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: Air Force Times
March 30, 2007
The Tuskegee Airmen, black pilots of World War II whose combat contributions languished as historical footnotes until a 1995 movie helped turn them into legends, capped their record of honors Thursday with the Congressional Gold Medal.The medal was presented to original members of the 99th Pursuit — later Fighter — Squadron during a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. One medal, of gold, will be housed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Duplicate medals made of br
Source: Boston Herald
March 30, 2007
The government ordered changes Friday to seven history textbooks describing how the Japanese army forced civilians to commit mass suicide at the end of World War II, the country’s latest effort to soften brutal accounts of its wartime conduct. The high school textbooks say the army -- faced with an impending U.S. invasion in 1945 -- handed out grenades to residents on the southern island of Okinawa and ordered them to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Americans.
Source: IHT
March 30, 2007
It was about 15 years ago, recalled Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a mild-mannered historian, that he grew fed up with the Japanese government's denials that the military had set up and run brothels throughout Asia during World War II.
Instead of firing off a letter to a newspaper, though, Yoshimi went to the Defense Agency's library and combed through official documents from the 1930s. In just two days, he found a rare trove that uncovered the military's direct role in managing the brothels, in
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 29, 2007
John Adams, second president of the United States and the son of a noted Puritan, would undoubtedly blush at the makeover planned for his former London residence.
While the developer is maintaining the historical features of the three-story house, including a broad ballroom with high ceilings and an ornate fireplace, he is adding the latest in high-tech gadgetry. Improvements will include Lutron-brand controlled lighting, electrically operated curtains, under-floor heating and a sta
Source: UPI
March 29, 2007
BOSTON -- U.S. writer Ernest Hemingway and German siren Marlene Dietrich flirted but likely didn't hook up, family members said.
Peter Riva, the late actress' grandson said the two were only "great pals" and Valerie Hemingway, the author's daughter-in-law, said "there is absolutely no evidence of there being an actual affair," ABC News reported Thursday.
Riva and Hemingway discussed 30 letters written from 1949-59 donated to the John F. Kennedy Libra
Source: Independent
March 30, 2007
It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the only one of them to remain standing today.
Yet the story of how the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually built has remained a mystery for more than four millennia -- until, perhaps, now.
A French architect believes he has finally solved one of the most puzzling construction problems in history by working out how the ancient Egyptians built such a massive structure without the benefit of iron tools, pulleys or w
Source: Guardian
March 30, 2007
The Greek prime minister, deploying the strongest language yet for the return of the Parthenon marbles, yesterday said that Britain had run out of "feeble excuses" to retain the treasures.
At a ceremony to mark the return to Athens of two art works Greece has long claimed from the Getty Museum - and the imminent completion of a £94m Acropolis museum -- Costas Karamanlis said it was only a matter of time before the sculptures' repatriation.
Source: Telegraph
March 30, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Israel is reeling from the revelation that one of its founding fathers was a British spy who betrayed Jewish freedom fighters in the turbulent years before the state's creation in 1948.
Teddy Kollek, who later served as mayor of Jerusalem for almost 30 years, fed sensitive information to MI5 when Britain ran Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.
Evidence of Kollek's secret past has been disclosed in documents discovered at the Public Record Office in
Source: Times (of London)
March 30, 2007
A passenger who died in the Titanic disaster had written to his wife from the liner, saying that he thought it was unsafe.
While most of his fellow passengers in first class were awestruck by their palatial surroundings, Alfred Rowe —- his mood perhaps soured by a bad cold —- sat down to write to his wife Constance, confiding that he thought the ship “too big” and a “positive danger”.
Mr Rowe, 59, a British businessman, was on his way to his ranch in Texas and had been
Source: Live Science
March 29, 2007
An ancient member of the human family has gotten a digital facelift, and the new mug looks more ape-like than scientists previously thought.
The new reconstruction suggests the large brains and flatter faces characteristic of modern humans did not appear in our lineage until much later in our history.
