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: Daily Mail (UK)
July 21, 2011
Ragged and filthy, their feet bare, they wear grave, careworn expressions. For these children, life was nothing but hard work, empty bellies and the constant struggle for survival. The pictures, taken by photographer Horace Warner 100 years ago in Spitalfields in London’s East End, were later used by social campaigners to illustrate the plight of the poorest children in London.On these streets and alleys, hordes of urchins eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, fending for themselves while their parents worked 14-hour days in the factories and docks....
Source: Shelbyville Times
July 20, 2011
The bodies of 11 U.S. soldiers who fought in the Battle of Monterrey in 1846 have been recovered in Mexico, and Bedford County commissioners may join a Lipscomb University history professor in asking that they be brought back to Tennessee for burial at the Mexican War Monument in Gallatin.Commissioner Joe Tillett, who spoke at Tuesday night's meeting of Bedford County Board of Commissioners' rules and legislative committee, read a July 9 opinion column in the Nashville Tennessean by Timothy D. Johnson, a history professor at Lipscomb, about the discovery of skeletal remains during a construction project in Monterrey, Mexico. The remains have been identified by Mexican archaeologists as soldiers from the army of Gen. Zachary Taylor in the Mexican-American War, and almost certainly members of the First Tennessee Volunteer Regiment, according to Johnson. No specific individuals have been identified.Bedford County was one of eight counties which supplied volunteers for the regiment.
Source: Time.com
July 21, 2011
Mothballing the shuttles was fine, but it's a little as if America opened an orbital B&B and then junked the jitneys that were needed to get the vacationers back and forth. And with at least 10 more three-person crews queuing up to take their turns aboard in the next few years, those space buses will be sorely missed. The good news is, there's an unlimited number of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fill the gap. The bad news is, well, there's an unlimited number of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fill the gap. If the shuttles were business class and the old Apollos were coach, the Soyuz is a little like hiding in the wheel well for a coast-to-coast flight, even if it's a wheel well with an impeccable safety record — at least recently.
Source: WaPo
July 18, 2011
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia is rolling out its custom 18-wheel Civil War HistoryMobile for the 150th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of First Manassas.The big rig contains what Virginia tourism officials call a high-tech immersive experience detailing the state’s pivotal role in the Civil War.As visitors walk through the rolling exhibit, they will experience a battlefield that is intended to convey the bewildering sense of chaos experienced by soldiers. The 18-wheeler also shares with visitors the experiences of people on the home front.The walk-through museum is the work of the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the Civil War Commission. It will make its debut Thursday at Manassas National Battlefield....
Source: AP
July 21, 2011
BERLIN (AP) — The bones of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess were exhumed under cover of darkness, burned and secretly scattered at sea after his grave became a shrine for thousands of neo-Nazis, a cemetery official said Thursday.Workers removed Hess' remains from his family's plot with the permission of his relatives, cremated the bones and dispersed them before dawn on Wednesday, said Andreas Fabel, a cemetery administrator in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel.Hess was captured in 1941 when he parachuted into Scotland saying he wanted to negotiate peace between Britain and Germany.The attempt was denounced by Hitler, and Hess later told British authorities that the Nazi leader knew nothing of it. Hess, who spent the rest of his life as a prisoner of the World War II allies and since his death in 1987, became a martyr for the far-right. Neo-Nazis have used the anniversary of his death as an occasion to hold large rallies, with Wunsiedel — near the Czech border — often a focal point....
Source: NYT
July 21, 2011
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — It’s been 10 years since L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor, unveiled a plan to build the United States National Slavery Museum on 38 acres here. It was to be the only institution of its kind, housed in a soaring glass-and-travertine building and illuminated at night so that cars passing on I-95 could see the full-scale replica of a slave ship in its atrium.Today the land remains vacant and is drowning in tax bills.The museum owes more than $215,000 in property taxes and fees, dating back to 2008. This month the city announced it is putting the land on the auction block.“It just seems that nothing has been happening, and nobody’s answering any of the mail we send to them, so we’re just doing the same thing to them that we’d do to anybody else,” said G. M. Haney, the city’s treasurer.The museum’s director has departed, its board no longer meets, its offices are abandoned, and the museum’s state license to solicit donations has lapsed. Some people who donated artifacts to the museum years ago have demanded them back....
Source: AP
July 20, 2011
The last of the more than 60,000 Confederate veterans who came home to Alabama after the Civil War died generations ago, yet residents are still paying a tax that supported the neediest among them. Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has "Heart of Dixie" on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.The tax once brought in millions for Confederate pensions, but lawmakers sliced up the levy and sent money elsewhere as the men and their wives died. No one has seriously challenged the continued use of the money for a memorial to the "Lost Cause," in part because few realize it exists; one long-serving black legislator who thought the tax had been done away with said he wants to eliminate state funding for the park....
Source: BBC
July 18, 2011
Archaeologists believe the remains of burned oak uncovered at the site of the first Sainsbury's in the Highlands to be evidence of an ancient "rest stop".
The supermarket and a filling station are being constructed on the outskirts of Nairn, at a cost of about £20m.
Headland Archaeologists investigated the site ahead of building work.
They radiocarbon-dated the hearth to the Mesolithic period, which started as the last Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago.
In a report published on Highland Council's Historic Environment Record site, the archaeologists said the fire appeared to have been made to provide heat and not cooking, because no food waste was found....
Source: BBC
July 19, 2011
A team of international experts has concluded that the former president of Chile, Salvador Allende, killed himself during the 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.A detailed report was released two months after Mr Allende's body was exhumed as part of an inquiry into his death.Mr Allende's family has always accepted the official version.But some of his supporters suspected he had been killed by soldiers.Allende, who was 65, died in La Moneda presidential palace on 11 September 1973 as it was being bombed by air force jets and attacked by tanks...
