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: NYT
September 29, 2006
After months of negotiations, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on Thursday formally turned over 13 archaeological treasures to Italy that cultural officials here say were looted from Italian soil.
At a signing ceremony at the Italian Cultural Ministry, Malcolm Rogers, the Boston museum’s director, pledged his institution’s cooperation in halting plunder in archaeological source countries.
“We’re committed to seeing the end of illegal excavations and the illicit trade in
Source: LAT
September 29, 2006
Empress Maria Fyodorovna, the Danish-born mother of Russia's last czar, was reburied Thursday next to her son and husband in the Romanov family crypt in St. Petersburg nearly eight decades after her death in exile.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II presided over the day's pomp-filled ceremonies, which were attended by hundreds of domestic and foreign dignitaries, including members of various branches of European royalty and about 50 Romanov descendants."
Source: Times Online (UK)
September 25, 2006
A COLLECTION of sacred artefacts looted by the Romans from the Temple of
Jerusalem and long suspected of being hidden in the vaults of the Vatican
are actually in the Holy Land, according to a British archaeologist.
Sean Kingsley, a specialist in the Holy Land, claims to have discovered
what became of the collection, which is widely regarded as the greatest of
biblical treasures and includes silver trumpets that would have heralded
the Coming of the Messiah.
The trumpets, gold cand
Source: Wa Po
September 29, 2006
On the opening page of a small leather-bound book in a University of Virginia library, graduate student Robert Stilling found an inscription in brownish-gray ink. It was a poem by Robert Frost, in the poet's own hand, unknown and, Stilling believes, unpublished.
"It's like coming across a ruin," he said, finding a poem that Frost seemed to have abandoned.
"It was a complete bolt out of the blue," said Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Re
Source: Reuters
September 27, 2006
BEIJING (Reuters) - Women are to be recognized for the first time as
descendants of Confucius in a new family tree of the ancient Chinese
philosopher, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
"We have to adapt to the times," it quoted Kong Dehong, a descendant
heading the fifth update of the family tree, as saying, adding that more
than 1 million descendants of Confucius will be added.
"Men and women are equal now. Even if a woman has to leave the family when
she gets married to live w
Source: Reuters
September 26, 2006
The 17th century punishment for sex crimes was public
humiliation and 1930s Britons pretended to be drunk so they could get away
with sex on the beach.
Historical attitudes to sex in Britain will be laid bare for all to see
this week in archives which reveal a nation rich in sexual experience and
enthusiasm.
The historical documents, to be given a public outing by the Center for
Archive Studies at Liverpool University, include Britain's first ever sex
survey, conducted 57 years
Source: Guardian
September 26, 2006
An intimate pen and ink drawing of Sir Thomas More at home with the family is returning to Britain for the first time since it was given as a present to the humanist scholar Erasmus almost 500 years ago. The inclusion of the Hans Holbein drawing has generated excitement at Tate Britain, which opens its autumn blockbuster, Holbein in England, on Thursday.
It was made in 1526 and became an 8ft by 13ft painting which ended up hanging on the walls of a castle in what is now the Czech R
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 27, 2006
His promise to the party faithful that he would 'always' be with them earned Tony Blair a seven-minute standing ovation.
But the Labour conference may have been slightly less overawed if they had realised that the Prime Minister had based the finale to his farewell speech on the words of a fugitive double murderer.
Mr Blair has confided to friends that he drew inspiration for his big sign-off from a favourite passage of John Steinbeck's 1939 classic The Grapes of Wrat
Source: AP
September 28, 2006
Rose Kennedy, for one brief shining moment the most powerful mother in America, went over President Kennedy's head in 1962 to write directly to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. For that, she got a playful scolding from her son.
She wrote a letter asking the Russian leader to autograph photographs of his meeting with her son, and Khrushchev complied.
"Would you be sure to let me know in the future any contacts you have with heads of state. ..." John Kennedy wr
Source: BBC
September 28, 2006
The mayor of Grantham has said Baroness Thatcher should be honoured with a statue in the town.
The grocer's daughter, who went on to be prime minister from 1979 until 1990, was born in Grantham and went to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.
She was the longest serving prime minister for more than 150 years.
