The story of how a B.C. man found his birth mother
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. have discovered the first evidence that European victims of the Black Death were buried with care in individual graves and not only in mass gravesites.
The Black Death, caused by the Bubonic plague pandemic, devastated Europe in the mid-14th century and killed between 40 to 60 per cent of the population. The plague continued to strike over several centuries.
Bubonic plague symptoms include fever, fatigue, shivering, vomiting, pain in the limbs and swollen lymph nodes, usually in the groin or armpits.
The plague killed so rapidly that it left no visible traces on the skeleton, so archaeologists have previously been unable to identify plague victims unless they were buried in mass graves, according to a release.
Researchers from the “After the Plague” project from the University of Cambridge, have been studying the DNA from teeth of individuals who died at the time and found the presence of Yersinia Pestis, the pathogen that causes plague, in the skeletal remains of people buried in individual graves at a parish cemetery in Cambridge.
"These individual burials show that even during plague outbreaks individual people were being buried with considerable care and attention,” said lead study author Craig Cessford of the University of Cambridge in the release. "This contrasts with the apocalyptic language used to describe the abandonment of this church in 1365 when it was reported that the church was partly ruinous and 'the bones of dead bodies are exposed to beasts'."
Researchers also found that some plague victims in Cambridge received mass burial, finding some in a large trench in the churchyard of St. Bene’t’s.
"Our work demonstrates that it is now possible to identify individuals who died from plague and received individual burials,” Cressford said. “This greatly improves our understanding of the plague and shows that even in incredibly traumatic times during past pandemics people tried very hard to bury the deceased with as much care as possible."
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
AI tools can offer recommendations, answer questions and 'talk' with users. But some users are using them to recreate the likeness of the dead.
The Israel-Hamas war has led to a spike in 'violent rhetoric' from 'extremist actors' that could prompt some in Canada to turn to violence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns.
A Montreal man is warning Tesla drivers about using the Smart Summon feature after his vehicle hit another in a parking lot.
Italy's mafia rarely dirties its hands with blood these days. Extortion rackets have gone out of fashion and murders are largely frowned upon by the godfathers.
A potential strike between WestJet and its mechanics union appears to have been avoided.
Prosecutors in Donald Trump's hush money trial are moving deeper into his orbit following an inside-the-room account about the former president's reaction to a politically damaging recording that surfaced in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine and Moscow warned that tensions with the West are deepening.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.