Breaking News

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: History.com
October 21, 2011

Forensics Put a Face to a Stone Age Boy’s Remains

The face of a teenager who died 7,500 years ago has been brought back to life through methods that combine forensics and art, the University of Stavanger in Norway announced yesterday. The remains of the Viste Boy—so named because he lived in Norway’s Vistehola cave—were discovered in 1907 and represent the most complete Stone Age skeleton ever found in the country. Jenny Barber, who performed the reconstruction, said she thinks it’s so accurate that people who knew the youth might be able to recognize him in her model.In law enforcement, forensic artists use drawing, digital imaging and skeletal analysis to recreate crime scenes and identify victims. As technology improves, these tools have become increasingly beneficial for researchers seeking to offer a glimpse at our earliest ancestors. That’s what Barber, a forensic art student at the University of Dundee in Scotland, hoped to accomplish when she began examining the Viste Boy’s brittle and fragmented skull.“The goal has been to create something as similar as possible to the original,” Barber explained. “That’s what facial reconstruction is all about—identification and recognition of a unique person.”...

Source: BBC
October 21, 2011

Plaque honour for Llanelli Battle of Britain pilot

A college in Carmarthenshire is to honour an RAF pilot who was killed in the Battle of Britain.Historians say Reg Isaac from Llanelli selflessly flew his Spitfire into a German ambush on 5 August,1940 to save his comrades, knowing he would die.A plaque will be unveiled at Coleg Sir Gar, the old Llanelli Grammar School, where he went from 1927 to 1934.Former Conservative leader Lord Howard, who also went to the school, will perform the unveiling.Friday's dedication is part of a programme by the Battle of Britain Historical Society to place a plaque in the schools of each of about 2,900 pilots who fought on the British side.Wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill praised them as 'The Few' who saved Britain from German invasion....

Source: Irish Times
October 21, 2011

Plaque to Irish 'flown earl' unveiled in Spain

One of Ireland’s “best loved and lost” leaders, Red Hugh O’Donnell, will be remembered in the Spanish city of Valladolid today where a plaque is being unveiled in his honour.Two-and-a half-year-old Hugo O’Donnell is the youngest of the earl’s descendants to attend the ceremony, which marks the culmination of many years’ effort by the O’Donnell clan to mark the burial place.Ireland’s ambassador to Spain, Justin Harman, and Mayor of Valladolid Francisco Leon de la Riva will jointly unveil the plaque. Family representatives will include Vincent O’Donnell, secretary of the O’Donnell Clan Association and Don Hugo O’Donnell, Duque de Tetuan and current head of the Spanish branch of the O’ Donnell family.Red Hugh or “Aodh Rua” died at the young age of 29 in September 1602, having contracted an illness while trying to persuade King Philip III of Spain to come to Ireland’s aid after the Battle of Kinsale defeat in 1601....

Source: Discovery News
October 21, 2011

Couple Held Hands for 1,500 Years

The skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple reveal the pair has been holding hands for 1,500 years.Italian archaeologists say the man and woman were buried at the same time between the 5th and 6th century A.D. in central-northern Italy. Wearing a bronze ring, the woman is positioned so she appears to be gazing at her male partner."We believe that they were originally buried with their faces staring into each other. The position of the man's vertebrae suggests that his head rolled after death," Donato Labate, the director of the excavation at the archaeological superintendency of Emilia-Romagna, told Discovery News....

Source: AP
October 21, 2011

Florida senator denies embellishing family history

MIAMI (AP) — In Florida, where Cuba and Fidel Castro can be highly combustible political issues, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is defending himself against allegations he embellished his family's story in saying his parents left the island after Castro came to power.So far, prominent members of the Cuban American community are standing by him, including the head of one of Miami's oldest and most respected exile groups, who said Friday that he is willing to give the rising GOP star and tea-party favorite a pass.The 40-year-old freshman senator has always publicly identified with the exile community and has a strong following within it. In a campaign ad last year, he said: "As the son of exiles, I understand what it means to lose the gift of freedom." Rubio's biography on his Senate website previously said he was "born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who come to America following Fidel Castro's takeover." It has been changed to say Rubio "was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban exiles who first arrived in the United States in 1956."