The town's Conservative MP Quentin Davies is also in favour of a statue. But he said Margaret Thatcher had told him she was not keen on the idea.
Source: Independent (UK)
September 28, 2006
New research by a leading British historian has cast serious doubt on its fundamental proposition: that the Austrian-born queen's sexual indiscretions precipitated the 1789 revolution which delivered her to her fate at la guillotine.Simon Burrows, of Leeds University, has uncovered evidence that the salacious pamphlets which revealed the queen had been promiscuous with lovers of both sexes were not distributed until after the revolution had started - a finding that dispels t
Source: macon.com
September 28, 2006
For five days last week, deep-sea cameras snapped countless photographs of the wreck of the USS Macon.
In dark waters some 1,500 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, archaeologists searched for relics from the world's largest rigid airship, which crashed off California's Big Sur in 1935.
They found and photographed the airship's hangar bay, which contained four Sparrowhawk biplanes and their detached landing gear. Through the camera lens on a remotely operated u
Source: NYT
September 28, 2006
There are those who say that in the Internet age the rules of grammar and style are dead. But the people at the University of Chicago Press, publisher of the Chicago Manual of Style, are not among them.
And so starting tomorrow the manual — sometimes known as publishing’s Miss Manners — will be available online by subscription, meaning that those who need to know, pronto, whether it is ever all right to capitalize the first letters of e. e. cummings’s name will no longer have to sea
Source: AP
September 26, 2006
LOSTWITHIEL, England (AP) -- Watercolors and sketches attributed to Adolf Hitler sold for twice their estimated price at an auction Tuesday -- but the sale in a tranquil English town was interrupted by a noisy protest by two self-styled ''comedy terrorists.''
The works, reputed to have been created by Hitler as he served in the German military during World War I, sold for $220,000 after security staff removed the gatecrashers -- one of whom dressed as the Nazi leader and shouted ''T
Source: NYT
September 28, 2006
A map dealer who stole nearly 100 rare maps valued at $3 million from Yale and other institutions was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on Wednesday after a federal judge credited him for helping the authorities retrieve most of the items taken.
Representatives of the institutions that were looted, who had traveled long distances to lobby for a stiff sentence, left the court saying they were deeply disappointed with the punishment given the map dealer, Edward Forbes Smil
Source: NYT
September 28, 2006
They call her the “Black Hawk Down” lady.
And in the corner of her dirt yard, beneath rags drying in the sun and next to a bowl of filthy wash water, she keeps a chunk of history that most Americans would probably like to forget.
It is the battered nose of a Black Hawk helicopter, from one of the two that got shot down in Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993, in an infamous battle that killed 18 Americans, led to a major foreign policy shift and spawned a big movie.
Source: monstersandcritics.com
September 28, 2006
St Petersburg - The remains of the Danish-born mother of Russia's last tsar, Maria Fyodorovna, were finally laid to rest Thursday near the former Russian capital St Petersburg in accordance with her wishes.
At a service attended by dignitaries and royalty from both countries, her casket was interred at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in the Peterhof Palace, next to her husband, Tsar Alexander III.
Earlier in the day, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy
Source: AP
September 28, 2006
France has ended a decades-old system of inequality by bringing lagging pensions of war veterans from former colonies into line with those of their French counterparts whose retirement payment is two-thirds higher.
Africans who fought in French wars welcomed the move, while lamenting that it was too late. The government's decision was not retroactive, as some had demanded.
President Jacques Chirac called it ''an act of justice and recognition for all those who came from
Source: NPR (audio)
September 28, 2006
Researchers have infected mice with a replica of the deadly 1918 flu virus. As expected, all the mice died within days. But not because the virus directly destroyed the lungs. Instead, it triggered an overwhelming and self-destructive immune response. That fits with emerging research on one way viruses kill.
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
September 28, 2006
The Bush Administration's use of Presidential signing statements to
assert objections to enacted legislation reflects an attempt to expand
and consolidate Presidential authority at the expense of Congress,
according to a new analysis from the Congressional Research Service."It seems evident that the Bush signing statements are an integral part
of the Administration's efforts to further its broad view of
presidential prerogatives and to assert functional and determinative
control over al
