A newly revealed top secret document indicates that the US once instituted a military plan by which it would launch an instantaneous “full nuclear attack” against both China and Russia, if attacked by one of the two, even accidentally or by conventional arms. The document, published Wednesday by the Washington-based National Security Archives, shows that until 1968, the US had a protocol in place... 

Pope Benedict XVI has claimed the entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation and that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly believed. In the book Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives published on Wednesday, the octogenarian pontiff claims the ‘mistake’ was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus. “The calculation of the beginning of our calendar... 

Scientists have been analyzing different aspects of the collapse of the classic Maya civilization for years, offering theories such as social unrest, disease, warfare, drought and deforestation. A new study shows that climate change led to the end of the Classic Maya civilization, confirming an earlier drought hypothesis. The study, conducted by an international team of researchers, was published in... 

How many people have ever been born? You’ve wondered this. You may have heard it said that there are more people alive today than have died in all of human history, but this is not true. According to calculations by demographer Carl Haub, about 107 billion people have been born up until now, and 100 billion of them are dead. You are among the lucky 6.5 per cent of humanity that is still alive. For... 

Diorama of a scene where ancient people are hunting mammoths. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Academy of Sciences, in St. Petersburg Europeans may have been the first people to settle in America, possibly more than ten thousand years before anyone else set foot there. ­A series of European-style tools dating from twenty-six-thousand to nineteen-thousand years ago have been... 

A concrete structure confirms that Julius Caesar was stabbed in the center of the Curia di Pompeo, while presiding over the meeting of the Senate in the year 44 BC… Researchers of the Spanish Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (SCSI) discovered the exact place of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the year 44 BC, the SCSI said on Wednesday. Researchers of the Spanish Superior Council... 

The swastika symbol was around long before the Nazis chose it for their notorious emblem. An ancient Buddhist statue with a swastika on it they brought back from Tibet was probably carved from a meteorite that crashed on the Siberia-Mongolia border. ­According to researchers, the 10-kilogram figure of the “Iron Man” which features a large swastika, a good-luck symbol in Buddhism, most... 

German tanks rumbling through the historic streets of Greek capital Athens as the conquering soldiers stage a victory parade in 1941 Greece has threatened to hit Germany with a bill for tens of billions of pounds in outstanding reparations for Nazi war crimes during the Second World War. The move is an indication of growing outrage in Athens at the strictures being placed on the Greek economy by EU... 

The US has long held in its possession verified documentation proving the 1940 Katyn forest massacre of several thousand Polish POWs was committed by the Soviet Union. Why did Washington conceal it: to cover-up for its wartime ally Josef Stalin. ­The Associated Press has seen newly declassified documents illuminating the Katyn Massacre, which are being released and put online by the US National Archives... 

August is a black month for the Russian Navy. On August 12, 2000 the nuclear submarine “Kursk” sank, on August 30, 2003 submarine “K-159” sank in the Barents Sea, on August 7 of 2005 bathyscaphe “AC-28” almost sank off the coast of Kamchatka. The loss of “Kursk” 12 years ago still causes heated discussions: how could this happen? At the time, “Pravda.Ru”... 

Divers from St Andrews University, find remains of Doggerland, the underwater country dubbed ‘Britain’s Atlantis’ ‘Britain’s Atlantis’ – a hidden underwater world swallowed by the North Sea – has been discovered by divers working with science teams from the University of St Andrews. Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that stretched from Scotland to Denmark... 

The famous self-portrait of Da Vinci. Researchers say a self-portrait by the legendary Italian painter and architect, Leonardo da Vinci, kept in a vault in the city of Turin, is in poor condition and probably beyond repair. The invaluable drawing which depicts the Italian Renaissance artist in his 60s was exposed to sunlight after being framed for an exhibition in 1929. The exposure has caused the... 

Pottery fragment from Xianrendong Cave in northern Jiangxi Province, China. Bits of the oldest known pottery, some 2,000 years older than previously found pieces, have been uncovered in China Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, according to archaeologists. Earlier theories have held that the invention... 

A depiction of the Queen of Sheba meeting King Solomon of Israel from the Florence Baptistry in Italy. The Queen of Sheba’s genetic legacy may live on in Ethiopia, according to new research that finds evidence of long-ago genetic mixing between Ethiopian populations and Syrian and Israeli people. The Queen of Sheba, known in Ethiopia as Makeda, is mentioned in both the Bible and the Quran. The... 

Treasure: Pieces of glass jewellery believed to have been made by Roman craftsmen were discovered in a 5th century burial ground in Kyoto, western Japan Glass jewellery believed to have been made by Roman craftsmen has been found in an ancient tomb in Japan. In a sign the empire’s influence may have reached the edge of Asia, three glass beads discovered in the 5th Century ‘Utsukushi’...