Embroidering the Fate of the First Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon
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Antoine de Caunes's densely plotted costume drama suggests that Napoleon's demise might have been an elaborate hoax through which he escaped into anonymity.
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The U.S. Mint will issue a dollar coin featuring the likeness of George Washington this Thursday, the first in the series of presidential coin dollars.
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By Janet Caggiano, Richmond Times-Dispatch  Feb. 19--In first grade, Edwin S. Snead III saw George Washington as a larger-than-life superhero riding a white steed.   His view hasn't changed much in the last 70 years.
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Personal letters from people such as Napoleon and John Donne are being sold at auction.
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A fabled fossil goes on view for the first time in decades  -  and ignites a controversy
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A sculptor, an architect, a photographer and a writer were involved. Collisions may have been inevitable.
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Scientists have pieced together how a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator was built, revealing an astounding level of craftsmanship for its time.
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A Greek doctor has come up with a new theory to explain the mysterious death of the ancient world conqueror Alexander the Great, long a subject of scientific debate.
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Two hundred years after he crowned himself emperor of France, a handwritten draft of Napoleon Bonaparte's memoirs -- littered with spelling mistakes -- have fetched a record price at auction in Paris.
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WASHINGTON - Thomas Jefferson appears bolder and bigger on new five-cent pieces, marking his first makeover since he landed on the nickel in 1938.    The maker of the nation's coins, the U.S...
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Movable parts in a silicone face enable 'emotional' response to key words.
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PARIS -- Can a woman have a Napoleonic complex? I'm not familiar with Dr. Freud's thoughts on the subject. Nor did Napoleon himself, that militant little dude, leave any guidelines at his opulent tomb that is only a few miles from the Roland Garros tennis parlor.
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There's change in store for Thomas Jefferson - on the nickel that is. He's getting his first makeover since being put on the coin in 1938.
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Legroom meets lebensraum in this Teutonic tie-up.
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Reader Himanshu Bhutani sends us a picture.
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This object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours - Rouen deputy mayor Catherine Morin-Desailly PARIS (New York Times) - Since 1875, the mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen in Normandy. But when Rouen's mayor arranged recently to return it to New Zealand as an act of "atonement" for colonial-era trafficking in human remains, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him. The ministry contends that the head is a work of art that belongs to France and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of national museum collections - from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the MusÃ©e Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the MusÃ©e du Quai Branly. "The mayor of Rouen made his decision without any consultation, and his decision is against the law," Olivier Henrard, the legal adviser for the Ministry of Culture, said.  "There are other Maori heads, there are mummies, there are religious relics in France," he said. "If we don't respect the law today, tomorrow other museums or elected officials might decide to send them back, too." Rouen officials insist that the Maori head is a body part, not artwork, and that due to France's bioethics law it must be returned to its place of origin. "This object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours," said Catherine Morin-Desailly, Rouen's deputy mayor, who proposed the return. "It belongs to the heritage of humanity, not in storage somewhere in a museum."  The Maoris traditionally preserved the tattooed heads of warriors killed in battle to keep their memory alive. Trade in body parts flourished in the 19th century, as contact with outsiders increased. Europeans collected Maori remains. Some Maori slaves were forcibly tattooed, then decapitated.  Morin-Desailly cites French precedent concerning the return of human remains: Those of Saartjie Baartman - the "Hottentot Venus" as she was labeled in her day. A farmer's slave born in 1789, she was sold to a British Marine surgeon and presented in public in London and later in Paris as a freak because of her oversized buttocks and genitalia.
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I have a faint memory from elementary school of stuffing coins into slots in a piece of cardboard decorated with the likeness of a Revolutionary War soldier. I was saving to buy a $25 U.S. bond, but since I don't remember actually owning a bond, I'm guessing my nickels, dimes and quarters didn't ...