An original copy of the Magna Carta has been discovered in a scrapbook in Kent, England.

The tattered document dates to 1300, 85 years after King John of England was compelled to sign the first agreement limiting the rights of kings.

This version was issued by King Edward I — King John's grandson — who was under pressure from the church and the barons to reaffirm good governance, said Sophie Ambler, a research associate with the Magna Carta Project.

"Nobody knew it was there," Ambler said of the damaged document.

"This Magna Carta had been stuck into a scrapbook by a Victorian official from the British Museum at the end of the 19th century."

Limiting the king

The copy was then placed in the Sandwich archive in Kent, where it was forgotten, Ambler told Live Science.

Its rediscovery was sparked by the efforts of researchers with the Magna Carta Project, who are investigating the history of the Magna Carta in the lead-up to its 800th anniversary this year.

The leader of the project, the University of East Anglia's Nicholas Vincent, asked a historian in Kent to look up Sandwich's Charter of the Forest, a complementary document to the Magna Carta.

In the process, the historian found the forgotten edition of the Magna Carta.

Often considered a precursor to modern constitutional law, the Magna Carta was first affirmed on June 15, 1215, by a beleaguered King John, who faced an uprising by a group of powerful barons upset over taxation.

The charter limited the king's power and set limits on taxation, also establishing rights to justice. Four copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta survive, including a badly burnt document held at the British Library.

Reaffirmed charter

After King John, England's kings periodically reaffirmed and reissued the Magna Carta, as was the case with this version. The new copy brings the total number of surviving 13th-century versions to 24, Ambler said. The newly discovered edition is the seventh surviving copy from the year 1300.

The charter is more than 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) long, but about one-third of the text is missing, according to the Magna Carta Project. Water damage has eaten away at the paper, and the royal seal is missing. Nevertheless, the date of issue survives at the bottom of the document, Ambler said.

Determining the authenticity of the charter was relatively straightforward, she added: The layout, handwriting and text all match what would be expected from a Magna Carta of this time.

The document's discovery in Sandwich reveals that copies of the Magna Carta were distributed more widely than ever known, Ambler said. Sandwich was what is known as a "Cinque Port," a coastal town given exemptions from certain taxes and oversight in return for maintaining ships for the kingdom's defense needs.

"The fact that we had one [delivered] to the Cinque ports adds a whole other audience" for the Magna Carta, Ambler said.

The fate of the newly discovered Magna Carta is not yet known, but it is likely to stay in Kent, Ambler said. The county council hopes to display the document as a tourist draw, she added.

The Magna Carta is currently being held at the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone, Murray Evans, spokesman for the Kent County Council, told Live Science.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Image Gallery: Medieval Art Tells a Tale
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Abraham Lincoln kept the US united and freed black Americans from slavery.

To achieve these historic feats, he relied on a mastery of the written and spoken word. In honor of his 206th birthday, we've collected a few of his most inspiring quotes.

On genius

On hypocrisy

On reading

Over Christmas I took a long stroll in the snow along with my wife, a proud West Berliner, through the “No-man’s Land” along the former path of the Berlin Wall, erected over 50 years before.

We walked from our apartment near Frohnau train station — formerly the end of the line before East Germany — along der Mauerwegthrough fields and farmland until Stolpe, a small village in Brandenburg.

The topic of conversation was the Wall, reunification, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The dominant narrative in the West has always been that the fall of the wall and collapse of the Soviet Union marked a final victory of Western democratic capitalism over communism.

However, for many citizens of the USSR — and especially guardians of the state such as Vladimir Putin — there were no great upheavals, no mass protests of discontent, no tanks or revolution in the streets in cities outside of Moscow.

Nothing had changed in their lives and no one had asked them. They simply woke up without the country they had long been exhorted to fight for, work for, and love. That memory is still there today.

There is also still a great deal of Ostalgie— nostalgia for East Germany — among those who grew up there. East Germans enjoyed a higher standard of living than anywhere else in the communist bloc. Some today would take it back; others do not go that far, but offer that they had less worries then.

Most West Germans are obligingly accepting of this, but less so of the “solidarity” tax citizens of western regions have paid for decades for the redevelopment of the former-East.

Most do not discuss the matter out of politeness. When the topic is broached, the passionate responses make it easy to see why.

The West may have come out on top in the Cold War, but it never truly vanquished the East and could never banish it from memory.

This week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested at the Munich Security Conference that the legal basis of German reunification was questionable.

It has also long been part of the Russian narrative that the West broke a promise not to expand NATO eastwards.

Much of Russia’s patently false argument for its response in Ukraine stems from supposed broken promises and encroachments by the West, the EU, and NATO.

In her continual quest to be “Chancellor of all the Germans,” Angela Merkel offered no response to Lavrov’s suggestion that the country she leads may lack legitimacy, but she was willing to insist that there is no military solution to Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is certainly true in Germany’s case.

Besides a generally dovish national sentiment and a constitution that prevents offensive military action, her government has purposefully allowed the Bundeswehr to fall into a woeful state of disrepair.

Merkel is always the first in diplomatic negotiations to tip her hand that force will not be considered. For Germany, military action is not only off the table. It never made it on the table to begin with.

A New ‘Munich’ Moment?

In Munich the Chancellor was unable to answer how she would stop Russia without a military solution if diplomacy failed. Others have made suggestions.

University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer argued in the New York Times that arming Ukraine would escalate tensions and cause Russia to act even more recklessly, reminding us that Russia has nuclear weapons and is protecting “a vital strategic interest.” Stephen Walt of Harvard echoed this sentiment in Foreign Policy.

Mearsheimer suggested something that many academics and policymakers have also offered as a solution to the troubles in Iraq — create a “buffer state”, an idea that keeps coming back despite research by Tanisha Fazal and others that buffer states are historically most likely to die.

The idea would allow Ukraine to be divided between Moscow and Kiev as a buffer between the EU and NATO-dominated West and Russian-dominated East, ceding to Moscow what it seeks for the sake of peace.

It is hard to believe that 53 years after the building of the Berlin Wall and 25 years after its fall, America, Germany, and its Western partners would agree to another wall — real or imagined — to divide East and West.

And not only to stand by helplessly and watch it being built as in 1961 Berlin, but suggest it as a solution and pursue the idea as a solution from our side in 2015. The immediate motivations are easy to understand and are a familiar refrain — appeasement and peace in our time: Echoes of Neville Chamberlain.

Strangely, many of those arguing against the West arming Ukraine to halt Russian aggression paint a picture of a determined Moscow, led by a resolved Vladimir Putin, willing to bear any burden to halt the advance of NATO and the EU onto its doorstep, while also earlier in the conflict arguing that Moscow and Putin would easily be stopped by the economic effects of a round of sanctions.

So which Russia are we facing? One determined to control Ukraine at all costs, or one that will break once the sanctions bite?

The sanctions are indeed biting and Moscow shows no sign of retreating. If a Western military response is truly off the table, the only answer if diplomacy fails, the argument goes, is to give Moscow what it wants — half or even all of Ukraine to keep the Western wolf from its door.

But this is not the first time Russia has sliced off pieces of states who shirked its rule — the same has already happened in Georgia and Moldova.

Surely Moscow will be emboldened to again employ a tactic it has thrice succeeded with. Surely even if Putin gets what he wants his “little green men” will return elsewhere to maintain or expand Russia’s “buffer” as it sees fit in coming years.

