Anglo Saxon Hoard saved

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke on Trent are celebrating today following the announcement that the £3.3 million to acquire the Staffordshire Hoard has been secured a month ahead of schedule – but the fundraising continues.

The announcement comes after news that the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) has approved a donation of £1.285 million that will meet the initial target of £3.3 million needed to acquire the joint ownership of the Hoard by Birmingham and Stoke museums...

Search engine collects historical resources

A search engine is being created to help historians find useful sources.

The Connected History project will link up currently separate databases of source materials...

The photograph that defined the class divide

In 1937, five boys were famously snapped standing outside Lord's. But who were they, what were they doing there – and what happened to them? The answer is surprising...

Carbon dating reveals vintage fraud in wines

"Up to 5% of fine wines are not from the year the label indicates, according to Australian researchers who have carbon dated some top dollar wines.

The team of researchers think "vintage fraud" is widespread, and have come up with a test that uses radioactive carbon isotopes left in the atmosphere by atomic bomb tests last century and a method used to date prehistoric objects to determine what year a wine comes from - its vintage.

The test works by comparing the amount of carbon-12 and carbon-14 in grapes..."

Flaming torches light up Britain's Hadrian's Wall

"Hadrian's Wall, a Roman-era fortification spanning the width of northern England, was lit up from end-to-end by volunteers carrying flaming torches Saturday.

As night fell, 500 gas flames were lit at 250-metre intervals for 84 miles (135 kilometres) from Wallsend in northeast England to Bowness-on-Solway in the northwest..."

Relic reveals Noah's ark was circular

Well apart from the fact they are talking about Atram-Hasis of course not Noah...

"That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside.

According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft..."

On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners

"Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures..."