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: Discovery News
April 11, 2011
Civil War photographers completely changed popular perceptions of modern warfare. We've all seen photographs of the Civil War: black-and-white images of bearded Union generals or mustachioed Confederate colonels posing to one side of the camera, dead bodies stacked on the battlefield or common soldiers around a camp tent. Looking back 150 years to the start of the Civil War this month, what impact did photography have on the war? On the people who lived during the time? What do these images tell us today about the soldiers and their families?
Source: Live Science
April 11, 2011
Seventy metal books allegedly discovered in a cave in Jordan have been hailed as the earliest Christian documents. Dating them to mere decades after Jesus' death, scholars have called the "lead codices" the most important discovery in archaeological history, and leading media outlets have added fuel to the fire surrounding the books in recent weeks. "Never has there been a discovery of relics on this scale from the early Christian movement, in its homeland and so early in its history," reported the BBC. [Image]
Source: Vietnam Net
April 12, 2011
According to the Institute for Archaeology, a section of the wall to protect the northern area of the relic collapsed while the structure of soil layers of the relic was broken.
Mud water has overflowed from the National Assembly House project to the relic.
The Institute for Archaeology said that the landmark of the relic has been broken. The National Assembly House project also caused the relic to sink, affecting the preservation of this important relic.
Source: National Parks Traveler
April 13, 2011
We've grown accustomed to media coverage of property threatened by raging wildfires in California, but… West Texas? Large fires that raced across the high desert last weekend caused major damage in the small town of Fort Davis. Thus far, the key historic structures at Fort Davis National Historic Site have escaped, but it's been a close call, and fires continue to burn in the vicinity.
Fort Davis National Historic Site preserves perhaps the best example of an Indian Wars' frontier m
Source: MSNBC
April 13, 2011
John Demjanjuk's defense attorney says his client's trial on Nazi war crimes charges should be suspended in the wake of an Associated Press report showing the FBI believed the Soviet Union fabricated evidence in the case. Ulrich Busch gave Tuesday's AP story to the judges as the trial resumed Wednesday, saying he needed the trial to be postponed so he could go to the U.S. himself to look for more possibly exculpatory evidence. The judges made no immediate ruling.
Source: Daily Record (Scotland)
April 13, 2011
NAZI commander Rudolf Hess parachuted into a Scottish field 70 years ago.
Hitler's deputy was arrested by pitchfork wielding ploughman David McLean on Floor's Farm near Eaglesham, south of Glasgow, in what was to become one of the strangest episodes of World War II.
Ever since, mystery has surrounded the top Nazi's dramatic arrival.
Conspiracy theories have raged about exactly what Hess was doing in Scotland at the height of the war and why the authorities
Source: NYT
April 13, 2011
MARIETTA, Ga. — It doesn’t take much to talk Selina Faye Sorrow into slipping on her replica of the dress Vivien Leigh wore in the barbecue scene from the film “Gone With the Wind.”
You don’t know the dress? Then you are clearly not a “Windy,” a fan so ardent that recreating the burning of Atlanta in an airport hotel banquet room is not out of the question....
“Gone With the Wind” means a lot in Atlanta. After all, Ms. Mitchell, who published her novel in 1936, lived, d
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 13, 2011
The birth of Richard Trevithick, the inventor of the high pressure steam engine, has been celebrated by the search engine Google.
Marking 240 years since his birth, Google has transformed their usual logo into a steam train, complete with steam puffing out of the letter “L”.
The internet search engine is known for its celebration of special days and occasions, but this marks a more unusual subject than most.
Mr Trevithick not only invented the first high p
Source: NYT
April 12, 2011
NASA’s space shuttles, which have been carrying astronauts aloft for 30 years, were assigned to their final destinations on Tuesday: one will head to the nation’s capital, another to Los Angeles, and the third from its current home at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the center’s visitor complex next door.
In a ceremony commemorating the shuttle program, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, made the long-awaited announcement of where the soon-to-be museum
Source: BBC News
April 12, 2011
Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant to the highest level, seven. The decision reflects the ongoing release of radiation, rather than a sudden deterioration. Level seven previously only applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, where 10 times as much radiation was emitted. But most experts agree the two nuclear incidents are very different. Explore the table below to find out how they compare....