Giving Moscow what it wants is not a solution. Success will embolden Moscow to try it again in future — just as much if not more of a threat as escalating the conflict by helping Ukraine defend itself.

Putin has calculated that the West would rather cave to him than confront him in its lust to finally savor the elusive “peace dividend.” He may be correct. How far will the West allow him to go? He will take every inch we give him.

The Western allies stood by helplessly and watched the Berlin Wall being built in 1961 because East Germany and Moscow wanted to halt the embarrassing exodus of its citizens into the West — it walled its citizens in.

America, its allies, and West Germany had no fear of the movement of goods and services or political ideas across its borders. Today, Moscow and Putin again fear above all the movement of free thinking, fair elections, and ideas across their borders.

The idea that the West should suggest or allow a wall — the “Ukraine Wall” — to once again be built in Europe is not only short-term in outlook, but plain cowardice. Will we really allow — or even suggest — an Iron Curtain slowly ascend once again over Ukraine?

As my wife and I walked back toward Berlin in the snow along the path of the Wall from Stolpe in the former East, we felt like we were going back in time and that history was repeating itself in a different place. The players are the same, but the outcome may be different.

Again a despotic Moscow seeks with force to play puppet-master in states it considers to rightfully be part of its orbit and empire. Will America and the West have the strength and resolve to oppose it once again?

Chris Miller is a veteran of the U.S. Army and a Purple Heart recipient following combat in Iraq. He has worked as a military contractor in the Middle East and his current work focuses on strategic studies. 

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Bad luck comes in threes in 2015. This year features a trio of Friday the 13ths, the first of which falls today (Feb. 13).

Today, it's taken for granted that Friday the 13th is an inauspicious day, but that wasn't always the case. Until the late 1800s, no one felt that Fridays that happen to fall on the 13th day of the month were anything special at all.

Exactly how the date became mired in the mind as an unlucky one is murky. Certainly the idea was firmly implanted in the cultural consciousness by 1980, when the slasher flick "Friday the 13th" was released. The hockey-masked villain of that tale, Jason Voorhees, has taken on a life of his own, driving 12 films as well as multiple novellas and comic books. Thus, it's no surprise that a Google Ngram search of the phrase "Friday the 13th" finds the term shot up in use in books in 1980. [The Surprising Origins of 9 Common Superstitions]

Credit for popularizing the Friday the 13th myth often goes to Capt. William Fowler, a noted soldier who rubbed elbows with former presidents and other high-profile people of the late 1800s. Fowler noticed that the number 13 was woven throughout his life (he went to Public School No. 13 in New York City, for example, and fought in 13 Civil War battles), so he decided to combat the "popular superstition against thirteen," according to his obituary.

Fowler started a society called the Thirteen Club, which held its first meeting on Sept. 13, 1881. Guests walked under crossed ladders to a 13-seat table festooned with spilled salt. It was a notable party and repudiation of superstition, but Fowler can't take credit for Friday the 13th, specifically: Sept. 13, 1881, was a Tuesday.

All Fowler proves is that 13 was considered an unlucky number, a tradition that may go back to ancient mythology.According to Donald Dossey, author of "Holiday Folklore, Phobias and Fun" (Outcome Unlimited Pr, 1992), a Norse myth told of a dinner party for 12 gods at which a 13th guest showed up uninvited. The gatecrasher — the trickster god Loki — shot the god of joy and happiness, Balder. The Christian tale of the Last Supper likewise holds Judas, Jesus' betrayer, as the "unlucky" 13th guest.

Friday has also been considered an unlucky day in Western tradition. E. Cobham Brewer's 1898 "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" claims Friday as the day that Jesus was crucified and perhaps the day that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, according to Christian beliefs. In 1882, poet John Godfrey Saxe published a poem called "The Good Dog of Brette," about a poodle that roams the city with a basket, bringing donations home to his blind master. On a Friday, "a day when misfortune is aptest [sic] to fall," a cruel butcher chops off the dog's tail.

In 1907, author Thomas William Lawson put together the notion of unlucky Friday and unlucky 13 with the novel "Friday the 13th," a tale of an unscrupulous broker taking advantage of superstition to game the stock market on that date, described as "Wall Street hoodoo-day." Lawson may not have invented the idea of the unlucky date, but he likely spread the notion.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article onLive Science.

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Marriage has always been a gamble, but the modern game is harder — with higher stakes than ever before.

Struggling marriages make people more unhappy today than in the past, while healthy marriages have some of the happiest couples in history, according to a comprehensive analysis published in 2007 regarding marital quality and personal well-being.

When Eli Finkel sought to understand why marriage is more extreme at both ends today than in the past, he discovered something intriguing yet discouraging: Marriages in the US are more challenging today than at any other time in our country's history.

Finkel is a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University and is known for developing a surprisingly simple marriage-saving procedure, which takes 21 minutes a year. (The procedure involves three seven-minute online writing sessions, where couples describe their most recent disagreement from the perspective of a hypothetical neutral bystander — something they are also encouraged to try out in future arguments.)

Finkel, together with his colleagues of the Relationships and Motivation LAB at Northwestern, have gone on to publish several papers on what they call "the suffocation model of marriage in America."

In their latest paper on this front, they explain why — compared to previous generations — some of the defining qualities of today's marriages make it harder for couples to cultivate a flourishing relationship. The simple answer is that people today expect more out of their marriage. If these higher expectations are not met, it can suffocate a marriage to the point of destroying it.

Finkel, in an Opinion article in The New York Times summarizing their latest paper on this model, discusses the three distinct models of marriage that relationship psychologists refer to:

• institutional marriage (from the nation's founding until 1850)
• companionate marriage (from 1851 to 1965)
• self-expressive marriage (from 1965 onward)

Before 1850, people were hardly walking down the aisle for love. In fact, American couples at this time, who wed for food production, shelter, and protection from violence, were satisfied if they felt an emotional connection with their spouse, Finkel wrote. (Of course, old-fashioned, peaceful-seeming marriages may have been especially problematic for women, and there were an "array of cruelties that this kind of marriage could entail,"Rebecca Onion wrote recently in Aeon.)

Those norms changed quickly when an increasing number of people left the farm to live and work in the city for higher pay and fewer hours. With the luxury of more free time, Americans focused on what they wanted in a lifelong partner, namely companionship and love. But the counter-cultural attitude of the 1960s led Americans to think of marriage as an option instead of an essential step in life.

This leads us to today's model, self-expressive marriage, wherein the average modern, married American is looking not only for love from their spouse but for a sense of personal fulfillment. Finkel writes that this era's marriage ideal can be expressed in the simple quote "You make me want to be a better man," from James L. Brooks' 1997 film "As Good as It Gets."

These changes to marital expectations have been a mixed bag, Finkel argues.

"As Americans have increasingly looked to their marriage to help them meet idiosyncratic, self-expressive needs, the proportion of marriages that fall short of their expectations has grown, which has increased rates of marital dissatisfaction,"Finkel's team writes, in their latest paper. On the other hand, "those marriages that succeed in meeting these needs are particularly fulfilling, more so than the best marriages in earlier eras."

