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16th Century Treasure Trove Found on Danish island

Denmark's National Museum has announced on Thursday a major treasure trove of 16th century coins on the small island of Moen in the southeast of the country.

"This is a find of exciting proportions," National Museum Numismatist Michael Maercher said in a video interview posted on the museum website from the Moen site.

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Renaissance Doors of Florence Baptistry Finally Open After 27-Year Restoration

The Renaissance bronze and gold doors of the Florence Baptistry -- a masterpiece known as the "Gates of Paradise" -- will be unveiled in September after a 27-year restoration, officials said on Thursday.

Culture Minister Lorenzo Ornaghi made the long-awaited announcement, saying the priceless doors now restored to their former glory will be displayed in the Florence Cathedral museum and not hang in their former place in the baptistery.

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Doctor’s Notes to Save Dying Lincoln Rediscovered

A doctor's account of his frantic efforts to save the life of a fatally wounded president Abraham Lincoln has been rediscovered in the United States, after being lost to history for 150 years.

On April 14, 1865, Charles Leale happened to be in the same Washington theater as the U.S. president, watching the play "My American Cousin," when he heard a gunshot and saw a man leap onto the stage.

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Hemingway Haunt in Madrid Threatened With Closure

Once a haunt of the greats from Ernest Hemingway to Salvador Dali and Hollywood beauty Eva Gardner, Madrid's famous Cafe Gijon may be nearing the end of its 120-year history.

Shaded under the tall trees of the Spanish capital's Paseo de Recoletos Boulevard, the cafe's outside tables have lured artists, writers and actors since 1888.

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Warsaw Stadium Adds New Threat to Historic Area

The National Stadium in Poland, built for the 2012 European Championship, rises in the shape of a wicker basket over one of Warsaw's most popular neighborhoods: Saska Kepa, an enclave of towering trees and architectural gems dating back to the 1920s.

To some, the colossal stadium — with a retractable fiberglass roof and a shimmery red-and-white facade in the colors of the national flag — is a source of pride, a symbol of a capitalist surge that has remade the country since it threw off communism in 1989.

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Auschwitz-Birkenau to Undergo Maintenance Work

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration camp where some 1.3 million people were killed, will undergo major maintenance work paid for by donors from nearly 20 countries, museum officials said Wednesday.

"Created three years ago as the first of its kind worldwide, the funding instrument for maintenance work is beginning to bear fruit," Piotr Cywinski, director of the museum located in Oswiecim, southern Poland, said in a statement.

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Spanish Poet Lorca Remembered in New York Tour

The niece of legendary Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca could not contain her tears as she traced the steps of Lorca's brief, but influential New York stay on the 114th anniversary of his birth.

"It's very emotional. In some ways this closes a circle," Laura Garcia Lorca told Agence France Presse late Tuesday as she paid homage to her famous uncle, a trailblazing poet who lived in New York between 1929 and 1930, before returning to Spain, where he was killed in the first days of the civil war in August 1936.

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'Global Art Show' Documenta to Open in Germany

Documenta, one of the world's biggest contemporary art fairs, will open to the public Saturday in this central German city, accompanied by events in Afghanistan, Egypt and Canada.

The 13th edition of the event, held every five years, will present the work of nearly 300 people from around 55 countries -- only about half of them "artists" in the conventional sense, organizers said.

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English Translation of Medieval Islamic Document Reveals Dynamism of Islamic Debate

A new English translation of a debate between two celebrated figures of the medieval Islamic era who diverge on notions of prophecy, miracles and the origins of science helps to dispel the notion of Islam as a rigid, monolithic religion, the American University of Beirut said in a press release Wednesday.

Tarif Khalidi, Shaykh Zayid Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at AUB who translated Abu Hatim al-Razi: The Proofs of Prophecy, explains that debates were frequent in pre-modern Islamic culture though very few have survived, and fewer still at such length, the media release added.

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Cultural Life Slowly Resuming in Turkmenistan

With a production of Shakespeare's "Othello" and even an opera, cultural life in Turkmenistan is slowly coming back after grinding to a halt under the rule of eccentric despot Saparmurat Niyazov.

Niyazov, who died in 2006, notoriously ordered the closing of the Central Asian state's theatres in 2001 and now his successor Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is seeing to a very cautious relaxing of control.

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