This Day in History

Jan 3 1946
William Joyce, the "Lord Haw-Haw" who broadcasted Nazi propaganda to Britain during World War II, is hanged for treason in London.

Jan 3 1958
The editor of the scandal magazine Confidential, Howard Rushmore, murders his wife and then suicides in the back of a taxicab in NYC.

Jan 3 1961
Three technicians -- John Byrnes, Richard McKinley, and Richard Legg -- are killed when the SL-1 experimental nuclear reactor explodes in Idaho Falls, Idaho. McKinley's corpse is found stuck to the containment dome ceiling, impaled on a control rod. The crewmen's radioactive bodies are so hot they have to be buried in lead-lined caskets.

Jan 3 1962
Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro.

Jan 3 1967
Jack Ruby dead of natural causes.

Jan 3 1987
Four non-cancerous polyps are removed from President Ronald Reagan's colon.

Jan 3 1990
Manuel Noriega surrenders at the Papal Nunciature. He is brought to Miami and charged with drug trafficking and money laundering.

Jailbreak Fugitive Updates Facebook Page

London, England (CNN) -- British police have appealed for information about the whereabouts of an escaped prisoner who has been telling the world via Facebook about his life as a fugitive.

Craig Lynch, 28, escaped Hollesley Bay open prison near Suffolk, eastern England, back in September, but has continued to update his Facebook status regularly -- describing everything from his meals to who his next girlfriend will be.

"mmm i just had a 12lb venison steak. Roasted veg and chips, bangin meal. I feel stuffed but still got room for the j.d's . Hope you enjoyed the meal babe's. We'll have to eat here again" Lynch wrote on his wall.

In another posting from earlier this week Lynch wrote "Is thinkin, which lucky girl will be my first of 2010!!."

Police are trying to use clues left by Lynch on his Facebook to track down where the convicted burglar may be hiding.

Lynch was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for aggravated burglary and was serving his sentence in an open prison before his escape, according to a police spokeswoman.

"We have spoken to Facebook and we are trying to trace him from the information we have, but it's one of those things that we're also asking for help from members of the public," Suffolk police spokesperson Anne-Marie Breach told CNN.

"Obviously we're taking what he's saying on Facebook with a pinch of salt because he's now aware that people may be reading what he's writing."

News that Lynch's Facebook was being updated broke yesterday and since then, he has written several times of his life on-the-run.

"The hotel staff haven't even clocked which was the only thing I've been paranoid about all day!" he wrote.

Lynch's most recent posting read "well what can i say fellow friends. The run is nearly over. Sorry some of you had to find out like this. I know some of you might take offence that i never told you personally. But you know me. I Trust No One. Its the only way to be."

Old London Street Scenes (1903)

This Day In History

Aug 31 1888
Jack the Ripper kills his first known victim, prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, slitting her throat from ear to ear.

Aug 31 1997
Lady Diana, and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, killed in car crash inside a Paris tunnel.

Aug 31 1999
A video game machine explodes at an underground Moscow arcade, injuring perhaps thirty people and killing several others.

Holy Shnikes!

Daily Mail UK - Man killed by shards of glass after hurling girlfriend through shop window

A man bled to death when he was impaled on a large shard of glass after throwing his girlfriend through a shop window in a street row.

The 30-year-old victim was seen arguing with the woman in the Regent Street area of London's West End shortly after 2am today.

Witnesses told police he hurled the woman against the window of a branch of Banana Republic up to three times.

After several blows, the glass shattered and the couple fell through, leaving the man fatally wounded.
He is believed to have suffered injuries to an artery and bled to death.

Members of the public flagged down a police patrol who went to the shop, at the junction of Regent Street and Great Marlborough Street.

Paramedics arrived at the scene but were unable to save him. A post-mortem examination will take place today.

The woman, also 30, was taken to hospital for treatment to multiple cuts, none of which are thought to be life-threatening.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said that shortly before 2.15am, officers on patrol were informed by a member of the public of an altercation in Great Marlborough Street.

