WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) – As online titans compete to
deliver instant maps to smartphones, the Library of Congress in
Washington is focusing attention on an antique “cosmology”
printed in 1507 that serves as America’s birth certificate.

The black-and-white map created by Martin Waldseemuller, a
French cleric, was the first time the name America had appeared
on any map.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A 70-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton from the Gobi Desert that was smuggled to the United States in pieces and auctioned for more than $1 million was returned on Monday by the U.S. government to Mongolia.

The huge Tyrannosaurus bataar’s skull was on display at a repatriation ceremony near the United Nations in New York, where officials of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) formally turned over the nearly complete skeleton to Mongolian officials.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Settlers at Virginia’s Jamestown Colony resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609, dismembering and consuming a 14-year-old English girl, the U.S. Smithsonian Institution reported on Wednesday.

This is the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas, according to the Washington-based museum and research complex.

WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) – Nine years after he placed
the first telephone call, Alexander Graham Bell tried another
experiment: he recorded his voice on a wax-covered cardboard
disc on April 15, 1885, and gave it an audio signature: “Hear my
voice – Alexander Graham Bell.”

The flimsy disc was silent for 138 years as part of the
Smithsonian Museum’s collection of early recorded sound, until
digital imaging, computer science, a hand-written transcript and
a bit of archival detective work confirmed it as the only known
recording of Bell’s voice.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Family members of the Newtown school shooting victims flew into Washington on Air Force One to press for gun-control legislation, but kept a low profile as they held private meetings with senators on Tuesday.

After coming to the capital aboard the presidential plane on Monday evening, the families had breakfast with Vice President Joe Biden. He said after the two-hour meeting, “I wish the members of Congress had been able to eavesdrop on the discussion in my home today.”

WASHINGTON, April 7 (Reuters) – To crack the code of the
human brain, Cori Bargmann figures it’s best to keep an open
mind.

As one of two leaders of a scientific “dream team” in the
initial phase of President Barack Obama’s ambitious $100 million
project to map the brain, Bargmann said the first step is to
find the right combination of people to set research priorities.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Washington is used to being the brunt of jokes, particularly those centered around the action, or lack of it, on Capitol Hill.

But on Tuesday, the focus moved to the Adams Morgan neighborhood, where some saw a symbol of Washington – a gaping sinkhole in the middle of a bustling sidewalk.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The sixth-grade class at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa, sent a message this week that was heard in the White House briefing room.

“The White House is our house,” the class said in a video posted on Facebook. “Please let us visit.”

WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) – The sixth-grade class at St.
Paul’s Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa, sent a message this
week that was heard in the White House briefing room.

“The White House is our house,” the class said in a video
posted on Facebook. “Please let us visit.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Thursday reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, the landmark 1994 law designed to curb domestic abuse in the United States.

At a packed signing ceremony at the Interior Department – the White House couldn’t accommodate all the advocates who supported the measure, the president said – Obama signed an expanded version of the law that extends protection to gays, immigrants, Native Americans and sex-trafficking victims.