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: Russia Today
October 27, 2007
Legendary Soviet spy Aleksandr Feklisov, who helped the Soviet Union get the secret formula for an atomic bomb, has died in Moscow at the age of 93. Feklisov was responsible for stealing nuclear technology from the U.S. His efforts cut by half the amount of time it took the Soviets to test an atomic weapon.
The KGB handler also played a key role in bringing the USSR and the U.S. back from the brink of a nuclear conflict during the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s.
A year bef
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 31, 2007
A stone tool found on a remote Pacific island has provided evidence that early Polynesians travelled 2,500 miles by canoe using only the stars, clouds and seabirds as navigational aids.
Scientists have found that the stone adze, found on a coral atoll in what is now French Polynesia, was quarried from volcanic rock in Hawaii, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
It was transported about 1,000 years ago by Polynesian voyagers in wooden canoes, either as a chunk of unc
Source: http://www.nctimes.com
October 29, 2007
OCEANSIDE --- At first, it is the graffiti that stands out on a group of granite boulders that sit a few hundred yards from a small seasonal creek. But closer inspection shows a series of faint red markings with much more historic significance.
"These are clearly pictographs, and they're probably Luiseno," said Joel Seay, referring to the Luiseno band of American Indians who once lived in the San Luis Rey River valley.
An amateur archeologist and preservationi
Source: BBC
October 30, 2007
The Red Lady of Paviland has always been a little coy about her age - but it appears she may be 4,000 years older than previously thought.
Scientists say more accurate tests date the earliest human burial found in the UK to just over 29,000 years ago.
When discovered in a cave on Gower in the 1820s the bones were thought to be around 18,000 years old, but were later redated to between 25,000 and 26,000.
Researchers said it casts a new light on human presenc
Source: Fox News
October 30, 2007
A group of congressmen has asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to retain the tradition of reciting the significance of each fold in the flag-folding ceremony at military funerals.
"The flag folding recitation is a longstanding tradition which brings comfort to the living and honor to the deceased," Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., writes in his letter Tuesday signed by 11 other congressmen. "The recitations accompanying each fold pay tribute to the service and sacrific
Source: NYT
October 31, 2007
President Vladimir V. Putin paid his first visit today to a memorial and church built on the site of a killing field where thousands were executed, as Russia marked the 70th anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror and the decades of Soviet political repression that left millions dead.
The site, on the grounds of a pre-revolutionary estate on the edge of Moscow, became a secret territory of the N.K.V.D., a predecessor of the K.G.B., the intelligence agency in which Mr. Putin rose
Source: History Today
October 29, 2007
Declassified documents reveal US diplomats doubted Margaret Thatcher's political worth when she became Tory leader. A briefing paper sent to Henry Kissinger in 1975 read: “Unfortunately for her prospects of becoming a national, as distinct from a party, leader, she has over the years acquired a distinctively upper middle-class personal image.” The documents, part of a batch on European foreign relations recently made available by the National Archives in Washington, also comment on “her conventi
Source: History Today
October 30, 2007
A painting given by Winston Churchill to Harry Truman is to be auctioned in London by Sotheby’s. The 1948 painting of Marrakesh is valued at £500,000 and was given to the American President three years later; it is now to be sold by his daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel. Churchill’s note along with the gift read: “It shows the beautiful panorama of the snow-capped Atlas mountains in Marrakesh. This is the view I persuaded your predecessor [Roosevelt] to see before he left North Africa after the C
Source: AHA Blog
October 30, 2007
The Library of Congress and the Xerox Corporation have announced that they will be collaborating on a project to develop new ways to store, preserve, and access digital images, according to a press release on October 25th. The two organizations are experimenting with the JPEG 2000 image format, a newer format for representing and compressing images, which they hope will make digital images easier to store, transfer, and display. JPEG 2000 “holds promise in the areas of visual presentation, simp
Source: AP
October 27, 2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is looking to the past for lessons on how to make next month's Mideast peace conference a success.
As she prepares to host the international meeting in Annapolis, Md., Rice has delved into the history of U.S. attempts to mediate peace in the region, plunging into the diplomatic annals and seeking out the major players responsible for both successes and failures.
