MEN with Viking surnames filled the meeting room of New Earswick Folk Hall and queued to help research into the ethnic origins of the British people.

Academics were collecting DNA from men with Viking names to see if they are directly descended from the Scandanavian traders and seaman who once ruled York and Yorkshire.

It was the first of four gatherings across northern England and followed a public appeal for people with Viking surnames to come forward.

The project will feature in a future BBC eight-part documentary series on the history of ordinary British people – the Great British Story – and BBC photographers were at the event....

LABADIE, Mo. — It was bravery at the highest level: William Shemin defied German machine gun fire to sprint across a World War I battlefield and pull wounded comrades to safety. And he did so no fewer than three times.

Then, with the platoon’s senior soldiers wounded or killed, the 19-year-old American took over command of his unit and led it to safety, even after a bullet pierced his helmet and lodged behind an ear.

Yet Shemin never earned the nation’s highest military citation, the Medal of Honor — a result, many suspected, of the fact that he was Jewish at a time when discrimination ran rampant throughout the U.S. military....

Officials in the District are accustomed to asking Congress for full voting rights on behalf of the city’s 600,000 residents or for greater control of city finances - and getting no satisfaction.

So when members of Congress proposed the “nationalization” of the District of Columbia World War I Memorial — the only memorial on the Mall exclusively for D.C. veterans — city officials did not jump to support the plan.

“The District of Columbia Memorial is for the people of the District of Columbia and it will never be otherwise,” Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting member of Congress, said Monday....

In 2010, the conservatives who controlled the Texas Board of Education caused an uproar when they made radical changes to the history curriculum for the state’s 4.8 million public school students. The changes included referring to the country’s first black president as “Barack Hussein Obama,” and requiring students to “contrast” Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address with Abraham Lincoln’s philosophical views.

To whitewash one of the darkest practices in America history, conservatives proposed that textbooks refer to the slave trade as the “Atlantic triangular trade.”

Now Tennessee Tea Party members are taking their efforts a step further and trying to eliminate references to slavery in American history textbooks. Salon reports that Tea Partiers who fetishize America’s founders are “demanding” that students not be taught that many of them owned sla

At a press conference, two dozen activists presented their proposals — I’m sorry, their “demands” — for the new state legislative session. Among them are sweeping changes to school materials that they probably have not actually read. [...]

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”...

CORAL SPRINGS, Fl. — The most exciting part of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s rally Sunday was the soul band that opened for him.

Mixing anti-Democratic Party and anti-Obama diatribes with soul classics, “Michael the black man” (as he introduced himself) and his band provided entertainment and smooth tunes both before and after Santorum spoke.

During his act, Michael Warns (“Michael the black man’s” real name, according to an associate) urged support for the Republican Party while comparing Democrats to slave masters....

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HNN Hot Topics: Election 2012

There have been many accusations made against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from conservative opponents, liberals and the media, in regards to his record at Bain, record on abortion, and record on Romneycare.

But few have questioned the immigration record of his ancestors.

On The Chris Matthews Show Sunday, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell went there:

"And looking ahead to the next primary in Florida, 30 percent of the Hispanic community is Cuban-American. That’s a smaller proportion, and so the Hispanic community there is different. And they are less prone to be susceptible to Mitt Romney’s really hard line on immigration, more prone to the Newt Gingrich approach to immigration. The other interesting little fact is about the Mexican Romneys, those looking back at all of those records say that Mitt Romney should look back at the records because the Romneys that came back from Mexico to the United States, they crossed the border illegally."

NewsBusters Noel Sheppard first speculated that Mitchell's claim could have come from a Sunday NPR report on the Romney's Mexican relatives, however Sheppard notes that the story said nothing about any of his relatives coming to America illegally. NPR's John Burnett told James Crugnale of Mediaite that he did not come across any documents indicating that the Gaskell Romney family came to the United States illegally, noting that they were part of an exodus of 1,200 Mormons from Mexico.

Miles Park Romney was Mitt's great grandfather, who fled the United States and crossed into Mexico in 1885 to escape religious persecution. There he helped build the Mormon enclave of Colonia Juarez in Chihuahua-- while having four wives and 30 children....

KABUL (Reuters) - A cache of ancient Jewish scrolls from northern Afghanistan that has only recently come to light is creating a storm among scholars who say the landmark find could reveal an undiscovered side of medieval Jewry.

The 150 or so documents, dated from the 11th century, were found in Afghanistan's Samangan province and most likely smuggled out -- a sorry but common fate for the impoverished and war-torn country's antiquities.

Israeli emeritus professor Shaul Shaked, who has examined some of the poems, commercial records and judicial agreements that make up the treasure, said while the existence of ancient Afghan Jewry is known, their culture was still a mystery....

WASHINGTON — North Korea faces the danger of an unguided missile strike, aimed right at the center of power from a direction both near and far.

That would be the newly installed supreme leader’s elder half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who has made some skeptical comments about the weakness of the bloodline that show an unusual insight into what’s going on in Pyongyang even though he’s a few thousand miles away.

