Helen Donoghue, a specialist in infectious disease at University College London, examined tissue samples from the mummy of an Egyptian woman known as Irtyersenu. She determined that the woman died of tuberculosis, and not from the growth on her ovary, as had been thought in 1825.  

Seven Roman statue bases were found during a new survey of the Blue Grotto, a cave on the island of Capri in southern Italy. In 1964, three statues of gods were recovered from the cave, which was Emperor Tiberius’s favored swimming hole. “The sculptures were all placed at the same level. It is likely that other statues will come to light as the project continues with new underwater investigations,” said diver Vasco Fronzoni.  

Here’s more information on the discovery of the foundations of Nero’s rotating banquet hall and part of the kitchens in his palace, the Domus Aurea, on Rome’s Palatine Hill.  

Turkey has allocated money to restore a Roman lighthouse located in the ancient city of Patara. “The world’s oldest lighthouse was known to be the one in Lacaruna, Spain. The lighthouse we have found is 60 years older than the one in Spain,” said Havva Isik, of Akdeniz University.  

Volunteer G. Pat Macha and others have found the wreckage of a Lockheed-Martin T-33A that went missing after take-off from Los Angeles International Airport on October 15, 1955. Two Air Force pilots died in the crash.  

A wooden walkway in Otago, New Zealand, is being preserved in a solution of polyethylene glycol. The walkway is about 150 years old, and was found during the construction of a new shopping mall.  

Kazuto Matsufuji of Doshisha University says he has found 120,000-year-old stone tools in western Japan. The country’s previously oldest stone tools on record were less than 100,000 years old.  

Richard Moter has been carefully recording what he finds at a slave cabin in Virginia owned by his family. “A lot of these sites have been destroyed by loggers and landowners. I’m in here just trying to piece together the story,” he said. Scholars from the University of Mary Washington have helped him in his quest.    

Dendrochronologists are studying a log cabin in Missouri’s Rock Bridge Memorial State Park. Park officials are unsure if the cabin’s original logs were used in a renovation project in the late 1960s or early 1970s. “It’s nice to have the cabin, but if it’s not historical then we can’t maintain it,” said superintendant Jim Gast.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, September 30, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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