Pardon Billy the Kid? As If!

Poor Billy the Kid? Perhaps.

The suddenly popular outlaw had a chance of being pardoned more than a century after his death, but the outgoing governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, couldn't find it in his heart — or, most likely, his jurisdiction — to do it, despite the pardon papers having been drawn up.

The story is that William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, made a deal with Lew Wallace, the territorial governor of New Mexico at the time, to testify in court about killings he witnessed, presumably to help convict other outlaws. The operative word there is story, since no papers proving this agreement have ever been found.

The recent exposure of what has been a long-dead issue is thanks in part to the diligence of an attorney, Randi McGinn, who has no doubt made a name for herself arguing on behalf of someone long dead and unable to provide evidence in his own behalf.

What is a fact is that Bonney was a killer. He was in jail awaiting hanging for the killing of a sheriff when escaped, killing two deputies along the way. New Mexico government officials say that Bonney killed at least nine people. Popular lore puts the figure at more than 20. The final killing belonged to Sheriff Pat Garrett, who killed Bonney himself in 1881.

The issue has caught on with a small segment of the world population. The governor's office set up a website asking for public comment and received 809 emails from all round the world. The final tally was 430 in favor of a pardon and 379 against.

So who has the last word? Apparently, it's Richardson, because the incoming governor, Susana Martinez, has gone on record as saying that the State of New Mexico has more pressing matters to attend to in these tough economic times.

Enough said.

Message Decoded 147 Years Too Late

They found out the hard way, turns out, possibly without ever receiving the message.

They in this case would be the Confederate forces at Vicksburg, the famed one of the one-two punch, along with Gettysburg, that finally set the Union on course to ultimate victory. With the victory at Gettysburg, the advance of the Army of Northern Virginia was stopped, never to return. With the victory Vicksburg, the Confederacy was split in two and, possibly more importantly, the vital waterway the Mississippi River was firmly in the hands of David Farragut and the Union Navy.

But Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton had no way of knowing all that as he hunkered down behind his defenses, trying desperately to hold out until reinforcements arrived to raise the siege of the Confederate positions at Vicksburg. All Pemberton knew was that he was running out of everything — food, medicine, men, munitions, and time. Ringing his position with a smug sort of aplomb was Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who would later end the war by accepting the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Pemberton was waiting, in particular, for word from one of his fellow commanders who was stationed just to the west of Vicksburg. This was the promise of reinforcement that Pemberton was seeking. If he could just hold out until …

But the day of reinforcement never came, instead turning into a day of reckoning, as on July 4, 1863, Pemberton surrendered to Grant both his men and his position.

But that is all old hat. The new hat is on the recently unencrypted message intended for Pemberton from this mysterious fellow commander who mysteriously never turned up. The message was found in a tiny bottle given over by a Confederate captain who somehow ended up with the message. Pemberton, it runs out, never got the message — not that it would have cheered him up any.

The bottle had sat in the Museum of the Confederacy for some time, since 1896, in fact. The bottle was recently re-examined and found to contain a message that didn't initially make sense. That's when the code-breaking began.

A retired CIA code-breaker cracked the code, utilizing the Vigenere cipher, a common enough code during the Civil War but not used in quite awhile. In this code, letters are shifted to create different letter combinations. The code cracked, the museum released the details.

In the end, it mattered little whether Pemberton got his reinforcements or not. They would most likely have been too late anyway, if they had come. Vicksburg was soon in Union hands, as was much of the rest of the Confederate lands. The Union's overwhelming advantage in money and manpower proved too much for the Confederacy to withstand. The nation was whole again.

Nuns Get Their Baseball Card Money After All

The School Sisters of Notre Dame, an order in Baltimore, have turned over their rare Honus Wagner T206 baseball card and received $220,000. From their point of view, the deal is done. However, the deal almost didn't get done at all.

The original bidder didn't come through, apparently. Stepping into the breach at the end of the 30-day payment period was another bidder who was initially scared away by the amount of the bid but later decided to pay the full amount when he was approached by the auction house. The fact that he was Catholic probably didn't hurt his chances, either of being approached or being willing to pay a few tens of thousands of dollars more than he was originally intended to pay.

That's all water under the bridge now, as the card now belongs to Nicholas DePace, a doctor from Philadelphia who plans to display one of just a few known representations of "The Flying Dutchman" in a sports memorabilia museum to be built outside Philadelphia, in Collingswood, N.J. DePace, a longtime collector, has amassed some impressive items in his collection over the years, including uniforms belonging to Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, and Babe Ruth. His interests extend past baseball to include a uniform worn by NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain.

To that he will be able to add one of the rarest baseball cards of them all. The Wagner card was part of the T206 series, a group of cards produced between 1909 and 1911. This particular card is so rare because so few of the original issue exist — and that is because they were made for just a few years, at the insistence of Wagner, one of the game's great all-around players, excelling hitting, fielding, and leadership for 21 seasons, mostly with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Two theories about why Wagner wanted production of the card to stop abound, the more favorable being that he didn't want children, then the main collectors of the cards, buying the other product made by the card-makers, the American Tobacco Company.

