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: Gulf Times (Qatar)
November 7, 2011
Carbon dating of ancient organic remains from Wadi Debay’an, a site a few kilometres south of Al Zubara on Qatar’s north-west coastline, has yielded the earliest yet known date for human occupation in Qatar – 7,500 years before present.This was revealed by Environmental archaeologist Dr Emma Tetlow of the Qatar National Environment Record (QNER) in a presentation last week to members of the Qatar Natural History Group on recent investigations at Wadi Debay’an....
Source: NYT
November 8, 2011
Another fragment of Louis Armstrong’s legacy is back where it belongs.The Armstrong museum and archive in Queens has received a treasure-trove of rare 78-r.p.m. records, bootleg tapes, five personal letters, candid photographs, European posters, news clippings, discographies, even weight-loss tips — 192 cubic feet in all — from the estate of a Swedish man known as the world’s second-largest private collector of Satchmoiana.There is also a sweat-stained handkerchief that belonged to Armstrong, who was famous for theatrically wiping his brow between the trumpet solos he blew better than almost anyone else.“We’re excited about it because there might be some valuable DNA in it, what with cloning and all,” joked Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona....
Source: NYT
November 8, 2011
BAGHDAD — As the United States ends its second war in Iraq, the legacy of the first one still haunts. The memory of the first President Bush’s urging Iraqi Shiites to rebel against the government in 1991, and standing by as thousands were slaughtered, is a tragic counternarrative to the revolutions that have swept the Middle East and a torment that even now complicates relations between the countries.In an effort to salve the long-festering wounds and to counter Iran’s influence ahead of the military drawdown, the United States ambassador, James F. Jeffrey, has offered Iraq’s Shiite leaders something they have heard very little of from Americans over the years since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003: remorse and humility.
Source: WECT 6
November 8, 2011
RALEIGH, NC (WECT) - This weekend, the North Carolina Museum of History will open the final part of its largest exhibit ever, "The Story of North Carolina." Thousands of people have already seen part one of the exhibit, which opened in the spring, but it only skimmed the surface of the state's early history, from North Carolina's earliest inhabitants thru the early 1800's. Part two will continue the journey thru the antebellum era, the Civil War, the rise of industry, the Great Depression, the two World Wars and the Civil Rights movement. "It is a good survey of the state's history," said Donna Bell-Kite, the North Carolina Museum of History's assistant curator." "It is not going to go into a great amount of detail in any one particular subject, but going thru this exhibit, you should get a good overview of North Carolina's history, from its earliest inhabitants until today."Hundreds of artifacts help tell the story. Early in the tour, you'll find out about the issue of slavery in North Carolina before the Civil War brought changes, divisions and hardships....
Source: Silicon Republic
November 7, 2011
When you think of Ireland’s cultural heritage, what comes to your mind? Perhaps William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Irish music, The Book of Kells. What about its science heritage?Robert Boyle, Ernest Walton, William Rowan Hamilton, Ellen Hutchins, Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Cynthia Evelyn Longfield are some of the many scientists that shaped Irish history and marked the path that leads to the future. As once said by the 1911 Literature Nobel Prize winner, Maurice Maeterlinck: "At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past."According to the book by David Attis and R Charles Mollan, Science and Irish Culture - Why the History of Science Matters in Ireland, “From the settlement of Ireland in the 17th century by English and Scottish adventurers intent on promoting the latest scientific and technological advances, to the flourishing of scientific institutions in Ireland at the height of its Georgian splendour, to a temporary decline of scientific activity at the time of Irish independence, and a spectacular increase of State interest in science and economic development in the 1990s, science has played a critical role in the development of Ireland.”...
Source: WSJ
November 6, 2011
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. — Robert Flacke Sr. can remember the days when Fort William Henry's multimedia exhibit consisted of two Kodak carousel-style color slide projectors that kept breaking down.The history-heavy tourist attraction on the southern end of Lake George upgraded years ago to a video display, an improvement that looks positively futuristic amid all the aging, dusty exhibits sprinkled throughout the privately owned reconstructed French and Indian War fort and museum. Many of the displays look like they haven't changed since the place was built more than a half-century ago.In an effort to boost numbers of visitors, museum and historical sites around the country are searching for new ways to update old exhibits amid a time of economic uncertainty and declining support for museums in general and history museums in particular."History is tough to sell," said Flacke, president of the Fort William Henry Corp....
