Environmental Graffiti has posted an amazing series of photos showing terrifying kamikaze strikes during WW2.

Kamikaze attack (top left) on USS Missouri (BB-63), 11 April 1945

The kamikaze strikes spiked from April to June 1945, becoming a central and highly organised part of the last gasp Japanese defence. Waves of planes were sent in – some 1,500 all told – as the Americans landed. The US Navy suffered heavy losses including at least 30 warships sunk or disabled – but there were also near misses. On April 11, a low-flying kamikaze crashed into the side of battleship USS Missouri, its spinning wing causing a fire but only minor damage.

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Part of an ancient Roman Law code, thought to be lost forever, has been discovered after reasearchers pieced together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment.

Corcoran and Salway found that the text belonged to the Codex Gregorianus, or Gregorian Code, a collection of laws by emperors from Hadrian (AD 117-138) to Diocletian (AD 284-305), which was published circa AD 300. Little was known about the codex’s original form and there were, until now, no known copies in existence.

“The fragments bear the text of a Latin work in a clear calligraphic script, perhaps dating as far back as AD 400,” said Dr Salway. “It uses a number of abbreviations characteristic of legal texts and the presence of writing on both sides of the fragments indicates that they belong to a page or pages from a late antique codex book – rather than a scroll or a lawyer’s loose-leaf notes.

“The fragments contain a collection of responses by a series of Roman emperors to questions on legal matters submitted by members of the public,” continued Dr Salway. “The responses are arranged chronologically and grouped into thematic chapters under highlighted headings, with corrections and readers’ annotations between the lines. The notes show that this particular copy received intensive use.”

The surviving fragments belong to sections on appeal procedures and the statute of limitations on an as yet unidentified matter. The content is consistent with what was already known about the Gregorian Code from quotations of it in other documents, but the fragments also contain new material that has not been seen in modern times.

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A 1,100-year-old tomb discovered discovered in Tonina, Mexico, may shed some light on why the Mayan civilization collapsed.

Archeologist Juan Yadeun said the tomb, and ceramics from another culture found in it, may reveal who occupied the Mayan site of Tonina in southern Chiapas state after the culture’s classic period began fading.

Many experts have pointed to internal warfare between Mayan city states, or environmental degradation, as possible causes of the Maya’s downfall starting around AD 820.

But Yadeun, who oversees the Tonina site for Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, said artifacts from the Toltec culture found in the tomb may point to another explanation. He said the tomb dates to between the years 840 and 900.

“It is clear that this is a new wave of occupation, the people who built this grave of the Toltec type,” Yadeun said Wednesday. “This is very interesting, because we are going to see from the bones who these people are, after the Maya empire.”

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Tomb raiders in china used bulldozers to tear into 10 ancient tombs, stealing most of the artifacts they unearthed.

The incident came almost a month after the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences claimed a major discovery of the tomb of Cao Cao, a renowned warlord and politician in the 3rd century AD, in central China.

Although the authenticity of Cao Cao’s tomb in Anyang, Henan, remains in question, the discovery seems to have reactivated interest in archaeology across the nation, with television programs about antiquities attracting enthusiasts.

Pieces of coffins made of valuable and rare Nanmu wood, as well as pottery and iron items, were seen scattered across an area of 1,000 square meters at the ravaged tomb site, located in Gucheng town in Gaochun county of Nanjing, the provincial capital, adjacent to the construction site of an expressway.

Judging from some of the items left by the robbers, Puyang Kangjing, a history scholar at the local museum, said Wednesday that the tombs date from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).

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Ancient humans were endurance runners, but how did they do it without air-cushioned soles? [Thx Tron]

The secret might have been to land on the balls of their feet.

Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University and colleagues compared the gait of endurance runners in the US and Kenya and found that more than two-thirds of those who grew up running barefoot or had trained themselves to do so as adults ran on their tiptoes, landing on the balls of the feet first. The trend is unusual: 80 per cent of endurance runners land heel-first.

The result suggests that our ancestors were toe-runners. This may simply reduce pain. In racetrack tests, the team showed that the impact on the foot is seven times as great in heel-first runners. “It’s like someone hitting you on the heel with a hammer three times your body weight,” says Lieberman.

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