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: BBC
July 11, 2011
A lost painting by Renaissance artist Michelangelo has been hanging in a University of Oxford residence, an Italian scholar claims.The Campion Hall painting, which depicts the crucifixion, had been thought to be by Marcello Venusti.But Antonio Forcellino said infra-red technology had revealed the true creator of the masterpiece.It has been removed from a wall of the Jesuit academic community and sent to the Ashmolean Museum for safekeeping....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 12, 2011
Plans to erect the world's biggest statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking Croatia's second-largest city sparked a backlash in the staunchly Catholic country, with thousands opposing it on Facebook Monday.Split mayor Zeljko Kerum announced an initiative last week to erect a 129-foot-high statue of Christ – 10 feet taller than the world's current biggest in Swiebodzin, western Poland.Mr Kerum said the statue, to be erected on the Marjan hill that for many years sported big letters spelling Tito for the late Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz, was a "good symbol."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 12, 2011
A massive statue believed to be a rare image of Roman emperor Caligula sitting on a throne has been unveiled in Rome.Officials said that it came from an illegal dig south of the Italian capital, and that may have been the site of one of his palaces.The statue, which had been broken in several large pieces and a head, was first found last January when finance police stopped it from being smuggled out of the country by boat at a port near Rome.The operation led to the arrest of two so-called "tomb raiders" – those who dig up the countryside looking for archaeological treasures to sell on the black market.But more importantly, the arrests led police to the site near Lake Nemi, just south of Rome, where Caligula was believed to have had one of his imperial residences...
Source: CNN
July 12, 2011
Former first lady Betty Ford was remembered Tuesday as a woman whose disclosures about her personal battles showed courage and grace and brought encouragement to others.A former president and first ladies present and past joined family members Tuesday afternoon at the first of two services for Ford.Among those attending were former President George W. Bush, who escorted former first lady Nancy Reagan to a pew, and current first lady Michelle Obama and former first lady Hillary Clinton.A military honor guard escorted Ford's casket, covered by a white shroud bearing a large blue cross....
Source: Time
July 12, 2011
A new book reveals that Adolf Hitler ordered the manufacture of Aryan blow up dolls to discourage his troops from sleeping with disease-ridden prostitutes.The so-called "Borghild Project" reportedly kicked off in 1940 when SS chief Heinrich Himmler wrote to Hitler alerting him of the health risks posed to his men by liaisons with French women. "The greatest danger in Paris is the widespread and uncontrolled presence of whores, picking up clients in bars, dance halls, and other places," he wrote. "It is our duty to prevent soldiers from risking their health just for the sake of a quick adventure."
Source: Slate
July 12, 2011
...The Incas never developed the arch, either—another common hallmark of civilization—yet the temples of Machu Picchu, built on a rainy mountain ridge atop two fault lines, still stand after more than 500 years while the nearby city of Cusco has been leveled twice by earthquakes. The Inca equivalent of the arch was a trapezoidal shape tailored to meet the engineering needs of their seismically unstable homeland. Likewise, the Incas developed a unique way to record information, a system of knotted cords called khipus (sometimes spelled quipus). In recent years, the question of whether these khipus were actually a method of three-dimensional writing that met the Incas' specific needs has become one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Andes.
Source: SCPR
July 11, 2011
A memorial service for former First Lady Betty Ford will be held Tuesday afternoon at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Palm Desert. She and late President Gerald Ford worshipped there after he left office in 1977. Betty Ford died Friday at the age of 93.While she was First Lady, Betty Ford championed breast cancer awareness, abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment. But she also endured a very public battle with addiction to alcohol and pain killers.The Betty Ford Center was founded in October 1982. Ford expected that the center would be a Southern California center, according to John Schwarzlose, the CEO of Betty Ford Center.He says Ford "really underestimated the demand, the impact [of the center], because of her, and everything she stood for as a woman. That we'd be worldwide. And that today, 29 years later, we're the best known addiction center in the entire world, was something that really overwhelmed Mrs. Ford."...
