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: Huffington Post
June 13, 2011
The next time someone argues that the New Deal failed, and only the Second World War ended the Depression, as 'proof' that government spending does not work, one can respond with the details of economic growth and unemployment reduction up to 1940, or one can ignore the claim and thank them for making your case for massive government spending in a deep, broad recession.
Source: CNN
June 14, 2011
NATO refused to say Tuesday whether or not it would bomb ancient [Leptis Magna] Roman ruins in Libya if it knew Moammar Gadhafi was hiding military equipment there."We will strike military vehicles, military forces, military equipment or military infrastructure that threaten Libyan civilians as necessary," a NATO official in Naples told CNN, declining to give his name in discussing internal NATO deliberations.
Source: BBC News
June 13, 2011
More than 60,000 Americans were sterilised, many against their will, as part of a eugenics movement that finished in 1979, aimed at keeping the poor and mentally ill from having children. Now, decades on, one state is considering compensation.In 1968, Elaine Riddick was raped by a neighbour who threatened to kill her if she told what happened.She was 13, the daughter of violent and abusive parents in the desperately poor country town of Winfall, in the US state of North Carolina.
Source: BBC News
June 14, 2011
New research into accidental deaths in Tudor England reveals the strange way people died, writes Sean Coughlan.Oxford University historian, Dr Steven Gunn, has been scouring 16th Century coroners' reports and researching accidental deaths in Tudor England.These reports revealed an intriguing possible link with William Shakespeare's tragic character Ophelia. But they also revealed examples of some strange and sometimes stupid deaths.
Source: MyFoxDC
June 13, 2011
RICHMOND, Va. - Sens. Jim Webb of Virginia and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia teamed up Monday with two fellow Democrats to seek Senate approval of $10 million for Civil War battlefield preservation in the fiscal year 2012 budget."With the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War having begun in April, this is an opportune time to recommit our energies to the protection of these hallowed grounds," the four wrote in a letter to the Senate Committee on Appropriations and a subcommittee on the interior and environment....
Source: CBC News
June 10, 2011
Canada is returning to the government of Bulgaria 21,000 pieces of stolen cultural artifacts, including Byzantine crosses, bone sewing needles, pagan amulets, jewelled belt buckles and bronze eagles.
There are also 18,000 coins, including some from Hellenistic and Roman times. Most of the cultural objects were illegally excavated in Bulgaria and shipped by mail to an importer in Montreal.
Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Culture, Todor Chobanov, who is also an archeologist, personally examined the artifacts and said he is excited to bring them home.
Source: The Yorker
June 12, 2011
University of York Archaeology students have unearthed a rare Bronze Age cremation urn during excavations on the University’s Heslington East campus.
The collared urn containing a cremation burial, together with a further cremation without a pot, was found by students from the Department of Archaeology on the Heslington East expansion in May.
This rare find, which dates back around 4,000 years, was found when the roundabout at Heslington East was being built.
It was lifted complete by specialist conservators from York Archaeological Trust....
Source: 6-11-11
The Canadian Press
Four people executed for murder during the Yukon's Klondike Gold Rush more than a century ago will be buried this weekend.
The remains were discovered during excavation work last November at a new waste water treatment plant in Dawson City.
Two sets of remains have since been identified as Dawson and Jim Nantuck, members of what is now the Carcross Tagish First Nation in southern Yukon.
A third set of remains was identified as Edward Henderson, who was hanged for murdering a companion, while the fourth set of remains has yet to be identified.
The Nantucks wer
Source: BBC
June 13, 2011
A team of amateur archaeologists has won lottery cash to fund an underwater excavation in Northumberland.
The £9,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund will allow Coquetdale Community Archaeology group to search the River Coquet for a 13th Century cloth mill.
Evidence of the submerged remains are already visible in a stretch of the river near Barrowburn.
Work on the project, which has also received backing from English Heritage, is due to get under way next month.
