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: Los Angeles Times
March 13, 2007
WASHINGTON —- The house is so quiet you can hear the clocks tick, except on those weekends when the mothers come in from around the country. Then the clocks are drowned out by all the chatter as everyone takes turns in the kitchen...
This brick four-story home in the chic Dupont Circle neighborhood is the clubhouse for a sorority no woman wants to join: The only qualification for membership is to lose a child in military service.
For a while, it looked as though the Ame
Source: Times (of London)
March 13, 2007
SYDNEY -- A long-dead Englishman threatens to spoil lavish celebrations planned for Sunday, when Sydney celebrates the 75th anniversary of Australia’s greatest engineering achievement —- the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Final preparations are under way for a mass walk across the “Coathanger”, a fly-past and a sail-past by a flotilla of historic vessels. But an English engineering company has put forward strong evidence that the Australian long credited with designing the bridge, John Brad
Source: Telegraph
March 13, 2007
BUENOS AIRES -- Britain forced Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, the members of General Leopoldo Galtieri's family said yesterday in their first interview since the 1982 conflict.
The widow and children of Argentina's former military ruler claimed that the war was engineered by Britain to avoid negotiations that could have led to the loss of sovereignty over the islands.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph in the Buenos Aires apartment where Galtieri lived with his
Source: Times (of London)
March 13, 2007
MADRID -- It is possibly the most famous literary feud of modern times: Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel prize-winning author, and Mario Vargas Llosa, his fellow giant of Latin American literature, have refused to talk to each other for three decades.
Once great friends, the two writers have steadfastly refused to talk about the reasons behind their spectacular bust-up, and so have their wives.
Now two pictures have appeared in which a youthful García Márquez shows off
Source: Telegraph
March 13, 2007
A child of eight who died 160,000 years ago in Morocco is today revealed to be the oldest human to grow up and develop in a modern way.
Genetic evidence suggests that between 200,000 and 160,000 years ago modern humans -- Homo sapiens -- evolved in east Africa and then spread over the world, displacing all other humans, such as the Neanderthals.
Today, Dr Tanya Smith tells of what she says are the remains of the oldest human, from a cave in Jebel Irhoud, 60 miles west o
Source: Telegraph
March 13, 2007
Exactly 250 years after Admiral John Byng was executed for failing to "do his utmost" to save Minorca for the British before the Seven Years' War, the prospect of a formal pardon may be at hand.
Descendants of the admiral have written to the Ministry of Defence to demand that their "wronged" ancestor receives the same treatment as the 306 First World War soldiers shot at dawn who were pardoned last year...
But the gesture was not extended to Viscount
Source: Telegraph
March 13, 2007
On the day that Charles Darwin married his first cousin and sweetheart Emma Wedgwood, she recorded the event in diary with customary common sense, writing simply: "Came to town." The day after, on Jan 30, 1839, the new Mrs Darwin records only that she bought an armchair.
But within the prosaic details of Emma Darwin's 60 pocket books lie the hidden secrets of six decades of family life.
They shed new light on the man who convinced scientists to believe in evo
Source: Guardian
March 13, 2007
BERLIN -- A newly discovered letter by Adolf Hitler's architect and armaments minister Albert Speer offers proof that he knew about the plans to exterminate the Jews, despite his repeated claims to the contrary.
Writing in 1971 to Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance leader, Speer admitted that he had been at a conference where Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, had unveiled plans to exterminate the Jews in what is known as the Posen speech. Speer's insist
Source: The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
March 13, 2007
Prime Minister John Howard has set himself on a collision course with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, by declaring there should be no "quibbling" over the degree of coercion used to force thousands of women to act as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II.
On the eve of their talks in Tokyo today, Mr Howard has made it clear he will not tolerate an attempt by Japan to rewrite history. He is expected to raise the issue with Mr Abe this afternoon.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
March 12, 2007
CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. -- For decades, young members of the Elem Pomo tribe have broken out in skin rashes and elders have suffered kidney failure.
The Elem Pomos' 50-acre reservation [in Lake County, north of San Francisco] is adjacent to the Sulphur Bank Mine, one of the nation's most polluted sites, and some Pomos believe the tribe's health problems may be related to the federal government's use of the mine's toxic tailings to build reservation roads and house foundation pads 37
Source: Live Science
March 12, 2007
Our ape-like predecessors kept their stout figures for 2 million years because having short legs ironically gave them the upper-hand in male-male combat for access to mates, finds a new study.
