Poland Looking to Restore Lost Glory in Castles

Once upon a time, Poland was a superpower, ruling vast swathes of land throughout Europe. Today's Poles are taking action to ensure that others in Europe don't think of that time only as a fairy tale.

A concerted effort is under way in a few towns across the country to refurbish, rebuild, or modernize medieval castles so that today's visitors can see the glory that was Poland in the Middle Ages. Inside will be conference centers, museums, or hotels, catering to the curious or serious tourist.

The rebuilding has been a long time coming and wasn't helped any at all by the communist governments that ran the country in the 20th Century. In those decades, the buildings were left to rot, since being symbols of feudalism and/or capitalism, they were seen as improper symbols of power and wealth.

Today's developers are skipping that era altogether and reaching back centuries to the time of King Casimir III "the Great" — who "found Poland built of wood and left her built of stone." — and the great land barons of the 16th and 17th Centuries.

One such place is an already reconstructed castle in Bobolice. A sign out front warns of the story within, of a legend saying that the castle is haunted by the ghost of a girl killed in its dungeon. If that doesn't bring in the crowds, well …

Back Yard Hoard Yields Medieval Treasures

Wish this one would happen to me.

So this Austrian guy goes out into his back yard and is digging around and finds a bunch of jewels and belt buckles and plats and stuff that are 650 years old. They're still in good condition, and he turns them into the local authorities, and he's sure to get some good money for it — he found the stuff on his property, after all.

It wasn't just a handful of things, either. No, this guy found more than 200 rings, brooches, plates, pearls, and other bits of a hoard that must have been there undisturbed for many generations.

The guy, who lives in Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna, initially posted photos of his find on the Internet, and alert collectors told him to go public with the hoard.

The case is still with the Federal Office for Memorials at the moment. Officials there are certainly excited by the find, although they haven't come out with a money value yet. Presumably, the guy won't be getting the things back, either. He should be getting a lot of money, though, if other recent payouts are anything to go by.

Filling the Gap Between Dinosaur Timelines

Scientists are frequently looking to fill in gaps in the historical record, especially the record of ancient history. Since the Internet wasn't around back then, they have had to guess a lot of the time.

Such is the case with a new discovery of a "gap-filling" dinosaur-like creature the fossil of which has been found in a New Mexico dig site knowingly named Ghost Ranch. Scientists have discovered other dinosaur fossils there, so they probably weren't surprised to find Daemonosaurus chauliodus, a creature the size of a tall dog that had slanting front teeth underneath a short snout and some neck features that are strongly reminiscent of dinosaurs.

The name certainly suggests a dinosaur: Daimon means "evil spirit," and sauros means, of course, "lizard." Those big teeth help with the second name because chauliodus comes from a Greek word meaning "buck-toothed."

It's all Greek to me, but the sense of it, I think, is that this was a feared lizard capable of rending great gaps in the hide of prey. The fossils found suggest a super-predator, which probably explains why the name begins with the Greek equivalent of "demon."

The snout is a little less pronounced than archaeologists would like it to be, which is probably why they haven't called this thing a full-blown dinosaur. Still, it is something more than earlier dinosaurs and something less than T-Rex and its Triassic ilk, so there's something. And the wide open spaces of the area have been lovingly represented in more than one George O'Keefe landscape.

You can read more about Daemonosaurus chauliodus and the fine folks who discovered its skull and neck here.

Nazi Bomber Found Intact Off British Coast

This Nazi bomber probably isn't a threat to the British mainland.

A Dornier 17 that was shot down in 1940 has been identified as nearly intact despite being in the shifting sands underneath the English Channel for 70-plus years. And now, British officials want to bring the plane to the surface.

The bomb bay doors are open, so the bombs might well have found their targets and the plane was on its way home when it was struck down, landing upside down in the Goodwin Sands, off the coast of Kent.

Port of London Authority high-tech sonar scans revealed the near totality of the plane. Archaeologists have since become very excited. Their budget doesn't match their enthusiasm, however. The RAF Museum, where the plane would rest if if were brought up from the water, has begun a fundraising effort to help with the operation.

The scientists are so excited because the plane was an iconic instrument of death, capable of outracing most other planes in the sky, mainly because its sleek one-piece design, a retrofitted passenger plane plan, contained 100 percent aluminum.

As for the people flying the plane, we know what happened to them. Two of the four escaped the watery grave and were captured and made prisoners of war. They were alive when the war ended. The other two crew members died on impact.