'When officers arrived at Great Marlborough Street, they found a male, believed to have gone through the window of a shop. A woman was also found at the scene, suffering cuts.

'London Ambulance Service attended but the man, aged 30, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police believe they know who the dead man is but are trying to contact his next of kin before releasing his name.

The couple were believed to be homeless.

Dog Walker Trampled to Death by Cows

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A woman was trampled to death by cows while walking her dogs in northern England, police said Monday.

The 49-year-old died at the scene, said a press officer for North Yorkshire police, where the incident took place on Sunday just after noon local time (7 a.m. ET).

"She had two dogs with her," said the spokeswoman, who declined to be named in line with police policy. They were not on a leash, she added.

"We believe the cows may have gotten protective of their calves," she said.

The woman was alone when she was killed in Gayle, near Hawes in Wensleydale, she said.

Police and the National Farmers' Union both said it was very unusual for people to be killed by cows in Britain.

"There are perhaps a few incidents every year where people are injured by cattle," said Mike Thomas, a spokesman for the union. "People being killed by cattle is quite a rare occurrence."

But he said cows could become aggressive if they felt their calves were being threatened.

"If the dog is getting close to the animal, it's going to react in some kind of aggressive manner," he said.

People who feel threatened by cows while walking dogs should let their animals off the leash in order to put distance between themselves and their pets -- because cows are more likely to see dogs than people as a threat -- and move to the edge of the field, he said.

The average cow weighs about 1,760 pounds (800kg), he said.

Forgotten Franklin Letters Offer Glimpse Into U.S. History

LONDON, England (CNN) -- An American professor doing research in London stumbled across a series of previously unknown letters written by, to, and about Benjamin Franklin, a stunning find that sheds new light on early U.S. history.

The collection of 47 letters are hand-written copies made 250 years ago, when Franklin lived in London. That they were filed under the copyist's name, not Franklin's, may explain why they were overlooked by historians until now, said a curator at the British Library, where the letters are held.

The find is reported in the April issue of the William & Mary Quarterly, a journal of early American history and culture.

The letters are important in large part because they offer a "wealth of new details" that affect modern understanding of Franklin, writes Alan Houston, the political science professor who discovered the letters in the spring of 2007.

They also raise the question of how many other documents remain waiting to be found on Franklin and his life.

Houston, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, discovered the letters on the last day of his last research trip to London, just before the library's closing time.

"The first item was a letter from Benjamin Franklin to the secretary of the governor of Maryland, and I looked at it and I started to read, and I thought, 'This doesn't look familiar,'" Houston told CNN. "I've read everything Franklin ever wrote."

Houston said he quickly began to realize he had uncovered something previously unknown to historians.

"I swear, I just about shot through the ceiling I was so excited," he said. "It's like finding a treasure chest."

Houston had been working at the time on a book on Franklin, "Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement," published last year.

The letters cover Franklin's success in dealing with British Gen. Edward Braddock, who had been sent to Pennsylvania in 1755 to defeat the French at Fort Duquesne, in modern-day Pittsburgh.

The march to retake the fort was part of the French and British battle for control of the western lands in the colonies, part of a larger struggle for control of North America, Houston said.

The problem was that Braddock was given no horses or wagons when he arrived in America -- no means of transport for him and his 2,000 redcoats. Braddock started to blame his hosts, so Franklin -- the Pennsylvania assembly's leading politician -- stepped in to help.

Franklin went all over Pennsylvania trying to persuade farmers to lend their horses and wagons to Braddock and his men. It wasn't easy, because the farmers were tough negotiators who were also anxious and suspicious of the effort.

Eventually, Franklin managed to get the farmers to agree, and within weeks, Braddock and his men were on the march.

Braddock suffered a devastating defeat before he even reached the fort, however, when a much smaller contingent of French and Indian soldiers surprised the British. They killed Braddock and about 1,000 of his men.

