The Secret History: Remains of Young Jamestown Settlement Girl Had Been Cannibalized

Reconstructed face of unidentified girl from Jamestown settlement.

Here's something you probably never read in any of your history books in school: Forensic scientists examining the remains of a teenaged girl discovered buried in the Jamestown settlement in Virginia have determined that her remains had been cannibalized!

The scientists from the Smithsonian Institute uncovered gruesome clues that the 14-year-old girl had been hacked at in much the same way a butcher would hack at the remains of a cow or pig. Many of the bones on her body had the unmistakable markings of being cut upon by a knife or axe.

Anthropologists and historians believe that the girl could have died during the famine of the winter of 1609 known as "The Starving Time" , an infamously harsh winter season that left only 60 of the 500 original colonists alive. Rumors of cannibalism during the Starving Time have existed over the centuries, but now the forensic scientists have offered conclusive proof that the colonists probably turned to eating human flesh in order to survive out of desperation.

The scientists believe that the girl died of natural causes, perhaps of starvation and/or disease, and that the cut marks upon her body were rendered postmortem.  The bones, the reconstruction of her head and the story were presented Wednesday at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The remains will now be displayed at the Archaearium, the museum at the Jamestown fort archaeological site in Virginia, starting this weekend. A sign at the room’s entrance warns tourists that human remains will be on view. There will be no depictions of bodies being butchered, cooked or consumed.

By the Rockets' Red Glare: NASA to Launch 5 Rockets from VIRGINIA?

Update: NASA has delayed the launch until Wednesday evening: (March 21)

NASA has announced plans to go ahead with a scheduled launch of five unmanned rockets into space on Sunday evening, after a four day delay. The launches will be conducted at the Wallops Flight Facility, located on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

The salvo of five rockets will be launched high into the atmosphere in quick succession, and the launches will be visible over a large area. The rockets will release chemical tracers at about 60 miles up into Earth's atmosphere, allowing NASA scientists to track  high-altitude winds that can top 300 mph.

The missiles' tracers will create luminous, milk-white clouds in the upper-atmosphere, which could be visible to sky watchers from South Carolina all the way up to parts of New England. Why NASA has decided to launch the missiles from Virginia, a location not noted for its missile launches, remains to be seen. News of the launch comes after reports of an anomalous change in earth's magnetic wind, coming from the opposite location than normal, began breaking on the Internet, leaving many to speculate about the existence of an approaching extra-solar system object.