Source: AP
July 20, 2011
Serbian authorities on Wednesday arrested the last remaining fugitive sought by the U.N. war crimes court, tracking Goran Hadzic down in a mountainous region in the northern part of the country, an official said.
The former leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs during the country's bloody ethnic war, has been on the run for eight years, managing to evade justice despite international pressure for his arrest.
He is wanted for atrocities stemming from the 1991-1995 conflict in Croatia, when he fought against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia...
Source: CNN
July 20, 2011
Three World War II soldiers were finally laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery Wednesday after almost seven decades missing in action.
The men were buried together in a single casket with full military honors. Their remains were only recently identified through the efforts of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC).
Army Pfc. Lawrence N. Harris of Elkins, West Virginia., Cpl. Judge C. Hellums of Paris, Mississippi, and Pvt. Donald D. Owens of Cleveland were fighting with their unit, the 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, on October 9, 1944, during the final battle for control of the Parroy Forest in eastern France, according to the Department of Defense.
All three were killed when their M-10 tank destroyer came under enemy fire....
Source: Seattle Times
July 15, 2011
Archaeologists are toiling side by side with construction workers on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Highway 520 projects.They're collecting broken bottles, peach pits and peanut shells. But instead of litter sticks and garbage bags, they are wielding trowels and shovels, and paying $342,000 for a space to preserve the junk.Because one man's trash is another man's ... really, really old trash."What archaeology is, is people's garbage," Washington State Department of Transportation cultural-resources specialist Kevin Bartoy said. "But what that garbage is to archeologists is little bits of data."Though they won't find "the gold idol," archeologists are piecing together a picture of 19th- and 20th-century Seattle society that is not well recorded, Bartoy said....
Source: USA Today
July 19, 2011
So much for Hagar the Horrible, with his stay-at-home wife, Helga. Viking women may have equaled men moving to England in medieval invasions, suggests a look at ancient burials.Vikings famously invaded Eastern England around 900 A.D., notes Shane McLeod of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia in the Early Medieval Europe journal, starting with two army invasions in the 800's, recounted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Viking invaders founded their own medieval kingdom, 'the Danelaw', in Eastern England....
Source: Tampa Bay online
July 19, 2011
Imagine last summer's Deepwater Horizon oil spill happening in slow motion, millions of gallons of oil fouling beaches and fishing grounds over decades instead of months.That's the kind of long-term disaster federal environmental officials say could happen as thousands of World War II-era shipwrecks erode in coastal waters around the world.After nearly 70 years under the sea, those ships have reached the point where their steel fuel tanks and cargo holds could soon give way, emptying their contents into the surrounding water.One of the ships on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's watch list is the Joseph M. Cudahy, which rests in the Gulf of Mexico off southwest Florida.Three days out of Houston, the oil tanker was bound for Pennsylvania with 77,444 barrels of fuel and lubricating oil....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 20, 2011
Wearing a full suit of armour doubled the amount of energy used in battle, according to a new study in which volunteers dressed as 15th century knights were made to run on a treadmill.The exertion of carrying the steel plate armour, which weighed between 30 and 50kg, (66-110lb), would have placed additional weight on each limb and hampered the wearer’s breathing, making them weaker in a fight.This meant that heavily-armoured French soldiers stood little chance when advancing across boggy ground towards more lightly attired British archers at Agincourt in 1415, experts said.The exhaustion caused by several days of marching while clad from head to toe in metal may also have contributed to the French defeat by the English in the Battle of Crécy in 1346....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 20, 2011
Despite initial reports that the fund would continue indefinitely, the organisers claim the charity was always meant to have a finite life.It will close at the end of 2012 after 15 years of operation.A spokesman said that the charity had started to spend its last remaining £13million in capital."By 31 December 2012, we aim to close the Fund's doors and cease operating as an organisation." he added."Until then, it is continuing to work with its partners to ensure that it leaves a lasting legacy of social change.”...
Source: CNN
July 20, 2011
On Tuesday July 20, Christie's is auctioning never before published photos of the Beatles by photographer Mike Mitchell. The black and white collection is expected to fetch an estimated $100,000. This silhouette of "The Fab Four" is estimated to sell for $2,000 - $3,000....
Source: BBC News
July 19, 2011
Croatia has put its former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader behind bars after his night-time extradition from Austria.He is due to be questioned this week over allegations of corruption and abuse of power.He was driven across the Croatian border in a silver Mercedes van under police escort, Reuters reported.Mr Sanader, 57, denies any wrongdoing, and says the charges are politically motivated. He was in power in 2004-09.He was arrested in Austria in December, on a Croatian arrest warrant, a day after Croatia had lifted his immunity from prosecution.There are suspicions that Mr Sanader diverted state budget money into a secret slush fund for his conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)....
Source: BBC News
July 19, 2011
Recent protests in Israel highlight the differences between the country's religious and secular Jewish communities.Hundreds of right-wing Jews have taken part in demonstrations outside Israel's Supreme Court over the brief detention of two prominent rabbis in the last few weeks.There were clashes with police on horseback on the nearby Jerusalem streets and several arrests were made.Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King's Torah - written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It justifies killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances.The fifth chapter, entitled "Murder of non-Jews in a time of war" has been widely quoted in the Israeli media. The summary states that "you can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews"....
Source: BBC News
July 20, 2011
Serbian authorities have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive war crimes suspect sought by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.Mr Hadzic, now 52, led Serb separatist forces during Croatia's 1991-1995 war.He has been charged with the murder of hundreds of Croats and other non-Serbs and is expected to be transferred to The Hague in the coming days.The arrest comes less than two months after Serbia caught former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed Mr Hadzic's arrest at a news conference....