The card came to the nuns in the first place by way of a brother of a nun, who recently died and who had kept the card since he acquired it in 1936. The top price paid for a mint condition Honus Wagner card is $2.8 million, back in 2007. The card that DePace got this time round is in poorer condition but it still one of only 60 of its kind.

Found Amelia Earhart at Last?

Here's where DNA testing can really do something worthwhile.

Amelia Earhart is once again in the news, long after her disappearance. This time, researchers have found a few bones on a deserted atoll in the Pacific that, along with a few other clues, would seem to paint the picture of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, spending the ends of their lives on land, alone, slowly running out of food and fresh water, undiscovered by the massive search team sent to look for them.

The other clues are perhaps more intriguing than mere bones: Among the findings are the mirror from a woman's compact, a pocket knife of the kind that was listed on Earhart's plane's inventory, and small travel-worthy bottles made in New Jersey (which, incidentally, is a long way from Nikumaroro, the atoll on which these things were found).

Earhart and Noonan went missing in 1937, so it's conceivable that the remains of small fires found on the atoll point as well to the missing pair's presence there. Also among the findings was a group of empty oyster shells laid out in a row, as if they had been cast down as water collection devices.

The findings were released by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has long been looking for clues to Earhart's fate.

Among the more outlandish theories were that she was captured by Japanese soldiers and executed as a spy or that she returned to the U.S. under a new identity and lived in secret the rest of her life. (Born in 1897, she would be very old if still alive.)

Finding the plane underwater would put to rest those outlandish theories, to a certain extent. But if the DNA testing on the bones that is now planned matches that of Earhart, then it's moreso an open-and-shut case of what happened on that grim July day in 1937.

JFK Photos Sell for $151,100 at Auction

The old saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. In some cases, pictures are worth thousands (perhaps hundred of thousands) of dollars. Such is the case with a recent group of images snapped by famed White House photographer Cecil Stoughton.

Stoughton is probably best known for his photo of Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in aboard Air Force Once hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That photograph, showcasing the steely calm of Johnson and the still-in-shock Jacqueline Kennedy, is one of the most famous in American history. The circumstances surrounding the taking of the photo are known, of course: the shooting, the aftermath, the constitutional carry-on. What was known previously only to some was the fact that Stoughton almost didn't live long enough to snap that shot. After hearing that Johnson would be sworn in aboard the plane, Stoughton rushed over in a car and literally ran across the tarmac to get on the plane to capture the moment. Secret Service agents, already frazzled from the horrific events that they had endured in the previous few hours, nearly gunned Stoughton down as a potential assassin. Fortunately, he was recognized.

That photo sold at a recent auction for $13,420, nearly twice the presale price estimated by Bonhams, the auction house in charge of the sale. The photo was one of 12,000 photographs taken by Stoughton of both public and private events involving Kennedy and his family. Among the headlines from the auction was the $9,150 paid for a rare photo showing Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Marilyn Monroe in the same public place at the same time.

Perhaps fittingly, a photo of JFK in the Oval Office with young Carolina and John-John dancing around, sold for $18,300.

Bonhams reported a total sale amount of $151,000.

Unabomber Land (Minus Cabin) for Sale - Any Takers?

If you had an extra $69,500 lying around and didn't care whether you even broke even on the investment, you might want to get in touch with the John Pistelak Realty of Lincoln, Mont. That's the company selling the land once owned by the Unabomber.


Yes, Theodore Kaczynski, the great opponent of advanced technology who is now serving a life sentence for his mad nationwide bombing spree, is still making the news, this time for 1.4 acres of land in western Montana — far from the ravages of such hallmarks of civilization as electricity and running water. It's basically a big bunch of trees and surrounding lands, no doubt by now teeming with wildlife.

The land is listed as "Very Secluded."

Kaczynski himself isn't far away: he's in a maximum security prison in nearby Colorado. Whether he profits from the sale isn't clear, and the realty company hasn't commented much other than to post the particulars of the sale, which include photos that show a very technological chain-link fence and barb-wire apparatus surrounding the property. (Guess they didn't want looters busting in and setting off their own bombs.)

One photo also shows FBI carved into a tree. Whether Kaczynski himself made the alteration in true Croatoan fashion isn't known.


One thing you won't find on the property is the Unabomber Cabin. No, that startling piece of back-to-nature living space is on display in the nation's capital, at the Newseum. Still, if you're looking to get away from it all, you could spend a lot more money and get a lot less land than this option.

Lee Harvey Oswald's Coffin - Cheap!

You have to wonder about the spending power of some folks in these dreary economic times.

One of the items being given away to the highest bidder by a Los Angeles auction house is the original coffin of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Remember him? The guy who shot JFK? Or was he merely the guy who was killed because he was believed to have shot JFK? Either way, he's still long dead.

Now, the coffin he was buried in is up for sale, and the current high bid is $1,000.

This all might be a bit on the really weird side if you didn't know that the coffin is, at the moment, quite empty. That's right — this isn't the box that currently holds the body. No, this is the box that originally held the body.

Seems that conspiracy theorists had had enough and, not waiting even 20 years, had Oswald dug up in 1981, to prove once and for all that it really was him in the coffin and not some Soviet agent who happened to look just like him. (That might have been the only thing they proved, but that's a story for another day.)

