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D'Artagnan's tomb found?

Dutch archaeologists believe that they have located the tomb of Louis XIV musketeer Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan in a small Catholic church in the Netherlands. According to a leading French historian, Charles de Batz de Castelmore dArtagnan, who served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard, was buried a few kilometres away at Saint Peter and Paul Church in Wolder, Holland, The Times Online reports.

The trail is very precise, according to Odile Bordaz, author of several works on the musketeer. She has marked down theories that d'Artagnans body was brought back to France, and has been insisting the Dutch authorities and the Catholic Church approve an archaeological dig of the site.

According to recently discovered documents, during the siege, bodies of French officers were buried in the nearest Catholic Church. D'Artagnan died during the Siege of Maastricht on June 25, 1673.

Colossus of Rhodes to be rebuilt as giant light sculpture

It may not straddle the port as its predecessor once did, but in terms of sheer luminosity and eye-catching height the new Colossus of Rhodes will not disappoint. Nor will it fall short of the symbolism that once imbued the ancient monument. Twenty-three centuries after craftsmen carved the legendary statue that has inspired legions of painters, poets, playwrights and politicians, a new world wonder, built in the spirit of the original Colossus, is about to be born on the Aegean island.

After decades of dashed hopes, the people of Rhodes will fulfil a long-held dream to revive one of the world's seven ancient wonders - thanks to the promise of international funding and the East German artist Gert Hof. "It will be a unique architectural creation," said the island's mayor, Hatzis Hatziefthimiou, presenting what is likely to become one of the 21st century's largest artistic projects in Dubai last week.

"We want to make it a work of global appeal and significance."

40 Years Later, It's Moon Race 2.0

You probably wouldn't have had much fun on the surface of the moon. It's not the exploring or the bouncing or the buggy-roving that would have bothered you. It's the worrying.

Landing on the moon is fine, but you need to get home too. That means heaving your multiton spacecraft back off the ground and up into space--and if that's going to happen, all its thousands of components have to work just so.

There's no guarantee that they will--which is why the first time men landed on the moon, President Richard Nixon had a short address prepared just in case things went wrong. "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace," he would have said. When they're writing your obit while you're still alive, it's hard to have a good time.

Could this be grave of King Richard?

Mystery surrounding one of the county's medieval legends has been reignited after an ancient stone coffin linked to Richard III was unearthed on a building site. The solid stone sarcophagus was discovered in the grounds of a property in Earl Shilton, by the home's former gardener Reg Colver, where it had formed part of a water garden built in the early 1900s.

Archaeologists believe it dates from the time Richard died and could have been buried in the same church, Greyfriars, which once existed near Leicester Cathedral. Richard Knox, of the county council's archaeological services, said: "It is an important medieval artefact in its own right, it also shows the strength of the Bosworth myth which makes all local medieval finds somehow relevant to Richard and the Battle of Bosworth."

Legend has it that after Richard's death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he was buried in Greyfriars Church, but some 50 years later his grave was ransacked and his bones thrown into the River Soar.

Climate change 'to halt ice age'

A new model of the Earth's climate suggests that human-made carbon dioxide emissions may prevent the onset of the next ice age. Based on geological history, the Earth would be expected to enter a new ice age in 10,000 to 100,000 years. Researchers say even small changes in carbon dioxide levels right now could prevent this from happening. They tell the journal Nature this may not be good news as the planet could change in ways that are unprecedented.

The scientists say that over the past 400,000 years, sea temperature and ice coverage have been more variable than before. This variation is a sign of the climate changing from one state to another, and signals the coming of an ice age.

Professor Thomas Crowley who developed the new model at Edinburgh University, UK, says this natural event might be postponed or even prevented by human-induced changes - especially the CO2 emissions from industrial processes.

Now in Sight: Far-Off Planets

A little more of the universe has been pried out of the shadows. Two groups of astronomers have taken the first pictures of what they say — and other astronomers agree — are most likely planets going around other stars.

