Underwater Archaeologists Excavate La Salle’s 300-year-old Ship
PORT O’CONNOR, Texas – The French explorer La Salle got lost. His ships sank. His own men deserted him, poisoned his food, and eventually shot him in the head. But during an incredible, if ill-fated, adventure in the New World, La Salle charted the Great Lakes, discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River and claimed half the American continent for his homeland. Now divers and archaeologists determined to pull the wreckage of La Salle’s ship, La Belle, from the murky waters of Matagorda Bay will attempt something that’s never been done before: They will move the mighty ocean out of the way…Parting the Waters

Smithsonian DNA Testing Kills a Legend
WASHINGTON — On the day they were going to kill him, Texas outlaw Wild Bill Longley, said to have murdered 32 people in his 27 years, joked with the hangman even as he was being strung up. For more than 100 years, some claimed the hanging was a hoax. Now scientists at the Smithsonian have settled the matter…DNA Kills a Legend- Wild Bill Longley

Transplant Series: Final Decisions
(stories from a multi-part series exploring human organ allocation )

• Questions Arise as Thousands Wait for Life-saving Transplants
  HOUSTON –It seemed like a good idea: Let a computer make the hard decision of who gets a transplant and who dies waiting for one. But more than a decade after the United Network for Organ Sharing won the federal contract to set up a distribution system for the country’s limited supply of organs, some are beginning to question the approach…Final Decisions- Day 1
• The Gift: He Needs a Kidney; I’m His Match
  (First-person story about donating a kidney to my brother)…Final Decisions- Kidney Transplant
• The Cost of a Life
  Almost everybody thought Rickey Jendry would be dead by now – the Medicare people he kept calling, the doctors he saw at four emergency rooms, the hospitals that turned him away instead of putting him in line for a heart transplant he couldn’t afford…Final Decisions- Cost
• Blizzard of Bills
  They thought the worst was over. Then the bills started coming…Final Decisions- Blizzard of Bills
  

Mission to Mars: Space Is ‘Cool’ Again
PASADENA, Calif. — Jennifer Harris was a 7-year-old farm girl living in Ohio when Viking landed on Mars 21 years ago. She doesn’t even remember it. But last week, Harris and her colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent their robotic explorers on a triumphant return to the Red Planet…Mission to Mars