So after Oswald was identified as himself, he was placed back in the ground — in a different casket this time — and that's the one in which his body still resides.

The coffin on auction is that original box and is much the worse for wear, having suffered water damage over the years. In fact, what you'll get if you win the auction isn't even the box as a whole, since the water damage has done the deed and created more than one piece. Still, as the auction house is quick to point, you do get all the pieces, and you could certainly have the pieces put together.

What you do with it is up to you. Why, you could even use it to store "magic bullets."

Act quickly, though: The Auction ends on December 18. Maybe by then we'll know everything about the Kennedy Assassination.

Celebrate Secession? Just Say No

Some in the American South are planning, in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, to celebrate secession. What a horrible idea!

The very principle of states' rights that the secessionists of the mid-19th Century (and the nullificationists a few decades before them) is foreign to the ultimate success of a federal government, as was proved quite convincingly by the failure of the Articles of Confederation. And yet we have now, as we did then, people who are standing up in public and celebrating the idea that the much smaller state (or even a larger confederation of states) is (or are) better off without the umbrella of the federal government.

Surely this kind of thinking went out the window along about Appomattox Court House time!

First and foremost is the necessity of a united armed forces, as World War I and World War II proved. Had what is now the United States been two or more countries during either of these worldwide conflicts, the outcome could have been quite different, at the very least the same result achieved in a much longer timeframe and with a much higher death toll. It was precisely America's ability to marshal great amounts of manpower, womanpower, and dollar-power and apply all of it to the war effort that turned the tide in 1918 and again in 1945.

And, as was seen in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the nation was able to as a whole pay off its debts after the wars and, further, after World War II, offer vast sums of money to European countries to help rebuild the devastation wrought across the continent.

The economic powerhouse that the U.S. still is would be nigh on impossible if the country had been parceled up into two or more entities. The states that resulted from such a divorce would have been far less enlightened than the countries that currently make up the European Union; and communication, trade, and taxation between the various state-level entities would have been far more contentious than they are now, in the U.S. or in the EU.

Politically, the continent would be a much weaker force as well, with the presidents of the various countries vying for supremacy in their own back yard before they ever got out of the gate and onto the world stage. It is doubtful in the extreme that had the country been split in two, the president of either North or South would now be viewed as the "leader of the free world."

The one thing that binds all people who live in the United States of America is the idea of being American — whatever each person views that to be. The idea of being an American means different things to different people, but the overriding identity that Americans feel toward their country, their flag, their freedom, and their rights under the laws of the land unite them in a way that living in cities, states, commonwealths, townships, and counties can't approach.

Such honoring of the idea of splitting off from the American way of life and rejecting all of the benefits and protection that federalism allows is to remember a failed idea in the positive — a dangerous practice indeed.

Civil War Re-examination Years in the Making ... and Doing

A full 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. That election, and its result, set the nation on the course to civil war, changing the fate of the nation in ways that are still being felt and explored.

To commemorate the sesquicentennial, the National Park Service is planning a large series of commemorative events, beginning with a re-enactment of the election and running right through to a re-enactment of the end of the war, five years later.

Re-enactment events are planned for the major battles of the war, including Gettysburg, Antietam, and the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). It's probably not too much of a stretch to anticipate a re-enactment of the Gettysburg Address.

It's not just the battles, however. Shortly after the election re-enactment, the presidential train will get revved up and ready to go, replicating Lincoln's journey from his home state of Illinois to the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. Other similar nonviolent events are planned in many states affected by the Civil War. In all, more than 75 different battlefields and historic sites will have events. And that's not covering the various museums and privately operated sites planning events as well.

The District of Columbia tourism bureau will open an exhibit titled "Civil War to Civil Rights." Also getting into the act will be the National Archives, which will open its vaults to allow viewings of rarely seen gems from history, including an original draft of the 13th Amendment (banning slavery) that didn't get past the draft stage.

It's entirely fitting and proper for the NPS, the National Archives, and other entities to take a good, hard look at these momentous events, especially at a time when the nation as its stands now is (or should be) doing a lot of soul-searching over its direction forward. By examining the past, we can divine not only what happened but also what should have happened (depending on your point of view), not only what might have been but also but still could be.

Click here for more.

Rare Baseball Card a Home Run for Nuns

No swing and a miss here. These nuns have knocked one out of the park.

The School Sisters of Notre Dame, a Baltimore-based order of nuns, is today $220,000 richer, thanks entirely to the sale of a baseball card.

This wasn't just any baseball card, though. It was a rare one. The card in question was a Honus Wagner T206, of which only about 60 are known to exist.

The card, produced by the American Tobacco Company between 1909 and 1911, was discontinued soon after because the player wanted it gone. Wagner, one of the game's all-time greats (and, some say, the greatest shortstop ever to play the game), didn't want to encourage smoking by children, the natural audience for baseball cards. However, some sources say that Wagner demanded more money than ATC was willing to pay and that it was perhaps the tobacco company that pulled the plug on the Wagner card. Whatever the motivation, the card was no more.

The actual sale price was $262,000 and was rung up at an auction run by Heritage Auction Galleries, an outfit based in Dallas. The card will now be in the possession of Doug Walton, a collector and card shop owner from Knoxville, Tenn.

