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
March 25, 2011
Creationists have claimed this petroglyph was proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.
Dinosaur or mud stain? An ancient cave drawing high on a rock formation in southeastern Utah has stirred a skirmish of sorts between creationists who believe it's proof that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and scientists who say no way.
A new research paper out on the subject probably won't change too many minds, but it is giving food for thought to those who wonder what the f
Source: LA Times
March 26, 2011
Betty Jean Vera came clutching a sheaf of yellowing papers, rolled tight and wrapped with string, which she had found in a musty trunk in her attic. The author was a young Confederate soldier.
Next came Lindsay Grant Hope, a Realtor, with another Civil War diary. The cover was moldy with age, the pages dog-eared and frail, the writing flowery and precise. It belonged to her great-great-grandmother.
Those haunting voices and other poignant portraits of America's bloodied
Source: The Wall Street Journal
March 27, 2011
Historian Josh Howard is playing with fire in the heart of the old Confederacy, with a scholarly finding that could rewrite the history of the Civil War, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
For more than a century, North Carolina has proudly claimed that it lost more soldiers than any other Southern state in the nation's bloodiest conflict. But after meticulously combing through military, hospital and cemetery records, the historian is finding the truth isn't so clear-cut.
Source: BBC
March 27, 2011
Historic census records have helped to identify the Scot who introduced football to Brazil, it has emerged.
Data from the 1891 census has confirmed that Thomas Donohoe, originally from Busby, Renfrewshire, arranged Brazil's first organised football match.
The Scottish Football Museum said the information had added a new chapter to Scottish football history.
The link was announced as Scotland prepared to play Brazil in a friendly on Census Day.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 27, 2011
Lenin's niece, Olga Ulyanova, the last surviving descendant of the Bolshevik leader's family, died in Moscow on Friday aged 89.
Ulyanova, who was born in 1922, two years before her uncle's death, was the last direct descendant of the Ulyanov family, Lenin's real surname.
She was the daughter of Lenin's younger brother Dmitry, a doctor who shared Lenin's revolutionary ideals and served in high posts in the health service after the 1917 revolution. He died in 1943.
Source: CBS
March 25, 2011
A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs.
Except for the brain, all of the skull's soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East c
Source: CNN
March 26, 2011
After almost 30 years in a mental hospital, John W. Hinckley Jr., the college dropout who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan, is moving closer to the day his doctors may recommend he go free.
According to court records, a forensic psychologist at the hospital has testified that "Hinckley has recovered to the point that he poses no imminent risk of danger to himself or others."
Hinckley is now 55. Over government objections in 2009, a judge extended his furl
Source: CNN
March 26, 2011
Geraldine Ferraro, a former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate, has died, according to a family statement. She was 75.
In 1984, Ferraro was the first female vice presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party when she ran with Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale.
A resident of New York City, Ferraro died in Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by loved ones. Her cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cance
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
March 26, 2011
HARRISBURG - For the first time, Civil War buffs can now walk the land on Chambersburg Pike west of Gettysburg where Confederate and Union troops locked in a ferocious struggle at the start of the epic battle.
The 95-acre tract, scene of major fighting on July 1, 1863, has been made part of Gettysburg National Military Park at last.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Friday - weeks before the start of a series of events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the C
Source: BBC
March 24, 2011
Striking discoveries in archaeology are being made possible by strong beams of X-rays, say researchers.
A report at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, showed how X-ray sources known as synchrotrons can unravel an artefact's mysteries.
Light given off after an X-ray blast yields a neat list of the atoms within.
The technique can illuminate layers of pigment beneath the surfaces of artefacts, or even show the traces of tools used thousands o
Source: BBC
March 24, 2011
Six letters written by Frederic Chopin, thought to be lost in 1939, have been found and donated to a Warsaw museum dedicated to the Polish composer.
The letters, written by Chopin to his parents and sisters between 1845 and 1848, were believed lost after the outbreak of World War II.