The key to a successful, flourishing marriage? Finkel and his colleagues describe three general options:

• Don't look to your marriage alone for personal fulfillment. In addition to your spouse, use all resources available to you including friends, hobbies, and work.
• If you want a lot from your marriage, then you have to give a lot, meaning that in order to meet their high expectations, couples must invest more time and psychological resources into their marriage.
• And if neither of those options sound good, perhaps it's time to ask less of the marriage and adjust high expectations for personal fulfillment and self discovery.

Other researchers, like sociologist Jeffrey Dew, support the notion that time is a crucial factor in sustaining a successful marriage.

Dew, who is a professor at the University of Virginia, found that Americans in 1975 spent, on average, 35 hours a week alone with their spouse while couples in 2003 spent 26 hours together. Child-rearing couples in 1975 spent 13 hours a week together, alone, compared to couples in 2003 who spent 9 hours a week together. The divorce rate in America was 32.8% in 1970 and rose to 49.1% by 2000.

While that doesn't necessarily mean less time together led to divorce or that the people who stayed together were happy, Finkel's research suggests that higher expectations and less investment in the relationship may be a toxic brew.

Marriage has become as tricky but also as potentially rewarding as climbing Mt. Everest: Obtaining a sense of personal fulfillment from your partner is as hard as achieving the summit. This is both good and bad because it means that you are reaching for the pinnacle of what marriage has to offer — which explains why couples in healthy marriages are happier now than in the past — but it also means that meeting those expectations and feeling satisfied in marriage is harder than ever.

"The good news is that our marriages can flourish today like never before," Finkel writes for The New York Times. "They just can't do it on their own."

SEE ALSO: Scientists Have Discovered How Common Different Sexual Fantasies Are

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Spliced into a World War I reel and discovered here, footage of the deadly SS Eastland disaster surprised a graduate student recently, and no one is quite sure how it got here.

This video originally appeared on Slate Video. Watch More: slate.com/video

Jim Festante is an actor/writer in Los Angeles and regular video contributor to Slate. He's the author of the Image Comics miniseries The End Times of Bram and Ben.

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BERLIN (AP) — A German court says a 93-year-old man has been charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as an SS guard at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland.

The defendant, whose name wasn't disclosed in line with privacy laws, allegedly served in Auschwitz from January 1942 to June 1944, the Detmold state court said in a statement Monday.

He's alleged to have been assigned to the Auschwitz I camp, but also to have helped supervise new prisoners, largely Jews, as they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the part of the camp complex where most of its 1.1 million victims were killed.

Defense attorney Johannes Salmen says his client has acknowledged being at Auschwitz I, but denies being assigned to Birkenau or being involved in killings.

This article was from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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History has seen empires that stretch across a fifth of the world; others that ruled hundreds of millions of people; and some that lasted more than a millennium.

Each empire seemed unstoppable for an age, but they all crumbled in the end.

Indeed, the age of empires may have ended with World War II, as world powers have moved on from colonization and conquest in favor of geopolitical and commercial influence.

The Turkic Khaganate spanned 2.32 million square miles at its height in 557 until a civil war contributed to its collapse in 581.

The Han imperial dynasty spanned 2.51 million square miles at its peak in 100 B.C. It collapsed by A.D. 220 after a series of coups and revolutions.

The Ming Dynasty spanned 2.51 million square miles at its height in 1450, but economic breakdown and natural disasters contributed to its collapse in the early 17th century.

Following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, two different operations were conducted to enforce the no fly zone (NFZ) that was set to narrow Iraqi government airspace: the Northern Watch, which started in 1997 and became Operation Provide Comfort, to monitor the airspace above the 36th parallel; and the Southern Watch, that began in 1992, to control the airspace south of the 32nd parallel, extended to the 33rd parallel in 1996.

Saddam Hussein's regime soon decided not to respect the no-fly zone, and Iraqi air defense systems began to attack both Northern and Southern Watch aircraft, even though the Surface to Air Missile (SAM) sites were more active against Southern forces. Many no-fly zone violations occurred after 1992, with Iraqi fighters crossing the zone several times.

Nevertheless the main threat to the allied aircraft was posed by the Iraqi SAM and anti-aircraft artillery batteries. Those soon became the target of several air strikes, like the ones conducted during Operation Desert Fox in 1998 and the powerful raid conducted by Joint Task Forces Southwest Asia, on Feb. 16, 2001.

As explained by the US Marine Corps historian Fred Allison to Giampaolo Agostinelli for his book Where Sea Meets The Sky, about 70 aircraft were involved in this air strike, and a quarter of those released weapons.

Among the strike aircraft which took part in the mission were eight US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and an element of Royal Air Force Tornado GR1s from bases in Kuwait, with fourteen F/A-18s belonging to Marine Strike Fighter Squadron 312 (VMFA-312) Checkerboards and Strike Fighter Squadron 105 (VFA-105) Gunslingers launched from the aircraft carrier USS Truman (CVN-75).

The strike was supported by E-2Cs in an AWACS role, S-3Bs and KC-10s for air-to-air refueling and EA-6Bs for electronic warfare. The escort for the strike force was provided by VF-32 Swordsmen F-14B Tomcats and by USAF F-15C Eagles.

Some of the targets — radars, communications centers and command centers — were placed north of Baghdad. To hit them the Hornets were loaded with external tanks, 200 rounds of 20 mm ammunition combined with AIM-120 and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles for self-defense and two types of standoff weapons: three AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapons (JSOWs) for each VMFA-312’s jet and Standoff Land-Attack Missile – Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) missiles for VFA-105’s F/A-18s.

The mission was launched after sunset. The Hornets refueled from an Air Force KC-10 tanker over Kuwait. The F/A-18s were the last aircraft to reach their targets over Baghdad, with the Iraqi gunners already alerted from the previous strikes: their first Gunslinger jets launched their SLAM-ERs which hit their targets with great accuracy.

This accuracy was demonstrated by footage sent back by one aircraft that hit Al-Taji air base. When slowed down, it showed a man outside the building smoking a cigarette.

Then, Checkerboards Hornets delivered their JSOWs from 36,000 feet while the sky was erupting “into a blaze of AAA and SAMs.”

But in the rarefied air at FL360, the F/A-18s were too slow to maneuver away from the SAMs. So they lit the burners for a steep dive, descending into the thicker air where the pilots could maneuver more effectively against the surface-to-air missiles.

In addition to the SAMs launches, the Hornets' pilots were notified that a MiG-23 Flogger had taken off from Al-Taqaddum airfield below them. Luckily for them the MiG escaped immediately towards the north.

With the afterburners still ignited, the Hornets avoided the last Iraqi SAMs and reached the tanker on a racetrack on the border of Kuwait. Suddenly a British voice came over to the radio: a Tornado was being targeted by a SA-6 which was receiving good tracking information from its radar.

Three seconds later another voice radioed: “Magnum!”: a VAQ-130 (Electronic Attack Squadron 130) Zappers EA-6B pilot had just launched an AGM-88 HARM missile which destroyed the Iraqi SAM site.

The mission ended after the safe recovery of the aircraft onboard the Truman’s deck.

As Allison recalls: “The mission had lasted slightly more than four hours and had accomplished its purpose. The Iraqis shut down their radars and there were less attacks on coalition aircraft over the NFZ, at least for a time.”

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Slicing bread, cooking with gas, inventing the wheel — these are the groundbreaking innovations to which we glibly compare many others. But if you want to talk about a real shift (and go a bit old school), you should compare it to the agricultural revolution.