Source: CS Monitor
July 11, 2011
Many Americans across the US were feeling the heat Monday, but how hot is it? The National Weather Service issued heat-related advisories for residents in 17 states, forecasting temperatures close to 100 degrees F. in the central and southern plains, and the middle and lower Mississippi Valley. In some parts of those regions, it will feel as hot as 115 degrees. Conditions are expected to continue into Tuesday.So far, the heat wave at hand is nowhere near as severe as the worst recorded since 1980, when the National Climate Data Center began compiling such data. Here is a look at the five deadliest US heat waves/droughts since then.#5 Spring and summer 2000About 140 people died during a heat wave and drought throughout the spring and summer of 2000, report officials with the National Climate Data Center. South-central and southeastern states were hit the hardest. Losses in agriculture and related industries topped $4.8 billion. During the heat wave, some areas experienced as many as 20 more days than usual of temperatures above 90 degrees F.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
July 11, 2011
Adolf Hitler ordered the Nazis to develop sex dolls to send to his troops being ravaged by disease after sleeping with French women, it's been revealed.The synthetic 'comforters' were made from silicone and designed to stop soldiers being laid low with syphilis.Smaller than life-size, the so-called ‘gynoids’ were to be targeted at the men most at temptation from a ‘quick adventure’ with a French prostitute.Initially, the Hungarian actress Kathe von Nagy was asked if the doll could be modelled on her, but she refused.Instead the look of the Aryan doll with blonde bob hair and blue eyes was left bland so soldiers could apply their own fantasy.
Source: LiveScience
July 6, 2011
The remains of a house uncovered in the city of Haifa are the best-preserved yet from the Kingdom of Israel, dating back nearly three millennia.The site of the discovery was excavated about 40 years ago, but neglect had left the structure hidden until now. Layers of earth and garbage had piled up atop it, and off-road vehicles had plowed over the area, damaging the artifacts.When archaeologists recently re-exposed the area during a dig, they found the four-room home to be remarkably good shape — the best-preserved house from the period of the Kingdom of Israel found so far, the researchers said today (July 6). The dig is in an area called Tel Shikmona....
Source: LiveScience
July 6, 2011
A recently discovered miniature clay head with eerie eyes may have been an effigy used by a shaman more than 1,000 years ago, researchers say.The head, which was discovered near Ebbert Spring in Franklin Country, Penn., has shells for eyes and tiny holes across its top and sides that may have been used for feathers or hair. A cavity at the base of the neck indicates that it was likely mounted on a stick or wand.
Source: Fox News
July 11, 2011
They haven't found the slingshot -- not yet anyway.But as archaeologists continue excavation at Gath -- the Biblical home of Goliath, the giant warrior improbably felled by the young shepherd David and his sling -- they are piecing together the history of the Philistines, a people remembered chiefly as the bad guys of the Hebrew Bible.
Source: Monroe News
July 7, 2011
Privately owned land once envisioned for an industrial recycling plant or a new hotel now is public property that can be used to expand the River Raisin National Battlefield Park to more than four times its current size.U.S. Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar, U.S. Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Dearborn, and a host of other dignitaries were on hand at the federal park Wednesday morning for a ceremonial deeding of the additional property to public ownership.It could add more than 143 acres to the federal park’s current 42-acre site and includes property north of the current federal land bordering Mason Run and also east, across Detroit Ave. from the park site near E. Elm Ave. and N. Dixie Hwy....
Source: Deseret News
July 9, 2011
...Historians and critics have struggled for more than a century to identify children Joseph Smith may have had through polygamous marriages in the 1840s. If definitive answers could be found, it would shed light on how plural marriage was introduced to Mormons by Joseph Smith in Illinois. Brigham Young succeeded Joseph Smith as leader of the LDS Church and announced the practice publicly in Utah. The church ended polygamy in 1890....But questions remain today — particularly whether Joseph Smith, who had nine biological children with his wife Emma Smith, had any children through a polygamous wife. Perego, a senior researcher at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, has looked at this question since 2003 when a descendant of Moroni Pratt called him on the phone.
