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: AP
October 26, 2006
Nineteen .45-caliber cartridges buried in northeastern France may mark the spot where Sgt. Alvin York became America's most celebrated soldier of World War I, a research team said Thursday.
The Sergeant York Discovery Expedition said that after four years of work, it found the cartridges buried 2 to 4 inches in soil near the village of Chatel-Chehery where York single-handedly took out a nest of German machine guns.
Source: Times
October 27, 2006
Israel has urged the Vatican to halt procedures putting Pius XII, the controversial wartime Pope, on the path to sainthood.Oded Ben-Hur, the Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See, said: “I am asking the Vatican to block the beatification process for Pius XII.” He added that the process should be halted until archives relating to the Second World War were opened to scholars.
Pius XII, formerly the papal nuncio to Germany and later Pius XI’s Secretary of State as Car
Source: Reuters
October 26, 2006
Ancient human footprints discovered in the Mexican
desert may be among the oldest in the Americas, researchers said on
Wednesday.
The 13 footprints found in Cuatro Cienegas in the northern state of
Coahuila are fossilized in stone less than an inch (2 cm) deep and are
around the age of the oldest known footprints in North or South America."We believe they could be between 10,000 and 15,000 years old," said
archeologist Yuri de la Rosa."The research we have done on Cuatro
Cienegas
Source: WaPo
October 26, 2006
In some parts of the country, the Civil War is still being fought.
And perhaps nowhere are the aftershocks and viewpoints as evident as in Richmond, where a new museum is attempting to tell the history of the war from three angles. That would be: the Union, the African American and the Confederate.
The American Civil War Center, which opens today, argues that each of the three had distinct ideas about freedom -- and few would challenge that. Its inaugural 10,000-square-
Source: Independent (UK)
October 25, 2006
Christopher Columbus was born in Cuba - at least that's what they say in the village of that name south-east of Lisbon in the heart of Portugal's Alentejo region. Portugal's first statue of the explorer is to be unveiled in Cuba's central square on Saturday, the 514th anniversary of Columbus's landfall on the Caribbean island later named after his supposed birthplace.
The 7ft bronze monument, showing the Admiralbestriding the globe, rolled map in one hand, shading his eyes with the
Source: NYT
October 26, 2006
When the historic Tabernacle, the egg-shaped building that is home to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, reopens next year after a lengthy face-lift and seismic retrofit, visitors will find something new: the pews.
The loss of the original, and uncomfortable, pine pews, handmade in 1867 and meticulously etched and painted to look like oak, angers many Mormons, whose religion is strongly defined by its history and its forebears’ hardships.
Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the Chur
Source: Times Online (UK)
October 25, 2006
JEWISH residents are being “expelled” from the second oldest Jewish ghetto in Europe by wealthy VIPs buying up property, according to Italian Jewish leaders.
Riccardo Pacifici, the deputy head of the Jewish community association in Rome, said that flats in the ghetto area were being snapped up at low prices by figures from show business, politics and finance. “The effect is that our poorest elderly Jewish residents are being expelled from places they have lived all their lives,” he
Source: NYT
October 26, 2006
Benjamin Meed, a leading advocate for Jewish Holocaust survivors who in the decades after the war gathered them together by the tens of thousands, reuniting people with friends, neighbors and family members presumed to have been lost forever, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.
The cause was pneumonia after a long illness, his son, Steven, said.
A survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, Mr. Meed was at his death the president of the American Gathering of Jewish
Source: Christian Science Monitor
October 25, 2006
If Todd Letimore ever thought the founding documents of the United States of America were simply pieces of history, he's long since left that notion behind.
At the "Constitutional Convention" for Philadelphia's new Constitution High School, Todd and the rest of the inaugural ninth-grade class argued passionately as they set up the school's government. ("The only stipulation was they could not vote me out of office," Principal Thomas Davidson says with a laugh.)
Source: Reuters
October 25, 2006
Showman P.T. Barnum never said"There's a sucker
born every minute" although he wished he had. And Civil War Admiral David
Farragut probably never said"Damn the Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead" --
words that have inspired generations of fighting men.