Around 12,000 years ago, our ancestors learned how to grow crops and raise animals for their own consumption, first in the Fertile Crescent, which stretches from North Africa into Asia, then springing up independently among populations all over the world. Farming meant that people could get food more reliably than they did as hunter-gatherers, and on a very basic level, that meant that more humans could survive.

“It’s a tough, rough, harsh, and risky lifestyle being a hunter gatherer,” said Mark Thomas, a professor of evolutionary genetics at University College London. “You’re much more buffered against fluctuations in food supply if you’re farming.” More people and more reliable food allowed people to worry about more than just their basic survival, leading to urbanization, trade, and a faster pace of innovation.

But the downside, Thomas said, was that humans were overall less healthy. Diets were less diverse and more reliant upon starches like wheat and corn, and that had a lot of effects on how humans looked physically.“Early farmers didn’t look healthy because they had shifted to a diet that their metabolism wasn’t optimized for,” Thomas said. “When we shifted to agriculture from a dietary point of view, we made a morbidity-mortality tradeoff—more people were living, but they weren’t living at their optimal health status.”

The negative effects were so pronounced that writer Jared Diamond called the switch to agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” With modern medicine and a better understanding of our biology and nutrition, humans today have figured out how reverse some of the detrimental effects that farming has had on our bodies. But some conditions, including autoimmune disorders and decay of our bones and teeth, continue to affect us thousands of years after these changes first appeared in our species. As researchers like Thomas continue to analyze the remnants of early farmers and their genetic information, our understanding of how and why these changes occurred is constantly improving.

Here are some of the changes that happened in human bodies after the agricultural revolution.

1. Farmers had worse teeth than hunter-gatherers

They had food that was easier to eat and more time to eat it at their leisure, so farmers developed smaller jaws than hunter-gatherers. This led to dental issues like malocclusion, or dental crowding, according to a study published earlier this month in the journal PLOS One. Also, farmers ate more starchy and sugary foods, which led to a higher frequency of cavities and tooth decay.

2. Farmers had weaker bones

Researchers still don’t agree on the cause behind farmers’ weaker, thinner bones. Some think it’s because of a shift in diet, others blame a change in the amount of physical activity. Whatever the cause, lighter bones made a lot of sense for our early farming ancestors: “Being robust is nutritionally expensive; if your bones are big it takes a lot of energy to carry that around,” Thomas said. But we still feel the effect today when we break bones or suffer from osteoporosis.

3. Farmers were of smaller stature

Though farmers had more reliable access to food than did hunter-gatherers, their diets were much less diverse and relied more on starches than on meat and vitamin-rich leafy plants. More limited nutrition meant that farmers didn’t grow as tall or as strong as hunter-gatherers. One 2003 study noted that human stature didn’t return to pre-agricultural levels until the end of the 19th century, when we understood what it takes to have a balanced diet.

4. Farmers were more prone to disease

Hunter-gatherers lived spread out across the landscape, moving often as they looked for food. Since they didn’t see other people very often, they rarely passed diseases from one to another; they would only get sick from infections like sepsis or from parasites. But farmers lived closer together, which meant that communicable diseases ran rampant. If farmers didn’t get sick from other people, they got sick from animals; using the first domesticated animals as pets and livestock, humans were living around animals more then ever, unaware of the fact that 70 percent of the world’s communicable diseases come from them.

5. Farmers were milk-drinkers

Today, about one third of the adults in the world have a handy mutation that allows them to drink milk comfortably. Without that mutation, people aren’t able to digest lactase, the sugar in milk, after age five; if they try, they can have severe gastrointestinal discomfort. There are lots of hypotheses for how milk helped early farmers, from staving off disease, or starvation, or dehydration, to aiding fertility. But, just based on the number of people that have the mutation, there’s no question that it helped them survive.

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The Battle of Iwo Jima kicked off 70 years ago, on Feb. 19, 1945.

One of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific theatre of World War II, the 35-day fight for the desolate island yielded 27 recipients of the Medal of Honor, along with one of the most famous photographs ever taken.

According to the The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, American military planners thought the battle would only be a few days. Instead, it dragged on for five weeks, at a cost of more than 6,800 American lives. The Japanese lost more than 18,000.

Here’s what the Marine Corps Historical Company wrote about the first day:

This Day in Marine Corps History. 19 February 1945: At 08:59, one minute ahead of schedule, the first of an eventual 30,000 Marines of the 3rd Marine Division, the 4th Marine Division, and the new 5th Marine Division, making up the V Amphibious Corps, landed on Iwo Jima The initial wave did not come under Japanese fire for some time, as General Kuribayashi’s plan was to wait until the beach was full of the Marines and their equipment. By the evening, the mountain had been cut off from the rest of the island, and 30,000 Marines had landed. About 40,000 more would follow.

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AND: The Most Iconic Photo Of World War II Is A Reminder Of How Deadly The Battle Of Iwo Jima Really Was

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“Never fear your enemy but always respect them.” — Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone

Seventy years ago, on February 19, Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone was killed in action during the battle of Iwo Jima and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for heroism — making him the first and only enlisted Marine to receive the Medal of Honor as well as the Navy Cross during World War II.

Every Marine who came after Basilone knows his name and his story. He was a former soldier who joined the Corps because the Army “wasn’t tough enough” and rose to fame during the battle of Guadalcanal, when he ran ammunition along the lines to beleaguered and cut-off Marines.

At points during Guadalcanal, Basilone hefted a Browning machine gun and fired from the hip — sustaining third-degree burns on both hands from using the weapon without protective gloves.

He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his extraordinary heroism on October 24, 1942, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines for his extreme heroism and sacrifice during the battle of Guadalcanal .

“While the enemy was hammering at the Marines’ defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machine guns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault,” reads the Medal of Honor citation. “In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone’s sections, with its guncrews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on.”

“Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived. A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment. His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of the US Naval Service.”

On February 19, 1945 Basilone was killed while serving as the Leader of a Machine-Gun section of the 27th Marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. For his bravery, outstanding leadership, and self-sacrifice Basilone was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross in September 1945.

Nearly three quarters of a century later, John Basilone’s example continues to inspire the Marines who follow after him.

SEE ALSO: 2 US military veterans explain why they joined an anti-ISIS militia in Iraq

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NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

Charles Darwin said humans descended from monkeys.

Darwin coined the term "survival of the fittest."

Darwin was the first person to theorize evolution as the origin of species.

Darwin did not believe in God.

Darwin played shortstop for the New York Yankees.

These are just few of the common myths that are associated with Charles Darwin. (Well, maybe not playing for the Yankees.)

But, as with the Yankees myth we just created, the rest are also all false.

Here is the truth about a few of the Darwin myths so prevalently repeated.

Myth #1. Charles Darwin said humans descended from monkeys.

The common mocking rhetorical question related to this one is "If evolution says we descended from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?"

In Charles Darwin’s 1871 science-altering book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, the great naturalist and scientist mused on his theory of evolution.

While he attempted to draw connecting lines between humans, monkeys, apes, he never explicitly said that humans descended from monkeys. Instead, he referred back to On the Origin of Species, in which he said,

Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to believe that all animals and plants have descended from one prototype. But analogy would be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, their laws of growth and reproduction.

Darwin’s main musing here was that all living things perhaps descended from one thing, including humans and monkeys. More to the point, he believed that humans and monkeys came from a common ancestor, with humans and monkeys having something more akin to a cousin relationship, than a parent/child one.

