The descendants of Martiros Muradyan cherish like religious relics the few objects he was able to carry with him when he fled the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces a century ago. 

The hand-made rugs and wooden spoons in their home in rural Armenia are the last physical reminders they possess of a life that was long ago torn apart. 

The Turin Shroud, one of Christianity's most celebrated and hotly-debated relics, went on display to the public on Sunday for the first time in five years.

More than one million people have already booked their slots to see the piece of linen that devotees believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ between now and June 24.

A replica of the French navy frigate Hermione which brought General Lafayette to America to rally rebels fighting Britain in the U.S. war of independence, will set sail for the United States again on Saturday, 235 years after the original crossing.

French President Francois Hollande is expected to be on hand to wish the ship and crew godspeed on the journey from France's Aix island to the U.S. east coast, a trip exciting sailing and history fans on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Catholic Church in the U.S. forked out $120 million to victims of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy and $30 million on pedophile prevention programs over 12 months, according to an annual report out Friday.

The bulk of the $150 million between June of 2013 and 2014 was spent on compensation, therapy and legal fees for victims, the report said, and the rest went to preventing the abuse from occurring, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

On the Tigris River waterfront where jihadists executed hundreds of captured Iraqi army recruits last year, bloodstains are gradually being covered by streaks of candle wax dripping down the quay.

A symbolic tombstone has been laid where Islamic State group fighters carried out their assembly-line slaughter, shooting the young mostly Shiite men in the head before tipping them into the river one by one.

A stage curtain believed to be the largest Pablo Picasso painting in North America is set to be displayed at a New York City museum.

Measuring 20 feet by 19 feet, "Le Tricorne" (luh TREE'-kohrn), or "The Three-Cornered Hat," was painted in 1919 for an avant-garde ballet troupe. It hung at the storied Four Seasons restaurant for 55 years.

Experts have discovered a World War II U.S. aircraft carrier that is "amazingly intact" despite languishing on the bottom of the Pacific for more than 60 years.

The ship is upright, listing only slightly and may even have an plane inside

Tearful survivors on Friday marked 40 years to the day since the Khmer Rouge marched on Phnom Penh, ending a civil war but heralding a terror that would kill a quarter of Cambodians and leave the capital a ghost town.

A few hundred people, including monks and elderly regime survivors, gathered early Friday at Choeung Ek -- the most notorious of the regime's "Killing Fields" -- on the capital's outskirts, burning incense and saying Buddhist prayers at a memorial stupa housing the skulls and bones of victims.

As armed groups in Syria and Iraq destroy priceless archaeological sites, European authorities and dealers are on high alert for smaller, looted artefacts put on sale to help finance the jihadists' war.

Stolen-art expert Chris Marinello, director of Art Recovery International, said he has been shown photographs of items being offered from Syria that were "clearly looted right out of the ground".

Israeli Jews stood in silence as sirens wailed across the country on Thursday marking Holocaust memorial day and 70 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

Traffic came to a halt and pedestrians stood at attention for two minutes as the sirens rang out.