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Seventy years ago, on February 28.1953, Cambridge University scientists James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced  that they had determined the double-helix structure of DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA was discovered in 1869 but its significant genetic inheritance role was not demonstrated until 1943. Many other Scientists were working on figuring out the structure of DNA. Read more

Source: NIH National Library of Medicine

“Worried that technology is ‘breaking your brain’? Fears about attention spans and focus are as old as writing itself."  Read more

A team of archaeologists in London recently uncovered a stunning 1300-year-old gold and gemstone necklace. This necklace is believed to have been crafted in the Anglo-Saxon period and is said to be a "once-in-a-lifetime" find. It is thought to have been a symbol of high status and wealth. It probably belonged to an elite woman who wanted to “show off” her new Christian identity"........ Read more

"The aroma of fried chicken and biscuits roused my appetite as the country sounds of Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson and Johnny Cash played over the loudspeakers.... I was ... in rural Brazil, at the "Festa Confederada" – the “Confederate Party” – an annual celebration of southern U.S. heritage held each April in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, in São Paulo state. Read more

"The newly discovered Nazca lines depict humans, cats, killer whales, birds, and snakes and date between 100 BCE and 300 CE" Read more

Photo courtesy of Yamagata University

"A symbolic moment of peace, grace, and humility amidst one of humanity’s most violent and disgraceful events".
"In December of 1914, a series of grassroots, unofficial ceasefires took hold of the Western Front in the heat of WWI. On Christmas, soldiers from an estimated 100,000 British and German troops began to exchange seasonal greetings and sing songs across the trenches",........ Continue Reading

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave a two minute speech that has been quoted ever since. There are five copies of the speech. All written in Lincoln’s handwriting. Each copy differs slightly, probably as a result of Lincoln’s self-editing. The Library of Congress has two copies of the address, Cornell University has one, the Illinois State Historical Library has one, and one is in the Lincoln room in the White House.
                 The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

When the federal government set up boarding schools in the 19th century to assimilate Native American children into American culture, one of the objectives was to get them to turn away from the use of their native languages. In recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the U.S., The Conversation turned to Daryl Baldwin, a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who is a leader in Native American language and cultural revitalization and a member of the National Council on the Humanities, for insight into a tribal community’s efforts working with a university to help bring languages back...Read more

According to the Department of Labor, the first Labor Day celebration in the US took place in New York City on September 5, 1882. On that day, between10,000 to 20,000 workers marched across lower Manhattan.(image below)
Before it was a federal holiday, Labor Day was recognized by labor activists and individual states. By 1894, 32 States had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday. Read more

 "Beneath Cappadocia's crumbling surface, a marvel of equally gargantuan proportions lay hidden away for centuries; a subterranean city that could conceal the whereabouts of up to 20,000 inhabitants for months at a time"   Read more

Photo credit: Halil Sayim 

"Formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, s The Trial which started on July 10 1925 in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school."

"The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the Word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen both as a theological contest and as a trial on whether evolution should be taught in schools". Read more