I've never been a big student of WWII naval history -- the era of sailing ships is much more interesting to me. As a result, I never knew that the German Navy had only one aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin. In fact, I was so unaware of that part of the war that I first clicked on this article believing that it had to do with the great German airship, sister to the Hindenberg. I'm glad about my mistake.

Poland's Navy said Thursday that it has identified a sunken shipwreck in the Baltic Sea as almost certainly being Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin — a find that promises to shed light on a 59-year-old mystery surrounding the ship's fate.

The Polish oil company Petrobaltic discovered the shipwreck earlier this month on the sea floor about 38 miles north of the northern port city of Gdansk.

Suspecting it could be the wreckage of the Graf Zeppelin, the Polish Navy sent out a hydrographic survey vessel on Tuesday, said Lt. Cmdr. Bartosz Zajda, a spokesman for the Polish Navy.

"We are 99 percent sure — even 99.9 percent — that these details point unambiguously to the Graf Zeppelin," said Dariusz Beczek, the Navy commander of the vessel, the ORP Arctowski, said soon after returning to port Thursday morning after the two-day expedition.

During their time at sea, naval experts used a remote-controlled underwater robot and sonar photographic and video equipment to gather digital images of the 850-foot-long ship, Zajda said.

"The analyses of the sonar pictures and the comparison to historical documents show that it is the Graf Zeppelin," Zajda told The Associated Press.

The ship never saw combat, and was last seen in 1947, when it was in Soviet control. The ship was sunk on August 16, 1947, during Soviet exercises to determine tactics for sinking American carriers.

I suppose this helps explain why most of the great naval battles of the war took place in the Pacific and involved the Japanese fleet.

Posted by: Greg at 02:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 345 words, total size 2 kb.

And is there a message for us today in the verses to which this incredibly old book of Scripture was opened?

Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration. Researchers will conduct years of painstaking analysis before putting the book on public display.

"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out," Wallace said. "First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."

It was discovered by accident, really, by an engineer digging in a bog, with the peat to become potting soil.

And perhaps most interesting is the place to which the book is open -- a very topical spot, given world events.

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

The enemies of Israel failed in ancient days, and they will fail in the present day as well, for God is faithful.

Posted by: Greg at 08:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 267 words, total size 2 kb.

When one thinks of presidential assassinations, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy spring rapidly to mind. If one thinks a little harder, you might also remember that Teddy Roosevelt became president following the assassination of President William McKinley. But the fourth president felled by an assassin's bullet, James A. Garfield, is often overlooked by Americans. No wonder, for he had been president for less than four months when he was shot by Charles Guiteau, and died an agonizing eighty days later.

Now an exhibit has opened at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center examining the medical treatment received by President Garfield. At the time, 1881, medicine was a changing field in the United States, and it is generally accepted by historians that Garfield's doctors, not his assailant, killed him.

Garfield was waiting at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, about to leave for New England, when he was shot twice by the assassin, Charles J. Guiteau.

The first bullet grazed GarfieldÂ’s arm, said Lenore Barbian, anatomical collections curator for the museum. But the second struck him in the right side of the back and lodged deep in the body.

“No one expected Garfield to live through the night,” Dr. Barbian said.

As the display makes clear, the second bullet pierced GarfieldÂ’s first lumbar vertebra, crossing from right to left.

At the time, however, without the benefit of modern diagnostics, Garfield’s doctors could not determine the location of the bullet. “Trying to understand its pathway became their primary concern,” Dr. Barbian said.

At least a dozen medical experts probed the presidentÂ’s wound, often with unsterilized metal instruments or bare hands, as was common at the time.

Sterile technique, developed by the British surgeon Joseph Lister in the mid-1860Â’s, was not yet widely appreciated in the United States, although it was accepted in France, Germany and other parts of Europe. Historians agree that massive infection, which resulted from unsterile practices, contributed to GarfieldÂ’s death.

Alexander Graham Bell was brought in to try to locate the bullet with one of his inventions.

The exhibit also includes an image of the metal detector designed by Alexander Graham Bell to search for the bullet. It was composed of a battery and several metal coils positioned on a wooden platform and was connected to an earpiece.

Jeffrey S. Reznick, senior curator at the museum, said the device was designed to create an electromagnetic field, which would be disrupted in the presence of a metal object. The disruption would cause the device to emit a clicking sound through the earpiece.

“Electricity and magnetism were just being appreciated as ways to explore the body’s interior,” Dr. Reznick said.

Bell’s invention failed on two occasions to pinpoint the bullet’s location. Historians say this may have been because the device picked up metal coils in the president’s mattress, or because Bell searched only on the right side of Garfield’s body, where the lead physician, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss — Doctor was his given name — had come to believe the bullet was lodged.

