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: History Today
November 12, 2007
Three Qing vases have been pieced together and are back on public display after they were toppled by a museum visitor last year. The 17th-century porcelain was left in hundreds of pieces after a visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge accidentally fell into the antiques in January 2006. One of the items (in 113 fragments) had already been glued together by restorer Penny Bendall and the remaining two have now gone on show – behind a specially designed glass case. The repair work cost up t
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 12, 2007
What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans' earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.
The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago.
Source: Salina Journal
November 13, 2007
At times, Barry Landau feels like a real-life Forrest Gump.
Like the fictional Gump, a man who found himself blending into the major historical events of the late 20th century, Landau has been on the periphery of history since he was a small boy.
In 1958, Landau, then 10, met President Eisenhower and was invited to the White House for milk and cookies. At 18, he became a White House intern, helping plan state dinners and other social events for the Lyndon Johnson presid
Source: http://www.indystar.com
November 11, 2007
Just a dull list of kings and dates? No relevance to problems of today? Think again.
Try some unfamiliar work by two of the best novelists of the 1800s: Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. They tell the tale -- facts not fiction -- of complex plots by Mary Queen of Scots, and of the little dog who hid beneath her skirts as she waited for the executioner's ax. Queen Elizabeth I of England convened the court that condemned Mary, who had long been her prisoner, for trying to take Elizabet
Source: Reuters
November 11, 2007
Flanked by bustling cafes in downtown Recife on Brazil's northeastern coast is a little-known treasure of Jewish history in the New World -- the oldest synagogue in the Americas.
Sephardic Jews built the two-story Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue before 1641 -- most likely in 1636 -- when they enjoyed religious freedom under the Dutch, who ruled part of the northeast region from 1630 to 1654 to control sugar production.
The Mikve Israel Congregation in Curacao, a Dutch Antill
Source: Reuters
November 13, 2007
Researchers unveiled a 10-million-year-old jaw bone on Tuesday they believe belonged to a new species of great ape that could be the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans.
The Kenyan and Japanese team found the fragment, dating back to between 9.8 and 9.88 million years, in 2005 along with 11 teeth. The fossils were unearthed in volcanic mud flow deposits in the northern Nakali region of Kenya.
The species -- somewhere between the size of a female gor
Source: AFP
November 12, 2007
Time, as we all know, is relative: good experiences seem to fly by, whereas bad ones seem to drag on forever.
"After two hours, I looked at my watch," a reviewer of Wagnerian opera is said to have written. "I found that 17 minutes had gone by."
In 1905, Albert Einstein wrote his own treatise on the relativity of time, famously theorising that time speeds up or slows down according to how fast an object is moving in relation to another object.
Source: Times (UK)
November 9, 2007
Turkana Boy, considered the most complete early human fossil, is being removed from his bomb-proof vault to take centre stage at an exhibition that curators say will provide the most complete record of the evolution of Man.
However, the collection, to be show-cased for the first time at the Nairobi National Museum after a £5 million renovation financed by the European Union, has drawn sharp criticism from evangelical Christians who deny the theory of evolution.
They, in
Source: AP
November 12, 2007
The sophisticated design and colorful artwork found in a 4,000-year-old temple unearthed near Peru's northern desert coast suggests that early civilization here was more complex than originally thought, archaeologists said.
Ventarron, a 7,000-square-foot site — a bit larger than a basketball court — with painted walls and a white-and-red mural of a deer hunt, points to an "advanced civilization," said the lead archaeologist who excavated the site last week.
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Source: Reuters
November 13, 2007
China's multi-billion-dollar building boom ahead of the Beijing Olympics has unearthed hundreds of ancient relics -- some 2,000 years old -- leaving archaeologists to pick up pieces behind construction crews.
The director of the State Administration and Cultural Heritage, Shan Jixiang, has urged local officials to conduct archaeological investigations of sites before construction, the China Daily reported on Tuesday.
But in the rush to finish projects ahead of the Augus
Source: Chicago Tribune
November 13, 2007
It might come as a surprise to the soldiers who defeated fascism in World War II, but the United States has become a refuge for Nazism and other brands of extremism over the last decade.