The nuns, who had to part with a buyer's premium off the top of the sale price, had the card in the first place because they inherited it from the brother of a nun. Virginia Muller, the sister in charge, says the money will go entirely to more than 30 countries around the world.

For more details, see this post.

Civil War Dolls Pegged as Smugglers

The Civil War continues to fascinate as its 150th anniversary approaches. The latest story to capture the public fancy is that of a pair of dolls thought to have been vessels for smuggling.

The papier mache dolls, which measure up to 3 feet in length and have been resting quietly at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., have become items of intense speculation in recent days, as recent X-rays have revealed hidden cavities and other hints that medicine was smuggled inside the two wooden girls (called Lucy Ann and Nina) on a ship bound for the American South from Great Britain. The idea would have been to get the medicine inside the dolls past the ever-present Union blockade.

No evidence of what was smuggled has been found, but officials at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center have scanned evidence that something was in this cavities, most prominently evidenced by not only a gash in the head of one dolls but also signs of the dolls' heads being stitched back on the bodies, presumably after the contents were removed.

The two dolls came from two different donors, both of whom insisted that medicine was the substance was smuggled into Confederate hospitals. The most obvious entities would be morphine and quinine, which could be used to malaria and other sources of devastation far behind enemy lines.

Lucy Ann came from an anonymous donor. Nina's donor, however, is known. That would be the children of Gen. James Patton Anderson, the commander of the Tennessee Army of the Confederacy.

Further tests, if ordered, would be forensic in nature, to discover traces of the smuggled contents, whatever they were.

Nuns to Make Money Off Baseball ... Card

The Lord works in mysterious ways. It's a common refrain among the Christian clergy and the Christian laity, and it's certainly applicable in this case.

Seems a certain man who died a few years ago left everything he had to the order of Roman Catholic nuns to which his sister belonged. Also seems that among the man's possessions was a very rare baseball card.

Collectors will immediately recognize the value of a T206 Honus Wagner, of which only 60 are known to exist. This is the most famous baseball card in history.

The paucity of copies of this card is the first clue that the card's worth has some heft. The card is more well-known, however, in collecting circles because of why so few copies exist.

Wagner was a super baseball player, one of the best in the history of the game, one of the first five ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. A shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was a speedy hitter (nicknamed the "Flying Dutchman") with tremendous defensive range and a terrific eye at the plate, compiling a lifetime .328 batting average. He won the National League batting title eight times, and his Pirates won the World Series in 1909.

The baseball card in question is famous because Wagner wanted it gone. He pressured the American Tobacco Company to take his card out of production, and so the T206 series, which was printed from 1909 to 1911, is the only known series to contain a Honus Wagner card. Wagner's commonly acknowledged motivation for doing this was because he didn't want to encourage smoking by children, the natural audience for baseball cards. However, some sources say that Wagner demanded more money than ATC was willing to pay and that it was perhaps the tobacco company that pulled the plug on the Wagner card. Whatever the motivation, the card was no more.

The current card is in the hands of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, in Baltimore, Md. The nuns are planning to put the card up for auction. The last Wagner sold brought in $2.8 million, the largest amount of money ever paid for a baseball card. That was in 2007, and that card was in mint condition. The nuns hope to fetch up to $200,000 from a collector willing to put up with the slight imperfections of the card, including a few missing borders and a large crease in one corner. The deceased had owned the card since 1936 and had had the card laminated, no doubt after watching the card's value go up over the years.

Stonehenge Tourist Circa 1550 BC

'The Boy with the Amber Necklace' isn't a best-selling book by Stieg Larsson. No, it's much older than that. Seems archaeologists have unearthed what they say is proof that Stonehenge was a tourist attraction way back in the day.

The British Geological Survey has announced the discovery of the skeleton of a teenager a couple of miles southeast of the great circle of stones. The skeleton dates to about 1550 B.C., according to radiocarbon tests, but it's the necklace the teen was wearing just before he died and results of tooth scans that have intrigued the scientists.

The necklace features amber beads, which weren't exactly easy to find in England in those days, so that's one clue to the teen's "visitor" status. Scans of tooth enamel, however, reveal the more telling evidence, namely the levels of strontium and oxygen isotopes that scientists say prove that he came from hundreds of miles away, much nearer the Mediterranean Sea. The teen would have absorbed the elements from drinking water near his homeland. Why he died where he did remains a mystery.

Was he a pilgrim on a religious quest? Did he seek healing? Was he attending a ritual? Did he want to learn more about the heavens? None of this is known, of course, nor is it known (still) what purpose Stonehenge served.

This latest find, coupled with previous long-distance visitors the "Amesbury Archer" and the "Boscombe Bowmen," serve to prove that people in olden days traveled farther from home than conventional wisdom generally allows.

Akhenaten: All-powerful Visionary of the Ancient World

Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, Living Aten, Beginner of Life—there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.

This was the famed Hymn to the Aten, spoken by the people of ancient Egypt in regard to their new god-king, Akhenaten, possibly the most powerful person in Egyptian history. His courage, inspiration, foresight, and actions make him one of the ancient world's most compelling figures.

