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: Guardian (UK)
December 8, 2011
Forlorn traces of England's most notorious pogrom against witches appear to have been unearthed by water engineers engaged in humdrum improvements to a Pennine reservoir.A buried cottage with a sealed room and a mummified cat bricked up in a wall has been discovered in the heart of the "witching country" of Pendle in Lancashire.The gruesome tomb had been hidden for at least a century under a grassy mound at Lower Black Moss, whose catchments provide water for homes and businesses across north-west England.The site is close to the supposed location of Malkin Tower, a ruin whose name echoes the spectral witches' cat Graymalkin in Macbeth. Three wizards and 17 witches were alleged to have plotted there to blow up Lancaster castle in 1612, to free an 85-year-old woman and her daughter accused of selling themselves to the devil....
Source: Spiegel Online
December 9, 2011
Using a hand hoe and working in dim light, geologist Otto Völzing burrowed into the earth deep inside the Stadel cave in the Schwäbische Alb mountains of southwestern Germany. His finds were interesting to be sure, but nothing world-shaking: flints and the remnants of food eaten by prehistoric human beings.Suddenly he struck a hard object -- and splintered a small statuette.It was 1939 and Völzing didn't have much time. He had just been called up to serve in the military and World War II was about to begin. He quickly packed the pieces into a box and the excavation, which was being financed by the SS, was terminated on the same day....
Source: Discovery News
December 9, 2011
Will the mystery over the Great Pyramid's secret doors be solved in 2012?I dare say yes. After almost two decades of failed attempts, chances are now strong that researchers will reveal next year what lies behind the secret doors at the heart of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.New revelations on the enduring mystery were already expected this year, following a robot exploration of the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum....
Source: Courier Mail (AU)
December 7, 2011
Poisoning Japanese crops with chemical weapons during World War II was a "worthwhile" and justifiable tactic, according to newly declassified Australian military documents.The documents also indicate authorities contemplated testing crop-destroying chemical weapons in central Queensland's Proserpine.The thinking contrasts with Australian policy today - in 1993 Canberra signed a global ban on the use and development of chemical weapons.The World War II details emerged on the eve of the 70th anniversary of Japan's attack of Pearl Harbour, which triggered the US to enter the conflict....
Source: The Art Newspaper
December 6, 2011
Images documenting the Nazi-sponsored Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (GDK) have been made available to the public for the first time in an online catalogue created by Munich’s Central Institute for Art History. More than 100,000 photographs, categorised by artist, genre, theme and, remarkably, buyer, have shed new light on the annual art exhibition, giving an insight into officially approved art of the Third Reich and the collecting taste of its citizens.“When we started working with the photographs, we realised there was a difference between what the secondary literature has told us about the exhibition and what it was actually like,” says Christian Fuhrmeister, an art historian from the Central Institute. According to Fuhrmeister, previous research relied on exhibition catalogues that listed works but failed to reproduce them....
Source: WaPo
December 2, 2011
RICHMOND, Va. — State grants totaling $1 million are being awarded to organizations working to preserve 530 acres of Civil War battlefields in Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Friday.The grants, drawn from a fund created by the General Assembly to preserve Civil War sites, will help preservation groups in nine counties preserve 10 places where North and South forces fought.McDonnell said it makes financial sense to preserve Civil War sites, which attract tourists....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 8, 2011
It was the setting for one of England’s most infamous witches’ covens.So the discovery of a mummified cat sealed into the walls of a 17th century cottage was yesterday described by historians as ‘spellbinding’.The unfortunate animal – associated with witches for centuries – was apparently buried alive to protect the inhabitants from evil spirits....
Source: Taiwan News
December 8, 2011
City authorities say Zimbabwe's famed colonial-era "Hanging Tree" crashed into the street after being struck by a workers' truck during highway repairs.Mbuya Nehanda and other icons of the first uprising against white settlers were said to have been hanged from the tree in 1898....
Source: AFP
December 9, 2011
THE HAGUE — An Amsterdam apartment where Jewish teenager Anne Frank and her family lived for nine years before going into hiding due to the Nazi occupation will be opened Saturday, a spokesman for its owner said."Around 400 people will be allowed to enter the home," Andre Bakker, a spokesman for the Ymere social housing company which owns the apartment where Frank and her family lived from 1933 to 1942, said on Thursday.Tickets priced at 7.50 euros ($10) were mainly sold to people living the same neighbourhood of Amsterdam-South, Bakker said....
Source: BBC News
November 28, 2011
Two previously undiscovered pits have been found at Stonehenge which point to it once being used as a place of sun worship before the stones were erected.The pits are positioned on celestial alignment at the site and may have contained stones, posts or fires to mark the rising and setting of the sun.An international archaeological survey team found the pits as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project.The team is using geophysical imaging techniques to investigate the site.The archaeologists from the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection in Vienna have been surveying the subsurface at the landmark since summer 2010....
Source: Japan Update
December 2, 2011
Archaeologists are ecstatic as they study a 24,000-year-old human bone fragment that’s been discovered on Ishigaki Island in southern Okinawa Prefecture....