Source: CBS
April 12, 2011
A newly released memo shows that a Boston doctor who examined FDR in 1944 said he did not believe the president was fit to complete a fourth term. Katie Couric reports.
Source: CNN
April 11, 2011
JERUSALEM, Israel (CNN) -- Israel is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Here is some history surrounding the trial and gets reactions to the trial and the anniversary. Gabriel Bach was a young Israeli prosecutor charged with the case of a lifetime. He says, "I'll never forget the first moment of that trail, when these judges came into the court room with the Israeli emblem behind them and that man whose only object in life had became to destroy that people, when he stood up to attention."
Source: DNA India
April 10, 2011
America’s FBI is set to reveal its secret files on Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, which details the agency’s attempts to find him despite reports of his suicide in 1945.
On 29 April 1945 Hitler and Eva Braun, his wife of one day, killed themselves in the Berlin bunker. But Soviet authorities who found the remains were happy for rumours to persist that he got away.
Now 752 sides of FBI reports chart how agents previously thought he was hiding out on a ranch in Argentina, livi
Source: DNA India
April 4, 2011
The sketches of one of Adolf Hitler's official artists, who erased his name from the records in shame after the World War II, are now being bought to light after 65 years.
The family of Austrian artist Roman Zenzinger, whose works portray German soldiers, are now planning to sell three of them at a British auction house in a bid to restore their relative's reputation, reports the Daily Mail.
“In the hope that his [Zenzinger's] achievements as a war artist will finally b
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
April 12, 2011
Darkness had fallen in the remote and beautiful Rift Valley, north of Nairobi, and the white farmer was in his pyjamas ready for bed.
But first he stepped outside his isolated house for his customary evening stroll in the garden with his pregnant wife, before checking the shutters on the windows and doors in case of intruders.
That was when the Mau Mau raiders struck; 30 of them, wielding their sharp pangas or machetes.
Thirty-eight-year-old Roger Ruck and his wi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 6, 2011
Many of the sacred objects in the Treasures of Heaven exhibition have been lent by the Vatican and will be on display in Britain for the first time. Among them is the Mandylion of Edessa, one of the earliest images of Christ, which is housed in the Pope's private chapel. At its centre is a cloth said to bear the imprint of Jesus's face....
The exhibition, which runs from June 23 - October 9, also traces the history of religious pilgrimage in Britain. A 15th century lead badge depict
Source: The Daily Beast
April 12, 2011
Going to elementary school in Michigan in the 1980s, Geoffrey Blair learned about the Civil War: a story of Lee vs. Grant, North vs. South. He learned about Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Manassas, and Antietam. And he learned that President Lincoln had freed the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation. But no one ever told him about the nearly 200,000 black soldiers who fought in the war. “I was never taught that blacks actually had a role in the Civil War,” says Blair. “It wasn’t until I had my fir
Source: Spiegel Online
April 8, 2011
...The public discourse about war is characterized by contempt for the bloody sides of the military profession, a contempt to which soldiers themselves conform when they are asked to describe their experiences. But there is also another view of war, one in which it is not only an endless nightmare, but also a great adventure that some soldiers later remember as the best time of their life.
In World War II, 18 million men, or more than 40 percent of the male population of the German
Source: WaPo
April 12, 2011
The National Archives unveiled a trove of newly found documents in its files Tuesday that were penned by Walt Whitman when the poet worked as a government clerk during and after the Civil War.
Whitman came to Washington from Brooklyn, where he lived, in 1862 after his brother, George, was wounded in the Battle of Fredricksburg. The poet stayed on in the capital after his brother recovered, working part time in the paymaster’s office and visiting wounded soldiers in Washington hospit
Source: AP
April 12, 2011
LONDON – In life, Pall Arason sought attention. In death, he is getting it: The 95-year-old Icelander's pickled penis will be the main attraction in one of his country's most bizarre museums.
Sigurdur Hjartarson, who runs the Phallological Museum in the tiny Icelandic fishing town of Husavik, said Arason's organ will help round out the unusual institution's extensive collection of phalluses from whales, seals, bears and other mammals.
Several people had pledged their pe
