Football legend John Madden died unexpectedly Tuesday morning at the age of 85. When I heard the news, my mind flashed back to the early 1980s when I began covering the Oakland Raiders (now the Las Vegas Raiders) for The San Francisco Examiner. That was two years after Madden ended his decade coaching the team. All I knew of John Earl Madden back then was the guy on TV with the easy smile, jumbo-sized eyebrows and folksy ways. He was that cartoon character in the flesh yelling, "Boom!" out of nowhere during nationally televised NFL games. [Source]
After a difficult year, it would certainly be nice to find a stash of gold coins worth more than $300,000 in the walls of a house or a rare dish worth $1.7 million tucked away in a drawer.
The unexpected appearance of an alleged Chinese submarine in the Taiwan Strait this week has highlighted the dangers posed by the frequent presence of military vessels in the narrow waterway, which analysts warn could ultimately spark an unintended conflict.
Commercial genetic tests can unveil surprising details about your roots. My Chinese mother-in-law, born in Hong Kong, found out she was a quarter Irish. The test results even pinpointed the county from where her previously unknown Irish grandfather originated.
Since their discovery, the ancestry of hundreds of mummified bodies buried in boats in an inhospitable desert region of northwest China has puzzled and divided archaeologists.