Despite the defeat, Franklin's success -- in what became known as "the wagon affair" -- highlighted his skill as a colonial leader, Houston said.

When Franklin was sent to London in 1757 as a representative of the assembly, he brought with him a collection of letters detailing that success. It was proof of his political value to Great Britain and that the assembly's loyalties had been on the right side.

This collection of letters, which Franklin referred to in his autobiography as his "quire book," was never found, however -- until now.

Houston said he believes the documents he read at the British Library are copies of that collection. They were made by Thomas Birch, an industrious and obsessive transcriber of historical documents who copied anything he could get his hands on.

"There was a vogue. It was very common for letters to be copied," said Matthew Shaw, curator of the U.S. collections at the British Library. "Birch was very well known for being a copyist."

Birch and Franklin were friends in London, both members of the Royal Society, and Houston said he believes the copies were made sometime between 1757 and 1758.

"Birch undoubtedly found Franklin's quire book captivating, and he appears to have copied anything that remotely interested him," Houston writes in the journal.

Also, Braddock's campaign and defeat were widely discussed in London, and "Birch may have wanted to capture a crucial moment in the life of the (Royal) society's most famous American member."

Birch's transcripts were filed in the British Library as "Copies of Letters relating to the March of General Braddock." They form part of the massive Birch Collection containing the hundreds of volumes of his copies that Birch bequeathed to the library on his death, said Shaw.

They weren't properly catalogued until the early 1970s, Shaw said, which is largely why they haven't been used by scholars.

"It's the first time they've really been shared with a wider audience," Shaw told CNN. "We're very pleased."

Hitler's Paintings

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A painting by Adolf Hitler sold for almost $15,000 Thursday -- more than six times as much as expected.

The watercolor was one of 15 items of Hitler art being sold at auction. Together, the artworks by the Nazi leader fetched almost $120,000.

They had expected to raise just under $50,000, auction house Mullock's of Shropshire estimated.

Many of the pictures were on the market because one of the sellers wanted money to install a new central heating system in his house, a spokesman for the auction house said.
"The watercolors came from a collector who is a regular vendor of ours," said Richard Westwood-Brookes, a historical documents expert at Mullock's. "He'd forgotten about them for years. He found them in his garage."

He refused to disclose the identity of the seller, as a matter of policy.

Thirteen watercolors were expected to fetch $580 to $2,200 apiece, while the lone small oil painting was estimated at up to $30,000, the auctioneer estimates.

All of the watercolors shattered expectations -- 12 of them selling for between $4,400 and $9,000.

The remaining watercolor -- a 1910 painting showing a figure sitting on a stone bridge -- fetched almost $15,000. There has been speculation that the figure was a depiction of Hitler himself.

The oil painting sold at only almost $20,000. A pencil sketch signed "A Hitler 1914" went for almost $4,700, beating the auctioneer's estimate of up to $3,700.

An easel thought to have belonged to Hitler sold for nearly $15,000, having been expected to bring $2,900 to $5,800. An anonymous bidder purchased it by phone.

Hitler dreamed of being an artist as a young man, and although he failed to get into the Vienna Academy of Arts, he supported himself by painting watercolors for several years before World War I, according the Holocaust Encyclopedia of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The auction also includes dozens of items related to Hitler's time as leader of Nazi Germany -- including documents from concentration camps where those deemed "undesirable" by the Nazis were imprisoned, sterilized and murdered. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi death camps, alongside millions of political prisoners, homosexuals, Gypsies and others.

"Who would want to have in their house a painting by the most horrible murderer in the history of mankind?" asked Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center which aims to fight anti-Semitism. "Any individual that would buy it to hang in their homes should be ashamed of themselves."

Hier said he did not object to Holocaust-related documents being auctioned "if their purpose is to wind up in research institutions," noting his own organization had obtained "important documents" that way.

Westwood-Brookes defended the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

"It's just as much as part of the Second World War as photographs of (Winston) Churchill," the British prime minister during the war. "It's something that happened and you can't ignore it."

