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    Meredith Bennett-Smith

    Meredith Bennett-Smith

    Contributor

  • LOOK: Graffiti, Greek Texts Found On Wall Of Ancient School

    Located in the ancient town of Trimithis (now called Amheida), the school was discovered by an exploration project whose sponsors include New York University, LiveScience reported. Although the village has been known to researchers since the late 1970s, a recent journal article by NYU classics professor Dr. Raffaella Cribiore has drawn attention to the school and its walls' unusual markings. The school is particularly interesting because of what was discovered inside, Cribiore told The Huffington Post in an email.

  • University Halts Sex Assault Investigation Weeks Before Results Released

    Fundamentalist Christian bastion Bob Jones University has sparked controversy after summarily dismissing a consultant group investigating the way the school handled sexual assault accusations. In 2012, the Greenville, S.C., school hired Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) to investigate how the university responded to reports of sexual assault, the New York Times reports. For years there have been allegations that Bob Jones University had been stifling the reporting of sexual assaults, and the school's decision to dismiss GRACE late last month -- mere weeks before its report would be made public -- has therefore been criticized by former students and others affiliated with the school.

  • 'Priceless' Statue Found By Fisherman Mysteriously Vanishes

    Where in the world is the Apollo of Gaza statue? In a baffling case of archaeological hide-and-seek, an ancient and extremely rare statue was reportedly dragged from the ocean by a Palestinian fisherman, only to vanish in Gaza before its authenticity could be independently verified. The bronze statue depicts the Greek deity Apollo and appears to date back to sometime between the fifth and the first century B.C., according to a very preliminary photographic examination, reports Reuters.

  • LOOK: 7-Year-Old Superhero Fan Gets Touching Police Funeral

    Jesse Heikkila loved superheroes and "Star Wars," and he dreamed of one day becoming a police officer. Jesse loved his home where he would build Legos, play video games and swim in his pool. It was Jesse’s dream to be a Police Officer one day to help catch all the bad guys.

  • LOOK: Are These The Bones Of Charlemagne?

    After 1,200 years, researchers have confirmed that a collection of bones, long interred in Germany, are those of eighth-century ruler Charlemagne. Also known as Charles I or Charles the Great, Charlemagne controlled a wide swath of Western Europe between 768 and 814 A.D. Remembered for his efforts to unify Germanic peoples and convert them to Christianity, Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 and is sometimes referred to as the father of Europe. Due to his holy status, Charlemagne's bones do not all rest in one place.

  • Ghostly Pale Baby Born With Almost No Blood In Her Body

    A California mother's instinct may have saved her newborn baby's life. Hope was born as white as a ghost, and doctors realized that the baby had almost no blood in her body. "She was crying and they brought her over to us and she was really pale," Hope's father, Josh Juarez, told local station ABC7.

  • LOOK: Is This The World's Oldest Roman Temple?

    It may only have been visible for a few days, but archaeologists have announced the discovery of what may be the oldest Roman temple ever found. Located on the grounds of the Sant'Omobono church in central Rome, the ancient temple, which dates back to the early sixth century B.C., is believed to have been constructed near where the Tiber River once flowed. “The religious dimension sort of sanctifies the trade,” archaeologist Albert Ammerman told the New Republic.

  • MAP: How Much Snow Does It Take to Cancel School Near You?

    Atrubetskoy (real name Alexandr Trubetskoy), created the cool, color-coded graphic using data "taken from hundreds of various points from user responses ... interpolated using NOAA's average annual snowfall days map," he wrote on Reddit. Waking up to a coveted "snow day" has long been a goal of American school children, but Trubetskoy's map shows that schools vary greatly in their ability to handle cold weather, notes PolicyMic. While only a few inches of snow is enough to shutter school across the south, according to Trubetskoy's calculations it can take closer to two feet of snow to close schools in the weather-weary areas of the Upper Midwest and Canada.

  • Nazi Scientists Tried To Use Mosquitoes As Weapons?

    Researchers now say that Nazi scientists were plotting to weaponize mosquitoes. The plan, which appears never to have been implemented, called for airplanes to release mosquitoes infected with malaria over enemy forces. The plan was uncovered by Dr. Klaus Reinhardt, a biologist at the University of Tübingen, who pored over records involving the notorious Dachau concentration camp.

  • He's A Belieber! 'Crack Mayor' Rob Ford Backs Justin Bieber

    Pop star Justin Bieber -- who's currently embroiled in multiple investigations over alleged bad boy behavior -- is getting some support from a decidedly unlikely source: scandal-plagued Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. After one of the radio hosts referred to Bieber as "Canada's worst export," Ford stepped in to defend the entertainer. "You know what, he's a young guy," Ford said during the show.