"For how many years now, people have been using this [skull] and the numbers may not be very meaningful," said Timothy Bromage, an anthropologist at New York Uni
Source: Telegraph
March 30, 2007
ROME -- Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.
Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.
In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's f
Source: Independent
March 30, 2007
Iran has lost a High Court battle to recover a collection of 5,000-year-old grave relics it says were looted from desert sites. In a ruling that could have implications for attempts by other countries to secure the return of antiquities, Mr Justice Gray said that, under the provisions of Iranian law, it could not show that it had obtained valid title to the artefacts.
Iran had sued the Barakat Gallery, an antiquities specialist with offices in Mayfair, central London and Beverly Hil
Source: American Statesman
March 24, 2007
George W. Bush's supporters often compare him to men they consider
among the greatest presidents of American history: George Washington,
Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan.
Friday's Watergate symposium at the University of Texas suggested a
less flattering point of comparison: Richard Milhous Nixon.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story for The
Washington Post more than 30 years ago, spent three hours Friday
afternoon at the University of Texas discussing th
Source: BBC
March 29, 2007
Turkey has renovated a 1,100-year-old church in the east of the country, in what is seen as a gesture to improve ties with neighbouring Armenia.Patriarch Mesrob II, spiritual leader of Turkey's tiny Armenian Orthodox community, told several hundred people at the ceremony that the government should open up the restored church for worship at least once a year.
He said the move would help reconciliation between Turks and Armenians.
"If our governm
Source: New York Times
March 29, 2007
The feud between the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, onetime best of friends, had all the elements of a literary classic: accusations of betrayal, jealousy and adultery, and a brutal encounter 31 years ago when things turned bloody.
What it had lacked, however, was a wealth of documentary evidence.
That all changed this month, with the publication of two black-and-white portraits taken on Valentine’s Day, 1976, in Mexi
Source: UPI
March 29, 2007
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- U.S. researchers say chain-mail, once popular with medieval knights, may become the high-tech fabric of the future.
Scientists say the world's smallest chain-mail fabric, developed at the University of Illinois, holds promise for "fully engineered smart textiles," the university said in a release.
The fabric and the fabrication process, described in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, consists of a network of small rings abou
Source: AP
March 28, 2009
BOONSBORO, Md. -- The last known surviving American female World War I veteran, a refined Civil War buff who met face-to-face with the Secretary of the Navy to fight for women in the military, has died. She was 109.
Charlotte Winters died Tuesday at a nursing home near Boonsboro in northwest Maryland, the U.S. Naval District in Washington said in a statement. Her death leaves just five known surviving American World War I veterans.
In 1916, Winters met with Secretary of
Source: Telegraph
March 29, 2007
The fog of war may have begun to lift 62 years ago but pockets linger on -- not least in the art world where the theft and mayhem of the Nazis still cast a shadow.
This time the exploits of a daring woman war reporter, the US 101st Airborne Division -- the Screaming Eagles of D-Day renown, a hoard of art plundered by Hermann Goering, and a day in charge of Hitler's Alpine lair have left the National Gallery with a headache over one of its most popular paintings.Cupid
Source: Independent
March 29, 2007
Napoleon, Stalin and Franco had more in common than being tyrants and dictators. They were all rather on the short side and helped to engender the belief that men of below average height were more aggressive than their taller peers.
But now the so-called Napoleon complex or Short Man Syndrome -- which determines that 80 per cent of the population believe that small men are angry -- has been put to the test by scientists who have established that, on average, it is tall men who are m
Source: AP
March 28, 2007
WASHINGTON -- A congressional committee approved a resolution yesterday calling for expediting the opening of millions of Nazi files on concentrations camps and their victims.
Earlier this month, an 11-nation body overseeing the long-secret archive set procedures to open the records stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany by the end of the year. All the member countries must ratify an agreement adopted last year to end the 60-year ban on using the files for research.
The resolut