In early September, the president was moved from the White House to a cottage in Elberon, N.J., on the shore.

Garfield died in New Jersey on September 19, which, fittingly enough is the closing date of this exhibit, (it opened on July 2, the 125th anniversary of the shooting).

Interestingly enough, a similar wound today would require only a brief hospital stay.

At the autopsy, it became evident that the bullet had pierced GarfieldÂ’s vertebra but missed his spinal cord. The bullet had not struck any major organs, arteries or veins, and had come to rest in adipose tissue on the left side of the presidentÂ’s back, just below the pancreas.

Dr. Ira Rutkow, a professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and a medical historian, said: “Garfield had such a nonlethal wound. In today’s world, he would have gone home in a matter or two or three days.”

One part of the exhibit is a section of Garfield's spine consisting of the 12th thoracic and 1st and 2nd lumbar vertebrae -- removed at his autopsy and passed around to the jurors as an exhibit at the trial of the assassin.

If you would like to read more about the Garfield assassination, but not something that is a dry, scholarly tome, I am told that Sarah Vowell's Assasination Vacation contains an interesting and accessible account of the assassination and its aftermath. I'm planning to read it shortly.

Posted by: Greg at 05:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 761 words, total size 6 kb.

This is going back into pre-history -- and may be another thing I pass on to my students during the first week or two of school, as we deal with the earliest history of humanity. There is just so much we don't know, so anything we can find out is exciting.

Researchers in Germany said Thursday that they planned to collaborate with an American company in an effort to reconstruct the genome of Neanderthals, the archaic human species that occupied Europe from 300,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago until being displaced by modern humans.

Long a forlorn hope, the sequencing, or decoding, of Neanderthal DNA suddenly seems possible because of a combination of analytic work on ancient DNA by Svante Paabo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a new method of DNA sequencing developed by a Connecticut company, 454 Life Sciences.

The initial genome to be decoded comes from 45,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found in Croatia, though bones from other sites may be analyzed later. Because the genome must be kept in constant repair and starts to break up immediately after the death of the cell, the material surviving in Neanderthal bones exists in tiny fragments 100 or so DNA units in length. As it happens, this is just the length that works best with the 454 machine, which is also able to decode vast amounts of DNA at low cost.

Recovery of the Neanderthal genome, in whole or in part, would be invaluable for reconstructing many events in human prehistory and evolution. It would help address such questions as whether Neanderthals and humans interbred, whether the archaic humans had an articulate form of language, how the Neanderthal brain was constructed, if they had light or dark skin, and the total size of the Neanderthal population.

And they only have to sequence 3 billion bits of Neanderthal DNA to do it, while separating out the DNA of human handlers of the bones and the various bacteria that have entered teh bones over the course of tens of thousands of years.

But they do have some areas with which to start.

The researchers’ hope is to recover the entire sequence of the Neanderthal genome, but that will depend on whether they can recover enough DNA. From sampling so far, no particular gaps in the sequence are apparent. “We are hitting all the chromosomes and getting good coverage,” Dr. Egholm said. If no single specimen yields a full sequence, the genome might be recovered by combining DNA from several individuals.

One of the most important results that researchers are hoping for is to discover, from a three-way comparison of chimp, human and Neanderthal DNA, which genes have made humans human. The chimp and human genomes differ at just 1 percent of the sites on their DNA. At this 1 percent, Neanderthals resemble humans at 96 percent of the sites, to judge from the preliminary work, and chimps at 4 percent. Analysis of these DNA sites, at which humans differ from the two other species, will help understand the evolution of specifically human traits “and perhaps even aspects of cognitive function,” Dr. Paabo said.

The degree of resemblance between humans and Neanderthals is fiercely debated by archaeologists, and even issues like whether Neanderthals had language have not been resolved. Dr. Paabo believes that genetic analysis is the best hope of doing so. He has paid particular attention to a gene known as FOXP2, which from its mutated forms in people seems to be involved in several advanced aspects of language.

A longstanding dispute among archaeologists is whether the modern humans who first entered Europe 45,000 years ago, ultimately from Africa, interbred with the Neanderthals or forced them into extinction. Interbreeding could have been genetically advantageous to the incoming humans, says Bruce Lahn, a geneticist at the University of Chicago, because the Neanderthals were well adapted to the cold European climate — the last ice age had another 35,000 years to run — and to local diseases.

And that plays out in textbooks. My old book indicated tehre was no relationship, my new one that there was not, and much current research comes down in the middle. The recovery of the full genome might well lay that question to rest, along with the question of interbreeding.

