Researchers unveil imprints made 20 years before Edison invented phonograph
...earliest known recordings. A bunch of wavy lines scratched by a stylus onto fragile paper that had been blackened by the soot from an oil lamp date from 1857.
Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville never intended for the soot-lined imprint of the sound waves to be played back, the historians reported. But the inventor hoped the visual patterns of the sound waves he had recorded using a hornlike device with the stylus attached resembling an artificial ear ? called a phonautograph ? might one day be read like sheet music to recreate a singer?s voice or the timbre of a musical instrument.
Convicted killer beheaded, put on display in Saudi Arabia -- nice crime deterrent
Saudi Arabian officials beheaded and then publicly displayed the body of a convicted killer in Riyadh on Friday, an act that prompted a stiff denunciation by a leading human rights monitor.
The Saudi Interior Ministry said Ahmed Al-Shamlani Al-Anzi was sentenced to death and then "crucifixion" -- having his body displayed in public -- for the kidnapping and killing of an 11-year-old boy and for the killing of the boy's father, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.
The Saudi Interior Ministry asserted that Al-Anzi's body was displayed as a warning that those involved in similar crimes would suffer the same fate, the press agency reported.
The ministry said Al-Anzi kidnapped the boy and held him for a "malicious purpose" at a grocery store where he worked. He tied rope around the boy's neck and strangled him to death, the ministry said.
When the boy's father came to the store looking for his son, Al-Anzi axed the father repeatedly until the man died. When police came to arrest Al-Anzi, Al-Anzi resisted arrest by threatening them with a knife.
Police later discovered that Al-Anzi had been previously convicted of other crimes, including possession of pornographic videos and sodomy, the Interior Ministry said.
Great Wall of China longer than previously thought
The most comprehensive and technologically advanced survey of China's Great Wall has discovered the ancient monument is much longer than previously estimated, state media reported on Monday.
The wall, built over centuries to keep foreigners out of China, stretches for 8 851,8 kilometres, much further than common estimates of 5 000 kilometres, according to the findings of the survey.
1.5 Million Year Old Microbe Colony Found in Antartic Ice
A living time capsule of sorts has been found buried under hundreds of feet of Antarctic ice -- a colony of microbes that have been sealed off from the rest of the world for more than 1.5 million years.
The microbes, which live without light or oxygen, were detected in meltwater flowing out from Taylor Glacier, one of the outlet glaciers of the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the otherwise ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Genetic tests suggest that the microbes are similar to ones found in marine environments today, which the researchers think are a remnant of a larger population of microbes that once lived in a fjord or sea that was cut off when sea levels fell and left the pool behind. The pool was eventually capped off by the flowing glacier.
The water the microbes dwell in averages a temperature of 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius), but doesn't freeze because the water is three to four times saltier than the ocean.
A riot erupted at a Brooklyn restaurant last week when Orthodox Jewish patrons discovered the "kosher" hot dogs on the menu were chicken franks that didn't answer to a higher authority.
The eatery's frightened manager was punched in the face and fended off the angry mob with an electric carving knife until cops finally broke up the frankfurter fracas.
"They were yelling at the guy behind the counter," one witness told The Post. "They started spitting and throwing things at him. They were shaking the counter and trying to jump over to search the fridge."
"There were at least 100 people there. We sent everybody out to the street," a member said.
The Torah tussle began when a longtime patron noticed the unusually plump wiener he bought Monday night at Cheskel's Shawarma King in Borough Park didn't fit into a challah roll as usual.
Shocked Hasidic patrons, joined by dozens of passers-by, encircled the counter of the 13th Avenue eatery, demanding answers.
At least one patron hit besieged manager Yosef Baron in the cheek.
Kitchen equipment that touched the offending meat was thrown out, and utensils were cleansed with a flame to purge any remnants of treif, or non-kosher food, in a process known as kashering.
Rabbi Israel Weingarten cross-examines his daughter at his own molestation trial
The Rabbi's own daughter accuses him of molesting her repeatedly from ages 9 to 16.
59 year old Israel Weingarten choses to represent himself against charges that could send him to prison for 20 years.
"Do I have to answer?" the now-27-year-old asked Judge John Gleeson in a trembling voice before gathering the strength to shoot back when asked why she didn't complain sooner.
"My feeling of your molesting me was at most fear and blackmail and years of torture," she said, eyes widening as she wiped tears off her cheeks. "Fear because you hurt me because I told my mother. Didn't I get hit enough?"
The girl, who broke with her father's ultra-Orthodox community after allegedly being abused by him from ages 9 to 16, explicitly described reprehensible acts in public with words she was once forbidden to say even in private.
"You could ask me, I'm not trying to fight you," Weingarten said once after she failed to understand a question.
