In Rome, art restorers have uncovered what they say are American Indians in the background of a 1494 fresco in the Vatican’s Borgia Apartments. Some commentary on the imperial-religious context is available here.

“Unity,” writes Ilan Stavas, “is the great elusive dream of Latin America, and Bolívar is its Don Quixote.” A review of Marie Arana’s new biography of El Libertador reflects on his contradictory legacy in Latin American politics.

The librarian of Lambeth Palace, the residence of the archbishop of Canterbury, has recovered 1,400 rare books that someone had stolen from the palace since the 1970s. The books include Theodor de Bry’s America and George Best’s True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discoverie, for the Finding of a Passage to Cathaya.

At Harvard, the Center for American Political Studies is digitizing 4,00o to 6,000 antislavery petitions from the Massachusetts State Archives. Completion is expected in the summer of 2015.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the History Channel is planning a miniseries about the Sons of Liberty, to be produced by Stephen David Entertainment.

Colonial Williamsburg is helping the Museum of the American Revolution build a replica of General Washington’s oval headquarters tent.

And the Telegraph, similarly, has undertaken the very important task of revealing what Henry VIII would have looked like on the cover of GQ.

Which brings us to this question: Is being an historian a real job? Katrina Gulliver thinks it’s important to have an answer.