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Combe Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, on the northern edge of the South Downs. It consists of an inner circuit of ditch and bank, incomplete where it meets a steep slope on its north side, and the remains of an outer circuit. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; their purpose is not known. The enclosure has been excavated twice: in 1949, by Reginald Musson; and in 1962, by Veronica Seton-Williams, who used it as a training opportunity for volunteers. Charcoal fragments from Musson's dig were later dated to between 3500 and 3300 BC. Musson also found a large quantity of Ebbsfleet ware pottery in one of the ditches. Seton-Williams found three polished stone axes deposited in another ditch, perhaps not long after it had been dug. The site is only 800 metres (870 yd) from Butts Brow, another Neolithic enclosure; both sites may have seen Neolithic activity at the same time. (Full article...)

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Shrine of St. Patrick's Bell

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In the news

Damage from the invasion of the Brazilian Congress

Supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro invade the National Congress (damage pictured), the Supreme Federal Court, and the Palácio do Planalto.
Michael Smith wins the PDC World Darts Championship.
Croatia adopts the euro and joins the Schengen Area.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI dies at the age of 95.
Brazilian footballer Pelé dies at the age of 82.

On this day

January 11: Prithvi Jayanti in Nepal

Byzantine coin depicting Theodora

1055 – Theodora Porphyrogenita (pictured) became the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire after the death of her brother-in-law Constantine IX Monomachos.
1787 – German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered two Uranian moons, later named Oberon and Titania by his son John.
1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Arkansas Post concluded with the Union Army capturing a fort from Confederate forces near the mouth of the Arkansas River.
1923 – Troops from France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr to force the Weimar Republic to pay reparations in the aftermath of World War I.
2013 – French special forces failed in an attempted rescue of a DGSE agent, who had been taken hostage in 2009 by al-Shabaab, in Bulo Marer, Somalia.

Domenico Ghirlandaio (d. 1494)
Bayard Taylor (b. 1825)
Peter Badcoe (b. 1934)

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Today's featured picture

The plate carrée projection is a map projection in which the horizontal coordinate is the longitude and the vertical coordinate is the latitude. The name derives from the French for "flat square". The plate carrée is a special case of the equirectangular projection, which has been in use since the earliest days of spherical cartography: the Roman mathematician Ptolemy attributed its invention to Marinus of Tyre, in around AD 100. This composite satellite image, titled "Blue Marble", was produced by NASA and shows Earth's land surface, shallow water and shaded topography.

Photograph credit: NASA

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