He said he hoped buyers would preserve items such as a teenage girl's registration document for the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, where approximately 1 million people were murdered.

"The intention is that people will acquire this material and make sure it is preserved for future generations to study," Westwood-Brookes said.

The buyers could be "anybody and everybody," he said.

"There are many, many collectors of Second World War memorabilia all around the world," he added.

"Some people wouldn't want it," he admitted, but some would, "mainly because they want something to do with a famous person in history. In this case it happens to be Hitler, but in another sale it might be Churchill or Gandhi."

"I don't take any moral position" on the sale of Hitler-related artifacts, he said. "You can't say this guy was a bad guy, so I won't sell his memorabilia, this guy was a good guy so I will sell his. If you do that, where do you stop?"

The Hitler paintings came from three sources, Westwood-Brookes said, describing them as "people who had collected them over the years."

"The rest of the stuff has come in from all sorts of sources -- dealers who acquire stuff and sell stuff from other auction houses or private sources, members of the public who find something in the attic, and collectors, who are constantly changing their collections and selling off that bit that they don't want in order to buy stuff that they do."

'Teenager Suffering From Rare Disease Which Will Turn Her Into Lliving Statue'

So sad..
A teenager is suffering from a rare disease which will turn her into "living statue" as her muscles turn to bone.

Already her arms have locked in a bent position at her waist and which means she can no longer reach up or dress without help.

Seanie Nammock, 13, from London, suffers from fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), thought to affect only 600 people across the world.

Even a slight knock can cause a reaction which triggers irreversible bone growth which lock her joints into place.

The teenager discovered she had the condition last year, when a minor accident on a trampoline caused her first flare-up.

Her mother, Marian Granaghan, said: "She had fallen on her back and it had caused a sore lump to form.

"It was huge, hard red and hot to the touch so I took her to the hospital to get it checked out."

But doctors could not diagnose the condition immediately.

"The drip she was on before she was diagnosed is probably what caused her left arm to lock," said Marian.

"To be told your daughter has one of the worst medical problems on the planet and that there is no cure is every mother's nightmare," she added.

Her daughter is determined stay positive about her condition.

She said: "I just said 'Oh well I'll have to just get on with it'.

"I'm still me so I'm trying to not let it make a any difference."

She added: " I don't get scared by looking at stuff on the internet as I don't automatically assume that something bad is going to happen to me. It might not, I like to stay positive."

People with the condition are often born with big toes shorter than the rest, which can be an aid to early diagnosis.

Tests are underway in America on a possible drug to halt the bone growth associated with FOP after doctors discovered the gene that causes the disease.

Scientists Create Laser Gun to Kill Mosquitoes

HOLY SHNIKES!
'Star Wars' scientists create laser gun to kill mosquitoes

LONDON, England -- Scientists in the U.S. are developing a laser gun that could kill millions of mosquitoes in minutes.

The laser, which has been dubbed a "weapon of mosquito destruction" fires at mosquitoes once it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of its wings.

The laser beam then destroys the mosquito, burning it on the spot.

Developed by some of the astrophysicists involved in what was known as the "Star Wars" anti-missile programs during the Cold War, the project is meant to prevent the spread of malaria.

Lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jordin Kare, told CNN that the laser would be able to sweep an area and "toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes."

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people from the bites of female mosquitoes.

It is particularly prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and kills an African child every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization.

There are an estimated 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than one million deaths, the WHO reports.

Responding to questions about any potential harm the laser could pose to the eco-system, Kare said: "There is no such thing as a good mosquito, there's nothing that feeds exclusively on them. No one would miss mosquitoes," he said.

"In any case," he added. "The laser is able to distinguish between mosquitoes that go after people and those that aren't dangerous."

He added that other insects would not be affected by the laser's beam.

The research was commissioned by Intellectual Ventures, a Washington, U.S.-based company that was founded by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corporation executive.

His previous boss, Bill Gates, who funded the research, asked Myhrvold to look into new ways of combating malaria.