Press Room

It was June 5, 1944. A Raven-class minesweeper of the U.S. Navy, the USS Osprey (AM–56), churned the waves toward Normandy. It was the evening before Operation Neptune, the maritime portion of Operation Overlord, the invasion of continental Europe, was to begin. Allied powers braced with bated breath.

A new study in the journal Antiquity, “The Six Recipes of Zhou: A New Perspective on Jin and Xi,” written by A.M. Pollard and Ruiliang Liu and published by Cambridge University Press, suggests a composition of ancient Chinese bronze that has puzzled archeologists, metallurgists, and linguists for decades.

As the urgency of the pandemic recedes and the world numbs to the entrenched presence of COVID-19 in our lives, what remains is a collective sadness and the indelible imprints of a most unusual time: the commonness of face coverings, the isolation from loved ones, and the plangent tolls of church bells calling out in solemn remembrance of the dead. 

It was the summer of 2018. The Miss America pageant announced an end to its swimsuit competition; the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, was lost to pancreatic cancer; the British royal family was celebrating the young marriage of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry; and one by one, bells mounted on buoys off the coast of Maine were vanishing in the night.
 

Atlanta’s Japanese community took another step toward building a home for what has become known as the Peace Bell with an official groundbreaking ceremony this last Friday, July 8, 2022. The Japan-America Society of Georgia and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Georgia, in cooperation with the Consulate General of Japan in Atlanta and the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) office in Atlanta, have come together to ensure the bell takes its proper place as a symbol of both U.S.-Japan economic ties and the enduring friendship between the two nations.

The medieval, Grade II-listed All Saints’ Church, Stranton, in the port town of Hartlepool, England, boasts a ring of eight merry peal bells ranging in size from 450 lbs. to over 1,400 lbs. (bells hang in only two other churches in Hartlepool: St. Aidan’s and St. Oswald’s). A couple of the church’s bells date to the middle ages and one, in particular, has caused quite the commotion of late.
 

It was a bright and fresh morning. The HMS Gloucester was under full sail, bound for the Scottish capital at Edinburgh. The fluttering royal standard atop the highest mast denoted the presence of royalty and, indeed, the Duke of York, younger brother to His Majesty King Charles II and heir to the English throne, sat ensconced in his well-appointed cabins.

This weekend, Her Majesty The Queen is marking an extraordinary accomplishment: the first British monarch to celebrate 70 years on the throne with a Platinum Jubilee. Four days of nationwide commemorations, splendor, and pageantry (including an estimated 16,000 street parties across the United Kingdom) will last from Thursday, June 2 to Sunday, June 5, 2022.

In early September 1857, the SS Central America, a 280-foot sidewheel steamer, left the Panamanian port of Colón bound for New York City with 477 passengers and 101 crew onboard – and almost 15 tons of California Gold Rush gold.