  • LOOK: 'Swedish Atlantis' Artifacts Found

    Divers exploring a bay off the coast of Sweden have uncovered artifacts from people who lived in the region during the Stone Age. Funded by the Swedish National Heritage Board and led by Södertörn University archaeology professor Björn Nilsson, the three-year excavation has so far recovered discarded items from between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago. The discovery of the well-preserved tools and other items was not an accident, according to Nilsson.

  • WATCH: Abandoned, Bowlegged Dog Gets New Lease On Life

    Sandy, a severely bowlegged pup nicknamed "the wonky dog" by British press, was abandoned in Greece. After learning about the animal, however, United Kingdom charity Mutts in Distress helped raise the money to drive Sandy to the U.K. for life-changing surgery. Pat Clark, of Mutts in Distress, said she first found out about Sandy, who also has difficulty seeing, through her contacts at an animal sanctuary in Corfu, Greece.

  • Vaccines Could Have Stopped These Outbreaks

    Created by the Council on Foreign Relations, the graphic shows all of the world's outbreaks from 2006 to today that could have been prevented by recommended vaccinations. The map, which is interactive on the CFR website, allows users to search outbreaks by year, location, number of victims and type of illness. Each dot on the map represents at least one case of a vaccine-preventable disease, with larger dots representing hundreds or even thousands of cases.

  • LOOK: Ancient Christian Church With Stunning Mosaic Unearthed

    Excavations prior to the construction of a new neighborhood in Israel have turned up the ruins of a 1,500-year-old Christian church with a beautiful mosaic. Archaeologists found the Byzantine-era church in Aluma, a town 30 miles south of Tel Aviv, according to a press release from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The IAA has spent the past three months carefully excavating the site, Haaretz notes.

  • Mom Writes A Lifetime Of Cards For The Son She Won't See Grow Up

    Rowena Darby may only have a short time left to live, but that hasn't stopped her from creating a lifetime of cards and letters for her son to read as he grows up. At the time, Darby's son, Freddie, was only 2 years old. "We were devastated especially that the timescale was so small," Darby told The Huffington Post via email.

  • And Winner Of Last Year's Worst Password Is..

    An annual ranking of the most common -- and therefore worst -- passwords used on the Internet shows that many users still don't understand the basics of online security. SplashData, a Los Gatos, Calif.,-based security-app producer, compiled its list of the top 25 worst combinations in an effort to make people aware of the dangers of easily guessable passwords.

  • LOOK: Police Officer's Touching Gesture Caught On Camera

    A Texas police officer said he wasn't looking for any recognition when he bent down and gave a local homeless man a pair of boots a few weeks ago. Jeremy Walsh, from Odessa, Texas, told local news site Odessa American that he noticed the man -- known to the area as A.J. but identified by media outlets as Anthony Young -- had been wearing a pair of battered boots with worn-out soles for some time. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

  • Tests Reveal Truth About Shocking Claim Of Titanic 'Survivor'

    Everyone who survived the 1912 sinking of the Titanic is dead, and now one of the tragedy's oldest mysteries has been laid to rest: DNA tests confirm that the sensational claim by a woman who said she survived the sinking was all wet. The bizarre saga begins more than a century ago, when two-year-old Loraine Allison set sail on the Titanic along with her parents and baby brother, Trevor. Three decades later a woman who called herself Helen Kramer surfaced with a shocking claim on a radio show, asserting that she was actually Loraine Allison.

  • Baby May Be One Of The Nation's Biggest

    Andrew Jacob Cervantez weighed 15 pounds, 2 ounces, when he was born by emergency cesarean section on Jan. 16 at Desert Valley Hospital in California's San Bernardino County. The infant also measured 2 feet long at birth, practically 40 percent of the height of his 5-foot-1-inch mother, Vanessa Cervantez. “I couldn’t even believe it,” Cervantez told the Victorville Daily Press.

  • WATCH: Locals Had Good Reason To Fear 'Haunted' Sinkhole

    For years, villagers who lived near the Sac Uayum sinkhole in Mexico's Yucatán peninsula refused to go near it, calling the underwater cave haunted. Explorers from National Geographic sent to probe the natural well found a creepy surprise beneath the sinkhole's surface: chambers littered with human bones. Located south of the modern-day city of Mérida, the sinkhole (also known as a cenote) was once positioned just outside the ancient Maya city of Mayapán, according to National Geographic.