The wires are abuzz with news of a soon-to-be-released book based on emails and interviews between Kim Jong Nam and a Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi over a seven year period. In the book, which is called “My father Kim Jong Il and Me,” Jong Nam reportedly said that North Korea is bound for collapse and called his half-brother, Kim Jong Un, a figurehead.

What “a joke to the outside world,” Jong Nam is purported to have said of the ascent of Jong Un, whom he admitted he has never actually met. More seriously, Jong Nam predicted, “The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long” and “without reform … the regime will collapse.”

The ruling elite in Pyongyang, the ones who are really in control, must be wondering what to do about a problem like Kim Jong Nam, a man who is, it seems, unafraid to speak his mind from where he lives in China....

LOS ANGELES - At three o’clock on a cold December morning, a team of researchers huddled together on scaffolding 25 feet high in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, holding a tablet computer up to a huge 16th century fresco.

But the researchers weren’t interested in the dramatic battle scene, the work of Renaissance artist Georgio Vasari.

Their goal was to solve one of art history’s greatest mysteries - whether Vasari preserved a long-lost work of Leonardo Da Vinci, "The Battle of Anghiari," behind his own....

Just in time for National Popcorn Day, a new study says that people in what's now Peru were eating the snack 2,000 years earlier than thought.

Coastal peoples were preparing corn-based foods up to 6,700 years ago, according to analysis of ancient corncobs, husks, tassels, and stalks recently unearthed at the Paredones and Huaca Prieta archaeological sites on Peru's northern coast.

Previously, evidence of corn as a food before about 5,000 years ago had mostly come from what are called microfossils—microscopic remains too tiny to offer much information.

But the newfound corn remains revealed a lot, via radiocarbon dating and other tests. For instance, the oldest cobs can be identified as popcorn, said study co-author Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and emerita staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama....

What would have made them laugh? Or cry? Did they love home more than we do? Meet the real Neanderthals

A NEANDERTHAL walks into a bar and says... well, not a lot, probably. Certainly he or she could never have delivered a full-blown joke of the type modern humans would recognise because a joke hinges on surprise juxtapositions of unexpected or impossible events. Cognitively, it requires quite an advanced theory of mind to put oneself in the position of one or more of the actors in that joke - and enough working memory (the ability to actively hold information in your mind and use it in various ways).

So does that mean our Neanderthal had no sense of humour? No: humans also recognise the physical humour used to mitigate painful episodes - tripping, hitting our heads and so on - which does not depend on language or symbols. So while we could have sat down with Neanderthals and enjoyed the slapstick of The Three Stooges or Lee Evans, the verbal complexities of Twelfth Night would have been lost on them....

(ANSAmed) - ATHENS, JANUARY 19 - There are enough significant archaeological discoveries made every year in Greece to fill entire museums. This was also the case in 2011, despite a drop in financing for research as a result of the economic crisis. The authoritative weekly To Vima (The Tribune) has drawn up a list of the ten most important archaeological discoveries of 2011.

The works, the publication says, were not listed according to their importance as this will only be established after further studies.

The discoveries listed are as follows: 1) A small 2,500-year old wooden statue in perfect conditions. The impressive find was made in the Sanctuary of Artemis in Vravrona during building works on the archaeological site's drainage well. Other objects were found alongside the statuette, all of them dating from the 5th century BC.

The repairs on the shuttered monument are unlikely to start until late summer at the earliest, the National Park Service said.

The work is expected to take up to a year, and the monument will likely be closed most of that time. The structure, which was entered by about 1,700 visitors a day, has been closed since Aug. 23, when it was damaged by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake that struck the Washington area.

Details of the repair plans were announced at a Thursday news conference called to mark the donation of $7.5 million to the $15 million repair project by David M. Rubenstein, a billionaire Bethesda philanthropist.

The gift confirmed Rubenstein’s status as a generous repeat benefactor for Washington’s endangered national icons....

Related Links

• NBC News: Video of the Washington Monument

Boston College is awaiting the decision of a federal appeals court in Boston that will determine its obligation to turn over to the US Attorney’s Office an interview with former IRA member Delours Price, which was conducted as part of the University’s oral history archive on The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The oral history project, which was directed by author and former Irish Times journalist Ed Moloney, and overseen by Executive Director of Irish Programs and University Professor of History Thomas E. Hachey and Burns Librarian Robert K. O’Neill, contains dozens of personal accounts of individuals from the predominantly Catholic nationalist movement and the largely Protestant loyalist cause in Northern Ireland.

Last spring, Boston College was served a subpoena by the US Attorney’s Office on behalf of an undisclosed law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom requesting the interviews of two individuals who participated in the project....

When it comes to presidential families, the Eisenhower family is among the quietest. Rarely do they speak up about anything, but that has changed dramatically as plans are finalized for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial adjacent to the Mall. Last week the family members joined forces to protest the design by architect Frank Gehry and the speed with which the Eisenhower Memorial Commission is moving the project forward.

A letter sent to the National Capital Planning Commission read, “We are calling for an indefinite delay in the approval process and an indefinite postponement for the groundbreaking for the memorial until there is a thorough review of the design.” It was signed by Anne Eisenhower with the note: “representing all members of the Eisenhower family.”

