The skull of an American soldier who died on a British prison ship will be reburied after undergoing forensic study.

A 1907 catalog of the New Haven County Historical Society listed several rare and odd items, including a necklace from an Egyptian mummy, slave chains, a small block of wood from the Old South Bridge in Concord, Mass., which the British guarded at the start of the Revolutionary War.

But lot 23 in the inventory — “a skull of an American soldier, one of 42 who died of the 200 in a destitute and sickly condition that were brought from a British prison ship … and suddenly cast upon the shore of the town of Milford on the 1st of January, 1777″ — has sparked contemporary patriots to ride to the rescue.

Flint Castle in Wales has survived many bloody battles, but now it is being closed to the public because of drunken British teens.

They claim their staff have been spat upon and threatened by youngsters from nearby housing estates, who smash bottles and treat the ancient ruins as a drinking den.

John Wallis, site operations manager for Cadw – the Welsh equivalent of English Heritage – who run the castle, said the behaviour of the youths was making it too dangerous to keep it open to the public. ’We are extremely frustrated with the ongoing spate of vandalism,’ he said.

A new first-hand account of POW life has revealed a horrifying fact: some British prisoners of war were forced to exhume the remains of Jews and extract gold from their teeth.

He said: “One of the jobs assigned to prisoners within the camps was the digging up of graves in a Jewish cemetery and taking the gold from the corpses.

“Many of us refused to participate, quoting the Geneva Convention in protest, but our pleas fell on deaf ears.” Mr Wicketts said that some of the German guards showed “great cruelty”.

Free.edu has posted an interesting list showcasing 20 fascinating ancient maps and why they are cool.

Modern and Completely Correct Map of the Entire World
Creator: Joan Blaeu
Date: 1659
Why it’s cool: Modern at the time, yes. Completely correct, not so much. The map reveals the limitations of knowledge regarding the west coast of North America, the Arctic, and New Holland (present-day Australia).

Slate asks the question, “Will we ever run out of dinosaur bones?”

Not for a long, long time. There are currently about 3,000 so-called “full” dinosaur specimens—complete or near-complete skeletons or just a complete or near-complete skull—in museums around the United States. Scientists estimate that there are at least triple this number as yet uncollected around the globe. It’s hard to say how long it will take to track these down. But currently we’re discovering new full specimens at a rate of about 14 per year. If we continue at that pace, it’s safe to say we won’t run out soon. (This rate is historically high—between 1970 and 1990, the rate was only six per year.) Pinning down the exact number of all uncollected fossils—not just complete specimens but bits and pieces like individual teeth or stray tail bones—is nearly impossible, but the figure is certainly in the millions.