(AP) – Archaeologists in Norway announced Tuesday that they
have discovered an ancient artifact believed to be the oldest of
its kind with inscriptions dating back 2,000 years.

The runestone, a flat, brown sandstone block covered in
scribbles, is believed to contain some of the earliest words
recorded in Scandinavia, the Museum of Cultural History
in Oslo, Norway, told the Associated Press. Those words,
the museum noted, are “among the oldest runic inscriptions
ever found” while the artifact itself is believed to be “the
oldest datable runestone in the world.”

Researchers inspect a runestone found at Tyrifjorden,
Norway, on Jan. 12 at the Museum of Cultural History
in Oslo.

(FoxNews) – Two Civil War cannonballs have been discovered on a South 
Carolina beach in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.

A spokesman for the city of Folly Beach told Fox News that some seashell
hunters spotted a suspicious item in the area of the old Coast Guard Base
at the east end of the beach. “It was reported to us as potentially older
unexplored ordnance,” he explained via email. “As per our policy, we
notified the Charleston County EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] team
who also responded and assisted with notifying the military EOD team.”

The spokesman added,“It was determined to be a cannonball (one larger
8” shell and one 3” shell)… “We were advised the military EOD team will
handle disposing of the ordnance.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Titanic survivor’s walking stick, (above) with an
electric light she used to signal for help from a lifeboat, sold for $62,500 at
an auction of maritime items.

Guernsey’s held the auction at the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, Rhode Island, on Friday and Saturday. The top bid on Ella White’s
cane was $50,000, plus the surcharge added by the auction house.

Guernsey’s President Alan Ettinger had expected it to sell for far more, with
a pre-auction estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. He described it as one of the
most extraordinary items to have survived the sinking.

The walking stick was consigned to Guernsey’s by the Williams family in
Milford, Connecticut.

Guernsey President Alan Ettinger.

The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning of 15 April 1912 after
striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The ship was 
four days into the her maiden voyage from Southampton to
New York City. The largest ocean liner in service at the time,
Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board. 

On this day in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a
French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing
near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly
shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in 3 different scripts:
Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on
the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests
honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More
startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of
identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000
years.

The Rosetta Stone on display in The British Museum.

"Lithograph image depicting a group of scholars inspecting the
Rosetta Stone during the Second International Congress of
Orientalists, 1874.

Buzz Aldrin (Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.) became 89 in January.

(FoxNews) – A number of Apollo 11 artifacts that were owned by Buzz Aldrin
(above) will be up for auction at Sotheby’s later this month.

The Apollo 11 lunar module pilot has consigned 11 items for auction, which
include pages from the mission’s flown flight plan and flown data file. They
include a “Mission Rules Summary; from the Apollo 11 data file, which
details the steps to be followed following a spacecraft malfunction. The
sheet has a pre-sale estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.

The first and last pages of the flown Apollo 11 Flight Plan are also up for
auction. The first page, which begins with the words “LIFTOFF,” has a pre-
sale estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. The final page describes the activities
to be performed during the last 2 hours of the mission and has a pre-sale
estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. All of the sheets in the auction are signed
by Aldrin.