History records that nearly a century and a half ago the sixteenth president of the United States was murdered by a treasonous actor (they had them back then, too) who was killed some days later in a Virginia barn.

But is history wrong? Did Abraham LincolnÂ’s killer escape justice? Did Union troops kill an innocent man in a tragic case of mistaken identity? Those questions are periodically raised by assassination buffs and conspiracy theorists alike. And now it may be possible to lay the question to rest once and for all.

Sometime after 2 a.m. on a cool, cloudy Wednesday, a group of detectives and blue-clad troopers cornered a murderous fugitive in a tobacco barn on the Garrett family farm near Port Royal, Va.

"Draw up your men before the door and I'll come out and fight the whole command," called a voice from the barn. "Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me!"

A soldier lit a tuft of hay, threw it inside and spied the silhouette of a man on crutches, a carbine on his hip.

Pop! A shot was fired and, 143 years ago today, John Wilkes Booth - assassin of Abraham Lincoln - collapsed to the ground, mortally wounded in the neck.
That's what history says.

But two local Booth family descendants - Joanne Hulme of Philadelphia's Kensington section, and her sister, Virginia Kline of Warminster - aren't convinced.

They think that another man was killed and that Booth, who they believe was the president's assassin, lived to a ripe old age.

Aided by Booth historians, researchers and scientists, the sisters may now be on the threshold of proving their theory through DNA tests.

Results of the tests will be revealed on television this fall.

Personally, I place myself among the traditionalists. That said, I am open to evidence that I am wrong to accept the official story. And given that there have been multiple individuals who claimed to be John Wilkes Booth years after he was supposedly killed at Port Royal, perhaps the evidence from these tests will substantiate or refute those claim as well.

Posted by: Greg at 08:44 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Their love story is one of the most intriguing of the ancient world, and has been chronicled again and again -- even by the likes of Shakespeare himself.

But the tomb of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and her lover, the Roman Consul Mark Antony, has never been examined by modern archaeologists -- because its location was lost in the mists of time.

Modern research seems to have found it -- and the site has now been made accessible. Archaeological work will start soon.

Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year.

Zahi Hawass, prominent archaeologist and director of Egypt's superior council for antiquities announced a proposal to test the theory that the couple were buried together.

He discussed the project in Cairo at a media conference about the ancient pharaohs.

Hawass said that the remains of the legendary Egyptian queen and her Roman lover, Mark Antony, were inside a temple called Tabusiris Magna, 30 kilometres from the port city of Alexandria in northern Egypt.

Until recently access to the tomb has been hindered because it is under water, but archaeologists plan to drain the site so they can begin excavation in November.

Among the clues to suggest that the temple may contain Cleopatra's remains is the discovery of numerous coins with the face of the queen.

According to Hawas, Egyptologists have also uncovered a 120-metre-long underground tunnel with many rooms, some of which could contain more details about Cleopatra.

Given that the tomb has spent centuries under water, the question of whether or not the remains of the queen and the general survive is an important one. I am unsure as to whether Cleopatra was mummified, or whether Antony was cremated as was Roman custom at the time. And what treasures are there, given the great quantity of treasure taken back to Rome in triumph by Octavian (soon to be Caesar Augustus)?

Still, there s potential to illuminate the end of Ptolomaic Egypt, and with it one of the most storied women of the ancient world.

Posted by: Greg at 02:31 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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On this day in history, the GOP-controlled Congress and a Republican President of the United States acted to end the threat to civil rights posed by the paramilitary terrorist wing of the Democrat Party.

On this day in 1871, the Republican-controlled 42nd Congress passed and the Republican President, Ulysses Grant, signed into law the Ku Klux Klan Act. The law banned the KKK and other Democrat terrorist organizations. President Grant then deployed federal troops to crush a Klan uprising in South Carolina.

Let me remind my readers that every major piece of federal legislation protecting the civil rights of Americans has been passed with the overwhelming support of Republicans. Every effort to ban lynching introduced by Republicans was thwarted by Democrats. The only member of the KKK to serve on the Supreme Court was appointed by and confirmed by Democrats, despite their full knowledge of his involvement in that organization.