To make things even more complicated, it is doubtful that Paul Revere
warned that"The British are coming" when he would have at the time of the
American Revolution thought himself British, although a revolting one. He
probably would have said
Source: Reuters
October 25, 2006
China has banned partying, stunts and
other"inappropriate behavior" on the Great Wall to protect one of its top
tourist attractions from erosion.
The Great Wall, which snakes its way across more than 6,400 km (4,000
miles), receives an estimated 10 million visitors a year, mostly to the
mere 10 km opened to tourists at Badaling, the nearest stretch to Beijing.
More adventurous visitors climb wilder, crumblier sections that are not
officially open to the public and stretches near
Source: Daniel Kovach
October 26, 2006
Are You a Blogger?
We are proud to annouce the launch of The Blogging Scholarship. We are offering bloggers a $1,000 scholarship quarterly.
Requirements:
Our requirements are
Your blog must contain unique and interesting information about you and/or things you are passionate about. No spam bloggers please!!!
You must be a U.S. citizen;
3.0 minimum GPA;
Enrolled full-time in post-secondary education....
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
October 26, 2006
It is the kind of letter that momentarily stops the hearts of manuscript experts. A moving three-page plea by Catherine of Aragon for help in trying to uphold her marriage to Henry VIII will be auctioned by Sotheby's.Arguably, the letter played a part in changing English history - the split from Rome. The queen - Henry's first wife - miserable and at her wit's end, asks for help from her nephew Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor.
"There is no need for my rel
Source: RIA Novosti (Russia)
October 26, 2006
The Latvian parliament voted Thursday to disclose the contents of KGB files containing the names of former secret police agents on March 1, 2007, a parliament spokesman said.On October 18, the legal affairs commission of the parliament finalized amendments to a draft law on the disclosure of information about former KGB agents, and decided to postpone the release of declassified data from November 1, 2006 until March 1, 2007.
The commission said it intends to pu
Source: AFP
October 26, 2006
On the 50th anniversary of the Franco-British airborne invasion of Egypt that is known as the Suez crisis, French veterans of the campaign are still pushing for official recognition from the state which they say has airbrushed them out of the history books.Some 17,000 French servicemen were involved -- mostly at a distance -- in the failed offensive to seize the Suez canal back from Gamal Abdel Nasser, according to the Association of Veterans of Suez and Cyprus, but th
Source: AP
October 25, 2006
The famous fossil of Lucy is scheduled to tour the United States, but one place it won't be on display is the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
"Not only is it not going to come to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, it is our position that we don't think it should leave Ethiopia," museum spokesman Randall Kremer said Wednesday.
Smithsonian scientists feel certain objects, such as Lucy, are too valuable to travel and should remain in their
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
October 25, 2006
Former President Ronald Reagan, namesake of an airport, roads, highways, schools, a mountain, a ship and a presidential library, is slated to receive yet another tribute -- to replace Thomas Starr King as one of two notable figures to represent California in Washington's National Statuary Hall.
Established in 1864, the hall at the U.S. Capitol houses statues of 100 influential individuals in American history, with each state contributing two statues. California has been represented
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
October 25, 2006
On 28 September 2006 the House of Representatives passed a bill"to
authorize grants for contributions toward the establishment of the Woodrow
Wilson Presidential Library" -- legislation (H.R. 4846) introduced by
Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and co-sponsored by eleven of his
colleagues.
The bill in essence authorizes a future Congressional appropriation that
directs the Archivist of the United States to contribute funds toward the
establishment of a private presidential m
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
October 25, 2006
Last week we reported that Library of Congress (LC) officials had decided to move, effective December 2006, the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room (AMED) from its present location to make room for a new permanent exhibition gallery of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of early Americana ("Library of Congress to Consolidate African and Middle Eastern Reading Rooms" in NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE; Vol 12, #40; 19 October 2006). News of the proposed closure resulted in a flurry of protests to t
Source: science.monstersandcritics.com
October 25, 2006
Athens - A recently-discovered bust of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle has been described by archaeologists as the best-preserved likeness ever found, reports said Wednesday.
Discovered under the Acropolis, the Roman-era marble bust of the famous philosopher had probably occupied the nearby villa of a wealthy Roman citizen, senior archaeologist Alcestis Horemi was quoted by the Greek newspaper Kathimerini as saying.
The 46-centimetre bust, which dates to the 1st
