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: BBC
January 12, 2007
Meet Dante. Not the best looking man in the world, but certainly better-looking than he has often been depicted in famous paintings.
Scientists believe this face is the closest match to the poet's skull found in his tomb.
And for Dante scholars it has thrown up a few surprises. They always imagined him to have a long aquiline nose.
Source: CNN
January 12, 2007
In 25 years of interviews with his hometown paper that could only be released upon his death, former President Ford once called Jimmy Carter a "disaster" who ranked alongside Warren Harding, and said Ronald Reagan received far too much credit for ending the Cold War.
"It makes me very irritated when Reagan's people pound their chests and say that because we had this big military buildup, the Kremlin collapsed," Ford told The Grand Rapids Press.
Ford
Source: Yahoo
January 9, 2007
People looking to track ancestors who emigrated from British ports will from Wednesday be able to search online passenger lists of the ships that carried them to new lands.
Released by Britain's National Archives, the passenger manifests give an insight into all long-distance trips made by 30 million travelers from the country's ports between 1890 and 1960, including that of the Titanic which sank in 1912.
Source: John Steele Gordon in Am Heritage
January 11, 2007
Today is Alexander Hamilton’s 250th birthday. Unless, of course, it’s his 252nd. He claimed to have been born in 1757, but there is considerable nearly contemporary evidence that he was actually born in 1755. But there is no argument that he was not yet 50 when he died at the hands of Aaron Burr in 1804. And there is no argument that despite his brief life he had more influence on the future of the United States than all but a very, very few of the Founding Fathers.
Source: AP
January 11, 2007
A judge Thursday ordered the arrest of former President Isabel Peron -- wife of Argentine strongman Juan Peron -- for questioning into alleged links to a right-wing death squad before she was ousted in a 1976 military coup.
Isabel Peron is sought in connection with three decrees she signed calling on the armed forces to crack down on "subversive elements," a judge's spokesman said.
Judge Raul Acosta also ordered her detained for questioning into the disappe
Source: Guardian
January 11, 2007
The international effort to recover “stolen” works of art from some of the world’s best museums gathered pace today with reports that Italy is seeking the return of Roman antiquities from Japan.
Authorities in Italy suspect that up to 100 treasures from ancient Rome were looted and have asked the Japanese government to help secure their return, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.
Source: Reuters
January 10, 2007
One of the art world's great mysteries may be about to be solved: Did Leonardo Da Vinci paint a masterpiece that was lost in time, and does it still survive today?
Italy's culture minister gave his go-ahead on Wednesday to explore behind a wall in Florence's renaissance town hall to see if it is hiding the 500-year-old "Battle of Anghiari," sometimes known as the "lost Leonardo."
Source: AP
January 10, 2007
A private group sued the National Archives on Wednesday, seeking information about the Secret Service’s suspension of its destruction of White House visitor records.
The Secret Service stopped the routine destruction of its White House visitor logs in October 2004 at the request of the National Archives.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is suing over the National Archives and Records Administration’s refusal to disclose why it asked the Sec
Source: AP
January 10, 2007
PLAINS, GA. - Folks in Plains were just delighted -- in a respectfully restrained way -- when former President Jimmy Carter said in a TV interview a few weeks ago that he wants to be buried in his front yard in his hometown.
Many in this little peanut-growing town of 640 people believe his decision to be laid to rest here rather than 120 miles away in Atlanta, home of his presidential library, or Arlington National Cemetery will help maintain the prosperity he brought to Plains.
Source: PRnewswire
January 10, 2007
Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Footnote, Inc. CEO Russell Wilding today announced an agreement to digitize selected records from the vast holdings of the National Archives. ...
This non-exclusive agreement, beginning with the sizeable collection of materials currently on microfilm, will enable researchers and the general public to access millions of newly-digitized images of the National Archives historic records on a subscription basis from the Footnote website.
