This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
February 20, 2008
Joy Cabarrus Speakes was among the Robert R. Moton High School students who in 1951 walked out of the Farmville school to protest the facilities to which black students were relegated.
Children such as Speakes manned the front lines in the battle for school desegregation, in many cases unknowingly taking up the torch for a greater civil-rights movement in this country.
It's those youths who will be honored at Virginia's Civil Rights Memorial in Capitol Square, on the gr
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
February 20, 2008
Sam White's garage left a big impression on Hopewell Mayor Steven D. Taylor.
Taylor remembers the Civil War artifacts that made White's Chesterfield County home what he called a virtual museum. The garage was more like a Civil War ammo dump.
"He had a lot of ordnance in there. . . . I remember leaving his house thinking, 'I wouldn't want to be his neighbor,'" the mayor said yesterday.
White, 53, died Monday after a Civil War shell exploded outside
Source: AP
February 19, 2008
Police in Rome have recovered dozens of looted artifacts, including a fresco believed to have been stripped from an ancient Roman villa.
Police were investigating 31 people who allegedly operated in Italy and France as part of a European art trafficking ring, a police statement said Tuesday. No arrests have been made.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 20, 2008
Two letters written by Sir Winston Churchill to the dentist who made his false teeth, telling him that he had been nominated for a knighthood, are expected to fetch up to £1,400 at auction.
The letters were written in 1952 and 1954, when Sir Winston was in his third term as prime minister, to Sir Wilfred Fish, one of Britain's most outstanding dentists.
In one letter, Sir Winston, who was then 79, said: "I am very glad it fell to me to recommend you for a well-dese
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 20, 2008
The heroism of millions of Britain's First World War servicemen, from ordinary foot-soldiers to actors and future prime ministers, is disclosed on the internet for the first time from today.
The exploits of famous names such as Harold Macmillan and Anthony Eden, who would both survive the battlefield to lead their country, as well as Noel Coward and Harry Patch, the last remaining "Tommy", are among the stories published online.
The records of 5.5 million troo
Source: NYT
February 19, 2008
The BBC World Service, which started its scratchy shortwave transmissions to listeners cut off by “desert, snow and sea” 75 years ago, ended its last English-language shortwave services in Europe on Monday.
The British public broadcaster has been reducing its shortwave transmissions over the last seven years, eliminating services to North America and Australia in 2001 and South America in 2005. Last March, the BBC started reducing European transmissions, finally cutting off a trans
Source: Daily Mail
February 18, 2008
The British National Party has the UK's most visited political website, a study shows.
The far-Right group received 51 per cent of all hits to party sites last year - seven times more than the online pages run by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
It was also twice as popular as the Conservatives' main website.
The report, for the Centre for Policy Studies, claims the site has flourished because it allows visitors to leave messages and interact with one anot
Source: Spiegel Online
February 19, 2008
Has the Amber Room, the 18th-century chamber decoration the Nazis stole from the Soviet Union in World War II, finally been found? German treasure hunters say they may have solved the decades-old mystery.
Treasure hunters in Germany claim they have found hidden gold in an underground cavern that they are almost certain contains the Amber Room treasure, believed by some to have been stashed away by the Nazis in a secret mission in the dying days of World War II.
The disc
Source: AP
February 19, 2008
A World War II-era bomb exploded Tuesday at a construction site in the southeastern Czech Republic. One worker was injured, officials said.
The 220-pound bomb was set off by an excavator in the outskirts of Znojmo near the Austrian border, police spokesman Jan Krepela said. The worker operating the machine suffered light injuries, Krepela said.
[One worker received light injuries.]
Source: BBC
February 19, 2008
A copy of the warrant for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots has been saved for the UK.
The document has been acquired by the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace for £72,485, with the help of heritage bodies' donations.
It faced being taken overseas by a private buyer until the government put a block on its export last year.
The Catholic Queen was executed on 8 February 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire.
He
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 17, 2008
When the Princess Royal's son, Peter Phillips, marries his Canadian fiancee, Autumn Kelly, at St George's chapel in Windsor in May, he will give up any hope of being crowned king of England, Mandrake can disclose.
"Peter will renounce his place in the line of succession," says Canon Ivor Smith-Cameron, a former chaplain to the Queen. "Given that he has slipped down the line after the birth of Prince Edward's son, I'm sure that he is happy to agree to this."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 19, 2008
France is undergoing a major shift in the perception of the country's wartime collaboration with the Nazis, marked by a new television film focusing on the unsung heroes of the Resistance.
Historians say that after a period of overblown pride in wartime resistance, the French had swung in recent decades to a national sense of guilt over the country's submission to its German occupiers.
The docu-drama, La Résistance, shown on French television, focuses on little known, o
Source: Independent (UK)
February 19, 2008
Fresh evidence that the Iraq weapons dossier was "sexed up" emerged as the Government finally published the secret first draft of the document.
As expected, the earliest version of the document did not include the now notorious claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so.
The first draft made a series of lurid claims about the extent and danger of the Iraqi president's weapons arsenal. But those wer
Source: NYT
February 19, 2008
The Kennedy assassination — a defining moment in American history and a never-ending topic of debate among conspiracy theorists — re-entered the spotlight for a moment Monday, after the Dallas district attorney unveiled the contents of a safe that had been secret for more than 40 years.
Inside were clothing worn by Lee Harvey Oswald; a small, tooled leather holster belonging to his killer, Jack Ruby; and piles of typed, old crackling documents. But nothing that was likely to settle
Source: Independent (UK)
February 17, 2008
A year after the Romans packed up their shields in AD410 and left Britain to the mercy of the Anglo-Saxons, a scribe in Edessa, in what is modern day Turkey, was preparing a list of martyrs who had perished in defence of the relatively new Christian faith in Persia.
In a margin he dated the list November 411. Unfortunately for the martyrs, history forgot them. At some point, this page became detached from the book it belonged to. Since 1840, the volume has been one of the treasures
Source: National Geographic News
February 15, 2008
An unusual, well-preserved burial chamber that may contain the mummy of an ancient warrior has been discovered in a necropolis in Luxor.
Scientists opened the tomb—found in Dra Abul Naga, an ancient cemetery on Luxor's west bank—on Wednesday.
Source: Fox News
February 18, 2008
A suspect transcript of a conversation between John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald, are among the treasure trove of items found in an old safe at the Dallas County District Attorney's Office.
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins presented the items at a news conference Monday. Watkins says they were locked in a safe for nearly two decades and that investigators had made him aware of them after he took office in 2006.
Source: AFP
February 18, 2008
More than two million people have registered as descendants of Confucius, tripling the size of the celebrated Chinese philosopher's family tree, state media reported Monday.
The new list, which was last updated in 1930, has rocketed by more than 1.3 million, the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee (CGCC) said, according to a report in the China Daily.
The updated list, which includes overseas and female relatives for the first time, will be published next year to
Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz
February 17, 2008
A museum has been opened in Arras, France to commemorate the astonishing work of 450 New Zealanders who built a network of tunnels between Arras and the German front lines during World War 1.
The Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Mahara Okeroa, and the NZ Ambassador to France, Sarah Dennis, represented New Zealand at the opening ceremony in the weekend (Saturday evening, France local time).
Source: Guardian
February 15, 2008
A few days ago, the Associated Press reported that the small Israeli town of Kiryat Yam is suing Google for slander, after a Google Earth user "inserted a note on the map" saying that the town was built "on the location of Ghawarina", a Palestinian village destroyed in 1948.
A town official said this was impossible, as Kiryat Yam was founded in 1945, while Google emphasised that their service "depends on user-generated content that reflects what people contr
