17th-century royal warship found off U.K. coast
Explorers and historians are telling the world about the discovery of the wreck of a royal warship that sank in 1682 while carrying a future king of England, Ireland and Scotland.
The HMS Gloucester, traveling from southern England to Scotland, ran aground while navigating sandbanks off the town of Great Yarmouth on the eastern English coast. It sank within an hour, killing an estimated 130 to 250 crew and passengers.
James Stuart, the son of King Charles I, survived. He went on to reign as King James II of England and Ireland, and as James VII of Scotland from 1685 to 1688, when he was deposed by the Glorious Revolution.
The wreck of the Gloucester was found in 2007 by brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell and others after a four-year search. It was firmly identified in 2012 with discovery of the ship’s bell.
The discovery was only made public Friday because of the time it took to confirm the identity of the ship and the need to protect the historical site. this information in the future.
NASA’S science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen acknowledged the traditional scientific community may see NASA as “kind of selling out” by venturing into the controversial topic, but he strongly disagrees.
“We are not shying away from reputational risk,” Zurbuchen said during a National Academy of Sciences webcast. “Our strong belief is that the biggest challenge of these phenomena is that it’s a data-poor field.”
NASA considers this a first step in trying to explain mysterious sightings in the sky known as UAPS, or unidentified aerial phenomena.
The study will begin this fall and last nine months, costing no more than $100,000. It will be entirely open, with no classified military data used.
Panjshir province since midmay as anti-taliban forces there attacked Taliban units and checkpoints, HRW said in a statement. The Taliban have responded by deploying thousands of fighters on search operations targeting communities they allege are supporting the opposition forces, the group added.
“Taliban forces have committed summary executions and enforced disappearances of captured fighters and other detainees, which are war crimes,” both in Panjshir and elsewhere in Afghanistan, it said.
The force fighting in the mountainous Panjshir Valley north of Kabul — a remote region that has defied conquerors before — rose out of the last remnants of Afghanistan’s shattered security forces. It has vowed to resist the Taliban after they overrun the country and seized power in Afghanistan in mid-august.
Nestled in the towering Hindu Kush range, the Panjshir Valley has a single narrow entrance. Local fighters held off the Soviets there in the 1980s, and the Taliban a decade later under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a guerrilla fighter who attained near-mythic status before he was killed in a suicide bombing.