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: Toronto Star (Canada)
May 11, 2011
Archeologists and several B.C. First Nations are keeping a close eye on a remarkable discovery in the North Okanagan near Vernon, B.C.
Workers expanding an orchard discovered a skull last month and further investigation turned up three more sets of human remains.
Provincial archeology branch official Eric Forgeng says the bones have not been dated but there’s no question they are from a First Nations burial site.
He says wear on the teeth is consistent with ancient diets that included a lot of gritty food, causing a distinctive pattern....
Source: CNN
May 11, 2011
Romans let out a sigh of relief Wednesday morning.
Everything was still in place: buildings, famous ancient ruins, schools and homes.
In recent months, concerns of a possible earthquake that was going to destroy the "Eternal City" spread on the Web. It all started with the misinterpretation of the theory of Raffaele Bendandi, a seismologist who died in 1979 who claimed a major quake would take place on May 11, 2011.
Source: BBC News
May 11, 2011
Andy Warhol's Sixteen Jackies has just exceeded its $20m (£12.2m) target pricetag at an auction of contemporary art at Sotheby's in New York.
The 1964 print of former US first lady Jackie Kennedy sold for $20.24m (£12.4m), while Jeff Koons' sculpture of a pink panther hugging a topless woman went for $16.8m (£10.3m).
Total sales reached $128m (£78m) just above the $121m (£73.8m) low estimate.
The auction house admits the estimates were "possibly aggressive".
"We did listen to the market, so works sold, if not always at
Source: BBC News
May 11, 2011
The London footprint left by reggae legend Bob Marley, who died exactly 30 years ago, includes a Bayswater B&B, a Chelsea townhouse and the unlikely setting of a school gym in Peckham.
Guide books tend to point visitors to an apartment block in Camden, where a heritage plaque unveiled in 2006 honours the Jamaican musician at his former north London home.
Robert Nesta Marley lived at 34 Ridgmount Gardens in 1972 when he first came to England, just as his group the Wailers were making a name for themselves.
But this tells only
Source: BBC News
May 10, 2011
Margaret Thatcher's resignation, Geoffrey Howe's demotion and the Brighton IRA bomb - ministerial drivers were the silent witnesses at all these major events.
For many years, one group of people has had access to the most intimate secrets in government.
They have been invited into ministers' families and private offices, uniquely seeing both their public and private faces.
In the process, they have literally found themselves sitting in the front seat while history is made.
Ministerial car driver Denis Oliver had just st
Source: BBC News
May 11, 2011
A Lithuanian court has jailed a former Soviet commando for life for his part in the killing of seven border guards just after independence in 1991.
Konstantin Mikhailov, an ex-member of the Omon paramilitary police, was arrested in neighbouring Latvia, where he had obtained citizenship.
He denied any part in the killings, known as the Medininkai massacre.
Three other Omon members wanted by Lithuania over the killings are believed to be living in Russia....
Source: AP
May 10, 2011
RICHMOND, Va. – It's an enduring myth of the Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrendered his sword to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, and his Union counterpart refused the traditional gesture of surrender. "Lee never offered it, and Grant never asked for it," said Patrick Schroeder, historian at Appomattox Courthouse National Historical Park.In an historical twist, though, Lee's French-made ceremonial sword is returning to Appomattox 146 years later, leaving the Richmond museum where it has been displayed for nearly a century.
Source: BBC
May 9, 2011
Italy recently said it was ready to join in Nato's air attacks on targets in Libya - and with the announcement came a sense of history repeating itself.It was in Libya, almost exactly a century ago, that a young Italian pilot carried out the first ever air raid.During fighting in November 1911 between Italy and forces loyal to the Turkish, Ottoman Empire, Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti wrote in a letter to his father: "Today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 10, 2011
Italians will on Wednesday evacuate Rome over fears a giant earthquake is coming following a seismologist's 1915 prediction that "the big one" would hit the capital on May 11, 2011.
Source: AP
May 10, 2011
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he never struck an agreement with the United States to let American special forces kill or capture Usama bin Laden inside
Source: MSNBC
May 9, 2011
Historian Douglas Brinkley discusses the collection of never before seen handwritten note cards recently discovered by the Ronald Reagan Presidential library.[The cards include hundreds of his jokes. Click on the Source link to see the cards and Brinkley talking about them.]
Source: NYT
May 8, 2011
WICHITA, Kan. — The faces in the jury box are a cross-section of southern Kansas. The judge has a white beard, wears a bow tie and speaks in the straightforward language of the Great Plains. One defense lawyer favors cowboy boots and sometimes dons bolo ties. But they are listening to testimony about a place and time in a village half a world away. On the stand, a diminutive Rwandan man with gold-rimmed glasses talks in his native language about how he participated in the murder of his neighbors during the ethnic massacres in Rwanda 17 years ago.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 9, 2011
France has agreed to return more than one dozen Maori heads taken from new Zealand more than a century ago.
Source: Independent (UK)
May 8, 2011
Unidentified ship that sank off the Dorset coast around 1600 is most important discovery since the 'Mary Rose'
The remains of the ship, known simply as the Swash Channel Wreck, were preserved for centuries under the seabed in six metres of water off the Dorset coast.
Source: LA Times
April 8, 2011
The artifacts — terra cotta floor tiles, an irrigation channel, bowls, beads and other evidence of 18th century mission life and the Chumash tribe that preceded it — may impede efforts to develop the parcel.
When archeologist John Foster started peeling the asphalt from a parking lot in downtown Ventura, he knew he wouldn't have to dig deep to find a cache of long-buried relics.He just didn't realize how many he'd find and from how many different eras.
Digging down 5 feet, Foster and his crew have f
Source: Escience
May 9, 2011
As the world's leading authority on beads manufactured from shells by California's Chumash Indians, UCLA archaeologist Jeanne Arnold was stumped by a series of anomalous artifacts excavated at former settlements on the Channel Islands.
Source: NYT
May 9, 2011
...This is a film set, at the 179-year-old Evergreen Plantation here, and the cast and crew of the movie, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” are scrambling to deliver a summer blockbuster. It is set for release, in 3-D, by 20th Century Fox in June of next year.
The filmmakers are also creating one of the more startling historical revisions in movie memory.
Source: BBC
May 9, 2011
The 100th anniversary of a fire which killed 10 people including famous magician, The Great Lafayette, is being marked by an Edinburgh theatre.
The fire started after a gas lamp was knocked over, which set fire to the scenery, during the magician's act at the Edinburgh Empire on 9 May 1911.
Edinburgh Festival Theatre, which now stands on the site, is to hold a seance on stage later.
It has hosted other events, including a show by Lafayette fan Paul Daniels.
Lafayette, a German magician, was the highest paid performer of
Source: AP
May 9, 2011
Israel's somber memorial day for fallen soldiers gave way to Independence Day celebrations at nightfall on Monday in a sudden, stark annual transition ceremony.
At Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Israel's national cemetery, Israelis kindled 12 huge torches to signify the start of the holiday marking
Source: Daily Caller
May 9, 2011