He started his life auspiciously enough, being born the son of a pharaoh, Amenhotep III. Growing up in a royal family certainly meant that the young Amenhotep (eventually the IV) was exposed to political and religious power, in the form of the priests of the civilization's various religions. He would have seen as well the enormous power wielded by these priests, to whom some pharaohs bowed on matters of religious portent.

Amenhotep IV he became after his father's death. He soon married one of Egypt's most famous women ever, Nefertiti. Together, they forged a powerful kingdom, a far-seeing, far-reaching partnership ruling a far-flung empire.

After a few years, Amenhotep had had enough of the polytheism and the requisite religious figures associated therein and decided to strike out on his own, declaring that his people should worship only one god, Aten. To emphasize this, he changed his name to Akhenaten and declared himself the chief priest of this new religion.

Aten was, quite literally, the Sun. And who better to worship the Sun and declare its portents to the people of Egypt than the pharaoh, lord over all. Akhenaten composed the aforementioned Hymn to the Aten, the utterance of which served to reinforce the idea that the way to the supreme god was through the pharaoh, not through the priests, as had previously been the case (for even though the Egyptian civilization was a theocracy, it was the priests who often wielded the real power by offering the people a lifeline to the gods).

Akhenaten was the pharaoh, who had the power of life or death over his people, all his people. His pronouncement transformed Egyptian society. The idea of the worship of only one god spread, and people began reciting the Hymn and showing their deference to their pharaoh in religious matters.

The priests went along with this, of course, because they had little choice. (The pharaoh had life or death over them, too.) Another difference was that Akhenaten decreed that worship would take place in the light. The god being worshipped was the Sun, so it was only natural to worship the light, whereas before, people attended religious services administered by priests in indoor temples. This outdoor worship was the second way that the religious shift enlightened the people.

But Akhenaten wasn't done. He decreed that he had had a vision from Aten, decreeing that the civilization needed a new capital. No longer content to rule from Thebes, as his predecessors had done, Akhenaten had a large temple complex built at what is now called El-Amarna, quite a ways north along the Nile River. This was a massive, sprawling collection of stoneworks, built into a cliff-face, from which the young king could expect to keep his throne in the face of many serious assaults.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti, said to be one of the world's most beautiful women, ruled supreme for several years. He elevated her to co-regent, something unheard of in the strong patriarchal tradition of the ancient world.

His last stroke of boldness lay in the artistic realm, as Akhenaten decreed that statues and inscriptions on temple walls be more life-like, and not so abstract. Rather than abstract images, the art produced when Akhenaten was on the Egyptian throne was dominated by realism, the idea that you could look from a sculpture or a wall carving into the eyes of the subject and see a striking resemblance. It was almost as if the spirit of the person or scene being described had been captured physically, rather than abstractly. In a society that believed that the spirit of a person did indeed live in such things as carved hieroglyphs on walls, this was an innovation indeed, one that was encouraged and likely even directed by the young king who had energy to burn and a legacy to create.

So, in his time on the throne, Akhenaten had created a new religion with himself at the head, put the civilization's Amen priesthood out of a job, made his wife co-ruler, and brought his people's art into an ancient Renaissance. Such boldness and staggering accomplishments surely made the young king the target of jealous men. And jealous they were — the priests and other once-powerful people who found themselves sidelined while the new pharaoh dashed his way into history.

Historians have no hard evidence that Akhenaten was murdered. Indeed, many historians think that Akhenaten, even though he ruled for only 16 years (longer than King Tut, his successor, but much shorter than other pharaohs, including the famed Ramses II), died of natural causes. His wife's career after her husband's death is still being debated, as the sands of history have her assuming various roles, including the full pharaohship by herself.

Akhenaten's legacy endures, however: He instituted a one-god religion, perhaps the first in the history of the world; he consolidated all of the power of the state and the religion in one person, himself; he moved the capital of his civilization, for the first time in memory, to a desert citadel that would have withstood several massive assaults should his enemies have chosen to thwart his innovations by brute force of arms; he challenged the role of women in government by making his wife a ruler at his side in name and deed; and he ushered his civilization's artists into what we would consider a modern age, one in which the artist captured the true nature of the subject, as if the creation were a photograph, rather than a badly drawn approximation.

Martin Luther Irreverent? Surely Not!

Martin Luther might appreciate the irreverence to an extent, but residents of Wittenberg, where Luther nailed his famous 85 Theses to a church door and helped bring about the Protestant Reformation, are not seeing the mirth so much.

There are two stories here, one present and past. First to the present:

So an artist named Ottmar Hoerl has created a boatload of colorful statuettes of Luther, in several colors, and placed them in the town square in Wittenberg, to replace the traditional larger statue of Luther while it has been taken away for renovation. The statue will be back soon enough, but it won't be at all soon enough for some people, who don't appreciate the colors (red, green, blue, and black) of the statuettes or the slightly mocking tone of the artist who created them. That the artist has somehow made Luther look a bit irreverent as a statuette — at least more irreverent than he looked as a statue — hasn't helped matters.

But surely those outraged forget that one purpose of good art is to evoke appreciation for the original. (How else to explain all those dirge-like religious paintings of the Early Renaissance?)

