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: CNN
June 16, 2011
Today marks the 100th birthday of IBM, which was founded on June 16, 1911, in New York City as the awkwardly named Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. (It was renamed International Business Machines in 1924.)
Source: NYT
June 15, 2011
When the Harvard psychologist and psychedelic explorer Timothy Leary first met the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1960, he welcomed Ginsberg’s participation in the drug experiments he was conducting at the university.
Source: US News and World Report
June 15, 2011
High school seniors' scores on a national history assessment remained flat between 2006 and 2010, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a government organization.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 15, 2011
A diary kept by Che Guevara has come to light that provides fresh insight into his relationship with Fidel Castro and the guerrilla campaign that led to the Cuban revolution.Extracts from notebooks previously thought lost have been published as Diary of a Combatant in Cuba.Researchers spent years deciphering the handwritten scrawl of the revolutionary icon.
Source: Foxnews
June 15, 2011
The author of a study claiming the U.S. housing collapse is now worse than during the Great Depression warned Wednesday that the
Source: CNN
June 15, 2011
A Civil War fort, a Chicago hospital and a Chinese neighborhood are among the sites listed as America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.The 24th annual list, released Wednesday, includes significant sites that reflect U.S. history and culture and are at risk of permanent damage or destruction.
Source: Golf.com
June 15, 2011
In Arnold Palmer's museum of an office in Latrobe, Pa., there's a great deal of presidential golfing memorabilia, dating to 1958, when Eisenhower briefly met Palmer, didn't recognize him as the reigning Masters champion and later wrote him to apologize for the slight. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
Source: BBC News
June 15, 2011
Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that the occupants of southeastern France were brewing beer during the Iron Age, some 2,500 years ago.A paper in Human Ecology outlines the discovery of barley grains that had been sprouted in a process known as malting; an oven found nearby may have been used to regulate the process.
Source: BBC News
June 15, 2011
They were towering figures in 20th Century Chile: Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda, the president and the poet, two men united in life by their left-wing politics, and divided in death by a matter of days.For years, Chileans have been taught that Mr Allende committed suicide during the military coup of 11 September, 1973, and that Mr Neruda died 12 days later of heart failure brought on by prostate cancer.But now, both deaths are under investigation.
Source: NYT
June 1, 2011
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA, it seems, is having trouble letting go.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
June 14, 2011
Behind the "staff only" door at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, student interns are wheeling around carts of human skulls from nearly every corner of the globe.The collection contains 2,000 of them, many with carefully printed labels across the foreheads - Icelandic, Peruvian, Mexican Aztec. They form part of a famous - and infamous - collection amassed by Philadelphia physician/scientist Samuel Morton.
Source: BBC
June 14, 2011
The medieval secrets of Northumberland Park could be revealed in the next few weeks during an archaeological dig.
Up to seven trenches will be dug within the park, which lies between Tynemouth and North Shields.
The dig is part of work to rediscover the medieval hospital of St Leonard's as part of North Tyneside Council's restoration plans.
The council is applying for £2.2m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to improve the park.
Northumberland Park opened in 1885 and comprised woodland areas, formal flowerbeds, a pond
Source: BBC
June 14, 2011
A US salvage diver says he will scour the bottom of the north Arabian Sea to hunt for the body of Osama Bin Laden.
Bill Warren says that he wants to establish once and for all whether the al-Qaeda leader was killed by US forces in May, and then buried out at sea.
Mr Warren, 59, says his search will begin in about four weeks time, and will cost around $400,000 (£245,000).
He admits it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but maintains it is not an impossible mission....
Source: BBC
June 14, 2011
A 94-year-old man who guarded Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, during his days as a prisoner of war in south Wales has died.
Joe Clifford, who had lived in Abergavenny since 1942, Monmouthshire, died after a short illness.
He guarded Hess in Surrey in 1941 and moved with him in June 1942 to Maindiff Court in Abergavenny, where he said the deputy fuhrer led a comfortable life.
In interviews given after the war Mr Clifford, who guarded Hess for three-and-a-half years,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 14, 2011
Legend has it that Herculaneum was founded by Hercules while he was returning from Iberia on one of his travels.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 14, 2011
A pair of round-framed spectacles belonging to Mahatma Gandhi have gone missing from a museum in western India, officials said. Staff at the Sevagram Ashram, a religious retreat some 47 miles from the city of Nagpur, noticed that the glasses had disappeared as they made preparations to mark the anniversary of its founding.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 14, 2011
Dormice, sea urchins and fresh figs were among the delicacies enjoyed by ordinary Romans, British archaeologists have revealed after discovering a giant septic tank at one of the ancient cities destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius.
Source: U.S. Army
June 14, 2011
The following is a description of the birth of the U.S. Army taken from Robert Wright, The Continental Army
Source: NYT
June 14, 2011
American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.
Source: Live Science
June 10, 2011
Let′s face it, Indiana Jones was a pretty lousy archaeologist. He destroyed his sites, used a bullwhip instead of a trowel and was more likely to kill his peers than co-author a paper with them. Regardless, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which celebrates its 30th anniversary on June 12, did make studying the past cool for an entire generation of scientists. Those modern archaeologists whom "Raiders" inspired luckily learned from the mistakes of Dr.