And today, the only living member of the US Senate to have been a member of Klan is labeled as the "conscience of the Senate" by his fellow Democrats -- and sits three heartbeats from the Oval Office because his fellow Democrats made him president pro tempore of the Senate.

H/T Grand Old Partisan

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Posted by: Greg at 03:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Or at least that is the latest theory.

Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.

The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic and two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.

For a decade, the scientists have argued that the storied liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the shipÂ’s builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. More than 1,500 people died.

When the safety of the rivets was first questioned 10 years ago, the builder ignored the accusation and said it did not have an archivist who could address the issue.

Now, historians say new evidence uncovered in the archive of the builder, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, settles the argument and finally solves the riddle of one of the most famous sinkings of all time. The company says the findings are deeply flawed.

The interesting bit of information from my point of view was that the builder had begun to switch to steel rivets, which are stronger. They used them on the central part of the hull, but not at the bow or stern, because they expected the most stress to be in that central zone. Unfortunately, a close encounter with an iceberg resulted in stress in the area with the sub-standard iron rivets, and it seems that they gave way and led to a catastrophic incident that would not have otherwise occurred.

And the rest is history.

Posted by: Greg at 09:36 PM | Comments (34) | Add Comment
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It is all well and good to try to undo historical wrongs. However, doing so can have unintended consequences if one is not careful.

In this case, it could upset the entire line of succession to the British throne, and even lead to the replacement of Elizabeth II by an extremely distant German cousin.

Gordon Brown is considering repealing the 1701 Act of Settlement as a way of healing a historic injustice by ending the prohibition against Catholics taking the throne.

But doing so would have the unforeseen consequence of making a 74-year-old German aristocrat the new King of England and Scotland.

Without the Act, Franz Herzog von Bayern, the current Duke of Bavaria, would be the rightful heir to the British Crown under the Stuart line.

The bachelor, who lives alone in the vast Nymphenberg Palace in Munich, is the blood descendant of the 17th-century King Charles I.

"If it [the Act] goes then the whole Catholic line is reinstated," said Prof Daniel Szechi, a lecturer in early modern history at the University of Manchester.

"Franz becomes the rightful claimant to the throne. We would just exchange one German family for another one."

The law in question dates back to the era following the Glorious Revolution, when efforts to keep the Catholic descendants of the deposed King James II from regaining the throne resulted in the selection of the House of Hanover to replace the House of Stuart. Could a change in the law result in a restoration of the claims of the Stuart Clan?

Indeed, the Act of Succession ought to be amended to remove the bar on Catholics from the line of succession or the throne. However, a better vehicle than that currently under consideration obviously needs to be found.

Posted by: Greg at 10:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And we have this fossil record because, dare I say it, sh!t happened.

The discovery was one for the pages of an archaeology classic, something with a title like “Gods, Graves and Scat.”

Some people, coming into new country long ago, stopped at a cave for years perhaps, or only a day’s rest. Time enough, in any event, for them to relieve themselves — you know, answer nature’s call, if they bothered with euphemism. The cave was their in-house outhouse.

Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA, which the discoverers said was the strongest evidence yet of the earliest people living in North America.

Other archaeologists agreed that the findings established more firmly than before the presence of people on the continent at least 1,000 years before the well-known Clovis people, previously thought to be the first Americans. Recent research at sites in Florida and Wisconsin also appears to support the earlier arrivals, and a campsite in Chile indicates migration deep into South America by 14,600 years ago.

The find was published online Thursday by the journal Science, www.sciencexpress.org.

That serves as a reminder that not every piece of the fossil record is something glamorous, and not every aspect of the anthropologists work involves findings of something glorious.

A bunch of humans stopped in a cave and set up a privy. Now, thousands of years later, that privy is the most significant piece of evidence we have for their existence, a millennium before any other humans came to the Americas.

Amazing, isn't it, what becomes scientifically significant?

Posted by: Greg at 10:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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