Living from 4 million to 2 million years ago, early hominins in the genus Australopithecus are considered immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo, and had heights of around 3 feet 9 inches for females and 4 feet 6 inches for males.
Until now, the squat physiques of australo
Source: Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, N.J.)
March 11, 2007
A rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike near Exit 8A in Middlesex County is named Molly Pitcher, but did she really exist?
Historical interpreter Stacy Roth of Burlington City answered that question in a re-creation of Molly's life based on historical research, story-telling, imagination and what she calls "plausible conjecture."
Roth sorted fact from fiction during "Over Here, Molly Pitcher," a Women's History Month event last week in Westampton at P
Source: Mark Brown in the Chicago Sun-Times
March 7, 2007
When I was a kid, I thought that anything that happened before I was born was ancient history. It didn't matter if it was five years before I was born or 500 years. The year 1955 was the cutoff point. Events before then might be interesting but couldn't possibly have any real-world connection to my life, or so I thought.
As I get older, my time perspective keeps changing. Despite the passage of all those additional years, I now feel closer than ever to the events of World War II --
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
March 11, 2007
Wind, rain and the reverent touches of 2.5 million annual visitors are taking their toll on the Alamo's limestone walls, slowly eroding the landmark where one of the most important battles for Texas independence took place 171 years ago today.
It's nothing at least $1 million in research and repairs couldn't begin to fix, caretakers said.
Yet, that estimate is "probably a small amount compared to what really needs to be done to adequately handle the site," sai
Source: Jerusalem Post
March 8, 2007
A section of the ancient walls of Masada, one of the country's most poignant symbols of survival, is in danger of collapse as a result of a heavy downpour that drenched the desert site three years ago, the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority said Thursday.
The fortress, built as a palace by Herod the Great, who was King of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, is situated atop an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea, and was the si
Source: Guardian Newsblog
March 12, 2007
By 2020 the British Library reckons that 90% of books and research papers will be available in some kind of electronic format. Only 10% will be available in hard copy only.
Such stats makes some giddy with enthusiasm about the brave new digital world. Information will be so much more accessible and we can do away with filing all those dusty bits of paper, the theory goes. But others aren't so sure.
Family historians, for example, are concerned that we're in danger of wi
Source: AP
March 12, 2007
FLORENCE -- An Italian senator chained himself to a column near the gates of the Uffizi museum Monday to protest the loan of Leonardo da Vinci's "Annunciation" for a show at Japan's National Museum in Tokyo...
In protesting the loan, Sen. Paolo Amato said it exposes a priceless masterpiece to unnecessary risk and belittles its significance by using it in a commercial event.
Inside the museum, the 6 1/2-foot-by-3-foot painting was being bundled in three protect
Source: Star-Press (Muncie, Ind.)
March 12, 2007
MUNCIE, Ind. -- The Delaware County Office of Geographic Information System stumbled onto what scientists believe to be a well-preserved earthwork built by pre-historic, Woodland Indians.
The site, only 150 feet from Ind. 32 between Muncie and Yorktown, recently came to the attention of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which plans to widen that segment of the highway to four or five lanes.
"It's absolutely critical we keep this one," said Don Cochran,
Source: Christian Science Monitor
March 12, 2007
BERLIN -- As Germany's long, often-praised reconciliation with its Nazi past digs deeper, it brings forward characters such as Christian Nazi resister Helmuth James von Moltke.
On his centenary anniversary Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised him as a symbol of "European courage" and for having a vision of a democratic Europe far ahead of its time.
Mr. Von Moltke, descendant of one of Germany's greatest military generals, was executed in 1945 for co
Source: UPI
March 12, 2007
Six decades after his death, the most notorious German of all times, Adolf Hitler, may be stripped of his German citizenship.Deutsche Welle Online reported Monday that a low-ranking official in the state of Lower Saxony, Isolde Saalmann, had convinced her colleagues from the governing Social Democratic Party to file a request to check whether the German citizenship given to Austrian-born Hitler in 1932 can be rescinded.
Hitler's application to become a German na
