In 1783, Louis-Sbastian Lenormand climbed to the top of an observatory tower in Montpellier, France, leaned over the edge, and jumped. An astonished crowd watched as he fell to the ground with the aid of a new contraption called the parachute and landed unhurt. The legend of the daredevil building-hop continued Oct. 18 with the 29th annual Bridge Day in Fayetteville, West Virginia — the largest group BASE jumping event in the world. 383 people made the 876-foot ...

The Virginia colony had John Smith, Pocahontas, slavery, famine, battles and a great Indian chief. So how come Plymouth Rock gets all the press? An in-depth look at the place where our nation began to take shape They thought they were lost. The Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery had sailed from London on Dec. 20, 1606, carrying 144 passengers and crew, bound for Virginia. Howling winds pinned them to the coast of England for six weeks. After crossing ...

They called him by fanciful code names -- Top Hat, Bourbon, Donald, Roam -- and on the days when his latest cache of secrets would arrive at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a CIA officer says, "it was like Christmas." There was something for everyone. The names of four U.S. military officers working as spies for the Soviet Union. Hard evidence of Beijing's deepening animus toward Moscow, which President Nixon exploited to forge his 1972 opening to China. Technical data ...

There was nothing very special about the message that made Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel the most hated couple in cyberspace. It was a relatively straightforward advertisement offering the services of their husband-and-wife law firm to aliens interested in getting a green card -- proof of permanent-resident status in the U.S. The computer that sent the message was a perfectly ordinary one as well: an IBM-type PC parked in the spare bedroom of their ranch-style house in Scottsdale, Arizona. But ...

The west side of Killeen, Texas is like countless other places in America's heartland, freshly carved out of prairie pastures with wide streets in bucolic neighborhoods like "Sunflower Estates" and "Bridgewood." But on a glorious cloudless fall day, the flags at the home sales center nearby are at half mast in honor of the 13 fallen at Ft. Hood, victims of a gunman whose deadly attack was stopped thanks to a petite, long-haired blonde mom from the neigborhood. ...

Convicted Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection November 10, a Virginia corrections official said Tuesday.

The mother of a Virginia Tech junior who disappeared Saturday night during a Metallica concert says she helped her daughter choose an outfit for the show that same morning. Morgan Harrington, a 20-year-old education major, went to the concert at the University of Virginia's John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville with several girlfriends but disappeared from their sight around 8:40 p.m., according to police, who are calling it a missing person case. "She was excited about the concert and she ...

When the Army flew home the body of Spc. Stephan Mace from Afghanistan, his mother climbed aboard a small jet with the flag-draped coffin for the last leg of his trip. Vanessa Adelson would not let her 21-year-old son make his final journey home alone. "I brought him into this world, and he was my baby," she said. "I thought it was my responsibility as a mother to bring him home." Mace and seven other soldiers were killed ...

Gary McKinnon, the hacker who broke into Pentagon and NASA computers, was at risk of suicide Friday after losing an effort to fight extradition to the United States, his attorney said. "This is the wholesale destruction and bullying of a small individual by the United States and now our own government," attorney Karen Todner said in a statement. McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp described her son as "suicidal." The British government did not respond. McKinnon, a British citizen, has admitted breaking ...

Stephan Mace of the Army's 61st Cavalry Regiment knew the Taliban would be waiting for him when he returned to eastern Afghanistan in September. During a two-week leave in early September, the 21-year-old specialist sat on his father's couch in Winchester, Virginia, and discussed his concerns over Forward Operating Base Keating in Kamdesh District, a region known as a Taliban stronghold. "He talked about the village next to the base, that it had 300 Taliban, and they couldn't do anything ...