Source: Alexandria Free Press (MN)
November 6, 2011
From preserving historic buildings to installing interpretive history markers along roadsides, Minnesotans now have access to more than $10 million for the cause of history and historic preservation through the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage Grants.The Minnesota Historical Society, the organization responsible for administering the grants, recently announced 49 recipients from across the state, of the September Small and Structured Grants of up to $7,000. The Society also announced the next deadline for Small and Structured Grants is January 13, 2012. The Grants Manual is available at www.mnhs.org/legacygrants with all applications being accepted only through the Society’s new grants portal at www.grants.mnhs.org.Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage Grants are made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with passage of the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment by the vote of Minnesotans on Nov. 4, 2008. The amendment supports efforts to preserve Minnesota land, water and legacy, including our state’s history and cultural heritage....
Source: AP
November 8, 2011
BENTONVILLE, Ark. — As an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, Alice Walton had the means to buy almost any piece of art on the market. So she scooped up one masterpiece after another: an iconic portrait of George Washington, romantic landscapes from the 19th century, a Norman Rockwell classic.She amassed an enviable collection of treasures spanning most of American history, and now it’s about to go on display in an unlikely place, a wooded ravine in a small city in northwest Arkansas.The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is regarded as the nation’s most important new art museum in a generation, offering the type of exhibits more commonly found in New York or Los Angeles. But this hall of paintings is taking shape in Bentonville, a community of 35,000 people best known as home of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. headquarters.Walton’s collection provided a “sort of instant museum,” said Henry Adams, an art history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Rather than starting with a small collection and slowly expanding, Crystal Bridges will be fully formed from day one....
Source: WSJ
November 8, 2011
Early on in the 1940 novel “Twilight in Delhi,” men in a Shahjahanabad market discuss how much money they’re making thanks to the 1911 Durbar, and how much more they’ll make when Delhi becomes the new capital.Anyone who has read about the Durbar will recognize how anachronistic that conversation is. It might not seem possible to keep something as major as plans to change your capital and build a brand new city secret, but right up until the afternoon of Dec. 12, 1911, only a handful of people consisting of the king and queen, Viceroy Charles Hardinge and his executive council, the Secretary of State for India and a few others knew anything about it.Those who did know about it referred to the plan by the codename “Sesame.” The queen wasn’t told about it till the party arrived in India, according to architectural historian Robert Grant Irving. The viceroys of the provinces concerned weren’t told a thing till the night of Dec. 11....
Source: Huffington Post
November 7, 2011
The devil's in the details, literally.Art restorers working on one the most famous frescoes painted by Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone in the Basillica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy have uncovered an astounding hidden secret painted by the artist himself. According to Reuters, Giotto hid the face of the devil himself in a fresco.The concept of hiding a figure in the clouds, according to the BBC, was previously thought to have first been implemented by Andrea Mantegna in the 15th century. Giotto's fresco dates to the 13th century....
Source: Gadling
November 6, 2011
The Kingdom of Makuria is the quintessential forgotten civilization. Very few people have even heard of it, yet it ruled southern Sudan for hundreds of years and was one of the few kingdoms to defeat the Arabs during their initial expansion in the 7th century AD. Makuria was a Christian kingdom, born out of the collapse of the earlier Christian kingdom of Axum. Makuria survived as a bulwark of Christianity in medieval Africa until it finally collapsed in 1312. Now excavations of some of its churches at Banganarti and Selib have revealed that this kingdom was a center of pilgrimage, attracting people from as far away as Catalonia, in modern Spain. The 2,300 mile journey from Spain to southern Sudan is a long one even today, but imagine when it had to be done on horseback, walking, and boats powered only by sails and oars. Yet an inscription records that one Catalan named Benesec made the journey almost a thousand years ago, probably to pray for a cure to an illness. "Benesec" was a popular Catalan name in the 13th and 14th centuries....
