In 1916, when the British government set up the Dardanelles Commission, they turned first to the most important member of the Secret Elite, Viscount Alfred Milner. Prime Minister Asquith and conservative leader, Bonar Law, both asked him to be its chairman, [1] but Milner turned the offer down in favour of more immediate work with Lord Robert Cecil at the Foreign Office. [2] Anyone could supervise a whitewash. Alfred Milner's influence want well beyond that of a commission chairman and he could ensure the conclusion without the need for his personal involvement. They turned to another friend and associate of the Secret Elite, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, who accepted the position knowing full well that 'it will kill me'. [3] And kill him it did. He died in January 1917 and was replaced by Sir William Pickford.

Others volunteered willingly. The position of Secretary to the Commission was taken by barrister Edward Grimwood Mears, who agreed to the post provided he was awarded a knighthood. [4] He had previously served on the Bryce Committee which falsified reports and generated volumes of lies about the extent of German atrocities in Belgium. [5] The British Establishment trusted Mears as a reliable placeman. Maurice Hankey, Cabinet Secretary and inner-circle member of the Secret Elite [6] 'organised' the evidence which politicians presented to the Commission. He rehearsed Lord Fisher's evidence, and coached Sir Edward Grey, Herbert Asquith and Lord Haldane. [7] Asquith insisted that War Council minutes be withheld and thus managed to cover up his own support for the campaign. Churchill and Sir Ian Hamilton collaborated on their evidence and planned to blame the disaster on Lord Kitchener. [8] Unfortunately for them, that strategy sank in the cold North Sea when Kitchener was drowned off the coast of Orkney in 1916, and was henceforth confirmed for all time as a great national hero; an untouchable.

Churchill informed the Commission that Vice-Admiral Sackville-Carden's telegram (in which he set out a 'plan' for a naval attack) was the most crucial document of all, [9] but there is no acknowledgement in the Commission's findings that Churchill had duped Carden into producing a 'plan' or had lied when telling him that his 'plan' had the overwhelming support of 'people in high authority.' [10] Every senior member of the Admiralty had advised Churchill that a naval attack on its own would fail, but he made no reference to that and scapegoated the ineffective Carden. General Hamilton conveniently added that the only instructions he had received from Kitchener before his departure was that 'we soldiers were clearly to understand that we were string number two. The sailors said they could force the Dardanelles on their own, and we were not to chip in unless the Admiral definitely chucked up the sponge.' [11]

A six-year search for a royal tomb may have finally paid off for an archaeologist excavating a tunnel deep underneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid in Mexico. At the end of the tunnel, he discovered a shimmering pool of liquid mercury.
Mexican archaeologist Sergio Gomez announced on Friday he had discovered "large quantities" of liquid mercury below the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, the third largest of the pyramids in Teotihuacan, an ancient city in central Mexico.

Gomez has spent the last six years excavating the tunnel, a slow and arduous process. It was only unsealed in 2003, after being buried for 1,800 years. Six months ago, Digital Journal reported that Gomez and his team announced they had found three chambers at the 300-foot end of the tunnel, 60-feet underground.

In most versions of the Biblical story of Sampson, the ancient Israelite gained incredible strength through his hair, but if a 14th century image currently making the rounds on the Web is accurate, he might have also had some help from a certain Jedi master.

It's hard to deny that this illustration of a monk bears a striking resemblance to the popular Star Wars character Yoda, as Mashable pointed out on Thursday. Yoda was spotted in the Decretals of Gregory IX with gloss of Bernard of Parma (also known as the Smithfield Decretals) by historian Damien Kempf while he was researching for his book Medieval Monsters.

According to the website, Kempf said during a recent interview that he "actually couldn't believe it" when he spotted the Yoda-like monk in a 700-year-old manuscript. Julian Harrison, curator of pre-1600 historical manuscripts at the British Library, told NPR that the artist who illustrated the manuscript "clearly had a vivid imagination."