Source: Popular Archaeology
September 1, 2011
The Sicevo Gorge is a rugged, picturesque river canyon cut into the Kunivica plateau in southeastern Serbia. Containing a nature park, it draws visitors for its beautiful landscape, the result of the occurrence and interaction of geological, geomorphological and hydrological phenomena. But it also contains a series of caves, at least one of which has yielded evidence of human presence during the shifting glacial times of the Ice Age of present-day Europe. The Gorge was placed on the map of popular attention when, in 2008, anthropologists uncovered a partial human mandible (lower jaw), complete with three teeth, while excavating in a small cave. "We were looking for Neanderthals," said Dr. Mirjana Roksandic, a participating paleoanthropologist with the University of Winnepeg and a leading research team member. "But this is much better."
Source: AP
December 7, 2011
JERUSALEM -- Mysterious stone carvings made thousands of years ago and recently uncovered in an excavation underneath Jerusalem have archaeologists stumped.Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V" shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 20 inches (50 centimeters) long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served.The archaeologists in charge of the dig know so little that they have been unable even to posit a theory about their nature, said Eli Shukron, one of the two directors of the dig."The markings are very strange, and very intriguing. I've never seen anything like them," Shukron said....
Source: Medievalists.net
December 8, 2011
A hand-carved reconstruction of an Early Christian cross has been unveiled in the Scottish village of Aberlady to mark the medieval pilgrimage route used by the monks of Iona and Lindisfarne.The pilgrimage route of ‘St Aidan’s Way’ – marks the culmination of an extensive and ambitious heritage project begun in 2007. Original research, archaeological surveys of four sites, the carving of the Aberlady Cross reconstruction and the development of interpretive panels, information leaflets and teaching materials has been carried out by the Aberlady Conservation and History Society.Ruth Parsons, Chief Executive of Historic Scotland, said, “The incredible work done by the Aberlady Conservation and History Society has brought previously unknown history to light. It has added to our understanding of a period in history little understood even by those who know most about it....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 9, 2011
Dutch troops swooped into a village in the town of Rawagede during Indonesia's fight for independence and executed men and boys as their families and neighbours looked on.Dutch officials say 150 people were killed, but a support group and the local community say the death toll was 431."In this context and on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for the tragedy that took place in Rawagede on the 9th of December, 1947," the Netherlands ambassador to Indonesia Tjeerd de Zwaan said.He then repeated the apology in the Indonesian language, to the applause of hundreds of people attending the ceremony, some of whom broke down in tears as they listened in front of a marble monument commemorating the dead....
Source: Charlotte Observer
December 5, 2011
It has been more than six decades since Warren Weaver, a pioneer in automated language translation, suggested applying code-breaking techniques to the challenge of interpreting a foreign language.That insight led to a generation of statistics-based language programs like Google Translate - and, not so incidentally, to new tools for breaking codes that go back to the Middle Ages.Now a team of Swedish and American linguists has applied statistics-based translation techniques to crack one of the most stubborn of codes: the Copiale Cipher, a hand-lettered 105-page manuscript that appears to date from the late 1700s....
Source: Postmedia News
December 9, 2011
On the eve of a War of 1812 bicentennial being heavily promoted by the federal government - and just days before a Dec. 13 deadline for bidders - the City of Niagara Falls, Ont., is scrambling to come up with a plan to purchase and preserve the site of the deadliest of all clashes between American invaders and British-led troops defending colonial Canada: the 1814 Battle of Lundy's Lane.As it happens, Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself stood on the spot last year to declare the battle a key turning point in Canadian history.Today, the patch of earth where more blood was spilled than at any other place in Canada during the war is the site of Battlefield Public School and its surrounding playground. But due to declining enrolment, the school was closed in June by the District School Board of Niagara and the property is set to be sold - potentially, heritage advocates fear, to a private developer....
Source: Medievalists.net
December 9, 2011
The cathedral in Stavanger was built in the year 1125, and is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for permanent settlement in the Norwegian town. However, new analyses of medieval skeletons found beneath the cathedral suggest that Christians lived in Stavanger for several generations prior to this.Over 15,000 human bone fragments lay helter-skelter in a wooden crate. This mess did not discourage the researchers at the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, who are now resurrecting the dead.“We are reassembling and analyzing individual skeletons in order to form a picture of Stavanger’s population before and around 1000,” associate professor Paula Utigard Sandvik and osteoarchaeologist Sean Denham said....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 10, 2011
When King Edward VIII choose love over the monarchy it was the scandal of the century.But this forgotten painting of King Edward VIII in coronation robes he never wore, released to mark today's 75th anniversary of his abdication, shows how the royal family could have been very different.The painting of the king, who gave up his crown to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson, was commissioned for a special coronation issue of Illustrated London News which never made it to the news stands....
Source: West Virginia Gazette
December 12, 2011
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. -- George Washington's "lost apron'' was hiding in plain sight at a Masonic lodge in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle.The Marquis de Lafayette gave the apron to Washington in 1784. Historians and curators at Mount Vernon in Virginia thought for decades that the apron was lost....
