Interesting news for my fellow history geeks.

The legendary city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great as he swept through Egypt in his quest to conquer the known world.

Now scientists have discovered hidden underwater traces of a city that existed at Alexandria at least seven centuries before Alexander the Great arrived, findings hinted at in Homer's Odyssey and which could shed light on the ancient world.

Alexandria was founded in Egypt on the shores of the Mediterranean in 332 B.C. to immortalize Alexander the Great.

The city was renowned for its library, once the largest in the world, as well as its lighthouse at the island of Pharos, one of the "Seven Wonders" of the ancient world.

Alexandria was known to have developed from a settlement known as Rhakotis, or Râ-Kedet, vaguely alluded to as a modest fishing village of little significance by some historians.

But now it looks like there was something more than a sleepy fishing village -- hardly a surprise, given that there are a limited number of sites that meet the needs of a Bronze Age city. I'd have been shocked if something hadn't been discovered there.

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I tip my hat to blogger and author Michael Zak, whose Grand Old Partisan website includes this bit of information I had never connected together about Yale historian and Republican Senator Hiram Bingham.

On this day in 1911, Yale University historian Hiram Bingham discovered in Peru the ruins of Machu Picchu, one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the world. Machu Picchu turned out to be a 15th century residence of the Incan emperor. Today, tourists arrive at the site via the Hiram Bingham Highway or the Hiram Bingham train.

Bingham would go on to become a successful member of the United States Senate -- and would also be one of those who would become a model for the character Indiana Jones.

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Teddy and Mary Jo went for a drive and drove off a bridge on July 18, 1969, resulting in one fatality. The wrong one survived.

Think I'm being harsh? Consider the fact that the Senator left his passenger to drown, failed to call the police, went to sleep it off at a cheap motel, tried to obstruct justice by getting a cousin to take the rap, and consulted with legal an political advisers before contacting the authorities after he sobered up -- and walked away with a slap on the wrist.

So have a happy Chappy Day, Senator Kennedy!

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What would have happened if the US didn't bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII?

here is a scenario written from the perspective of a world in which the atomic bombings didn't happen.

Computer modeling of alternate World War II scenarios, which began in the academic world, has begun to generate considerable controversy in popular opinion. In one much-discussed simulation, Harry S. Truman made the immense, irrevocable decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan. To the relief of a war-weary world, this hastened Japan's surrender. But relief swiftly gave way to doubt and fear -- doubt about whether the use of such weapons had been justified, and, when the U.S. nuclear monopoly ended, fear that America had created the instrument of her own eventual demise. The simulation, however, produced a surprising result: the grim warning of the destroyed cities, together with stockpiled nuclear weapons as a strategic deterrent, ensured that the leaders of a multi-polar nuclear world, in future international crises, never pushed brinksmanship across the final threshold. A sort of "cold war" ensued, but catastrophe was averted. Deterrence worked.

Readers are doubtless aware that this scenario is also the basis for a popular board game simulating the politics of an imaginary twentieth century. What actually happened, of course, bore no resemblance to a "cold war".

First you must remember that in 1945, the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was gravely ill but did not die. At Yalta and Potsdam, FDR's condition left him no match for Stalin, and he continued to deteriorate. Vice President Truman was obliged to make some difficult decisions, but whether to use the atomic bomb was not one of them. The military did not inform Truman of the successful Trinity test, because the extent of FDRÂ’s infirmity was concealed by the PresidentÂ’s staff. By default, use of the bomb against Japan was never authorized.

More than 2.5 million American, Russian, and Japanese lives were lost in an invasion that many theoreticians now argue should never have happened. In the think-tank scenario, Operation Downfall (the plan for the invasion of Japan) is a minor footnote.

The divergence between history and the simulation widens. As we know, Japan was partitioned after the Allied victory. The Soviets demanded sovereignty over the Kurils, Sakhalin, and Hokkaido; the northern third of Honshu and an enclave in Tokyo comprised the Soviet Occupation Zone. The remainder of Japan was under U.S. occupation. Before FDRÂ’s death in late 1946, the ailing President bowed to the Russian and Chinese demand that Hirohito stand trial as a war criminal. When the Emperor was sentenced to hang, MacArthur refused to recognize the war crimes tribunalÂ’s authority. A newly-sworn President Truman relieved MacArthur of his duties.

There is a photograph which haunts the memory of every historian. An angry crowd is outside the building where the tribunal was convened. A young man waves a sheaf of political pamphlets. Many hands reach for the proffered tracts. His face is unmistakable; he is Yukio Mishima.

In the simulation, Mishima has an important place in twentieth-century literature, but in a prosperous, non-partitioned, postwar Japan, his politics are completely marginalized. In history, MishimaÂ’s Emperor-worship, his fanatical hatred of Russia, and his willingness to threaten nuclear war to regain lost territory became dominant themes in South Japanese politics. The forever-demonized image of Mishima is inescapably linked to that day thirty years ago when everything changed forever, the day that the Hokkaido crisis exploded in a nuclear exchange involving Japan, Russia, China, America, Britain, and France. Today we remember over two billion dead.

The theorists have created a scenario in which the destruction of two cities allows the world to be spared. The public is obsessed with this alternate history because it does not approach the horror of the truth.

Now it is true that some historians now suggest that the invasion of japan would have had a significantly smaller cost in lives than the 2.5 million envisioned in this piece, but I've never been persuaded by their arguments. And while I'm not so sure that the Japanese would have later acquired the bomb, I do recognize that a partition of Japan was a likely outcome of the war in the Pacific dragging on much longer, as the soviets would have been part of any invasion. Imagine the geopolitical impact of the existence of the People's Republic of Nippon and a divided Tokyo (similar to the status quo in Germany for four decades).

Ultimately, the use of the two atomic bombs at the end of World War II probably contributed to a more stable world situation than any other outcome could have -- unless, of course, we had been able to use them before the ailing Roosevelt's trip to Yalta and the subsequent partition of Europe that resulted from his inability to face down Stalin.

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O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain.
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov'd
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.
America! America! May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.

O Beautiful for patriot dream
that sees beyond the years.
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea.

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