In remembrance of the Armenian genocide, here are three videos depicting the history of this mass atrocity - still denied by many today. The first is a silent film, Ravished Armenia, produced in the US in 1919, based on the book by Aurora Mardiganian, who witnessed many of the events depicted, and who also starred in the film. The second, The Armenian Journey, tells the story of survivor Margaret Garabedian Der Manuelian and narrated by her 21-year-old great-granddaughter. And the third, The Hidden Holocaust, was produced in 1992 by Michael Jones for Channel 4.

It was a vision that apparently led the biblical Paul to become one of the most influential figures in early Christianity by helping to spread the religion around the world.

But now astronomers believe the bright light in the sky that triggered the conversion of Paul the Apostle may have actually been a falling meteor 2,000 years ago.

They say descriptions of Paul's experience - in which he was blinded for three days after seeing a bright light - match accounts of the fireball that streaked across the sky above Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013.

Dr William Hartmann, co-founder of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, examined three accounts of Paul's conversion in the Bible.

A mysterious underwater structure off the coast of Japan causes historical controversy. This megalithic structure is commonly referred to as the "Yonaguni Pyramid."

Though it is not an actual pyramid, this massive structure looks like a small mountain, which was carved to suit the needs of an unknown ancient civilization.

In 1986, a diver near the island of Yonaguni Jima, off the southern tip of Japan (around Okinawa) came across some strange structures about 25 metres (82 feet) below the sea level.

Between 3,500 and 900 years ago, people first settled the islands of the vast Pacific Ocean in double-hulled and outrigger canoes. Many scientists have tried to explain just what made these epic journeys possible. University of Utah anthropologist Adrian Bell tackled the problem from a completely new perspective. He used statistics that describe how an infectious disease spreads and applied them to computer simulations of the colonization of 24 major island groups.

"We model ocean migrants as 'infecting' uninhabited islands," he said in a statement.

If the results of the analysis are correct, the colonizers didn't just hop to the nearest islands or drift around hopefully. The study, published in this month's issue of the journal American Antiquity , suggests that those early Pacific seafarers "had a strategy for the best way to discover new places: movement across the ocean in a less risky fashion - often meaning into the wind - and moving to places that were more easily visible."

Scientists have found that the Neanderthal fell down into the cave thousands of years ago - believing the person starved to death
It was a gruesome death that is the stuff of most people's nightmares. Now scientists have identified the unfortunate individual whose bones were found fused to the walls of a cave in Lamalunga, near Altamura, in southern Italy.

Using analysis of DNA extracted from the bones sticking out from the limestone rock, researchers have found he was a Neanderthal who fell down a sinkhole around 150,000 years ago. Genetic analysis of the bones (above) of 'Altamura Man', found entombed in limestone in a cave in Altamura, Italy, has revealed that they belong to a Neanderthal who fell into the cave 128,000 to 187,000 years ago

Wedged in the narrow space and probably badly injured, he is thought to have starved to death.
Over the thousands of years that followed, the body decayed and the remaining bones gradually became incorporated into the stalactites left behind by water dribbling down the cave walls.

The DNA is the oldest to ever be extracted from a Neanderthal and the researchers now hope to further analyse the genetic information from the skeleton.

Here's what they don't teach: When the blind-deaf visionary learned that poor people were more likely to be blind than others, she set off down a pacifist, socialist path that broke the boundaries of her time—and continues to challenge ours today.
"So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind." —Helen Keller (letter to Senator Robert La Follette, 1924)

A clock based on a design from 300 years ago has stunned experts by keeping accurate to a second for 100 days.

The modern-day Martin Burgess Clock B is based on John Harrison's 18th century clock, which he thought up to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea.

It has been part of a 100-day trial at the Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, to see if the claim - that the clock would neither lose nor gain more than a second in 100 days - was true.

The clock, which was built using modern materials, was initially set ticking a year ago after being strapped to one of the Observatory's supporting pillars.

But it quickly became apparent the trial would be a success and wax seals were placed on its case so its accuracy could be verified, the Independent on Sunday reported.

The time was measured using a radio-controlled clock, which received the national time signal, and the BT speaking clock.