Now to the past:

Martin Luther and the town of Wittenberg are forever linked because it was in that town and at Castle Church that Luther posted his first major public condemnation of some of the practices of the then-ruling Catholic Church. It was the practice of indulgences that really set Luther off, particularly the indulgence practice as practiced by one Johann Teztel. Seems the Pope at the time wanted money to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica and sent Tetzel round Europe to "sell" heavenly grace to raise money for the basilica rebuilding project. People would visit the friar Tetzel, beg for forgiveness, and the friar would grant them forgiveness — after they had paid the fee, of course.

Luther, who was already fed up with what he saw as a hypocritical Church, decided to act. He wrote out a serious of arguments, which are now commonly called the 95 Theses, and nailed them to the door of All Saints' Church, for all to see. This act and others by Luther and by other people coalesced into the movement that would become the Protestant Reformation, many of the effects of which are still being felt throughout the world.

Luther was certainly helped by the recent advent of the printing press, which was available to rapidly produce copies of not only his 95 Theses but also the Bible, which he had recently translated into German. The Reformation was off and running.

The statuettes won't be off and running anytime soon, however, no matter how many residents of Wittenberg dislike them. Why? They (the statuettes) are bolted to the ground.

Stirring Up the Ghost of Simon Bolivar

You have to hand to Hugo Chavez: He really knows how to stir things up.

So Chavez, the leader of Venezuela, has ordered the exhumation of the remains of Simon Bolivar, the greatest of all South American military leaders, to prove a point. That's what it's always about with Chavez — proving a point.

So why dig up this great savior, this man who single-handedly turned back hundreds of years of Spanish oppression? Well, to rewrite … sorry, to see if modern technology can shed more light on history.

See, Simon Bolivar died of TB in 1830. That's a long time ago, true, but they knew what tuberculosis was back then. So the charismatic Bolivar rode his horse up hill and down dale and inspired thousands to take up their arms and follow him into battle against the almighty Spain. A handful of countries owe their thanks to Bolivar's efforts.

But Bolivar died of TB — at least that's what most historians tell us.

Chavez, though, has other ideas. He insists that Bolivar died at the hands of not some dread disease but some dread Colombian. And that is definitely fighting words in Colombia.

The Colombian in question is Francisco de Paula Santander, who served as Vice-president of the Republic of Colombia under Bolivar (the president) and later served as President of the Republic of New Granada.

Santander and Bolivar started out as friends and allies but gradually grew apart as the events of the world overtook them (and they began to see each other as rivals for the people's affections). The disagreements came to a head in the late 1820s, when Bolivar declared himself dictator of Colombia and exiled Santander. Around this time, Bolivar narrowly escaped an assassination attempt and many people at the time thought that Santander was involved.

So, too, apparently does Chavez.

But why now, why this way? Modern relations between the two countries are already strained. Surely Chavez is just playing a game of one-upmanship. This couldn't possibly be a pretense for sanctions or incursions or some other such silly thing.

Stay tuned.

200-Year-Old Ship Found in Mud at Ground Zero

A recent find at Ground Zero has workers abuzz but in a good way.

Construction workers digging below street level in Manhattan to build a memorial to the victims of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have found the hull and other remains of a ship that looks to have been buried as junk more than 200 years ago. One of the pieces is 32 feet long. Both pieces are being treated with extreme care because their sudden exposure to oxygen, after a couple of centuries of preservation in mud, has accelerated their decomposition. In the meantime, workers have been busily photographing and measuring the remains, so that research can continue in the event that the pieces of wood well and truly fall apart.

Archaeologists have discovered other evidence of human presence, including pieces of shoes and a 100-pound iron anchor.

Historians say this kind of ship was used in the 1700s but was probably not a ship of choice by the time it was sunk, likely to serve as support for a southern expansion of landfill making up the boundaries of Manhattan. (A ship sunk for similar purposes was discovered nearby in 1982.)

Still unknown: what kind of wood has been found, how old the ship really is, and whether the ship sailed in the Caribbean (as one historian thinks likely, based on remains of marine life discovered attached to the wood).

Construction continues in the area, as workers build the set of large buildings set to replace the World Trade Center and function as a memorial. The discovery of the ship has been a highlight amid the mixed reactions to the decision to rebuild on the Trade Center site and also a reminder that the area was a center of commerce long before 1973, when the Trade Center was unveiled to the world.

Leonardo Painting Termed a Solo Effort After All

Ah, modern technology. We curse it sometimes; other times, it can tell us something quite extraordinary that we might not otherwise realize.

Such is the case with the latest news out of the U.K. National Gallery, which has announced that experts believe that Leonardo painted the famed Virgin of the Rocks all by himself.

What's the big deal? Well, up until now, acute analysis of the painting has convinced experts that the variance in brush strokes and finality of shapes and structures meant that assistants had helped Leonardo with this one. But recent restoration has revealed more evidence in favor of the sole painter theory, especially given Leonardo's penchant for leaving things unfinished, as if he always had another element to add. (Is the Mona Lisa unfinished? Film at 11.)

The National Gallery is in the final stages of a 18-month restoration project. Among the other findings was a wider range of tone in the late-15th Century painting.

Also strengthening the claim is a 2005 finding from an infrared scan revealing a pair of unfinished drawings virtually hidden under what we know as the surface layer; one of these drawings provided proof that Leonardo indeed kept changing his mind as he painted.