All that being said, we now know that humans are more directly related to apes. In fact, humans and apes have more common, gene pool-wise, than monkeys and apes.

Myth #2. Darwin was an unknown scientist before On the Origin of Species.

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species struck a chord when it was released in late 1859. But prior to that, he was already well respected in the scientific community.

Peers described him as an "accomplished naturalist" (from Andrew Murray’s 1860 review of the book) and "ANY contribution to our Natural History literature from the pen of Mr. C. Darwin is certain to command attention" (Samuel Wilberforce, 1860). There’s a reason all 1,250 copies of the first print of On the Origin of Species sold the first day.

It was as early as 1836 that Darwin started getting attention for his work when his mentor, John Stevens Henslow, started telling others of Darwin’s studies.

Darwin wrote many books and pamphlets prior to On the Origin of Species, including Journals and Remarks published in 1839 (basically a memoir about his Beagle travels) and The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (a much more narrow writing about coral reefs).

While they weren’t as highly read nor as revolutionary as his more well-known works, they were thought of as scientifically significant within the community and helped establish his reputation.

Myth #3. Darwin was the first to publish a book about evolution.

Despite the common misconception that Darwin is solely responsible for discovering evolution, that is not the case. The idea of evolutionary biology was not by any means a new one, with theories that touch on evolution going all the way back to at least the 7th century BC.

Much more recently, in the early 19th century, there was a very popular theory of evolution proposed by Catholic scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

However, Darwin took a slightly different approach than Lamarck, suggesting that entirely different species could share a common ancestor, a so-called branching model, rather than a "ladder" model that was so popular in some scientific circles before.

In another example, fifteen years prior to Darwin’s published work, building somewhat on Lamarck’s work, there was Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Published in 1844 originally anonymously, it talked of ideas like "stellar evolution"– that stars change over time – and "transmutation," that species change from one form to another.

Later, Darwin would cite Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in the first edition of On the Origin of Species, then again in the sixth edition, when he praised the book for its forward thinking,

In my opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views.

Myth #4. Scientists across the world largely dismissed Darwin’s theories initially.

Sure, some did not agree with Darwin’s theories, including Charles Hodge who was among the first to associate Darwinism with atheism, "If a man says he is a Darwinian, many understand him to avow himself virtually an atheist; while another understands him as saying that he adopts some harmless form of the doctrine of evolution. This is a great evil."

But many praised, agreed, and admired Darwin and his findings, as exemplified by this glowing statement (from Wilberforce), "a beautiful illustration of the wonderful interdependence of nature—of the golden chain of unsuspected relations which bind together all the mighty web which stretches from end to end of this full and most diversified earth."

Additionally, this anonymous review appeared on Christmas Eve 1859 in the Saturday Review, "When we say that the conclusions announced by Mr. Darwin are such as, if established, would cause a complete revolution in the fundamental doctrines of natural history."

Myth #5. Darwin coined the term "survival of the fittest."

During this era of Victorian scientific study, nothing was written, studied, or read in a vacuum. This was certainly the case when Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," which he did after reading Darwin’s thoughts on evolution. Freely admitting that this was based on Darwin’s theories, he wrote in his 1861 book Principles of Biology, "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr Darwin has called natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."

Returning the favor, Darwin gives credit to Spencer for providing a much more "accurate" and "convenient" phrase to his own principles, writing in the sixth 1872 edition of On the Origin of Species,

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

Myth #6. Darwin was an atheist.

Confronted with these questions while he was still living, he passionately denied being an atheist in correspondence, letters, and even his own autobiography. Instead, he said, "I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. – I think that generally … an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."

As a scientist, he was smart enough to know not to draw conclusions when the data was lacking. In that same letter, he also admits that his "judgement fluctuates." Even one of the greatest scientists in history was flummoxed by the question of God and a greater presence.

There is also a myth out there that he recanted evolution on his deathbed and "returned" to Christianity. This is not true and, beyond creating a dichotomy where one didn’t necessarily exist in Darwin’s mind, has been denied several times by Darwin’s descendants. To Darwin, religion and evolution weren’t mutually exclusive. This brings us to our final myth.

Myth #7: From the beginning, it has been almost universally evolution vs. creation.

While certainly the likes of the Church of England and certain other religious groups had issues with Darwin’s theories, largely centered around the timetables involved (millions of years, rather than less than about 6,000 years), this type of religious contention was hardly the norm initially, with the "creation vs. evolution" battle being more of a relatively modern widespread phenomenon.

(This is similar to the relatively recent Big Bang vs. Christianity battle, when in truth it was a Catholic priest, and probably the greatest scientist of the 20th century you’ve never heard of, who came up with the theory that would evolve into the Big Bang. Ironically, it was initially rejected out of hand by many scientists precisely because it seemed to correlate strongly with Christian views of the origin of the universe.

Many scientists accused the priest in question of allowing his religious views to cloud his scientific judgement, despite that his ideas were backed by a whole lot of mathematical and scientific evidence, resulting in Albert Einstein declaring, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I ever listened," after hearing the priest’s lecture on the topic.)

Back to evolution, in truth, many among the clergy saw no problems with Origins of the Species, and the debate among various branches of Christianity over the idea of evolution often mirrored the types of debate going on in secular circles.

Some major Christian groups even simply abstained from taking an official stance — this was something for science to figure out if there was validity in the theories, as it didn’t inherently contradict many religious views.

For instance, the Catholic church never banned the work, unlike so many other works they felt even hinted at going against established Catholic doctrine. (See: Galileo and Why He was Convicted of Heresy)

More recently, many popes have discussed the topic, including Pope Pius XII who stated that there was no conflict between evolution and Catholicism. Even more recent than that, Pope Francis noted in 2014:

[God] created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and to arrive and their fullness of being. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time at which he assured them of his continuous presence, giving being to every reality. And so creation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the creator who gives being to all things… The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.

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SEE ALSO: Almost a third of Americans think the jury is still out on evolution

AND: A Valuable New Book Explores The Potential Impacts Of Intelligent Machines On Human Life

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NOW WATCH: Amazing Video Of Japanese Monkeys Having A Spa Day In The Wild

The raising of the US flag atop Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima 70 years ago is perhaps the most iconic image of World War Two.

No other picture so succinctly and evocatively captures the triumph of the Allied forces, while also highlighting the critical role that US troops played in the Pacific. The picture has also become one of the enduring symbols of the US Marine Corps.

Joe Rosenthal, at the time an unknown Associated Press photographer, is the man behind the photo. Although it was technically the second flag raising on Iwo Jima, which shows five Marines and a Navy Corpsman, it is no less important. The first flag planted was replaced, as it was too small to be seen from the coast.

Rosenthal, in an attempt to position himself properly for the shot, almost actually missed the flag raising. In a desperate attempt to capture the scene, Rosenthal shot the image without the use of his viewfinder. His gut instinct certainly hit the mar. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his image.

Almost immediately, though, the overall quality of the framing led to accusations that Rosenthal had framed the picture.

This controversy still remains. Fortunately, an official video of the flag raising by a Marine photographer shows that the events transpired naturally, and exactly as Rosenthal had claimed.

Rosenthal's photo has gone on to become a deeply ingrained cultural image for America. The US Marine Corps War Memorial, in Arlington, Virginia, is modeled after this photo. President Franklin D. Roosevelt also used the image to promote war bonds at the end of the war, and it was featured on stamps.

