A US presidential historian has admitted stealing dozens of historical documents including letters signed by George Washington, Sir Isaac Newton and Marie Antoinette. Barry Landau, 63, admitted he and an assistant, 24-year-old assistant Jason Savedoff, swiped items from museums across the US, and sold selected documents for profit.The pair face up to five years in prison for their conspiracy and 10 years for the theft. In Landau's New York apartment, authorities uncovered over 4,000 items traced as being stolen from libraries and museums Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut.
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A woman thought to be the world's last known surviving service member of World War I has died aged 110. Florence Green, from King's Lynn, Norfolk, served as a mess steward at RAF bases in Marham and Narborough.
Technology has allowed the Southington Library to digitize its entire newspaper collection. Now people anywhere can view online the black-and-white pages that date back to the 1800s.
When your society has inhabited a small, remote island for countless generations and boasts a population of only 300,000, the odds of having sex with a relative are significant. Luckily, Icelanders now have a handy tool to avoid family-sex.
The National Archives of Ireland have just given their website, 
The site of a Maryland plantation which is renowned by local historians for its connection to Black history and to the Civil War has lost its historical designation and is on its way to becoming an 85-store outlet mall, after an early January vote by the Prince George’s County Historic Preservation Commission.
Etched into three brass war memorials were the names of men who had made the ultimate sacrifice for this country in the fight to defend freedom and overcome the rise of dictatorship. But the plaques honouring those who had fallen during two world wars were tossed into an oil-spattered iron bin, on top of a pile of mangled piping and frayed cables.
Jennifer Aniston was born on February 11, 1969, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles to actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow.
SNCF, the French national railroad, has handed over digital copies of hits World War II–era archives. The documents were transferred to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Shoah Memorial in Paris, SNCF said Feb. 3 in a statement.
The 'My GeneaNet' menu has been redesigned to be more intuitive.
A copy of the Magna Carta, the English royal manuscript setting out the rights of man, is to be displayed at the US National Archives in Washington from February 17, after a year of restoration work.
Germany’s “puzzle people” will soon be able to count on a new tool in their Herculean task of re-piecing together thousands of ripped-up former Stasi secret police files.
The following genealogies have been added to GeneaStar:
A Maine treasure hunter says he has discovered a WWII-era shipwreck filled with platinum, now worth $3bn (£1.9bn). Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research says a wreck sitting 50 miles (80km) off the US Atlantic coast is the SS Port Nicholson, sunk in 1942.
Acadian researchers at l'Université de Moncton have discovered a list of 289 names of Acadians who were living on Prince Edward Island in 1763, but they're still trying to reach a consensus about what exactly the rare list was for.