The machine guns recovered from a fighter plane that crashed in an Irish bog in 1941 were pieced together to create one working weapon, which was later fired by television presenter Dan Snow and a team from the Irish army. “That was the noise that filled the air during the Battle of Britain,” he writes.

Turkish officials are concerned that the country’s museums are not strong enough to withstand an earthquake, putting lives and artifacts at risk. Housing and Development Commission Chairman Idris Güllüce recommended that government building inspectors be supervised and that building codes be enforced.

Rick Scott, governor of Florida, recently slighted the value of a degree in anthropology. Elizabeth Benchley of the University of West Florida has defended the profession and her students in The Pensacola News Journal.

A study of primates suggests that human ancestors may have begun living in bonded social groups at the same time they moved to day-time activity. “If you are a small animal active at night then your best strategy to avoid predation is to be difficult to detect. Once you switch to being active during the day, that strategy isn’t very effective, so an alternative strategy to reduce the risk of being eaten is to live in social groups,” said Suzanne Shultz of Oxford University.

A new experiment supports the idea that cooked food is easier to digest and gave early humans an evolutionary advantage. When food is cooked and pounded, even more energy and nutrients are released.

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources will survey Frederick County’s historic industrial sites, including iron furnaces, mills, and lime kilns.

Connecticut’s state archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni is leading the search for the remains of nineteenth-century abolitionist David Ruggles, who created Mirror of Liberty, considered to be the first magazine published by an African American. Ruggles is thought to have been buried in an unmarked grave in Norwich’s Yantic Cemetery.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, November 10, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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