Local News | The next chapter for old story pole yet to be written | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | The next chapter for old story pole yet to be written | Seattle Times Newspaper

Census ranks Seattle among whitest big cities | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | Census ranks Seattle among whitest big cities | Seattle Times Newspaper

Compared with other large U.S. cities, Seattle is pretty white.

Along with Portland, Seattle is among large U.S. cities in which the highest proportions of residents describe themselves as non-Hispanic white, based on 2010 census data.

In Seattle, 66 percent of all residents fit that category — the fifth-highest rate among the nation's 50 largest cities — higher even than Wichita, Kan., and Minneapolis.

Seattle rose two notches in the ranking from a decade ago, in part because other cities experienced higher growth in their Latino populations.

Portland's 72 percent white population was the highest in the country, a position unchanged from 10 years ago.

Nation & World | Letters trace Civil War for writer's forebears | Seattle Times Newspaper

Despite the glaring mistake in the headline, an interesting story.

Nation & World | Letters trace Civil War for writer's forebears | Seattle Times Newspaper

BOSTON —

Alone in his hotel room after a solemn dinner with his brother, the newly enlisted Army surgeon took up pen and paper to make the first installment on his promise.

"I have a few moments," he wrote to his wife, just 10 miles up the coast in Lynn. "I am in such a whirl that I can hardly think much less write."

Just four days earlier, on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery had fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, igniting the Civil War. On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln issued an urgent appeal "to all loyal citizens," seeking 75,000 volunteers to quell the rebellion.

The very next day, Dr. Bowman Bigelow Breed - my great-grandfather - was on a train south, bound for Boston, and for war....

Local News | Rail tunnel dig yields 1880s Seattle sidewalk | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | Rail tunnel dig yields 1880s Seattle sidewalk | Seattle Times Newspaper

A Rainier Beer bottle. A kitschy ceramic cup and a silver spoon. Thirty-one men's, women's and children's shoes.

No one would be shocked to find these things in any Seattle family's basement. But it's a little more surprising to find them packed under 38 feet of dirt downtown.

Human history rewritten: Texas artifacts oldest found - MontereyHerald.com :

Human history rewritten: Texas artifacts oldest found

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Scientists along Buttermilk Creek north of Austin, Texas, have found flint knife blades, chisels and other human artifacts lying in a soil layer nearly 16,000 years old — a discovery they say will rewrite a major chapter of ancient human history.

For one thing, it is now the oldest and arguably most credible site of human occupation in North or South America; but there's more.

The discovery, by Texas A&M archaeologist Michael Waters and others, pushes back by 2,500 years the time when traditional science thought humans entered the New World from Siberia and founded the native peoples of North and South America.

"This discovery ought to be like a baseball bat to the side of the head" to past theories, Waters said.

Local News | Ghosts of Seattle's maritime past lie at bottom of Lake Union | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | Ghosts of Seattle's maritime past lie at bottom of Lake Union | Seattle Times Newspaper

Beneath Lake Union's inky surface is a graveyard of old boats, an underwater museum of waterlogged artifacts of Seattle's industrial and maritime history that have mostly lain untouched for decades — until now.

HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

2 April 2011—April Fools—a day late.

HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

To celebrate April Fool's Day, HistoryLink.org takes a look back at some of the more notorious hoaxes that Washingtonians have fallen for over the years. We begin in 1938, when more than a few radio listeners thought that Planet Earth was under attack by invaders from Mars. This was especially true in the town of Concrete, which -- purely by happenstance -- suffered a power outage during the middle of Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast. Panic ensued.