Source: WaPo
July 11, 2011
About 80 children sat in the oppressive heat on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday morning. White, black, American Indian children — a rainbow coalition itching for the adults to stop talking so they could grab their sticks and play their sport in the president’s back yard.And then Jim Brown’s former teammate came to the microphone, a resplendent ponytail poking out of the back of his hat.“The game you have now in your hands belongs to our nation,” Oren Lyons said, raising his lacrosse stick, admiring the wood workmanship.The stick, he said, represents the trees. The webbing, made of deer gut, “goes to the honor of our four-legged friends.”“For us, lacrosse is a spiritual game — a connection to everything around us, not just a sport,” Lyons said. “We forget that and we miss what the game can still be.”...
Source: NYT
July 11, 2011
Theodore Roosevelt — he’s the one who doesn’t have a highway in Manhattan named after him — seems to be enjoying a resurgent popularity among the city’s political and chattering classes.T.R. re-entered the collective consciousness on Monday when Bob Turner, a Republican, officially kick-started his campaign to fill the vacancy in New York’s Ninth Congressional District. You probably know it better as Anthony D. Weiner’s former House seat.Mr. Turner will run against the Democrats’ choice, Assemblyman David I. Weprin. Party leaders, not voters, picked both of these candidates to run in a special election that the governor set for Sept. 13. Sic transit the new era of political openness we’d been hearing so much about.
Source: NYT
July 11, 2011
WASHINGTON — As archivists prepare to make public 63 boxes of Robert F. Kennedy’s papers at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, his family members are having second thoughts about where they should be housed and are considering moving them elsewhere because they believe that the presidential library has not done enough to honor the younger brother’s legacy.
Many of the papers, dealing with Cuba, Vietnam and civil rights, are classified as secret or top secret. There are also 2,300 other boxes covering every stage of Robert Kennedy’s life, including his years as a United States senator and attorney general, most of which have already been opened for research.
Source: 3 News (New Zealand)
July 11, 2011
Archaeologists in Mexico made a dramatic discovery in the state of Morelos when they uncovered an 8th century monolith featuring an Aztec God weighing 60 tonnes.With agricultural images engraved on its side, the massive stone is believed to have been used by the Aztecs to call on the god of rain."These signs on the rock are fundamentally associated with agriculture and water. We think it's highly probable that it (the monolith) was used during rituals to ask for rain and it was placed in a position facing Popocatepetl," said archaeologist Raul Gonzalez.With the ritual stone also bearing the image of the Aztec god Tlaloc, experts are connecting the massive monolith to the nearby archaeological site of Xochicalco....
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
July 12, 2011
Ceremonies are taking place in Poland this week to mark the 70th anniversary of a series of massacres committed by Poles against their Jewish neighbors during World War II. But some groups are still in denial. A ceremony in the eastern town of Jedwabne, Poland, on Sunday marked one of the darkest chapters in the nation's history. Leading Polish politicians, the Israeli ambassador to Poland and the country's chief rabbi were joined for the first time by a Polish Roman Catholic bishop on the site where Polish villagers turned on and massacred their Jewish neighbors during the World War II. The Soviets occupied the area when war broke out in 1939. After the Nazis attacked the USSR two years later, confusion and mayhem gripped Jedwabne. Historians estimate that the massacres of Jews took place in over 50 places in the region, killing thousands.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 12, 2011
Russia celebrates today the 450th anniversary of the Russian Orthodox church, located in Moscow's Red Square, with the opening of an exhibition honouring the "holy fool" Basil the Blessed, to whom the iconic church is dedicated.The exhibition opens today after a decade-long restoration of the cathedral that cost 390 million rubles (£8.7m)."This cathedral is a shrine and a symbol of Russia," Deputy Culture Minister Andrey Busygin. "It's a miracle it survived at all."Built from 1555-1561 by orders of Ivan the Terrible, St Basil's Cathedral suffered heavy damage during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and had been a target of Napoleon's a century earlier.Saint Basil was an unorthodox saint infamous for his naked walks around Moscow in the bitter cold, shoplifting and for his open mockery of Ivan the Terrible, who feared Basil as 'a seer of people's hearts and minds'....