Source: Independent (UK)
January 11, 2007
It has been one of America's happiest conservation stories. After teetering on the edge of extinction more than 100 years ago, bison are back, roaming the grasslands of national parks and private ranches of the western US in significant herds. But there's a hitch. How many really are bison?
Not that many, it seems. Animal geneticists have determined that, because of a long history of ranchers cross-breeding cattle with bison in search of a better beef animal, fewer than 3 per cent
Source: NYT
January 11, 2007
The long saga of U-864 [which sank in 1945 containing 65 tons of mercury] is far from over. Many of the canisters containing the liquid mercury are now corroding. Small amounts have seeped out, and Norwegian government tests around the wreck have detected slightly raised amounts of the metal in crabs and fish — the country’s second biggest export, after oil and gas.
Indeed, Kristian Hall, an environmental consultant with a Norwegian engineering firm, said the corroding canisters cou
Source: NYT
January 12, 2007
From a new analysis of a human skull discovered in South Africa more than 50 years ago, scientists say they have obtained the first fossil evidence establishing the relatively recent time for the dispersal of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa.
The migrants appeared to have arrived at their new homes in Asia and Europe with the distinct and unmodified heads of Africans.
An international team of researchers reported yesterday that the age of the South African skull, which
Source: WaPo
January 10, 2007
They are little specks no bigger than the period that concludes this sentence, but they represent the germ of something enormous: fortune, empire and a national vice that would visit a slow death on millions of people.
Three 400-year-old tobacco seeds recovered recently from the ooze of a colonial well in Jamestown appear to be the first and earliest-known evidence of cultivation by English colonists of a plant that would become the cash crop of a New World empire, a form of living
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 12, 2007
Germany wants to use its European Union presidency to push through legislation that would make denying the Holocaust punishable by stiff jail sentences in all 27 EU member states.The country's justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, said Thursday night that Germany's commitment to combating racism and xenophobia — and keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive — was both an enduring historical obligation and a present-day political necessity.
"We have always sai
Source: David Swanson in a column emailed around the Internet
January 12, 2007
[Mr. Swanson has been in the forefront of the small movement to impeach President Bush.]
There is a decent chance that within the next month or two the New Mexico State Legislature will ask the U.S. House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And there is the definite possibility that a Congress Member from New Mexico will take up the matter when it gets to Washington. The Jefferson Manual, rules used by the U.S. Hous
Source: Times-Dispatch
January 10, 2007
JAMESTOWN, Va. - It was fitting for Virginia to begin its 2007 legislative session at the place where representative democracy in America was born, Vice President Dick Cheney told legislators Wednesday.
In a speech that stressed themes of religious faith, sacrifice and personal courage, Cheney helped open the Virginia General Assembly's winter session on the site where the first English settlement in North America was established 400 years ago.
"It's striking to re
Source: Reuters
January 10, 2007
An international quest is being launched for historical heirs to the throne of England.
Advertisements appearing this week in British, U.S., Australian, German and Norwegian newspapers will ask "Can you trace your family tree back to 1066? Might your ancestors have claimed the English throne?"
Edgar Aetheling was named heir apparent by his great-uncle King Edward the Confessor but was not crowned when the King died in 1066 because he was too young. Harold II w
Source: http://www.aftenposten (Norway)
January 8, 2007
The Viking treasures were found at Frøyland in Rogaland County. Local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad reported Monday that items recovered from the graves indicate they belonged to wealthy Vikings of the time.
In one of the graves, belonging to a woman, archaeologists found jewellery, many pearls, glass beads, scissors, a knife and other household utensils.
"The size, quality and design of the jewellery is highly unusual," said archaeologist Olle Hemdorff. "
Source: AP
January 9, 2007
Since the 16th century, when they ferried King Henry VIII between his riverside palaces, Thames boatmen have plied the waters, fathers passing detailed knowledge of the river to their sons.
Now, a new licensing system designed by the European Union threatens to sweep away centuries of tradition and, the boatmen say, undermine safety.
The system abolishes apprenticeships -- completed by generations of London boatmen -- which last as long as seven years. In its place co
