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: AP
April 12, 2011
RICHMOND, Ky. – The home of anti-slavery newspaper publisher Cassius Marcellus Clay is being designated a Historic Site in Journalism on Tuesday.
The national president of the Society of Professional Journalists will take part in the ceremony in Madison County at White Hall State Historic Site. Also expected to attend are Eastern Kentucky University President Doug Whitlock; Tourism, Arts and Heritage Secretary Marcheta Sparrow; and Parks Commissioner Gerry van der Meer....
Source: Yahoo News
April 7, 2011
TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (AFP) – Archeologists are unearthing a 2,000-year-old tunnel outside bustling modern day Mexico City searching for clues to one of the region's most influential former civilizations.
Heavy rains at the site of Teotihuacan, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the capital, accidentally provided the first sign of the tunnel's existence in 2003, when the water made a tiny hole in the ground.
Six years later, a team financed by Mexico's National Institute
Source: Discovery News
March 29, 2011
Ancient images that creationists claim are evidence of humans living alongside dinosaurs are at best just smeared pictures, scientists find.
At the site of Kachina Bridge in Utah — an immense sandstone formation resembling an arch more than 200 feet (60 meters) high and wide that was formed by the undercutting of a rock wall by flowing water — prehistoric cultures decorated the walls with paintings and engravings known as petroglyphs. Among them are what young-earth Earth creatio
Source: WaPo
April 11, 2011
Trying to bring a Civil War history lesson to life, teacher Jessica Boyle turned her fourth grade Norfolk classroom into a slave auction: She ordered black and mixed race students to one side of the classroom. Then, the white students took turns buying them.
Parent complaints began rolling in shortly after the April 1 lesson, and the principal at Sewells Point Elementary School, Mary B. Wrushen, wrote to parents last week that Boyle had gone too far.
“The lesson could h
Source: LA Times
April 12, 2011
On the heels of the Civil War's 150th anniversary come film and TV projects from Robert Redford, Carlton Cuse and others that may take a page from the richer, and darker, narratives being uncovered.
Of course, the war between the North and South over slavery and states' rights has for decades supplied a bottomless well of drama — and potential profit — for storytellers. But the new wave of projects is coming at a time when researchers raised in the post-Vietnam era have revolutioniz
Source: BBC
April 11, 2011
The first series of documents have been released by the High Court in the legal challenge by Kenyans for abuses and torture more than 50 years ago.
The documents give further details of what ministers in London knew about how the colony was attempting to crush the rebellion that paved the way to independence.
The papers - the first of more than 17,000 pages - contain reports of British officers implicated in atrocities including the murder of suspected Mau Mau rebels.
Source: BBC
April 12, 2011
The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum has acquired a collection of more than 7,000 items from the Titanic's parent company White Star Line.
It includes serving dishes and soap from the Titanic, as well as passenger lists, tickets, playing cards and a steward's menu ideas.
The collection will form the basis of an exhibition at the museum to mark the centenary of the Titanic's launch.
TITANICa: The Exhibition will be open to the public on 31 May.
Source: BBC
April 12, 2011
A file detailing the fuss and the flurry for Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland in 1900 could prove sober reading to those planning her great great granddaughter's trip in May.
An Irish Office of Public Works file which is to be sold at Whytes auctioneers in Dublin on Saturday details a "misplaced" royal yacht and chaotic last-minute preparations.
The papers, published for the first time, are being sold by an Irishman in the United States who inherited them fro
Source: BBC
April 12, 2011
A 1938 comic featuring Superman's debut that has been recovered in a storage locker in the US appears to be the copy stolen from Nicolas Cage, police say.
The 47-year-old actor, who accepted an insurance payout after the 2000 theft, said last week's find, in Los Angeles, was "divine providence".
He said he was hopeful the "heirloom", a mint condition copy of Action Comics No 1, would be returned to his family.
In March 2010, a copy of th
Source: WaPo
April 10, 2011
The Civil War began here shortly before dawn when a mortar on the starlit beach fired a single shot high into the sky over this proud and elegant city.
From Fort Sumter, the gun’s target out in the harbor, and from points ashore, people watched the shell arc overhead, the path marked by its burning fuse.
