Mysterious Indian Skeleton Found Inside 18th Century British Fort
When 18 skeletons were found at Fort William Henry by Lake George in the 1950’s 17 were European, 
which is not strange. One was of unknown origins, possibly hailing from Africa. Modern forensic technology has revealed the skeleton was not African, but American Indian. Like most questions in history, when one is answered, ten more get asked. How did an American Indian believed to be from the western United States wind up in the Adirondacks?
The skeleton is believed to be from the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years War, when heavy, bloody fighting was going on around the Lake George area. It was discovered in a unmarked grave along with two others. Modern technology was able to identify that the skeleton’s water source for most of its life was located somewhere in the modern day Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Dakotas region. The researchers admit that the finding caught them by surprise.
An easy answer would be that this Indian was fighting alongside the hundreds of Indians who were allied with the French to try to repel the aggressive British Empire. Except when the French and Indians attacked the fort in 1757 the researchers believe this Indian was already dead. It probably isn’t a British allied Indian because they were rarely buried inside the fort. One explanation is that the Indian was a scout for the British which is why he was buried inside the fort.
Either way, the truth can never be fully known. While modern technology is able to answer questions we never would have been able to even 10 years ago, it seems to only lead us further down the endless hallway. There has to be a side to the story that has been lost to history, and unfortunately unless we invent a time machine, those answers will always be lost. For now we will just have to theorize.
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Photo byDoug Kerr
The Lewis Chessmen: Humor Is Cultural
The Lewis Chessmen: Humor Is Cultural
The diminutive, delicately carved, 12th century Lewis chessmen face off in an endgame at the Cloisters, the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art of the Middle Ages.
Their expressive faces, with bulging eyes, down-turned mouths, and gestures with their tiny hands prove a counterintuitive notion. Comical, even adorable, toy-like artwork can achieve historical and international significance.
The exhibit, The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen From the Isle of Lewis, brings 34 of the world’s most famous chess pieces from the British Museum to New York City.
Read the rest of the article at The Lewis Chessmen: Humor Is Cultural | Literary & Visual Arts | Arts & Entertainment | Epoch Times.
Story by Betsy Kim; Photo from the British Museum
Science Hundreds of lost Darwinian specimens discovered in cabinet
Hundreds of lost Darwinian specimens discovered in cabinet
A collection of hundreds of fossil specimens, including some gathered by Darwin on his travels, have been discovered after 165 years hidden in an old cabinet.
The 314 slides were found by Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway at the British Geological Survey. The professor says in a release: “While searching through an old cabinet, I spotted some drawers marked ‘unregistered fossil plants’. I can’t resist a mystery, so I pulled one open. What I found inside made my jaw drop!”
The glass slides were made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets, explains Falcon-Lang, to allow them to be studied under the microscope. Among these was a piece of fossilised wood that had been collected by Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle.
Read more of the story at Hundreds of lost Darwinian specimens discovered in cabinet (Wired UK).
Story by Katie Scott – Wired UK; Photo by British Geological Survey
Charlotte Bronte first story sells for £700k to a French museum
British novelist Charlotte Bronte was the eldest of the three Bronte sisters, who all helped set the standard to great British literature. Charlotte Bronte’s most famous work was Jane Eyre, published in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell. Jana Eyre has been described as one of the most influential feminist texts and well ahead of its time. Seventeen years before, when Charlotte Bronte was only fourteen years old, she wrote her first story. The short story, only 4,000 words is written in a tiny booklet (35 x 61 mm) about the size of a credit card was put up for auction. David Wilkes of the Daily Mail reports on the book and the auction. Tell me that picture of Charlotte Bronte does not look like Uma Thurman!
Tensions in Europe took on a literary flavour yesterday as the French snatched a tiny but historically priceless Charlotte Bronte manuscript from under the nose of a British museum.
The unpublished work, written in 1830 when she was just 14 and containing a story which is a precursor to a famous passage in her novel Jane Eyre, was bought for a record £690,850 by Le Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris at auction.
The Bronte Parsonage Museum, in the literary family’s home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, was so keen to acquire the miniature treasure that it had launched a fundraising appeal before the sale at Sotheby’s in London.
It secured a £613,140 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, leaving enough to bid up to a hammer price of £560,000 for the work, which Charlotte Bronte wrote to entertain her sisters Emily and Anne, and brother Branwell.
Read more of the story at Charlotte Bronte first story sells for £700k to a FRENCH museum | Mail Online.
British WWII bomb forces evacuation of Koblenz
A 1.8 tonne World War II bomb has been discovered in Koblenz, Germany and plans are underway to evacuate the city in order to remove it. The low water level of the Rhine river has uncovered other unexploded bombs recently in the Rhineland. The plans to remove the bomb are reported in German edition of the The Local.
Plans are being made to evacuate nearly half the residents of Koblenz next weekend so that a 1.8 tonnes British WWII bomb found in the Rhine River can be defused. Two hospitals and a prison are within the evacuation zone.
The enormous bomb, dropped by the Royal Air Force, was only discovered thanks to the unusually low level of the Rhine, due to a severe lack of rain over the last few weeks.
The bomb disposal situation has been complicated by the discovery of two more, smaller bombs in the mud nearby.
The Koblenz city council said around 45,000 people will have to move, that is around 42 percent of the city’s population, in what will be the biggest evacuation in its history.
An evacuation radius of 1.8 kilometres has been decided upon. This means 700 patients at two hospitals will have to be moved, as well as the residents of seven old people’s homes and prisoners in a jail. The city’s main train station will also have to be emptied as well as several hotels.
Read more of the article at British WWII bomb forces evacuation of Koblenz – The Local.
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