Researchers have found and named a new dinosaur species closely related to the massive theropod Tyrannosaurus rex. The newly discovered creature, dubbed Zhuchengtyrannus magnus and believed to be one of the largest known carnivorous dinosaurs, was identified based on skull and jaw bones unearthed from an eastern Chinese quarry. A long-lost cousin of prehistory’s most infamous predator, Tyrannosaurus rex, has been found and identified, according to a paper published online on April 1, 2011, in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research. The gargantuan theropod has been dubbed Zhuchengtyrannus magnus—“tyrant from Zhucheng”—after the eastern Chinese city in which scientists uncovered its fossilized skull and jaw bones. Artist’s rendering of Zhuchengtyrannus magnus.…

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history. His Gettysburg Address consisted of just 273 words over 10 sentences, and took Lincoln less than three minutes to deliver. The Gettysburg Address Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate…

When the American Civil War (1861-65) began, President Abraham Lincoln carefully framed the conflict as concerning the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery.

Abraham Lincoln, a self-taught Illinois lawyer and legislator with a reputation as an eloquent opponent of slavery, shocked many when he overcame several more prominent contenders to win the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1860. His election that November pushed several Southern states to secede by the time of his inauguration in March 1861, and the Civil War began barely a month later. Contrary to expectations, Lincoln proved to be a shrewd military strategist and a savvy leader during what became the costliest conflict ever fought on American soil. His Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863, freed all slaves in the rebellious states and paved the way for slavery’s eventual…