Titanic ~ The Unsinkable Ship and Halifax, Nova Scotia Titanic History On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic left Southampton, England on her maiden voyage. After stops at Cherbourg, France and Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, she steamed for New York, USA carrying over 2,200 passengers and crew. Four days later, on Sunday, April 14 at 11:40 pm, Titanic struck a giant iceberg and by 2:20 am on April 15, the “unsinkable ship” was gone. Within days of the sinking, the White Star Line dispatched the first of four Canadian vessels to search for bodies. Today, the city of Halifax and the Province of Nova Scotia retain many reminders of the way in which the tragedy of the Titanic touched the lives of those who lived here.
Scientists re-create spiny 'ancestor of the cockroaches' from 300m years ago By Eddie Wrenn Published: 07:48 GMT, 27 September 2012 | Updated: 10:34 GMT, 27 September 2012 They last walked the Earth 305 million years ago - but scientists have now been able to recreate the forms of two insects which were early ancestors of the cockroach. Scientists from Manchester University had little to go on other than small holes left in a rock by the decomposing bodies of the insects, but by scanning the 'fossils' in a CT scanner - along with 3,000 X-ray scans, they were able to re-produce the insects down to the smallest details. The process is analogous to how scientists could re-create the long-dead citizens of Pompeii by pouring plaster into gaps left in the volcanic ash. It allowed the team to learn about the biology, lifestyle and diet of the two long-extinct insects - one of which came with sharp spines to help it avoid predators. Brought back to life: Anebos phrixos, named for the Greek words for 'young' and 'bristling', last walked the Earth 300 million years ago
Titanic International Society 300million-year-old forest preserved by volcanic ash found beneath Chinese coal mine By Ted Thornhill Updated: 12:58 GMT, 24 February 2012 A 300-million-year-old forest has been found preserved by volcanic ash, just as the Roman town of Pompeii was. The remarkable discovery was made near a coal mine at the city of Wuda in China, by a University of Pennsylvania scientist and Chinese researchers. The study site is unique as it gives a snapshot of a moment in time. Because volcanic ash covered a large expanse of forest over the course of only a few days, the plants were preserved as they fell, in many cases in the exact locations where they grew. Can you dig it? The excavation site: Researchers made the discovery on the northern Helanshan Mountains of Inner Mongolia, five miles west of Wuda ‘It's marvellously preserved,’ said Hermann Pfefferkorn, a paleobotanist from Penn's Department of Earth and Environmental Science. ‘We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch.
Titanic Inquiry Project - Electronic copies of British and American inquiries into the disaster Titanic's Unknown Child Given New, Final Identity Five days after the passenger ship the Titanic sank, the crew of the rescue ship Mackay-Bennett pulled the body of a fair-haired, roughly 2-year-old boy out of the Atlantic Ocean on April 21, 1912. Along with many other victims, his body went to a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the crew of the Mackay-Bennett had a headstone dedicated to the "unknown child" placed over his grave. When it sank, the Titanic took the lives of 1,497 of the 2,209 people aboard with it. Some bodies were recovered, but names remained elusive, while others are still missing. Though the unknown child was incorrectly identified twice before, researchers believe they have now conclusively determined the child was Goodwin. The effort to verify the child's identity using genetics began a little over a decade ago, when Ryan Parr, an adjunct professor at Lakehead University in Ontario who has worked with DNA extracted from ancient human remains, watched some videos about the Titanic. A second try