After it emerged in 2003 that they still existed in a private collection, moves were made to secure them.
Chopin was born in Poland in 1810 but spent half of his life in France
Source: BBC
March 25, 2011
The world's oldest twins have been shown a 100-year-old census with their names on it.
Farmer's daughters Ena Pugh and Lily Millward were just one when their parents completed the questionnaire in 1911.
The sisters, from Powys, were named the oldest twins in the world by Guinness World Records in November.
Not many people are able to see their own names on the census record as they are kept confidential for 100 years.
The sisters were shown the
Source: BBC
March 24, 2011
Dating from the 7th Century, long before the Domesday Book, the Senchus fer nAlban (History of the men of Scotland) is Britain's earliest native census. It is a list of the population of Dál Riata, the Kingdom of the Gaels on the west coast of Scotland. At around only 70 lines of text, the Senchus is considerably shorter than Domesday; much shorter even than a modern census form and certainly shorter on detail. But then, it was created for a much simpler purpose.
While the modern ce
Source: BBC
March 25, 2011
Edinburgh's Napier University has sold its Craighouse campus to a group of developers who plan to turn the site over to residential use.
The redevelopment plans include the restoration of the Morningside campus's seven listed buildings, as well as new homes designed to complement the existing buildings and landscape.
The 51-acre site dates back to the 12th Century and used to be an asylum....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 25, 2011
Two Polish children have been killed by an explosion of munitions left over from the bitter battles of the Second World War.
The two, brother and sister, were caught in the blast as they played in a ditch in eastern Poland. The 10-year-old boy was killed on the scene while his nine-year-old sister died later in hospital.
Poland is littered with unexploded munitions left over far from the huge battles played out across the country during the Second World War, but fatal
Source: Cincinnati.com
March 24, 2011
Damage caused by vandals at the Harrison Tomb last week will be repaired quickly, according to officials from the Ohio Historical Society.
The Harrison Tomb is the final resting place of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States of America. His family is also buried in the mausoleum within the tomb. The memorial on Cliff Road is a 60-foot marble obelisk in a 14-acre park.
On March 17, Bev Meyers, a member of the Harrison-Symmes Memorial Foundation
Source: Daily Press News (Syria)
March 24, 2011
An archaeological burial from the Byzantine era was uncovered in al-Ruba village in Zighreen town, 30 km northeastern Hama, including a number of tombs inside which pottery, metal and glass findings and golden pieces were unearthed.
Abdul-Qader Farzat, Head of Hama Archaeology Department, told SANA that the burial comprises a 110 cm long and 60 cm wide entrance leading to a square surrounded by five chambers including three tombs each. The tombs are 175 cm long and 40 cm deep, separ
Source: Monsters and Critics
March 24, 2011
A 9-year-old Polish girl died Thursday after an explosion of what was likely a bomb left over from World War II in a field in southern Poland.
The girl was the second victim of the explosion, which occurred Tuesday in the village of Konskowola. The explosion also killed the girl's 10-year-old brother on the spot.
The pair were playing in a field when they found the device. Police are waiting for test results to determine what caused the explosion.
Unexplode
Source: Ria Novosti (Russia)
March 24, 2011
The grandson of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has taken liberal Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy to court for alleging that his grandfather "strangled small children," a spokesman for the station said on Thursday.
Stalin descendent, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, is demanding 11 million rubles ($388,000) in compensation for the comment made by journalist Nikolay Svanidze on a show aired on May 21, 2010.
Svanidze was referring to an order signed by Stalin in which he al
Source: Prague Daily Monitor
March 25, 2011
A son of wartime SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, deputy Reichs-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, wants to restore the dilapidated chateau in Panenske Brezany near Prague where his family lived, the public Czech Radio reported yesterday.
The chateau may house a museum or a national resistance memorial, Panenske Brezany Mayor Libor Holik, told the radio.
After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, the son, Heider, kept living in the Panenske Brezany cha