It's important to note that while the image evoked a feeling of American victory, it was shot only five days into the Iwo Jima campaign. The battle went on for many more weeks, and three of the Marines who raised the flag were later killed in action.

Although Rosenthal's image has become synonymous with the courage of the Marines, many still debate the value of invading Iwo Jima.

The battle was particularly bloody and was the only battle in which the US Marine Corps suffered more casualties than the Japanese Army. The Japanese were well entrenched on the island when the US decided to invade. Iwo Jima is also a mountainous island, and its topography proved extremely difficult for US troops.

Once taken though, Iwo Jima proved of significant tactical importance as the US military pursued its strategy of "island hopping" to the Japanese mainland. For pushing the US deeper into Japan's Pacific holdings, the military command decided that the 26,000 American casualties was worth the island.

Both the cost and the accomplishment of the campaign is forever immortalized in Rosenthal's photograph.

SEE ALSO: The most iconic photo of World War II is also a reminder of how deadly the battle of Iwo Jima was

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NOW WATCH: This 26-year-old from Baltimore took a 35,000-mile road trip and ended up fighting in the Libyan revolution

Even world-changing leaders need to rest. 

Some, like Thomas Edison, hated that fact. He thought sleep was a waste of time and did as little of it as possible.

Others, like Winston Churchill, loved to sleep. He credits his success in leading Britain through World War II to the naps he took. 

To see the sleeping habits of other great leaders, check out the below infographic, care of Big Brand Beds UK. 

SEE ALSO: Take Our 21-Day Program For Radical Self-Improvement

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NOW WATCH: This incredible animation breaks down how Alzheimer's affects the brain over time

Most companies live between 40 and 50 years. 

So there must be something about the businesses that have persisted for 300, 500, or 1,300 years.

When we doveinto the data on the world's oldest companies, a few themes became clear — like that people have wanted to eat food, get drunk, learn things, and maybe kill each other once in a while for a really long time. 

Here's a list of companies with timelines that dwarf that of the U.S. itself, because startups have lots to learn from their elders.

705 — Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Yamanashi, Japan

The hot spring hotel has been in operation since 705, making it the oldest running hotel in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The inn has been run by the same family for 52 generations, according to Japan Page, the English-language expat site. The secret to its success is a sense of inter-generational pride, the report says: 

... There are even some staff whose families have held the same post for generations, passing it from parent to child to grandchild. All the same, the staff are committed and courteous, earning wages for themselves and their families. They put their all into offering a spirit of service that stems from a shared desire to protect the inn. This unflagging commitment and hospitality is drawing attention from the hotel industries worldwide.

In management-speak, we call that alignment. Generations of it. 

803 — Stiftskeller St. Peter in Salzburg, Austria

This restaurant inside St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg, Austria, may be the oldest continuously running restaurant in Europe, and perhaps the world. 

Its reputation precedes it. The classy dining spot was written about by Alcuin, a follower of the world-conquering emperor Charlemagne back in 803. According to Atlas Obscura, "the restaurant has also been host to countless dignitaries over its 1,200-year history, including cardinals, kings, and in more modern times Bill Clinton and Clint Eastwood."

900 — Sean's Bar in Athlone, Ireland

Sean's Bar is one of the oldest bars in Ireland and also in Europe. Fun fact: Excavations have revealed mugs and coins from centuries of carousing. 

The secret of its success? Location, location, location From the bar's site: 

... Sean's Bar is located in the very heart of Ireland, on the banks of the beautiful River Shannon at its intersection with the Esker Riada - the ancient route carved by glaciers that allowed travelers safe passage across the bog for thousands of years. You can find us just next to Athlone Castle, a 12th century Norman Castle whose residents may have frequented the pub!

Just days after finalizing an agreement to train a new rebel force inside Turkey to attack the Islamic State, Turkish forces moved into Syria to evacuate some 40 soldiers protecting the Suleyman Shah Tomb: a small Turkish enclave on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river, 30 kilometers from the Turkish border town of Karkamis.

The operation included 39 tanks, 57 armored vehicles, and an estimated 572 military personnel.

The soldiers removed the body of Suleyman Shah and transported his remains to an area just opposite the Turkish town of Esmeler.

#SuleymanShahtomb relocated twice in history. New location of the Tomb: Eshme village in #Syria#Turkeypic.twitter.com/eCeMPdVLQO

— CNN Türk ENG (@CNNTURK_ENG) February 22, 2015

The tomb lies on the M4 highway that runs West-East from the coastal city of Latakia across northern Syria to the Yaroubia border crossing with Iraq, via Aleppo.

The highway serves as a main artery across the northern central part of Syria, and is a key supply route for anybody wishing to move supplies and personnel quickly back and forward across the country, in this instance between ISIS’ nominal capital Raqqa and the outskirts of Aleppo.

The road was frequently in use by ISIS particularly for those units travelling between the town of Manbij and Raqqa.

Indeed the rationale for the string of ISIS offensives launched against the Kurdish city of Kobane in 2014 (quite apart from their hatred of the PYD/YPG’s socialist ideology) was to protect this particular highway and afford ISIS logistical resilience and strategic depth for the main arteries running between its major population centres.

But it begs the question: If ISIS was able to pass by the Tomb on a daily basis, why did the Turks not already consider the site to be under such threat that it needed to be forcibly evacuated? These points of interest should be considered:

• Something has changed: Since the rise of the Islamic State, Ankara has sought to tie the group’s defeat to that of regime change in Damascus. Ankara argues that the Islamic State is a symptom of Assad’s brutality, and should be dealt with as part of a broader military campaign to force the Syrian dictator from power. Ankara’s efforts to convince the coalition to widen its current air offensive have failed and Turkey recently reached an agreement with the United States to train a small group of rebels to fight ISIS. The introduction of these forces risks embroiling Turkey in a direct offensive against the ISIS, a policy it had hitherto avoided.

•  Given the intensity of the fighting in Kobane, the security environment around the tomb was simply too hostile for the Turks to attempt a rescue. The Turkish soldiers were in effect trapped inside the tomb complex for months, with the resupply by air complicated by MANPADS concerns and the overland route blocked by ISIS forces. ISIS just chose not to fight with them out of a desire to avoid opening up another front, this time against a nation state which it knew it could not defeat.

ISIS (Daesh) trying to shoot down US A-10s north of Mosul with Strela MANPADS pic.twitter.com/xObE7qR5cq

— Jeff Gauvin (@JeffersonObama) January 16, 2015

• Similarly, ISIS feared that any engagement with Turkish forces could prompt Ankara to take further steps to impede the flow of fighters and cross border trade, both of which ISIS relies on to sustain its war in northern Syria and throughout Iraq.

• The collapse of the ISIS offensive against Kobane and the subsequent advances made by the YPG and allied FSA groups towards the towns of Tel Abyad and Jarablus have been the major catalyst in bringing about a strategic shift for both ISIS and Turkey. In the absence of any strategic depth for its main supply corridor ISIS is likely to act in a less calculated fashion. No longer on the offensive, the Turks have calculated that ISIS may have little to lose. Either out of retribution, spite or simple petulance for the losses in the Kobane area the tomb becomes a legitimate target for withdrawing ISIS forces.