Source: Business Report
November 6, 2011
Germany's Quandt family, a major shareholder in car manufacturer BMW, has pledged more than 5 million euros (6.9 million dollars) to a memorial for forced labourers in Nazi Germany, media reported Sunday.The Quandt family, which is one of Germany's richest, benefited under Nazi rule from using forced labour in its factories, including Jews rounded up in concentration camps....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 4, 2011
When a workman at Kensington Palace scrawled an obscene remark on a piece of concealed timber more than a century ago, he must have thought his crime would never be detected.However, a £12 million restoration project of the royal residence has discovered the culprit’s handiwork in pristine order, providing a glimpse of the banter between palace staff at the turn of the 20th century.Either a proud boast by the author or an insult about a colleague, the piece of graffiti adorns a post supporting the ceiling beside the palace’s front door....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 3, 2011
Astonishing drawings of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen sketched in 1931 by a British artist who was allowed into the dictator's lair have emerged.Helen McKie was the only woman allowed to sketch in Hitler's Munich headquarters, called Brown House, and she produced 17 chilling pictures of the Nazi monster and his inner-sanctum.Drawn two years before Hitler came to power and eight years before the start of World War Two, the images are a glimpse into the early stages of Nazism....
Source: AP
November 1, 2011
CLEVELAND — The defense for a retired auto worker convicted in Germany of Nazi war crimes told a judge Tuesday that hundreds of pages of newly released documents cast doubt on the U.S. effort to revoke his American citizenship.Attorneys for John Demjanjuk, 91, made the appeal in renewing their request to U.S. District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster to hold a hearing on whether Demjanjuk should regain his U.S. citizenship.Last month, prosecutors said the retired autoworker was trying to cast himself as a victim following his conviction in Germany on more than 28,000 counts of accessory to murder....
Source: CNN.com
April 12, 2011
Washington (CNN) - It has been 150 years since the Civil War began with the first shots at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and in some respects views of the Confederacy and the role that slavery played in the events of 1861 still divide the public, according to a new national poll.In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Tuesday, roughly one in four Americans said they sympathize more with the Confederacy than the Union, a figure that rises to nearly four in ten among white Southerners. When asked the reason behind the Civil War, whether it was fought over slavery or states' rights, 52 percent of all Americans said the leaders of the Confederacy seceded to keep slavery legal in their state, but a sizeable 42 percent minority said slavery was not the main reason why those states seceded....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 1, 2011
A billionaire New York City art dealer is refusing to return a famous $25 million painting that was stolen from a renowned Jewish art dealer by the Nazis during World War II, a sensational lawsuit charges.In court papers, Philippe Maestracci alleges that the Helly Nahmad Gallery -- located in Manhattan’s posh Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue -- is wrongly in possession of the 1918 painting, 'Seated Man With a Cane,’ by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.The canvas was owned by Maestracci’s grandfather Oscar Stettiner, a prominent Jewish gallery owner in Paris.But Stettiner was forced to flee with his wife and two children months before the German troops stormed into Paris and the north and west of France became occupied Nazi territory....
Source: CNN.com
November 1, 2011
Boston (CNN) -- Out of sheer boredom, Susumu Ito, in World War II, became a forward artillery observer, one of the most dangerous jobs available."I lied to my mom and told her it was assigned," he recalled. "I didn't want to tell her I thought it was exciting."Forward artillery observers are among the first to go behind enemy lines, scouting for enemy installations and troop formations, targeting them for artillery strikes. In combat, he used an artillery periscope to spot enemy positions and direct cannon fire.Ito had been in the Army since 1940, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor, many Japanese-American soldiers were discharged, and even those kept on were disarmed and reassigned."They took our rifles away, they didn't know what to do with us," Ito said....
Source: CNN.com
November 2, 2011
Washington (CNN) -- Nearly seven decades after the attack on Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese-American World War II veterans were honored Wednesday at a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony held at the U.S Capitol.In a rare moment of unity, Democratic and Republican Senators and members of the House of Representatives praised Japanese-American soldiers of the 442nd Regiment Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion and veterans of the Military Intelligence Service for their contribution to the war."Aloha and welcome," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, at the start of the invitation-only event inside the Capitol's Emancipation Hall. About 1,000 people witnessed the ceremony in person, including several aging Japanese-American honorees and their families who waited years for this day....
Source: WTVR
November 2, 2011
When President Obama designates part of Fort Monroe as a national monument Tuesday, it won't be the first time a prominent piece of Hampton Roads real estate has had its destiny transformed by the stroke of a presidential pen.Using the powers conferred by the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Herbert Hoover created Colonial National Monument in 1930, linking parts of Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg into a protected federal preserve that became Colonial National Historical Park in 1936.
