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
August 1, 2011
CAIRO – Nineteen artifacts taken from the tomb of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun will be returned to Egypt next week after more than half a century at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Egypt's antiquities authority said Saturday.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
August 3, 2011
A crazy plan to make German footballers in World War Two play a 'Blitzkrieg' game that copied the tactics of battlefield warriors has been found in a German archive.Devoted Nazi Karl Oberhuber accused the national team trainer Sepp Herberger - the coach for 28 years who led postwar West Germany to its first World Cup win in 1954 - of being 'too Jewish' in his training methods.In 1940, when the Nazi armies overran France, Belgium and Holland with lightning war tactics, Oberhuber was chief adjutant to the Nazi gauleiter of Bavaria and in charge of sport in the state. This made him a powerful and dangerous man to have as an enemy....
Source: Boston Globe
August 2, 2011
Poland’s government has earmarked funds to improve accessibility to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp memorial for visitors and to develop educational programs about the notorious Holocaust site.At a session on Tuesday, the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk pledged almost 34 million zlotys ($12 million) to local authorities to be spent between 2012 and 2015 on developing access roads leading to the museum and other infrastructure....
Source: Polskie Radio
August 2, 2011
Representatives of several European countries have been taking part in events commemorating WWII's Roma genocide by Nazis and their allies, to coincide with the 67th anniversary of the liquidation of the so-called 'Roma camp' at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 2 August 1944.The meetings are being promoted under Poland's presidency of the EU Council.Meetings in Krakow and at Auschwitz began on Monday, with guests including leading specialists on the fate of the Roma community in wartime Europe.Last Friday, the Polish parliament passed a resolution confirming 2 August as the official Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day....
Source: Gulf Times (Qatar)
August 2, 2011
Sirens wailed, traffic drew to a halt and pedestrians stood in silent tribute yesterday, as Poland’s capital marked the ill-fated 1944 Warsaw uprising against occupying Nazi Germany.The sirens sounded at 5pm (1500 GMT), the exact time that the Polish resistance launched Europe’s largest World War II revolt on August 1, 1944. The brief siren ceremony was the cornerstone of dozens of events to mark the start of the 63-day uprising, which sparked bloody Nazi reprisals and the destruction of Warsaw. At a memorial monument, President Bronislaw Komorowski paid tribute to resistance veterans, whose number has dwindled to around 3,000....
Source: Huffington Post
August 2, 2011
A 14,000 year old carving found in a cave on the Gower peninsula, a part of South West Wales, may be the oldest example of rock art in Britain. The carving of a reindeer is an example of Upper Paleolithic rock art, the second discovery of the kind in the British Isles.Dr. George Nash of the University of Bristol discovered the carving in September of 2010 while with students and members of the Clifton Antiquarian Club. The deer-like motif is hidden in the recesses of the cave and was carved with a sharp tool, possibly made of flint....
Source: Huffington Post
July 29, 2011
Revised editions of two history textbooks in Virginia that were found to be erroneous last fall will be taken to universities across Virginia for public review.Previous state-approved editions of "Our Virginia: Past and Present" and "Our America to 1865," both Five Ponds Press textbooks, were removed from Virginia elementary schools early this year after errors were found in its texts. The most egregious statement was one that says thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War, which most historians reject, The Washington Post reported last fall.Dozens more errors were found after historians took a closer look at the texts, including "inaccuracies, inconsistencies, omissions, questionable interpretations, and spelling and grammatical errors," The Post reported in January....
Source: WaPo
July 31, 2011
AMSTERDAM — Russian archivists have published new material from a German officer imprisoned after World War II who shared a cell with Raoul Wallenberg, the missing Swedish diplomat credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews.Publication of the statements from Willy Roedel came as a surprise since the Russians had previously denied they existed, say two independent scholars who have researched the Wallenberg mystery for decades, in a paper released Monday.
Source: NYT
August 1, 2011
SEATTLE — He smoked Raleigh cigarettes, wore a black clip-on tie and drank whiskey, and when zero hour came, he was one cool cat.......D. B. Cooper hijacked the plane, later parachuting out of it and into the unknown. His body was never found. Mr. Cooper became a folk hero, and the case remains the only unsolved hijacking in American history....Now, 40 years later, comes what seems like a tantalizing new tip. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has a new suspect, one whose name has never surfaced in the ocean of tips that has washed in over four decades.Fred Gutt, a special agent in the Seattle office of the F.B.I., told The New York Times on Monday that the suspect died 10 years ago. He said the tip came from a retired law enforcement officer who knew a witness who “had an association with” the suspect from long ago....
Source: NYT
August 1, 2011
If part of the romance of baseball has often been romance, along comes one from another era.This one features Lou Gehrig, a young woman three years his junior he called “Red,” a domineering mother and a surprise ending 80 years later.The woman was Ruth Martin, a vivacious redhead from Elizabeth, N.J., whom Gehrig apparently dated sometime around 1930.It was a different time and Gehrig, whose mastery on the field was equaled by his discomfort, particularly with women, off it, was a different kind of athlete. He lived with his parents until he was 30 and was the ultimate outsider from baseball’s raucous atmosphere in the ’20s and ’30s.