I won't telll you what lies at the end of the article -- but it raises all sorts of moral/ethical questions that are fascinating to think about.

Posted by: Greg at 05:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 757 words, total size 5 kb.

I'll have to pass this on to my students in a few weeks.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt owed their existence to prehistoric climate change in the Eastern Sahara, according to an exhaustive study of archaeological data that bolsters this theory.

Starting at about 8500 B.C., researchers say, broad swaths of what are now Egypt, Chad, Libya, and Sudan experienced a "sudden onset of humid conditions."

For centuries the region supported savannahs full of wildlife, lush acacia forests, and areas so swampy they were uninhabitable.

During this time the prehistoric peoples of the Eastern Sahara followed the rains to keep pace with the most hospitable ecosystems.

But around 5300 B.C. this climate-driven environmental abundance started to decline, and most humans began leaving the increasingly arid region.

"Around 5,500 to 6,000 years ago the Egyptian Sahara became so dry that nobody could survive there," said Stefan Kröpelin, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Cologne in Germany and study co-author.

Without rain, rivers, or the ephemeral desert streams known as waddis, vegetation became sparse, and people had to leave the desert or die, Kröpelin says.

Members of this skilled human population settled near the Nile River, giving rise to the first pharaonic cultures in Egypt

This does help to explain the Neolithic Revolution that occurred around this time, as people began the transition to an agricultural society. The concentration of human beings in one region resulted in th formation of cities, specialization of labor -- and civilization.

Posted by: Greg at 11:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 255 words, total size 2 kb.

I've seen few defenses of the Vietnam war made so concisely and so eloquently. And it takes a Canadian writer, looking at the ignoble role of his own country in support of deserters and draft dodgers, to say it.

Let's get something clear here.

Vietnam was a moral war.

A bunch of folks written off at the time as loonies by the left predicted that if South Vietnam fell it would become a brutal Communist dictatorship that would herd dissidents into concentration camps, that other south Asian nations would also fall.

Well, after Saigon fell, those predictions came true. Life in Vietnam, particularly for ethnic Chinese, became so horrific that it gave birth to the boat people, who were thousands of desperate souls who crammed themselves and their children into leaky boats and cast themselves into the ocean to get away from the monsters who'd "liberated" their homeland.

They became fodder for sharks and pirates, but it was worth the risk to get out of yet another "people's democratic republic" under a red flag.

Another Communist, Pol Pot, who conquered Cambodia, was worse. He killed off millions of his own countrymen; their skulls are still heaped in pyramids around that nation.

After the war, North Vietnamese leaders admitted they'd been defeated militarily, but that was irrelevant. The real war was won in the streets of America.

In a very real sense, every U.S. draft dodger and deserter helped consign the millions who suffered and died under south Asian communism to their fate.

Maybe there is still hope for Soviet Kanuckistan after all.

Posted by: Greg at 07:07 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 272 words, total size 2 kb.

WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great-Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
more...

Posted by: Greg at 04:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1527 words, total size 10 kb.

From John Adams' Letter to his wife, Abigail, written the afternoon of July 3, 1776.

The second day of July, 1776, will be memorable Epocha in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not.

So let us this day remember the work of Lee and Adams, Franklin and Jefferson, and all those patriots whose courage and love of country led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence two days later, on July 4, 1776.

This Post Will Remain At The Top Of the Page In Honor Of The Day. Newer Posts Will Appear In The Space Below.

Posted by: Greg at 05:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 248 words, total size 1 kb.

Noting that today, not Tuesday, is the 230th anniversary of Continental Congress' vote for independence, the New York Times' Adam Goodheart comes up with this list of 10 days that changed American history.

Take this one.

FEB. 15, 1933: The Wobbly Chair

It should have been an easy shot: five rounds at 25 feet. But the gunman, Giuseppe Zangara, an anarchist, lost his balance atop a wobbly chair, and instead of hitting President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, he fatally wounded the mayor of Chicago, who was shaking hands with F.D.R.

Had Roosevelt been assassinated, his conservative Texas running mate, John Nance Garner, would most likely have come to power. "The New Deal, the move toward internationalism — these would never have happened," says Alan Brinkley of Columbia University. "It would have changed the history of the world in the 20th century. I don't think the Kennedy assassination changed things as much as Roosevelt's would have."

I've often wondered about that one myself -- seems like an interesting point of departure for an alternate history novel.

As a whole, the dates selected are an interesting bunch. -- and not all based upon politics, which I think is often a failing of such lists.

Posted by: Greg at 06:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 215 words, total size 2 kb.