Tag: history

Looters plunder Albania’s sunken treasures

by Briseida MEMA Agence France-Presse VLORA, Albania (AFP) — Albania’s long under-explored coastal waters have become a hotspot for treasure hunters scooping up ancient pottery, sunken ship parts and other shell-encrusted relics that have lain on the seabed for centuries. The 450-kilometer (280-mile) coastline, which is lapped by the Adriatic and Ionian seas, was off-limits under the communist regime which ruled the Balkan state until 1990, with orders to shoot anyone caught diving without authorization. […]

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World’s oldest intact shipwreck found in Black Sea

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — An ancient Greek trading ship dating back more than 2,400 years has been found virtually intact at the bottom of the Black Sea, researchers said on Tuesday. The vessel is one of more than 60 shipwrecks identified by the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project including Roman ships and a 17th-century Cossack raiding fleet. During the three-year project, researchers used specialist remote deep-water camera systems previously used in offshore oil and […]

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New Zealand PM makes UN history with first baby

by Catherine Triomphe Agence France Presse UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — New Zealand’s prime minister has been proclaimed a history maker for taking “first baby” — daughter Neve — into the United Nations General Assembly hall, shaking up what is still a boys’ club of world leaders. Photographs of Jacinda Ardern, 38, kissing and bouncing her three-month-old in the main hall at the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit on the eve of the General Assembly […]

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US embassy: US Defense chief had already notified US Congress on Balangiga bells’ return to PHL

  MANILA, Philippines (AFP) — The United States will return to the Philippines church bells seized by American forces in a bloody campaign more than a century ago, its embassy said on Sunday, following a demand by President Rodrigo Duterte. American forces took three bells from the Catholic church of Balangiga town on the eastern island of Samar in 1901 as war booty in what historians said was a particularly brutal military operation in the […]

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Japan marks 73rd anniversary of atomic attack on Hiroshima

TOKYO, Japan (AFP)–A bell tolled Monday in Hiroshima as Japan marked 73 years since the world’s first atomic bombing, with the city’s mayor warning that rising nationalism worldwide threatened peace. The skies over Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park were clear, just as they were on August 6, 1945, when an American B-29 bomber dropped its deadly payload on the port city dotted with military installations, ultimately killing 140,000 people. Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, standing at the […]

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Napoleon Bonaparte’s rifle, silver soup spoon sold at auction

  PARIS, France (AFP) — A silver soup spoon that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile on St. Helena and a hunting rifle owned by the French emperor were sold at auction in France on Sunday. Engraved with Napoleon’s coat of arms, the silver soup spoon sold for 8,375 euros ($9,700) while the rifle, originally owned by King Louis XVI, went for 80,000 euros in the sale held by the Osenat auction house at Fontainebleau. […]

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Turkey’s ancient temple site gets UNESCO heritage status

ANKARA, Turkey (AFP)–A Turkish ancient temple site in southeastern Anatolia was given UNESCO World Heritage status on Sunday, the UN agency announced at a meeting in the Bahraini capital Manama. Named Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill), the site is the world’s oldest known megalithic structure located in Upper Mesopotamia and is some 11,000 years old. The site, considered to be the world’s oldest temple, is in the present-day southeastern province of Sanliurfa and reopened to tourists […]

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China’s ‘space dream’: A Long March to the moon

BEIJING, China (AFP) — The plunge back to Earth of a defunct Chinese space laboratory will not slow down Beijing’s ambitious plans to send humans to the moon. The Tiangong-1 space module, which crashed Monday, was intended to serve as a stepping stone to a manned station, but its problems highlight the difficulties of exploring outer space. But China has come a long way in its race to catch up with the United States and Russia, […]

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1968, key events in “The Year That Changed America”

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The year 1968 featured a series of tumultuous events in the United States. Here are some of the most notable occurrences during the year: January 23  North Korea captures the USS Pueblo, claiming the US Navy intelligence vessel violated its territorial waters. One member of the Pueblo’s crew was killed in the attack and the other 82 held for 11 months before being released. January 30  North Vietnamese troops launch the […]

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Five key dates for post-Soviet Russia

MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Here are five major dates in Russia since the disintegration of the USSR or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 1991: the Soviet Union dies December 8, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, elected six months earlier at the first multi-party election, agrees with his Belarussian and Ukrainian counterparts to replace their union, the USSR, with a commonwealth. As the Soviet Union disintegrates, leader Mikhail Gorbachev resigns. The USSR ceases to exist in […]

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100 years of women’s suffrage: How one group changed British history

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — British women won the right to vote 100 years ago after an intense struggle marked by a violent fringe campaign that shocked the country but helped to change the world. On February 6, 1918, the Representation of the People Bill became law and added to the voting roll around eight million women who were aged over 30 and met other conditions. It was not until 1928 that British women gained […]

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Preserved in time: WWII bunker hidden under Paris train station

by Jean Liou © Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFPI) — t lies hidden deep beneath Paris’s bustling Gare de l’Est railway station, its sprawling subterranean rooms and sparse furniture pristinely preserved if a little dusty. Originally built a few years before World War II for luggage storage, the underground bunker was repurposed after war broke out. French railway historian Clive Lamming said its 1939 overhaul was to provide “a place to retreat in case of an […]

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