Experts believe the mediaeval fulling mill was operated by l
Source: BBC
June 12, 2011
Ten years ago, the Taliban blew up Afghanistan's ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, provoking international outrage. Now, the country's rich heritage is facing a new threat.
Source: AP
June 13, 2011
Forty years after the explosive leak of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study chronicling deception and misadventure in U.S. conduct of the Vietnam War, the report is coming out in its entirety on Monday.
The 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks disclosure of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon's presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that advanced press freedom.
Source: AP
June 13, 2011
A B-17 bomber that dates to World War II crashed and burned Monday morning in a cornfield outside Chicago, aviation officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration believes the seven people on board the plane escaped uninjured, spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
Source: Star Tribune
May 20, 2011
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minneapolis man has petitioned that Lake Calhoun be renamed, arguing it's inappropriate that a South Carolina politician who was an ardent supporter of slavery should have his name attached to one of Minnesota's most popular recreational lakes.Retired computer programmer John Winters is suggesting that John C. Calhoun's name be taken off the lake and replaced by the late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, a former Minneapolis mayor.
Source: AFP
June 11, 2011
HAGATNA, Guam (AFP) – Almost 70 years after US Marines freed Guam from Japanese forces during World War II, political leaders on the Pacific island are again seeking liberty -- this time from Washington.The Marines who took Guam in a bloody 1944 battle reinstated the island as a "non-governing US territory", meaning its 180,000 population enjoys US citizenship but cannot vote in US presidential elections.
Source: Live Science
June 9, 2011
Mysterious brown spots covering the surfaces of King Tut's tomb have long puzzled scientists trying to identify them. Now a new study reveals ancient Egyptian microbes left these blemishes.The spots offer insight not only into the boy king's death, but also into the haste of his burial, according to researcher Ralph Mitchell, an expert in cultural heritage microbiology at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Source: Bearsden Herald (UK)
June 13, 2011
A glassware set purported to originate from Adolf Hitler's Berlin bunker is to go under the hammer at a sale of militaria in Towcester, Northamptonshire, later this month.The monogrammed drinking glasses, estimated to be worth up to £8,000, will be up for grabs alongside a 12-tonne mobile gun at the auction on June 21.JP Humbert Auctioneers said the glassware, which has no written provenance, would take centre stage at the sale after being shipped from the United States.
Source: National Parks Traveler
June 12, 2011
Just what sort of president was Abraham Lincoln, and how did he rely on the U.S. Constitution in developing his strategies for handling the Civil War? Those are tough questions, and there are no easy answers, but a new exhibit at Gettysburg National Military Park is expected to spur more than a little debate over those questions.
Source: BBC News
June 13, 2011
Peru's President-elect Ollanta Humala says he would pardon former President Alberto Fujimori on humanitarian grounds if his health worsens.Mr Humala told Peru's El Comercio newspaper that "nobody should die in prison, except people serving life sentences for abusing children".Fujimori is serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and ordering killings by the security forces.He has been taken to hospital, suffering bleeding in his mouth.Doctors fear this might be linked to a recurrence of his tongue cancer.
Source: BBC News
June 13, 2011
Sotheby's London is to auction a portrait of a monk, credited to Anthony van Dyck, that was previously thought to have been painted by Rubens.The work, owned by the same French family for at least 200 years, was known as Confesseur de Rubens.Sotheby's says experts noticed brushwork more characteristic of Rubens' pupil Van Dyck.Meanwhile, a dealer who rediscovered Van Dyck's A Portrait of a Young Girl, in 2010, has spoken of his find.Thick paint
Source: Slate
June 13, 2011
President Lyndon Johnson, domineering and manipulative, lives on in American memory as the classic power broker. He bullied opponents, sweet-talked skeptics, and chewed out subordinates. He oozed confidence as he passed one piece of landmark social legislation after another, even as his cockiness helped to mire the country in Vietnam.