• The Suleyman Shah Tomb was a soft target liable to fall into the hands of either ISIS or the YPG, offering a point of leverage to blackmail Ankara, and so the Turks moved to evacuate it. Ankara has fears that Kurdish control of the area would strengthen the YPG’s hand and by extension the PKK.

• ISIS strength in the area appears to be on the decline, and a possible withdrawal from Manbij would be filled most likely by a coalition of FSA and YPG led groups who the Turks cannot trust to maintain previously existing no-targeting agreements.

• Relatedly, ISIS has a presence in Turkey. Its operatives continue to work with local Turks to facilitate the movement of fighters through the country and to sell oil and antiquities plundered. The coalition’s air attacks have decreased ISIS’ oil profits, thus increasing the group’s reliance on alternative means for financing. Turkey remains the main conduit for the group’s illicit trade. Consequently, the group has a number of cells operating inside Turkey, which could be used to carry out suicide attacks, should the tacit agreement with Ankara break down. Increasingly, there are signs that this is exactly what ISIS is planning.

Ankara cooperates with the Kurds — for now

First, the PYD (Democratic Union Party) have emerged as a powerful actor from this episode. That the Turks had to work with them to secure safe passage to the tomb shows a de facto recognition on Ankara’s part of the YPGs growing strength in North Central Syria.

This does not indicate an alliance of any sort between the two sides. Mutual mistrust after perceived Turkish inaction in Kobane is high, and growing social unrest in the Turkish Kurdish towns of Cizre and Amed (Diyarbakir) demonstrates that cooperation over the Suleyman Shah withdrawal is nothing more than a moment of mutual agreement in an otherwise deeply hostile relationship.

Against this backdrop, Qandil had expressed misgivings about the AKP-led negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, thus complicating the on-going efforts to reach a peace agreement between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Second, the PYD have chips to play. It was politically smart for the group to guarantee safe passage to the Turkish military. The PYD have sought to convince the Turkish state for some time now that they are not a threat to Ankara.

Turkey has quietly acquiesced to this approach, albeit after working for months to marginalize the group via its preferred Kurdish interlocutor, Massoud Barzani. Turkey’s actions would not have been possible without the Kurdish and coalition’s advance.

All the fuss about the rise of the PYD whom Ankara repeatedly calls a terrorist organisation seems to have been conveniently forgotten for the time being. Expediency trumps ideology it would seem.

Third, the operation shows just how far IS has been pushed back, after nearly over running the YPG in Kobane in early October.

The PYD and FSA allied elements have intermittently shelled the IS stronghold of Jarabulus for the past week; signalling that it is indeed now the Kurds and the coalition that is on the offensive, rather than IS.

Quite whether this has an effect on ISIS’ growing presence in Eastern Aleppo remains to be seen, but as with the Iraqi city of Mosul the weaknesses in ISIS’ overstretched supply lines are beginning to become apparent.

Fourth, the rift between Turkey and ISIS has grown to the point where Turkey feels its territory is directly threatened by the group. Turkey has been taking steps to stem the flow of illicit trade and human trafficking since February/March 2014. To be clear, these efforts could be augmented further.

But long gone are the days of Turkey actively facilitating the movement of weapons and fighters to all areas of Syria carte blanche.

An opening for Erdogan's right-wing opponents

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as he monitors the evacuation operation in #Syria#SuleymanShahTombpic.twitter.com/MvgcKGn0dW

— CNN Türk ENG (@CNNTURK_ENG) February 22, 2015

Turkey is polarized. The opposition has already criticized the action, saying things along the lines of "Erdogan will go down in history, Kobane stood, while Suleyman Shah fell."

"Tayyip Erdoğan, tarihe geçtin""Kobane değil Süleyman Şah düştü"http://t.co/6GlKuLq8kwpic.twitter.com/cS08FCKTji

— cumhuriyet.com.tr (@cumhuriyetgzt) February 22, 2015

Beyond this headline, the issue will have resonance for Turkey’s nationalist right, which has long prioritized the maintenance of the tomb in Syria.

Indeed, this political dynamic explains why Turkey moved the tomb to a location inside Syria (albeit just inside the officially demarcated border). The AKP is eager to protect its right-wing flank from any encroachment from the MHP: a political party with which the AKP shares a small percentage of its political base.

Far from fearing any encroachment from the political left (represented imperfectly by the CHP), the AKP has always feared the loss of small numbers to the MHP on its right.

Even a small loss of votes could have a large impact on the AKP’s overarching political goal: winning over 330 seats in the parliamentary election to allow for the rewriting of the constitution.

The political signalling thus far indicates that the AKP is targeting the far right with its imagery and rhetoric.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as he monitors the evacuation operation in #Syria#SuleymanShahTombpic.twitter.com/MvgcKGn0dW

— CNN Türk ENG (@CNNTURK_ENG) February 22, 2015

In short, the action may lead to criticism of the AKP, but much of that should be dismissed, in favor of a more pronounced focus on upcoming poll data indicating the popularity of the MHP.

With that said, the Kurds remains the kingmaker in Turkey and their decisions may well determine the AKP’s constitutional future. This requires watching closely how the Kurdish political movement responds to this incident and indeed whether it remains a politically salient issue after the media coverage subsides.

A changing approach to ISIS?

It is important to put this operation into perspective: Ankara launched a limited incursion to evacuate a tomb that had come under threat. The coalition, the Kurds, and the FSA did much of the heavy lifting. Turkey, however, has proven yet again that its role in the Syrian conflict must not be overlooked.

It has links to all the main actors operating in northern Syria and is able to generally get its way with most of them, albeit with the occasional disagreement.

The biggest change appears to be Ankara’s approach to ISIS. Since 2013, Turkey had treated ISIS as an irritant, rather than a major security threat, but the Suleyman Shah operation is the clearest sign to date that this approach is changing.

However, it is far too early to determine whether this will result in Turkey changing its approach to the coalition’s military operations.

All signs indicate that Turkey will not agree to increase its role in the coalition by opening up Incirlik Air Force base for armed strikes, or by allowing its planes to bomb ISIS directly.

Turkey’s role will remain limited to the train and equip, intelligence sharing, and border enforcement, rather than engaging ISIS from the air.

In fact one must consider that now that the potential embarrassment of an ISIS takeover of the Tomb has been avoided, Turkey will take a more relaxed stance to events south of its border, and it is unlikely that another Turkish military incursion will be repeated.

It is more likely that Turkey will continue with the policy it has pursued thus far: border defense at airports, increased military deployments along certain areas of the border, and the training of the new rebel brigade with US assistance.

This signals one key change: Turkey is now attacking ISIS through the use of proxies, which Ankara had previously rejected, in favor of focusing on Assad.

SEE ALSO: ISIS is closing in on a Turkish enclave in Syria, and Ankara is facing a huge dilemma

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NOW WATCH: Turkey's Latest Plan To Drain $3 Million A Day From ISIS Is Working

Last week, UK’s air defense was once again put to the test by two Russian strategic bombers that flew off Cornwall during a routine long-range patrol over northern Europe.

The two Bear H aircraft were intercepted and shadowed by two Royal Air Force Typhoons: a pretty standard practice since the Cold War, in the UK and the rest of Europe.

The following footage, shows the UK Quick Reaction Alert at work against possible Soviet threat 45 years ago.

At that time, the Royal Air Force interceptor was the mighty F-4 Phantom.

