here,” he says, confidently dismissing competing theories on America’s oldest unsolved mystery. • The artifacts, many unearthed during archaeological digs in the past year, may hold the clues that finally answer the question: What happened to the Lost Colony, a group of 117 Englishmen who settled on a tiny island off the North Carolina coast and then vanished with barely a trace?

The 32-year-old Dawson has a personal stake in what happened to the early settlers. The son of a family whose roots can be traced back to the Croatoan Indians, he thinks his ancestors have been falsely maligned by the legends that have grown up around the case of the missing Englishmen.

It’s a typical day at the Hatteras Histories and Mysteries Museum in Buxton, N.C., and Scott Dawson is buzzing around glass cases full of centuries-old arrowheads and broken pottery. Puzzled visitors listen as he explains for the gazillionth time the difference between fact and speculation. • He speaks with certainty in a voice tinged with more than a hint of frustration. • “Anybody who researches it knows that the colony came down here,” he says, confidently dismissing competing theories on America’s oldest unsolved mystery. • The artifacts, many unearthed during archaeological digs in the past year, may hold the clues that finally answer the question: What happened to the Lost Colony, a group of 117 Englishmen who settled on a tiny island off the North Carolina coast and then vanished with barely a trace?

The 32-year-old Dawson has a personal stake in what happened to the early settlers. The son of a family whose roots can be traced back to the Croatoan Indians, he thinks his ancestors have been falsely maligned by the legends that have grown up around the case of the missing Englishmen.

Today, that place is called Buxton and the villages that border it to the south on Hatteras. Home to the Croatoan tribe for more than a thousand years, it’s a place Dawson knows well.

Dawson’s research has revealed an important fact that he thinks other historians have overlooked or dismissed as insignificant: Two tribes inhabited the land near the Lost Colony’s settlement – two distinct tribes with their own dialects, cultures and social hierarchies. Two rival tribes with polarized opinions of white settlers.

His research, combined with his intimate knowledge of Hatteras Island, has led Dawson to conclude that the Lost Colony must have abandoned its settlement on Roanoke Island, traveled south and eventually assimilated into the Croatoan tribe – all in an effort to escape the threat of the Secotan.

As history has given way to legend, Dawson believes the Croatoan have been denied their rightful place in American history as people who welcomed foreigners into their home.....

Washington (CNN) -- The government has started distributing additional benefits for Agent Orange exposure to Vietnam War veterans who qualify under liberalized rules, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday.

Up to 200,000 Vietnam veterans could be eligible for the disability compensation for diseases now associated with Agent Orange, including hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease, the department said in a news release....

WILLIAMSBURG –- Colonial Williamsburg has acquired a large amount of cash, but it's not the kind the foundation can spend.

The collection of colonial paper currency was issued by North Carolina prior to the American Revolution.

Comprised of more than 6,600 notes in varying denominations issued between 1748 and 1771, the stash of cash was worth about 7,176 pounds sterling in 1775. If legal tender today, the currency would have purchasing power of more than $750,000.

Portions of the currency will be featured in a new coins and currency exhibit, “Dollars, Farthings & Fables: Money & Medals From the Colonial Williamsburg Collection,” opening in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum on Nov. 24....

The following is the latest installment of Mayor Jim Boroff's monthly updates on city issues.

Civil War Museum. Renovation has been started at the Cornerstone Building for the American Civil War Museum of Ohio. About two years ago, Mark Young, president of the Civil War Museum Board, expressed an interest in purchasing the Cornerstone Building at Main and South Washington streets to house the museum's exhibits.

To make the museum a reality, the city, in partnership with the Seneca Industrial and Economic Development Corp. and the museum board, was able to secure the necessary funding from grants and foundation donations to proceed with the renovation of the building. The bulk of the construction work is expected to be completed by the end of the year, with the facility opening early in 2011....

Joe McGill can’t get enough exposure to South Carolina’s black history, which is why he occasionally spends nights in slave cabins and re-enacts in a Civil War uniform.

And with the 150th anniversary of the war approaching, he’s ready to promote those stories whenever he can.

“We’ve just got to press on and tell the story as we know it,” said McGill, who is black and works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

But with the state’s Civil War remembrance set to kick off in December, some leaders are concerned over how the NAACP’s travel and tourism boycott over the Confederate flag could affect the effort to link audiences with the stories of African-American contributions....

CHARLESTON — A black South Carolina lawmaker hopes the NAACP will end its tourism boycott of the state as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches.

The Post and Courier of Charleston reported Sen. Robert Ford says it's time for the 11-year boycott to end....

Why are U.S. elections held on Tuesday?

We’re not asking why the US holds elections in the first place. We’re asking why everybody goes to the polls on that particular day of the week. Did the Founding Fathers think Tuesday was lonely and needed the attention? Is it a secret Masonic thing – if we voted on Thursdays, would the pillars of the National Archives crumble, revealing the awful truth behind Nicolas Cage’s film career?

Nope. It turns out that elections are held on Tuesdays so that you’d have enough time to ride Dobbin from your farm to the county seat....