Anne’s brother is David Eisenhower, who resigned from the Eisenhower Memorial Commission in December. Susan Eisenhower, who is an author and an expert on international security and US-Russian relations, is another vocal opponent of the design. We talked with Susan about the memorial, the controversy, and what the family hopes to achieve.

The Eisenhower family does not strike me as a family that seeks out controversy. How did this happen?

There’s been a long process, going back to 1999, in identifying architects and the site. The site selection was one of the first jobs. The controversy began emerging this summer when there was a change in concept. Originally the plan was to put Dwight Eisenhower’s image on these metal tapestries. By summer, the approach changed to focusing on Eisenhower as a young boy. We had some concerns about that approach, and the more we looked into it the more we became concerned about other elements of the design—some fairly basic issues of scale, scope, and sustainability.

WASHINGTON –  An international group seeking to preserve the legacy of Winston Churchill is announcing plans Thursday to create the first U.S. research center devoted to the longtime British leader.

The new National Churchill Library and Center will be established between 2013 and 2015 at George Washington University with an $8 million pledge from the Chicago-based Churchill Centre. Rare books and research materials will be transferred to the university's library and housed in a new street-front center with exhibit space, officials told The Associated Press.

University President Steven Knapp said the center will become a destination for scholars and students of the former British prime minister along with Washington's many museums, archives and libraries. Churchill is widely admired for his leadership of Britain during World War II....

Richard Nixon thought that doing it would make him look like a "jerk." Geraldine Ferraro said it spread germs and lipstick, but did it anyway. Andrew Jackson suckered his secretary of war into doing it for him. Davy Crockett did it so much it should have been mentioned in his theme song. We're talking about kissing babies, that revered yet reviled, much-analyzed yet meaningless American political custom.

Few candidates dare avoid it, yet no one can point to a case of a politician's failure to do it (or to do it well) causing an electoral defeat. As we head into the thick of another hotly contested baby-smooching season, here's a short history of our love-hate relationship with a campaign-trail cliché.

1833: Andrew Jackson's lips are sealed 

The first politician to lay lips on an unsuspecting infant is unknown, though President Andrew Jackson is credited with the first use of a supporter's baby as a political prop. As recounted in an 1888 issue of Cosmopolitan (no, not that one), during an 1833 tour of the eastern states, the president was approached by a "poor bareheaded woman with a little baby under her arm" who said she wished to see him...

Jeff Biggers, the author most recently of "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland," is currently at work on a new book on Arizona politics and history

In a clarification of last Friday’s announcement of a list of Mexican-American studies books to “be cleared from all classrooms” in order to comply with a state ban on ethnic studies, the Tucson Unified School District declared Tuesday that it ”has not banned any books as has been widely and incorrectly reported.”

Salon reported last week that TUSD had  “banned” seven textbooks and forbidden the teaching of  Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” in Mexican-American literature classes, a story that was picked up by two Arizona newspapers as well as Democracy Now radio program.

“Seven books that were used as supporting materials for curriculum in Mexican American Studies classes have been moved to the district storage facility,” the statement read, “because the classes have been suspended as per the ruling by Arizona Superintendent for Public Instruction John Huppenthal.” District spokesperson Cara Rene added that “the books may be considered for future use as new curriculums are created going forward. We are seeking assistance from the Arizona Department of Education to help us create new classes for the 2012/13 school year.”

Huppenthal, who campaigned in 2010 to stop the Mexican-American studies program, overruled an independent audit that praised the curriculum and ruled last month that it violated the state ban....

London (CNN) -- The year 2012 is a significant one in the Maya calendar.

The ancient long count calendar of the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Mexico and Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish Conquistadores, states that on the 12th December, 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in approximately 26,000 years.

And 21 December, 2012, is said to mark the end of the 13th Maya Calendar, a 144,000-day cycle or "b'ak'tun" since the mythical Maya day of creation 5,200 years ago.

Though popularly interpreted as signifying the "end of the world as we know it," scholars stress that the end of the "b'ak'tun" does not mean apocalypse....

Let's face it. When Millard Fillmore, the undistinguished, uninspiring 13th president of the United States, comes up in political conversation these days, it's usually as the butt of jokes....

But last night, during the GOP debate in South Carolina, Ron Paul issued a full-throated endorsement of Fillmore's approach to foreign policy, whether he realized it or not. "If another country does to us what we do to others, we aren't going to like it very much," Paul explained in the context of his opposition to war with Iran. "So I would say maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy."...

OK, but what does all this have to do with Millard Fillmore? The former president, it turns out, expressed nearly the same sentiments in 1850 during his first State of the Union address, in a formulation of foreign policy that sounds an awful lot like Paul's noninterventionist, empire-shunning worldview....

In 1945, Carl Clark saved the Navy destroyer ship Aaron Ward from Japanese Kamikaze pilots. But he was not recognized for his heroism because of his race. Now, 66 years later, Clark was awarded his Medal for Distinguished Service in Combat. John Blackstone reports.