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Map of the Freston causewayed enclosure

Freston is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure at an archaeological site near the village of Freston in Suffolk, England. The Neolithic enclosure was first identified in 1969 from cropmarks in aerial photographs. At 8.55 hectares (21.1 acres), it is one of the largest causewayed enclosures in Britain, and would have required thousands of person-days to construct. The cropmarks show an enclosure with two circuits of ditches, and a palisade that ran between the two circuits. There is also evidence of a rectangular structure in the northeastern part of the site, which may be a Neolithic long house or an Anglo-Saxon hall. Excavation in 2019 indicated that the site was constructed in the mid–4th millennium BC. Other finds included oak charcoal fragments believed to come from the palisade, and evidence of a long ditch to the southeast that probably predated the enclosure, and which may have accompanied a long barrow, a form of Neolithic burial mound. The site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1976. (Full article...)

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In the news

David Lynch in 1990

American filmmaker David Lynch (pictured) dies at the age of 78.
South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol is arrested after his declaration of martial law.
Joseph Aoun is elected president of Lebanon after a two-year vacancy, and Nawaf Salam is nominated as prime minister.
An attack on the presidential palace in N'Djamena, Chad, results in 19 deaths.

On this day

January 18:

United Nations Memorial Cemetery

1871 – A number of previously independent states united to form the German Empire, with Wilhelm I as German Emperor.
1951 – Construction began in Busan, South Korea, on the United Nations Military Cemetery (pictured), the only United Nations cemetery in the world.
1956 – Navvab Safavi, an Iranian Shia cleric and the founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed with three of his followers for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.
1969 – Thousands of Japanese police stormed the University of Tokyo after six months of nationwide leftist university student protests and occupations.
1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Isabella Jagiellon (b. 1519)
Elena Arizmendi Mejía (b. 1884)
Philippe Starck (b. 1949)
Bruce Chatwin (d. 1989)

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Today's featured picture

Aucanquilcha is a large stratovolcano located in the Antofagasta Region of northern Chile, just west of the border with Bolivia and within the Alto Loa National Reserve. Part of the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, it takes the form of a ridge, with a maximum height of 6,176 metres (20,262 ft). The volcano is embedded in a larger cluster of volcanoes known as the Aucanquilcha cluster. This was formed in stages over 11 million years of activity with varying magma output, including lava domes and lava flows. Aucanquilcha was formed from four units that erupted between 1.04 and 0.23 million years ago. During the ice ages, both the principal Aucanquilcha complex and the other volcanoes of the cluster were subject to glaciation, resulting in the formation of moraines and cirques.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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