Source: NYT
August 2, 2011
Some archaeologists have painted primitive societies as relatively peaceful, implying that war is a reprehensible modern deviation. Others have seen war as the midwife of the first states that arose as human population increased and more complex social structures emerged to coordinate activities.
Source: BBC
August 2, 2011
A rare book marking a literary milestone in South Africa has been discovered by a Fife university expert researching a 19th Century collection.
The lost work, which is written in French and tells the story of a forgotten shipwreck, is one of just seven copies known to exist.
David Culpin, of St Andrews University, found it while studying books owned by a governor of Cape Colony in the 1800s.
Cape Colony's present day name is Cape Town.
The book tells the tale of the Eole, a French merchant vessel which sank off the coast of Africa in April 1829, and of its eight survivors who walked barefoot for three weeks to safety....
Source: BBC
August 2, 2011
A private box at the Royal Albert Hall has been put up for sale for £550,000.
The box, which can seat five people, is located on the second tier of the Grade I listed building in Kensington, central London, which opened in 1871.
The private box is the only remaining one in the hall to retain the original timber veneer and mirrored panels, estate agent Harrods Estates said.
Earl Spencer and the Duke of Devonshire have previously owned the box, but the current owner has not been revealed.
The box is located on the eastern side of the auditorium and has about 865 years remaining on the lease....
Source: BBC
August 2, 2011
The British Library is making digital copies of more than 40,000 classic books available for the iPad.
Texts appear in fully digitised form, complete with original page markings and drawings, as opposed to the plain formatting associated with other types of e-books.
All of the works date from the 18th and 19th centuries and include novels, poetry and historical accounts.
Users must pay a monthly subscription of £1.99 to access the full collection....
Source: BBC
July 2, 2011
Researchers working in Uganda say they have unearthed the well-preserved fossil skull of an ancient primate.
The 20 million-year-old specimen comes from the site of an extinct volcano in Uganda's north-east Karamoja region.
The scientists say preliminary analysis showed the tree-climbing herbivore was roughly 10 years old when it died.
The skull is about the same size as that of a chimp, but its brain was smaller....
Source: AP
August 2, 2011
In a dramatic policy shift, Israel's prime minister has agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the cease-fire line that marks off the West Bank, according to a TV report.In a speech about the Middle East in May, Obama proposed negotiations based on the pre-1967 line with agreed swaps of territory between Israel and a Palestinian state. Netanyahu reacted angrily, insisting that Israel would not withdraw from all of the West Bank, though that was not what Obama proposed.Now Netanyahu is basically accepting that framework, Channel 2 TV reported on Monday, and is offering to trade Israeli territory on its side of the line for West Bank land where its main settlements are located....
Source: National Security Archive at GWU
August 1, 2011
Washington, D.C., August 1, 2011 - Pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive on the 50th anniversary of the infamous CIA-led invasion of Cuba, the CIA has released four volumes of its Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation. The Archive today posted volume 2, "Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy" (Part 1 | Part 2), classified top secret, which contains detailed information on the CIA's negotiations with Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama on support for the invasion.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 1, 2011
It is one of the best preserved buildings from the Roman world, a 2,000-year-old testament to the immense power and wealth of the empire.
But mystery has always surrounded what lies behind the unusual design of the Pantheon, a giant temple in the heart of Rome that was built by the Emperor Hadrian.
Now experts have come up with an intriguing theory – that the temple acted as a colossal sun dial, with a beam of light illuminating its enormous entrance at the precise moment that the emperor entered the building.
Constructed on Hadrian's orders and completed in AD128, the Pantheon's hemispherical dome is punctured by a 30ft-wide circular hole known as the 'oculus'.
It provides the interior of the building with its only source of natural light and allows in rain and – on rare occasions – snow....
Source: USA Today
July 30, 2011
Battling nomads earned you buckets of trouble around 2,500 B.C., reports an international archeology team. Scars too.
The study team reports on two Bronze Age burials in a tomb from the ancient trade town of Terqa, a Mesopatamian archeological site in modern-day Syria.
The twin-domed tomb was about 16 feet long, 12 feet wide and six feet high, note the authors. Examination of the skeletons showed one belonged to a woman and one belonged to a man. A tough man.
But other skeletons from this period don't show such serious wounds, he adds, which leads to the conclusion that this person might been a notable warrior in the local community.
The researchers attempted to study the DNA of both skeletons, taken from tooth samples.
Source: BBC
July 31, 2011
Successive British governments have accused Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe of brutal, corrupt and incompetent rule, but new evidence suggests that without British help, he might not have lived long enough to come to power. It was widely suspected that the British had somehow got wind of the raid and warned Nkomo's men.New evidence seen by the BBC's Document programme, suggests they might have been right. The British government, which was opposed to Ian Smith's white minority government, was working hard to find a peaceful end to the war.London believed this could only come about if rebel leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe were part of any solution.So the Foreign Office was desperate to ensure that both men would make it to the Lancaster House peace talks that were due to take place in London later that year....