Source: Vancouver Observer
October 20, 2011

The history of Halloween

It's sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, sometimes strange...but without a doubt, the Halloween candies always taste good.Behind all the costumes, candies and pumpkins, there lies the strange story of Halloween...A long time ago, Halloween was merely a celebration to symbolize the transition between the warm season to the cold season.  During this dark night, it was thought that all the dead, ghosts and ghouls, and the spirits of the night, would come back on the earth in order to haunt the living.  In 840AD, Pope Gregoire IV decided to establish the "the Day of the Dead" which was also known as, All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween).One of the traditions which was started was the concept of the Jack o'lantern. To commemorate the legend ofthe Jack o’ lantern, who was said to be the man who gave his soul to the devil and doomed to walk in hell with a lantern, people from all around the world, would put a candle inside of a turnip. Many years later, the turnip was replaced by the pumpkin, because it was much easlier to hollow out....

Source: The Daily Mail (UK)
October 18, 2011

Was football being played 300 years before we thought AND was it invented by the Scots?

It has been the nation’s favourite game for centuries.And now historians have discovered evidence that suggests football is actually 350 years older than first thought.Experts believed the modern version of the game was established in the 19th century, with earlier matches involving barbaric scraps between dozens of players on pitches two miles long.However, documents suggest that British royals hosted less chaotic games in their courtyards in the late 15th century....

Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 19, 2011

Found, the Viking war lord buried in his boat: 1,000-year-old tomb of Norse invader and weapons of war

Judging from the opulence of his tomb, he was a revered Viking warrior destined to take his place in Valhalla among the honoured dead.Laid to rest in a 17ft boat with his sword, axe and bronze drinking horn, the powerful Norseman’s burial site has been discovered by archaeologists in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands.The grave, unearthed in Ardnamurchan, is the first of its kind to be found intact on the British mainland and is thought to date from 1,000AD – the height of the ‘Second Viking Age’....

Source: The Post and Courier
October 10, 2011

Faces of the Civil War: Mary Chesnut's photographs back in family hands

Mary Chesnut, wife of U.S. Sen. James Chesnut Jr. of South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War — a man who played a pivotal role in the war's first shot at Fort Sumter and later served as an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, wrote an extensive diary widely praised as one of that era's greatest works of literature.But she also collected a few hundred photographs, primarily of the people who were her subjects. These photos likely jogged her memory as she continued to rework her diary up throughout Reconstruction and until her death in 1886.Since then, the photographs and her written words were split up.Her diary, first published in 1905, would become famous. Her photographs, however, disappeared — at least from the scholars and family members most involved in keeping Chesnut's legacy alive....

Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 19, 2011

Amateur historians unearth Australian Spitfire in France

Amateur aviation historians have unearthed the wreckage of a Royal Australian Air Force Spitfire that crashed in northern France during the Second World War and the skeletal remains of its pilot.The wreckage of the plane, which was shot down in action and crashed in May 1942 near the village of Hardifort, was dug up from beneath 16 feet of soil, local officials said.The fighter was in pieces but the bones of its pilot - identified by tags as W.J. Smith of the RAAF, service number 400942 - were recovered....

Source: WSJ
October 20, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Has History on Its Side

To many Americans, Occupy Wall Street was a long time coming. On Wall Street, it seems to have been going on for a long time....Wall Street protests are an American institution, from Father James Cox's Depression-era march on Washington, which I mentioned last week, to the populist movements of the late 19th century, to the Hard Hat Riot of 1970....But if the history of Wall Street protest is a thread, Occupy Wall Street represents a big knot. Mr. Geisst says there's been no protest of this length on Wall Street. And he believes the protest has exceeded all previous efforts by expanding nationally and internationally. Part of the appeal is Occupy Wall Street's use of social networking and blogging."It's the same thing that's been happening in the Middle East," he says.That part is no accident. Occupy Wall Street is based on the Arab Spring model. Occupy Wall Street hasn't come close to overthrowing a government, of course, but it likely has accomplished more than any other protest in the rich history of demonstrations at Wall and Broad streets....

Source: AFP
October 19, 2011

Hitler 'personally' planned 1934 putsch in Vienna

VIENNA — Adolf Hitler himself planned a failed Nazi coup in 1934 that culminated in the assassination of the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, according to new findings by a Viennese historian.Based on journal entries by close Hitler associate Joseph Goebbels, historian Kurt Bauer concluded the thwarted "July putsch" of 1934 was devised "with great likelihood by Adolf Hitler personally", in a newly published article.On July 25, 1934, Austrian Nazi partisans attacked the chancellery in Vienna, hoping to force the government to resign and install a regime favourable to Hitler's Germany....

Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 20, 2011

Amazing scale model recreates Nonsuch Palace more than 300 years after it was destroyed

When it was built, it was hailed as one of the finest buildings of its age – only to be destroyed 150 years later.Now Henry VIII’s ‘lost’ palace can be seen for the first time in more than 300 years – in a scale model based on 50 years of research.The replica of Nonsuch Palace – so named because there was no other like it – took 1,250 hours to make.It measures 7.2ft by 4ft (2.2m by 1.2m) and is made of wood, with intricate architectural detail added in plastics, fibre-glass resin and brass....

Source: LiveScience
October 19, 2011

Computers Piece Together Scattered Medieval Scrolls

It's like something out of "The Da Vinci Code": Hundreds of thousands of fragments from medieval religious scrolls are scattered across the globe. How will scholars put them back together?

Source: Discovery News
October 18, 2011

Taxi Driver Mummified Like Pharaohs

A former British taxi driver has become mummified in the same way as the pharaohs.Viewers of England's Channel 4 will see Alan Billis turned into a mummy over the space of a few months as his body is preserved using the techniques which the ancient Egyptians used on Tutankhamun.Billis had been terminally ill with cancer when he volunteered to undergo the procedure which a scientist has been working to recreate for many years.The 61-year-old from Torquay in Devon had the backing of his wife Jan, who said: "I'm the only woman in the country who's got a mummy for a husband."...

Source: NYT
October 18, 2011

A Boss Collection for Monmouth University

A collection of documents, articles and books about Bruce Springsteen’s career that has been growing for years at the Asbury Park Public Library will be moved to nearby Monmouth University in West Long Branch, N.J., the university said.The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection includes nearly 15,000 documents from 44 countries and comprises books, concert programs, magazine and newspaper articles and other ephemera chronicling the career of Mr. Springsteen and members of his bands. Assembled by fan organizations, the archive has grown so large it can no longer be housed at the library in the town where Mr. Springsteen began his professional career in the 1970s....

Source: Kentucky.com
October 18, 2011

Prohibition was a job-killer for Kentucky's bourbon makers

....The idea that Kentucky — a state which takes so much pride in being the birthplace of bourbon whiskey and the home of many distilleries — could vote to ban alcohol seems almost unthinkable today. But historians say it was typical of a period in which anti-alcohol fervor ran strong and dry forces successfully promoted Prohibition as a solution for many societal ills."There is something of a perception that the dries kind of pulled the wool over the eyes of the American people all of a sudden in 1919 and 1920," says Thomas Appleton, a professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University. "But that's not true. It was a movement that lasted a full century, and here in Kentucky it began in the 1830s and moved steadily forward."Lexington churches celebrated when Prohibition went into effect, but the liquor ban didn't go over any more smoothly here than in other cities across the country.Lexington newspapers soon were carrying stories of liquor seized by police at private establishments and of increasing acts of lawlessness, like the theft of whiskey from the James E. Pepper Distillery on Old Frankfort Pike by gun-wielding bandits.

Source: AP
October 17, 2011

Army Museum's Morbid Oddities Resettled in Maryland

The bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln is mounted under glass, like a diamond in a snow globe, in its new home at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.The lead ball and several skull fragments from the 16th president are in a tall, antique case overlooking a Civil War exhibit in a museum gallery in Silver Spring, just off the Capital Beltway. The military museum, known for its collection of morbid oddities, moved in September from the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. At Walter Reed, visitors had to pass through a security gate and find the museum on the campus, where parking could be a problem. The new building stands outside the gates of Fort Detrick's Forest Glen Annex....

Source: Huffington Post
October 16, 2011

Chicago's Great Migration: Blacks Leaving Historic Neighborhoods To Return South

CHICAGO — Nearly seven decades ago, James Middleton was just a toddler when he watched a white man shoot and kill a black man in the little town of Lambert, Mississippi.He had tagged along with his father to run errands and, giddy with excitement, sat in his daddy's Ford as they pulled up to a local restaurant. There was a commotion out front —a family friend arguing with the eatery's white owner, who had a pistol in his hand."You nigger!" Middleton recalls the white man shouting. "I'll kill you!"The friend ran. Gunshots followed."I looked down and I could see this man, still trying to breathe, and blood was coming out of his chest," says Middleton. "I don't like to remember bad things. But it seemed like bad things were always happening to black folks."...

Source: NJ.com
October 17, 2011

Woman gets $4 compensation for Korean War killing

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean woman has been offered a little over $4 in government compensation for the death of her brother during the 1950-53 Korean War, embarrassing officials who say they were bound by an out-dated law.The woman was two years old when her brother was killed in combat in 1950, but never knew of his existence until told of his death by a neighbor, local media reported, adding the children's mother has suffered from dementia....