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: NYT
March 11, 2011
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Here, in this lovely town, once one of the most prosperous in the American colonies, there is no escape.
In the Old Slave Mart Museum that opened in 2007, you read: “You’re standing in the actual showroom, the place where traders sold — and buyers bought — American blacks who were born into slavery.”...
Slavery and its heritage are everywhere here. Charleston was one of the main colonial ports of the 18th century, dealing in rice, indigo and slaves. I
Source: Seattle Times
March 11, 2011
Inside his trinket shop in the city's El Pueblo historic district, Mike Mariscal is surrounded by painted masks, woven blankets and Day of the Dead figurines he's long sold to tourists.
Mariscal fears his own day of reckoning is near as a series of disputes surround the adobe buildings, shops and Mexican-era churches in an increasingly trafficked corner of the city's revitalizing downtown.
One dustup is over Indian graves unearthed during construction of a Mexican-Ameri
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 10, 2011
A photograph said to be of the 19th century composer Frederic Chopin just after his death has surfaced in Poland – an extremely rare find that experts are trying [to authenticate.]br />
If real, it would be only the third known photograph of the Polish-French musical genius who lived from 1810-1849.
Wladyslaw Zuchowski, a photographer and gallery owner in Gdansk, said on Thursday that he bought the daguerreotype, the earliest type of photograph, from a private owner in Scotl
Source: NYT
March 10, 2011
TOKYO — A top American diplomat, Kevin K. Maher, has been removed from his post after stirring outrage in Japan for reportedly belittling Okinawans, a State Department official said Thursday....
According to Japanese news reports, Mr. Maher told students at American University in Washington during a lecture in December that the Okinawans were “masters of manipulation and extortion.” Mr. Maher, who was head of the State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs, has called the news report
Source: NYT
March 10, 2011
Anthropologists studying living hunter-gatherers have radically revised their view of how early human societies were structured, a shift that yields new insights into how humans evolved away from apes.
Early human groups, according to the new view, would have been more cooperative and willing to learn from one another than the chimpanzees from which human ancestors split about five million years ago. The advantages of cooperation and social learning then propelled the incipient huma
Source: NYT
March 11, 2011
NEW DELHI — The Dalai Lama announced Thursday that he would formally relinquish his political leadership role in the Tibetan exile government, a decision intended to strengthen the democratic structure of the Tibetan movement on the eve of elections to choose a new generation of political leaders.
For years, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, has spoken of his desire to cede political authority, or “retire,” as he has sometimes put it. But in Thursday’s speech he made it
Source: Reuters
March 9, 2011
Smoking was as bad for the Victorians as it is for anyone today, but back in those days it seems it did far more damage to their teeth. In the mid-19th century, prior to the invention of the cigarette, when tobacco was copiously consumed through clay pipes, smoking often resulted in nasty dental disfigurement.
A Museum of London study of skeletal remains excavated from a Victorian cemetery in Whitechapel, east London, found most people had "notches" in at least two, and of
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 9, 2011
A Republican congressman who has convened a public inquiry into radical Islam in the United States has been accused of staging a "show trial" reminiscent of the McCarthy-era hunt for communist sympathisers.
Representative Peter King, who heads the House homeland security committee, has come under withering criticism for the hearings, which begin today against a backdrop of increased terror plots by American Muslims.
Protesters and critics ranging from Islami
Source: Delmarva.com
March 9, 2011
Almost every Virginia county has a monument to Confederate war dead, and most of them are located in the county seat, at or near the courthouse.
Accomack County has a Confederate monument, but it is not at the county seat. It stands, instead, six miles from the courthouse in a town that did not exist during the Civil War -- a town that was, in fact, founded by Yankees.
This curious circumstance is the result of two movements, one national, the other local....
Source: Culpepper Star-Exponent (VA)
March 8, 2011
B.B. Mitchell, first president of the Brandy Station Foundation and the driving force behind extensive Civil War land preservation efforts in eastern Culpeper County, died Friday of congestive heart failure. He was 75.