All of this is, of course, right in line with the master's "sfumato" technique, which created, among other things, elements of illusion in the artworks. "Sfumato" is derived from sfumare, which is Italian for "to evaporate like smoke."

The London painting is one of two versions of this particular masterpiece. The earlier version hangs in the Louvre.

Purveyors of pop culture will remember that this painting featured in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Newly Unearthed Old Kingdom Tombs Yield Brilliant Colors

A new round of excitement is thrilling archaeologists in Egypt, after the showing off of photos from a newly unearthed set of Old Kingdom tombs. Specifically, the twin tombs originally contained the last resting places of a father and son who were in charge of the royal scribes. (We know this because of the hieroglyphs found on the walls and false doors of the tombs.)

Zahi Hawass, the most well-known and most senior at the Department of Antiquities, made good use of the media by unveiling the vivid colors found in the drawings on the false doors. One door contained an inscription with the name of Pepi II, a pharaoh whose time on the throne was Egypt's longest, at nearly a hundred years.

Nearby is the famed Step Pyramid of King Djoser, itself surrounded by a large burial ground. Archaeological teams began digging in the area three years ago and have unearthed six tombs so far.

Sadly, the two most recently unearthed tombs had poorly kept interior remains. The tomb of the son, Khonsu, was the victim of robbery ages ago. His father, Shendwas, fared no better, as his sarcophagus had fallen victim to one of ancient Egypt's sharpest foes in the struggle for immortality: humidity.

Hawass and others are hopeful that this is only the beginning.

Cutting the Gordian Knot: Alexander at His Creative Best

One of the many apocryphal stories about Alexander the Great is his solving of the problem of the Gordian Knot. In true Alexander fashion, he found his own solution to a problem that had vexed all before him.

An intricate knot was used by a man named Gordius to secure his oxcart. This man was a peasant who came to Phrygia in an oxcart. An oracle had told the Phyrgians that their next king would arrive in a wagon. The oxcart was good enough for them, and they made Gordius king. He responded by offering his oxcart to Zeus and tying the cart up with a difficult knot. Gordius was succeeded by Midas, who didn't leave an heir. The same oracle who had spoken before now told the people that whoever untied the knot would have the rule of all Asia.

It was quite the puzzle, this knot. Many men had tried to untie it; none had succeeded. So Alexander, no stranger to puzzles (having studied under the great Aristotle) and wanting to make a name for himself in this part of the world, announced that he would solve this puzzle.

Not much is known about how much Alexander examined or prodded the knot. The knot was, after all, tied to an oxcart and in full view of everyone around it, so it's unlikely that Alexander had any chance to do anything other than what he did to solve the puzzle.

For solve the puzzle he did. He untied the knot by cutting it with his sword! Faced with a problem whose solution had eluded a great many men, Alexander changed the rules and found his own way forward — a strategy that epitomized his entire career and very way of thinking. He reached the ends but by means other than what was expected.

What was it about this knot that had so vexed the brave and clever before Alexander? It was certainly a puzzle, this knot that looked like it had no ends. How could one possibly untie a knot that had nowhere to start untying? Surely many men had left, shaking their heads, after trying in vain to get the knot undone.

But Alexander was different. He was brash. He was self-confident. He was extremely intelligent. He had a keen sense of the possible, even in the face of seemingly impossibility and overwhelming odds against him. He saw what others did not, believed what others would not, succeeded where others could not.

Alexander saw through the way the problem was presented, beyond the "rules" that said one had to use one's hands and wits and seize the knot by the ends in order to untie it. Rather than try what others had, Alexander forged a new path, succeeding where everyone else had failed.

Was this a technicality? Probably. Technically, Alexander did untie the knot. After he cut it with his sword, the knot was easily enough untied.

Did he fulfill the prophecy foretold by the oracle? He most certainly did. Alexander and his loyal men conquered more territory than anyone before him (and many since) and stretched the boundaries of what Greek minds would know as "the known world" far beyond the imaginations of the time. His boldness, courage, and vision got him there — the same skills that enabled him to see through the trap of trying to untie the knot in the conventional way and find a way to achieve the end by different means.

In recent years, historians have come to doubt the veracity of this story, either its elements or its entirety. Whether the oracle element was around in Alexander's lifetime or whether it was invented later for convenience is really neither here nor there. In fact, whether Alexander actually cut the knot at all is probably neither here nor there. For the real lesson in all of this is not whether the events really happened but, rather, what the events demonstrate about Alexander, his character, his vision, and his accomplishments. We know a lot about Alexander the Great, thanks in large part to several prominent biographers who lived in his lifetime. We have lots of facts about him and his reign and his battlefield acumen. We know a lot about his vision and his temperament and his extraordinary luck, on the battlefield and off. This story most certainly illustrates a character that we are already familiar with — the bold Alexander, trading a solution for stagnation, a new way of thinking for tired persistence in the face of continual defeat.

If Alexander didn't cut the Gordian Knot, he should have.

Hi-tech Imaging Reveals 'Edit' in Declaration of Independence

It's like something out of a recent Nicolas Cage movie, except no one was hurt in the process.