"She's trying to draw on the historical record and the experiences of othe
Source: Seattle Times
October 27, 2007
FORT WORTH, Texas — Nearly 40 years ago, Beth-El Congregation obtained a Torah — a parchment scroll containing the first five books of the Bible — that survived the Holocaust, although most of the Czech Jews who treasured it did not.
Beth-El, in Fort Worth, Texas, recently installed an exhibit paying tribute to the scroll's poignant history.
The Torah, from a small farming community called Uhrineves in Czechoslovakia, is one of 1,564 such scrolls seized by Nazis as they
Source: NYT
October 30, 2007
Barack Obama does not say much about his years in New York City. The time he spent as an undergraduate at Columbia College and then working in Manhattan in the early 1980s surfaces only fleetingly in his memoir. In the book, he casts himself as a solitary wanderer in the metropolis, the outsider searching for a way to “make myself of some use.”...
Some say he has taken some literary license in the telling of his story. Dan Armstrong, who worked with Mr. Obama at Business Internation
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
October 30, 2007
Andrew Carnegie is 78 years old, far from Pittsburgh and the steelmaking that made him rich. His voice is shrill, laced with an unmistakable Scottish brogue, as he reads from his 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth," a text he altered slightly for a reading inside Thomas Edison's sound studio in the Bronx, N.Y.
The recording, set down 93 years ago on a contraption known as the "Kinetophone," is far from pristine, both in quality and performance. Amid static, the gre
Source: Jerusalem Post
October 29, 2007
Victory by 800 mounted Australians over 4,000 well-trained Turks seems a bit far-fetched. But that's exactly what happened on October 31, 1917, at the Battle of Beersheba, which 90 years ago arguably changed the direction of the Sinai and Palestine campaign during World War I.
It was a day of surprises for the Turks, one that had been planned far in advance: Already in May 1917, General Philip Chetwode wrote his Notes on the Palestine Campaign, which outlined a suggested plan of att
Source: NYT
October 29, 2007
What does it mean to be the Democratic front-runner at this stage in the race? Not as much as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is now leading in the national polls, might wish, if past elections are any indicator.
Starting in 1952, the Democrats have contested the presidency 11 times (not counting 1964, 1980 and 1996 when they nominated incumbents). Of those 11 times, only five of the candidates who were leading in national polls in January won the nomination: Adlai E. Stevenson
Source: NYT
October 30, 2007
Art and history scholars, amateur coin collectors and professional numismatists are among the 11 members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, the panel that offers coin-design guidance to the United States Mint and the Treasury secretary.
“Coins are a very particular form of artwork and tend to be very evocative of American history,” said Mitchell Sanders, the committee chairman and an amateur coin collector and market researcher based in Rochester. “We’re working on somethin
Source: CNN
October 30, 2007
In tiny Bishop, California, five hours north of Los Angeles, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-California, wants to build a museum honoring the mule.
McKeon has requested a $50,000 earmark to explore the possibility of building a museum in the town that every Memorial Day weekend holds the biggest mule celebration in the United States.
It might sound preposterous but McKeon is doing what many of his House colleagues are doing -- appropriating federal funds for pet projects back home
Source: CNN
October 30, 2007
Vice President Dick Cheney spent about eight hours hunting Monday at a secluded Hudson Valley gun club where well-heeled enthusiasts shoot ducks and pheasants.
It was Cheney's second visit to Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in Dutchess County, about 70 miles north of New York City. The previous trip was in fall 2001.
Although a heavy police presence kept the media and curious local residents at a distance, Cheney's visit did stir up a bit of controversy when a New York
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 29, 2007
Preferably headless, rattling chains optional, but soul wandering the earth for eternity essential: it is what those of a ghoulish persuasion may want to see this Hallowe'en week — a ghost.
To assist in this quest the National Trust has released a top 10 list of its most haunted historic properties.
In at number one is Blickling Hall, Norfolk, described by the National Trust as a "magnificent Jacobean house famed for its fine tapestries, rare books and reputedly th
Source: International Herald Tribune
October 28, 2007
A new memorial exhibition center at a former Nazi camp in central Germany reflects the experiences of inmates when it was a prisoner of war facility, a concentration camp and then a holding center for displaced Jews after World War II.
The new center, which opened Sunday, is the first stage in an overall makeover of the Bergen-Belsen camp — razed by the Allies in the postwar years — to more accurately document prisoners' experiences there. It draws on archive material that came to l
