Indiana Museum Finds Lost Picasso

[Huffington Post]  Considered lost for 50 years, Pablo Picasso's "Seated Woman with Red Hat," has finally been discovered at The Evansville Museum of History & Science... in storage.

17th century shipwreck to be freeze-dried, rebuilt

[CBS]   More than three centuries ago, a French explorer's ship sank in the Gulf of Mexico, taking with it France's hopes of colonizing a vast piece of the New World — modern-day Texas. Like La Salle in 1685, researchers at Texas A&M University are in uncharted waters as they try to reconstruct his vessel with a gigantic freeze-dryer, the first undertaking of its size.

Jefferson may not have been first to say "United States of America"

[Daily Mail]   The National Archives cite the first known use of the 'formal term United States of America' as being the Declaration of Independence in June 1776, which would recognise Jefferson as the originator. But historians have uncovered an example of the phrase published in The Virginia Gazette three months earlier.

Babe Ruth footage unearthed

[Huntington Beach Independent]  "There are so few moving images of Babe Ruth that even Major League Baseball's monstrous archive contains less than an hour's worth."  Less than one hour of film exists of Ruth — who died Aug. 16, 1948 — that we know about.

Was Ancient Egypt Wiped Out by a Mega-Drought?

[The Epoch Times]  Analysis of deep sediments around the Nile River in Egypt has shown a massive drought 4,200 years ago contributed to the end of Egypt’s pyramid-building era, according to a new U.S. study.

York’s secret underground passages unearthed

[Yorkshire Post]  IT IS a site that has been at the heart of York’s ruling elite since the Roman era, but the secrets of the past have remained hidden away beneath the ground.

Solved: the 17 year mystery of the ship under the floorboards

[Current Archaeology]  In 1995 archaeologists made a surprising discovery beneath the floorboards of the Georgian wheelwright’s workshop at Chatham Historic Dockyard – the remains of an 18th-century flagship. Now after almost two decades of research, the mystery vessel has been named as the Namur, a second-rate ship of the line that played a key role in the battle that eliminated the threat of French invasion and left Britain ruling the waves.

Canadian family discovers 'Superstar' reptile fossil

[Global News]  "A new window into our ancient world has just opened," says Deborah Skilliter, Nova Scotia Museum's curator of geology.  Skilliter says she was "jumping up and down" in her chair when Peter Keating sent in photos of the fossils.

Discovered! Captain Scott's ship Terra Nova reveals itself in north Atlantic

[Daily Record]  THE REMAINS of the legendary ship Captain Robert Scott used to take him to the South Pole has been discovered 100 years after his ill-fated adventure. The wreck of the SS Terra Nova, which was built in Dundee, was found 1000 feet beneath the sea off the coast of Greenland, where she has lain for nearly 70 years.

Drought brings 19th century Missouri River shipwreck to surface

[Digital Journal]   A steamboat that was lost on the Missouri River in the latter part of the 19th century has resurfaced due to the severe drought conditions that have been plaguing the region. For 128 years the boat was hidden beneath the waters of the Missouri River

Biblical Samson Tale May Be Depicted on Ancient Seal

[Live Science]  An ancient seal slightly smaller than a penny apparently depicts a man fighting a lion, which archaeologists believe could be an early reference to the Biblical tale of Samson.

Lost Egyptian pyramids found by Google Earth

[Global Post]  A Google Earth satellite imagery survey may have found two pyramid complexes in Egypt, Discovery News reported.

Tonga Shipwreck Discovered, Believed To Be Pirate Treasure Ship

[Gadling]  A recent discovery made by divers in Tonga could hold a missing puzzle piece to an age-old mystery. A local diver in the Ha'apai group of islands last month found wreckage believed to be a pirate vessel containing treasure that sank in 1806.

"Sensational" finds unearthed in Kazakhstan

[Caspionet]  A well-known Kazakh archaeologist Viktor Merz has made a new scientific discovery. On the shore of Lake Borly located about 100 kilometres from Pavlodar, his expedition came upon traces of an early settlement of an unknown archaeological culture. Ceramics with anthropomorphic motifs, darts, arrow tips, and other household items were among the finds serving as evidence that many thousands of years ago, the steppes of Kazakhstan were buzzing with life with an active cultural and intellectual exchange taking place. The actual discovery is a round-shaped ancient dwelling dating back to third millennium BC.

2000 year old Roman ship found nearly intact

[Discovery News]  An almost intact Roman ship has been found in the sea off the town on Varazze, some 18 miles from Genova, Italy. The ship, a navis oneraria, or merchant vessel, was located at a depth of about 200 feet thanks to a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) following tips from fishermen who had caught some jars in their nets.  The ship sank about 2,000 years ago on her trade route between Spain and central Italy with a full cargo of more than 200 amphorae. Test on some of the recovered jars revealed they contained pickled fish, grain, wine and oil.

New Fossils Indicate Early Branching of Human Family Tree

[NY Times]  Fossil by fossil, scientists over the last 40 years have suspected that their models for the more immediate human family tree — the single trunk, straight as a Ponderosa pine, up from Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens — were oversimplified. The day for that serious revision may be at hand. The discovery of three new fossil specimens, announced Wednesday, is the most compelling evidence yet for multiple lines of evolution in our own genus, Homo, scientists said. The fossils showed that there were at least two contemporary Homo species, in addition to Homo erectus, living in East Africa as early as two million years ago.

Volcano blast led to thousands of deaths in London in 1258, archaeologists find

[Medievalists.net]  A report to be released tomorrow by the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) will reveal that a mass burial on the site of the Augustinian priory and hospital of St Mary Spital had thousands of victims from a famine that occurred in 1258. The famine was caused by a volcanic blast from the other side of the world, which sent vast amount of ash into the atmosphere and dropped world temperatures.

Nazi war criminals could have lived out their lives in New Zealand

[NZ Herald]  A former police detective who led a 1992 investigation to track down former Nazi collaborators, Wayne Stringer,  spent a year investigating 47 people who arrived in New Zealand as "displaced" people from former Nazi-occupied countries after World War II and were suspected war criminals.

Mexican experts find hundreds of bones piled around skeleton in unprecedented Aztec burial

[Washington Post]  Mexican archaeologists say they have found an unprecedented human burial in which the skeleton of a young woman is surrounded by piles of 1,789 human bones in Mexico City’s Templo Mayor. Researchers found the burial about five meters (15 feet) below the surface, next to the remains of what may have been a “sacred tree” at one edge of the plaza, the most sacred site of the Aztec capital.

Letter to Winston Churchill May Contain First Known Use of ‘OMG’

[New York Magazine]  Letters of Note curator Shaun Usher has pointed out what might be the first known usage of O.M.G., in a September 1917 missive from British admiral John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher (or Lord Fisher) to Sir Winston Churchill. In a letter to Churchill about some "utterly [upsetting]" World War I–era newspaper headlines, Fisher wrote, "I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis — O.M.G (Oh! My! God!)— Shower it on the Admiralty!!"