It was a fateful moment — one of the most profound in U.S. history — and in many ways the moment modern America was born.
Turn back the pages of the nation
Source: CNN
April 12, 2011
This week marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, a war that redefined national and regional identities and became an enduring tale of noble resistance in the South and, for the rest of the country, a mighty moral struggle to erase the stain of slavery.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on the beleaguered Union garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. By April 14, the fort had fallen and the war had begun in earnest.
To see th
Source: CNN
April 12, 2011
How did churchgoing, Bible-worshiping Christians justify holding slaves? It’s a question I’ve long had as a Civil War buff and that has new resonance on Tuesday, which marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.
Henry G. Brinton, a pastor at Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia, writes that the Bible was used a weapon by both the North and the South. Brinton says some contemporary Americans are making the same mistake their Civil War ancestors did by twisting the B
Source: CNN
April 12, 2011
Sam Lyons' connection to the Civil War came to him last year in a pink gift bag.
Lyons said one of his relatives lived near Gettysburg in the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and picked up the cannon ball a few days after the 1863 battle. It's been in their family ever since.
It's been 150 years since the first shots of the Civil War fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The four-year conflict killed more than 600,000 people and became a pivotal part of American hist
Source: ANI
April 10, 2011
Chinese archaeologists have excavated a tomb built more than 2,000 years ago in the ancient capital of Xi’an to study the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 24).
The tomb was discovered in a southern suburb of the city, which is now the capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, reports the China Daily.
Ding Yan, a research assistant of the Shaanxi provincial institute of archaeology and head of the tomb archaeological excavation site, said the tomb was the only one n
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 11, 2011
Two of the nails used to crucify Jesus have been dsicovered in a 2,000-year-old tomb, according to a new film.
The film, 'The Nails of the Cross' by Simcha Jacobovici, follows three years of research during which he presents his assertions - some based on empirical data, others requiring much imagination and a leap of faith.
He hails the find as historic, but most experts and scholars dismissed his case as far-fetched, some calling it a publicity stunt.
Ma
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 12, 2011
The Google doodle has the word "Google" written in an angular, Cyrillic-influenced font, with the two O's replaced by the head of an old-fashioned space suit and a planet with a rocket - like the Vostok 3KA that took Gagarin into space - which blasts off when the mouse moves over it.
Clicking on the image takes users through to a search for "Yuri Gagarin", the top result of which is Gagarin's Wikipedia page.
Gagarin's flight made him a lifelong natio
Source: BBC News
April 11, 2011
It has been claimed that as many as two out of five humans on the planet today owe their existence to the discoveries made by one brilliant German chemist.
Yet this is the same chemist denounced by young German students today as a "murderer".
No-one personifies better than Fritz Haber the debate over science's capacity for good and evil.
And there is more to his dramatic life even than this. For Haber personifies too the tragedy of a Jew desperate
Source: BBC News
April 11, 2011
The Americans won the race to the Moon when Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface in 1969.
That single act trumped the Soviet achievement of sending the first man into space eight years earlier. But what might have happened if the Soviet Union had got to the Moon first?
The first manned lunar landing was a triumph for Nasa, and when the Americans won the Space Race, they also sounded its death knell.
The Apollo lunar programme continued until 1972 an
Source: BBC News
April 11, 2011
The US is commemorating the 150th anniversary of the country's most destructive conflict, the Civil War. In Charleston in the state of South Carolina, where the war erupted, the BBC's Paul Adams says Americans remain divided over the roots of the conflict to this day.
On a patch of open ground near Charleston, the US Civil War came vividly, noisily to life on a rainy Sunday in late March.
Re-enactors played out the 1864 Battle of Bloody Bridge, a victory for Southern, o
Source: Reuters
April 8, 2011
A rare World War Two German bomber, shot down over the English Channel in 1940 and hidden for years by shifting sands at the bottom of the sea, is so well preserved a British museum wants to raise it.
The Dornier 17 -- thought to be world's last known example -- was hit as it took part in the Battle of Britain.
It ditched in the sea just off the Kent coast, southeast England, in an area known as the Goodwin Sands....
