Web project brings the Dead Sea Scrolls to life, and more

last updated 8 January 2015

Web project brings the Dead Sea Scrolls to life

You no longer have to be a scholar to pore over the ancient texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, thanks to an innovative Web project. Although the scrolls were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek some 2,000 years ago, visitors can now view them in English translation by hovering their computer cursors over digital scans of the text on the website of the Israel Museum. The parchment and animal-skin scrolls, discovered in 1947, contain the Book of Isaiah and details of God’s instructions to Moses.

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It’s taken over 200 years, but the family of William Clark has finally returned a canoe stolen from a Native American tribe by the legendary explorer and his partner Meriwether Lewis. The pair, who led the Corps of Discovery to the American West, stole a canoe from the Clatsop Indians—now part of the Chinook Nation—in the spring of 1806. Now, Clark’s descendants have paid for the construction of a replica canoe and given it to the Pacific Northwestern tribe as a gift of reparation. The canoe’s return is a “good place to begin healing,” said Ray Gardner, chairman of the Chinook Nation’s tribal council. “It’s nice to see a circle completed.”

China's American made chopsticks

A small town in Georgia has created a mini manufacturing boom in the unlikeliest of markets—selling chopsticks to China. The state’s poplar and sweet gum trees provide ideal wood for making the implements, so entrepreneurs have opened a factory in Americus to churn out up to 10 million of them a week. Georgia Chopsticks has already created 80 new jobs, and hopes to hire 70 more people soon. “There’s lessons in this,” said company director David Hughes. “Small-town America could be a manufacturing center for a lot of small to midsize companies.”