Out of the Library of Congress comes word that new high-tech science has revealed proof of a word change that Thomas Jefferson made while writing the Declaration of Independence.

By using a hi-res digital camera on an early draft of the Declaration (wonderfully preserved, of course), preservation scientists at the Library of Congress have uncovered stunning proof that Jefferson made a word change. How do we know this after all these years? The digital camera, through a technique called hyperspectral imaging, showed one word underneath another.

The Declaration of Independence includes an extensive list of grievances that the American colonists had against King George III of England. Toward the end of this list, Jefferson makes reference to the British captive of capturing American sailors and forcing them to fight against their American countrymen.

As it reads now, this grievance begins: "He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country …"

The key word in that sentence is citizens. In the earlier draft examined by the Library of Congress, Jefferson used the word subjects, which has an altogether different connotation. A subject acknowledges sovereignty of someone else; a citizen, on the other hand, considers his membership in a society independent of that society's ruler, particularly a monarch.

The Declaration of Independence makes very clear that many Americans in the late 18th Century considered themselves already independent from Great Britain. Stunned by a series of severe taxes, the colonists on the eastern seaboard of North America revolted, crying out for the right of taxation without representation, self-government, and other "inalienable rights." Jefferson's words in the Declaration were a clear representation of those sentiments and dearly held beliefs.

The scientists at the Library of Congress were very safe in their handling of Jefferson's early draft, exposing it to air only as long as necessary and making sure that it was transferred back and forth from lab to resting place under armed guard. And, in photos they revealed to the world, there was clear evidence of Jefferson's "live edit," a wipeout of one word and replacement with another — two words that were at once close in meaning yet worlds apart in interpretation.

Waterloo: Predictor of Alliances Future?

All too often in history, enemies end up as allies. It takes more time for some alliances to form.

Such is the case with the nations of Europe, now united as never before in the European Union (well, most of them are in there anyway). These nations share a common currency, their borders are relaxed, the Iron Curtain has fallen and with it the threat of mutual assured destruction (at least from the Soviet Union, which isn't exactly living and breathing any longer). They do squabble amongst themselves, especially over who else to let into the club, but they do swap the EU leadership around and they do present a real economic powerhouse on the global market stage.

Many people in Europe were in mind of alliances recently in Belgium — in Waterloo, to be precise, at a re-enactment of the famous battle fought there in 1815. This, as many good students of history will remember, was the final defeat of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France, he of the mammoth military reputation an intellect whose best-paid plans went for nought when the heavens opened up and muddied the field and Prussian reinforcements arrived just in time to help the Duke of Wellington complete his triumph. Every year, tens of thousands of people arrive at Waterloo, not only to remember the events of the day (June 18 it was) but also to don the uniforms, fire the guns, mount the horses, and otherwise participate in a replay of one of the most famous battles in European military history. (Sadly for fans of the great Napoleon, it ends the same way no matter how many people take part in no matter how many re-enactments.)

Napoleon, a symbol of the French Revolution somehow turned into Empire, was the giant of the age, bending other world leaders (and their armies) to his whim, reinventing the French legal system (and many countries still build their laws on his revisions), and otherwise bringing more glory to France than anyone possibly before him or since. A shrewd tactician and brilliant politician, he willed his men to victory on the battlefield, sometimes against spectacular odds. (Indeed, Wellington is famous for saying of Napoleon: "His presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men."

One thing Napoleon was good at as well was uniting people against him. The English hated him, not only because of what he represented — at first a representative government and later a more successful monarch than many kings and queens of England — but also a rival to English hegemony over the Continent. All of the Grand Alliances against France in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries were spurred on by England and its hatred of Napoleon.

The Emperor made mistakes, of course, and often did little to endear the leaders and populaces of other countries to his or France's causes. He was successful, however, at uniting most of Europe under his sway at one time or another. The Confederation of the Rhine and the Continental System are examples of that. Neither, however, included England; both, it can be said, eventually angered the people of Central and southern Europe — not to mention England.

And so it came to be that England convinced more and more European leaders and armies to unite with England against Napoleon. The Battle of Waterloo featured a grand coalition, formed in reaction to the Hundred Days, and so it was that nearly equal numbers of French troops fought against British, German, and Dutch troops until tens of thousands of Prussians arrived and turned the tide. In its wake, Waterloo left a powerful mark on the alliance structure of Europe.

A century later, World War I would start and inflame so quickly mainly because of "entanglements," mutual defense treaties signed by various countries to protect against the aggression of other countries. Similar alignments could be found involving the combatants of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. More recently, European nations worked together to oust Iraq from Kuwait and to stop genocide in Bosnia.

Is this a straight line from Waterloo to today? Probably not. A hundred years on, the hard feelings on both sides of the battlefield have lessened somewhat, as generations pass on to generations the lessons not only of war and statesmanship but also forgiveness and seeing the big picture.

It is that big picture that features in European thinking today, even on the battlefield of an epic struggle that defined an age. And it is that big picture that is embraced by the tens of thousands of people who come to Waterloo to fight and remember. These people who show up year after year (and they may be the same people from year to year or they may not) come from all over Europe and, indeed, all over the world. The re-enactors choose their sides out of interest not so much out bloodlust. The spectators revel in the global nature of it all, as should we all.