According to the user who uploaded the footage to YouTube, the video shows scenes shot RAF Wattisham, involving the Southern QRA.

A commenter says the footage comes from a RAF recruiting film titled “Intercept” which was filmed at several locations across the British Isles to cover the whole UK Air Defence System and RAF units that supported it.

Anyway, enjoy a few minutes of cool Phantom Phootage!

SEE ALSO: Listen to Russian strategic bombers speaking in code over UK airspace

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NOW WATCH: How To Land A Plane If The Pilot Has A Heart Attack

Even the most well-read people have a tendency to read the same books as everyone else.

"Classics" are classic for a reason, of course, and are certainly worth reading, but there's a wealth of knowledge to be gained from the titles that rarely appear on school reading lists.

Ryan Holiday, the author of "The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph," is a voracious reader. He's recommended over 1,000 books since launching his reading list newsletter in 2009.

Holiday shared his presentation on 24 great books spanning ancient philosophy, literary nonfiction, and forgotten literature that offer unique and valuable perspectives on life.

Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” of 25 February 1956 marked the full commencement of “de-Stalinization” in which Josef Stalin’s “Cult of the Individual” would be denounced and dismantled.

But it did more than that — rule of law was reinstated; subjective history corrected; paranoia and purges condemned; gulags emptied, and innocent party members rehabilitated.

The Cold War ended 25 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But another cult of personality has been established in Moscow surrounding Vladimir Putin.

Delivered to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s speech warned of the dangers to the Soviet state of the cult of personality and laid out a program to eradicate it, which makes it all the more ironic how applicable his words are when one looks at the state Putin has built around himself in Russia today.

The Secret Speech

Before a hall packed with party delegates from across the Soviet Union, Khrushchev made clear from the speech’s outset that the “founders” – Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin — were firmly against the cult of personality Stalin had developed; were believers in collective leadership of the party and state; discussed views rather than imposing them, and allowed the party apparatus to function as it was organized to. Stalin had not been for any of these things.

His rivals on the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union knew this better than anyone.

Khrushchev went on to describe in detail Stalin’s transgressions as a “grave abuse of power” and that “many prominent party leaders and rank-and-file party workers … fell victim to Stalin’s despotism” in a system that “rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven” which “actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one’s views known on this or that issue” and where “confessions were acquired through physical pressures against the accused.”

He announced: “Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.”

He then laid out what de-Stalinization would entail:

First…to condemn and to eradicate the cult of the individual as alien … and not consonant with the principles of party leadership and the norms of party life, and to fight inexorably all attempts at bringing back this practice in one form or another.

Secondly, to continue systematically and consistently … the main principle of collective leadership, characterized by the observation of the norms of party life described in the statutes of our party, and, finally, characterized by the wide practice of criticism and self-criticism.

Thirdly … to fight willfulness of individuals abusing their power. The evil caused by acts violating revolutionary Socialist legality which have accumulated during a long time as a result of the negative influence of the cult of the individual has to be completely corrected.

The Secret Speech made clear the Soviet leadership’s view that the Cult of Personality was inimical and was to be eradicated; that rule of law was to be restored; that collective leadership of the state by a functioning party apparatus was to be restored, and; that abuse of power was to end.

Soviet communist leaders recognized then the dangers to the functioning of a state — even in a non-democratic, non-capitalist system — of the building of an ego-maniacal dictatorship surrounding one man.

Khrushchev’s Warning for Russia

For many in Russia today, Vladimir Putin is Russia.

He holds the reins of presidential power tightly, passing them off to his pliant former-deputy Dmitry Medvedev for a few years to become Prime Minister, only to receive them back — a trick they can play for the rest of Putin’s natural life.

He has systematically oppressed individual political opponents to his rule, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny, as well as parties attempting to compete with his own United Russia Party in a rigged game laughably dubbed “managed democracy.”

He has brutally repressed criticism in the press, been accused of ordering the murder of muckraking journalist Anna Politikovskaya and the oppression of protest groups, such as the band Pussy Riot.

Russian state-owned media, such as ITAR-TASS, and state-controlled media, such as RT (formerly Russia Today) are solely propaganda tools for the Putin government.

Putin’s level of control of the Russian state is comparable to that which Josef Stalin held until his death in 1953.

It is no wonder Putin has made efforts to rehabilitate him as a respectable figure, pushing against his historical perception a murderous and paranoid dictator.

Putin’s popularity has soared since the annexation of Crimea during Russia’ continuing war in Ukraine.

Despite the “reset” of relations America has desperately sought under President Obama, Vladimir Putin has continued to pursue a strategy that restores Russian pride while consolidating his support and grip on power.

He has little interest in engaging with Western politics. The West has underestimated Putin, miscalculated his aims, and misunderstood his and Russia’s tolerance for the pain of criticisms and economic sanctions.

Russians are proud people and Putin has made them proud again. Russians are tough and do not lead what some would criticize as the “decadent Western consumerist lifestyle.”

They are better able to cope with the pains a broken economy brings because so many already lived through it under communism and its aftermath.

Research on economic sanctions by Daniel Drezner and Tara Maller, among others, shows, counter-intuitively, that they are ineffective, detrimental, and often have the effect of increasing nationalist feeling in the targeted state — the opposite of what they are designed to achieve.

Sanctions may have a negative effect on Putin’s coffers, but they also serve to reinforce the image he cultivates as a strong leader standing up to the West.

Despite these feelings of pride and solidarity over finally dragging the Western tiger by the tail following Cold War humiliation and loss of identity, the Russian people should take heed of Nikita Khrushchev’s warning about the dangers of the dictatorial Cult of Personality Vladimir Putin has built.

Democracy — particularly American democracy — came about as a response to the tyranny of dictatorial monarchy and its Constitution rejects it.

Ironically, the polar opposite and once arch-enemy of American democracy — Soviet Communism — recognized the same dangers to the functioning of its state and the life and liberty of its citizens. It is a common threat to domestic and international peace regardless of the system.

Putin may easily continue to embarrass a West that is so fixated on reaping its “peace dividend” and believing in the “End of History” that it is willing to have the wool pulled over its eyes by the plausible deniability that “little green men”, “rebels”, military exercises, and bald-faced denials provide.

However, if Putin makes a miscalculation and breaks the thin meniscus he purposefully continues to build at the rim of the Ukrainian glass, it will overflow.

Putin has thus far outmaneuvered and called the bluffs of American and European leaders — and they have made many weak excuses why letting him do so is for the greater good.

Yet, if a more resolved West does finally decide that a military solution actually is on the table, it is clear that the consequences would be more painful for the Russian people than anyone else. Fortunately for Russia, following a second dodgy Minsk ceasefire agreement, it seems the West is still willing to be fooled for a while longer.

The Russian people have long suffered for their rulers’ miscalculations. However, there is no need for them to do so again because of an imagined threat or infringement by the EU and NATO built by Putin’s propaganda machine.

The thought of the West creeping closer to Russia’s borders may haunt Putin and threaten his power, but it should not worry the Russian people themselves.

Despite his own feelings to the contrary, Putin is not Russia. The West, and America specifically, has extended its hand to the Kremlin, but only received rejection in return.

Russians should heed Khrushchev’s warning from the Secret Speech of 60 years ago and think carefully about the consequences of worshiping as members of Vladimir Putin’s Cult of Personality.

SEE ALSO: Lithuania is so worried about Russian aggression that it's brining back military conscription

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