By Peyton Knight A few years ago, Lee Ott was driving around his vegetable farm in Yuma,Ariz., when he spotted a crew of surveyors putting stakes in his land. "Istopped and asked them what was going on", he recalls.

STEPHENVILLE, Texas — In this farming community residents are abuzz over what many believe is a UFO. Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said:"I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it, I think it must be some kind of military craft, at least I hope it was."

Homer Noble Farm, a former Frost residence that's now a historic landmark, was ransacked late Friday night during a party attended by up to 50 people, Sgt. Lee Hodsden said Monday.

I just now realized that I have no desire to clean my house. Or shovel the new layer of snow from my shared driveway. Or start the chili for dinner. Right now, my son is playing with his new farm set and Amos Lee is singing “Colors seem to fade…” for our listening pleasure.

When Truman Capote was asked about his research for In Cold Blood, his 1966 masterpiece about the murders of a Kansas farm family, he liked to say, "Every word is true."

The History of Africa begins from the emergence of modern human beings to its current state as a politically developing continent.Africa's ancient historic period involves the rise of Egyptian civilization, the further development of societies outside the Nile River Valley and the interaction between them and civilizations outside of Africa. In the late 7th century North and East Africa were heavily influenced by the spread of Islam, leading to the appearance of new cultures such as those of the Swahili people. This also lead to an increase in the Arab slave trade that would culminate in the 19th century. Pre-colonial African history focuses on the time between the early 16th century with the forced transport of African peoples and cultures to the New World in the Atlantic slave trade up to the beginning of the European scramble for Africa. Africa's colonial period lasted from the late 1800s until the advent of African independence movements in 1951 when Libya became the first former colony to become independent. Modern African history has been rife with revolutions and wars as well as the growth of modern African economies and democratization across the continent.Long-standing prejudice against particularly black Africans has meant that until recently African history writing was largely dictated by Eurocentric or outright racist scholarship. African history has been a challenge for researchers due to the scarcity of written sources in large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and also because of conflicting opinions on what is and is not African. Scholarly techniques such as the recording of oral history, historical linguistics, archeology and genetics (to trace the movement of peoples) have been crucial to writing the history of many regions that in the past often have been dismissed as lacking a meaningful history altogether.