Mitchell, who went simply by the first name “B,” was a running back on the 1952 undefeated football team at Culpeper County High School who attended Virginia Tech on a track scholarship but injured his knee the spring of his freshman year.
He served two y
Source: KSPR 33
March 10, 2011
REPUBLIC, Mo. (AP) — Vandals did at least $4,000 damage to four cannons at the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield in southwest Missouri.
Park Superintendent Ted Hillmer says the vandalism to four of 10 cannons was discovered Monday. The cannons were reproductions of weapons used during the Civil War battle near Republic....
Source: Billings Gazette
March 10, 2011
LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT — In two cramped rooms in the basement of the visitor center at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, treasures are everywhere.
In drawers and filing cabinets, on shelves and in display cases, there are nearly 120,000 priceless artifacts, documents and books.
There is a large parchment commission, dated 1861 and signed by President Abraham Lincoln, appointing George A. Custer a second lieutenant in the Army's seco
Source: AP
March 10, 2011
SKOPJE, Macedonia — Macedonia has inaugurated a $23 million memorial centre for the country's Jews who were killed in Nazi death camps during World War II.
Thursday's ceremony in central Skopje was attended by the presidents of Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, as well as Israel's Cabinet minister for strategic affairs, Moshe Yaalon....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 10, 2011
The first, and perhaps only, colour photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly flattened the city have been unearthed.
The six never-published images were snapped by photography innovator Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 "Great Quake".
Most were taken from the roof of the hotel where Ives stayed during an October 1906 visit.
They were stowed amid other items donated by Ives' son, Herbert,
Source: London SE-1
March 9, 2011
Plans to install girders from the ruins of New York's World Trader Center as an artwork in Potters Fields Park to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks have been put on hold amid mounting controversy.
Last month we reported on a highly charged consultation meeting where historian Simon Schama made the case for the artwork and families of Britons who died in the twin towers voiced their opposition to the public display of the wreckage in which their loved ones' remai
Source: CNN
March 10, 2011
Life.com has obtained a set of newly released photos from the personal albums of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's longtime girlfriend and, in their final hours, wife.
The photos "reveal new dimensions" of the woman who married Hitler as the Russian army closed in on his Berlin bunker and then committed suicide with him a day later. He was 56. She was 33.
The 30 photos cover almost all of Braun's life, from images of her as a toddler and schoolgirl to her spending tim
Source: Baltimore Sun
February 20, 2011
GRANTSVILLE — — Bryant Bunch, who came from Prince George's County to attend college here at the far end of the Maryland panhandle, first saw the sign on Interstate 68 while traveling with a carload of friends a few years back.
He remembers their reaction: Does that say what we think it says?
Maxine Broadwater, born and raised on a farm outside Grantsville, and the town's librarian for three decades, recalls the first time she ever gave the name a second thought. It was
Source: News.az
March 9, 2011
Archaeologists have unearthed a large 12th-13th century kiln for firing bricks in Azerbaijan's second city, Ganja.
"We have found four tiers to the kiln and there may be even more," Arif Mammadov, head of the Ganja archaeological expedition, told 1news.az.
"Archaeological digs need to continue if we are to find more. I would like to stress that this is the largest kiln found in Azerbaijani territory," Mammadov said....
Source: Medieval News
March 8, 2011
A doctoral student at Durham University in England has discovered the existence of the oldest known copies of books of the Ethiopic Old Testament. The books date back to the early sixth century.
Ted Erho, a postgraduate student in the Department of Theology and Religion, made the find while examining microfilms of classical Ethiopic (Ge’ez) manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John’s University in Minnesota.
Working with previously-unca
Source: NY Post
March 8, 2011
Auctioneers clearing out the historic Steinway Mansion have made a grisly discovery -- a voodoo doll and voodoo masks hidden in the fabled Astoria, N.Y., landmark.
Experts made the chilling find in the Queens mansion, which was home to the Steinway piano family until the 1920s, as they cleared the attic following the death of its last owner, Michael Halberian, who lived there for 82 years and died in December.
Halberian's children brought in auctioneer Michael Capo to s