The achievement, the result of years of effort on improved observational techniques and better data analysis, presages more such discoveries, the experts said, and will open the door to new investigations and discoveries of what planets are and how they came to be formed. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia. “Now that we know they are there, there is going to be an explosion.”

Dr. Marois is the leader of a team that recorded three planets circling a star known as HR 8799 that is 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. The other team, led by Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, found a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, only 25 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Piscis Austrinus.

New Pyramid Found in Egypt: 4,300-Year-Old Queen's Tomb

A new pyramid has been discovered deep beneath Egyptian sands, archaeologists announced today. The 4,300-year-old monument is believed to be the tomb of Queen Sesheshet, the mother of Pharaoh Teti, the founder ancient Egypt's 6th dynasty. Once nearly five stories tall, the pyramid—or at least what remains of it—lay beneath 23 feet (7 meters) of sand.

The discovery is the third known subsidiary, or satellite, pyramid to the tomb of Teti. It's also the second pyramid found this year in Saqqara, an ancient royal burial complex near current-day Cairo. "I always say you never know what the sands of Egypt might hide," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

"This might be the most complete subsidiary pyramid ever found at Saqqara," added Hawass, who is also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence.

Foreign Accent Syndrome Gives Sufferers an International Sound

CindyLou Romberg sounds like she could be from any number of exotic countries around the world. She sometimes rolls her "R"s like a Russian, chops syllables like a German or turns an unsuspecting "W" into a "V," like a Swede. But Romberg is not Russian, German or Swedish. In fact, she has never even left her tiny hometown of Port Angeles, Wash.

Romberg suffers from what doctors call Foreign Accent Syndrome, or FAS, an extremely rare brain disorder that, as the name implies, causes its sufferers to speak as if they are from a foreign country. "We'll be in the grocery store and someone will come up and say, 'Oh, you have a beautiful accent. Where are you from?'" Romberg told "Good Morning America."

The syndrome is likely related to an accident in 1981 when CindyLou suffered a depressed skull fracture after falling out of a moving truck, scientists say. She recovered from a severe brain injury, and spoke normally until just two years ago when she lost her voice for a couple of days after a visit with a chiropractor.

Thousands flock to see Nepal's mystery "Buddha" boy

Thousands of people flocked to a remote jungle in southeast Nepal to see a boy, some believe is a reincarnation of Lord Buddha, who reappeared after missing for more than a year, police said on Tuesday. Seventeen-year-old Ram Bahadur Bamjon spoke to devotees from nearby villages on Monday in the remote forest in Ratanpuri, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Kathmandu, Prakash Sen, a police constable said.

Bamjon made international headlines in 2005 when tens of thousands of people turned up to see him sitting cross-legged under a tree in a dense forest for nearly ten months. reportedly without food and water.

Hundreds of devotees, including many from neighboring India are trekking the five-km (mile) site to see him on Tuesday, Sen said. "He spoke to the devotees standing near a temple in the forest," Prakash Sen said after a visit to the site.

Screaming Man 'led plot against pharaoh'

It is a mystery that has troubled Egyptologists for generations - just why was this mummy screaming 3,000 years ago? The "Screaming Man" was found buried in a tomb with some of the greatest pharaohs in history, including Rameses the Great, Seti I and Tuthmosis III. Experts have speculated that the figure could be a foreign prince who had offended the Ancient Egyptians in some way.

Now facial anthropologists have created a 3D picture of the Screaming Man's features and performed a CT scan. The new investigation, detailed on Secrets of Egypt on Channel 5 tonight, found the autopsy report after the mummy was discovered in an unmarked tomb near the Valley of Kings in 1881 was flawed.

As the man was buried in an expensive cedar wood coffin with his hands and feet bound, Victorian archaeologists concluded that he was buried with his organs intact, in contravention of normal custom for important Egyptians.