On the Internet, that is.
Hundreds of foreign-language Web sites -- some tied to the Chicago area -- are using U.S. servers to dodge laws abroad that prohibit Holocaust denial or racist and anti-Semitic speech. Run by hosts in the United States, they thrive out of reach of prosecutors i
Source: Irish Times
November 8, 2007
Former president of the Coca-Cola corporation Donald Keough has warned that Ireland is becoming more "mentally distant" for Irish-Americans and may have to consider a looser, Israeli-type citizenship test for people of Irish origin.
Mr Keough, who is also the former chairman of Columbia Pictures, said the world's focus on a successful, peaceful Ireland is waning.
"The global white light of attention is finding new stages in eastern Europe, Brazil, China a
Source: NYT
November 13, 2007
Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, a husband-and-wife team of French-educated Communist revolutionaries who held senior positions in the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia in the 1970s, were arrested in Phnom Penh on Monday and charged with crimes against humanity.
Mr. Ieng Sary, a onetime history and geography teacher who became the Khmer Rouge foreign minister and deputy prime minister, was also charged with war crimes.
The two were arrested at their Phnom Penh home, where
Source: Reuters
November 12, 2007
The teenage son of a Mapuche Indian chief came a step closer to becoming Argentina's first indigenous saint on Sunday when he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in his remote Patagonian homeland.
Local media said about 100,000 people flocked to the small town of Chimpay for the ceremony to beatify Ceferino Namuncura, who died of tuberculosis more than a century ago when he was 18 and studying to become a priest.
Source: BBC
November 11, 2007
An artist turned to a famous World War II German commander's photographic collection in her research for a mural recalling a former Scots regiment.
Tracey Shough's work commemorating the Seaforth Highlanders covers the walls of Invergordon Railway Station.
She had struggled to find evidence of how Seaforth Highlanders were attired at St Valery-en-Caux in France in 1940.
However, images once belonging to Field Marshal General Erwin Rommel - the Desert Fox -
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 12, 2007
Our love affair with chocolate began at least 500 years earlier than previously thought, and was combined with a love of alcohol too, according to traces of the treat found in pottery shards uncovered in Honduras.
Archaeologists have long known that cocoa was cultivated in the land between the Americas - including what today is Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize - for thousands of years and was the favourite drink of the powerful elite.
Chocolate ultimately became the standa
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
November 11, 2007
U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, has tried since 1992 to pass the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill, which would give the Filipino WWII veterans full recognition and some better benefits. "Fifty years of injustice still burn in their hearts and memories. They want justice in their last years. It is time that this country adequately recognized their contributions, recognize the injustice, and act to correct it. We must do this to establish our honor - and the honor and dignity of these veteran
Source: NYT Book Review
November 11, 2007
Quick! What is the best-selling children’s picture book of all time? You might be surprised to learn it’s “The Poky Little Puppy,” by Janette Sebring Lowrey, originally published in 1942. One of the first 12 Little Golden Books, it has sold more than 15 million copies and is still in print. For her efforts, Lowrey was paid a fee of $75. This and many other delightfully entertaining nuggets of information are included in Leonard S. Marcus’s enthusiastic history of Golden Books.
Marcu
Source: WaPo
November 10, 2007
The Wall stands between the girl and a War.
The girl presses her fingers against the granite. Her fingers run along the names cut into the black stone.
"That is Nana's brother," a man is explaining to the girl.
"But how did he get inside the wall?" the girl asks.
Her question hangs near the Wall. It is an innocent question, the kind of question the Wall must have heard often since its dedication 25 years ago next week. Simpl
Source: NYT
November 10, 2007
A Chinese government panel announced plans on Friday to revamp the holiday schedule to re-emphasize traditional festivals at the expense of the Marxist May Day celebration.
The new schedule aims to address the severe overloading of China’s air, rail and road links in the first week of May, when virtually the entire country goes on vacation. But gridlock may remain around the two other major holidays — essentially a week each — at the Chinese New Year and in the first week of October
