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: WaPo
March 6, 2011
When the remains of a Vietnam War soldier buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified in 1998 using DNA, Pentagon officials proudly said that the days of interring service members as "Unknown" could well be over.
But now, for the first time in decades, the cemetery has multiple "unknowns" to bury - and it has itself to blame.
Criminal investigators looking into how eight sets of cremated remains ended up crowdin
Source: CNN.com
March 2, 2011
Feared lost forever, 20 ancient ivory artifacts looted from Afghanistan's national museum were presented to the country's president, Hamid Karzai, in London Tuesday.
The 2,000-year-old artifacts are the latest additions to the internationally acclaimed exhibition "Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World," which starts its UK run at the British Museum this week.
Stolen during Afghanistan's civil war between 1992 and 1994, the ivory inlays were once part of
Source: NYT
March 7, 2011
SINGAPORE — For more than a decade, archaeologists and historians have been studying the contents of a ninth-century Arab dhow that was discovered in 1998 off Indonesia’s Belitung Island. The sea-cucumber divers who found the wreck had no idea it eventually would be considered one of the most important maritime discoveries of the late 20th century.
The dhow was carrying a rich cargo — 60,000 ceramic pieces and an array of gold and silver works — and its discovery has confirmed how s
Source: BBC News
March 6, 2011
Winchester Cathedral has opened its first addition in 500 years.
A purpose-built extension has been attached to the eastern corner of the existing building, which is the longest medieval cathedral in Europe.
It took the cathedral's stonemasons a year to construct the limestone attachment, which will provide storage, a new boiler and its first toilets.
The £820,000 needed for the work was raised by the Friends of Winchester Cathedral.
The buildi
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 7, 2011
In grainy black and white photographs, it's the way the Wild West really was.
From hunting, mining and wagon trains to white settlers mixing with native American Indians, life on the frontier is captured movingly by cameraman John C.H. Grabill.
Between 1887 and 1892 he sent 188 photographs to the Library of Congress for copyright protection. Most of his work centred on the then rowdy town of Deadwood in South Dakota.
The famous and the infamous passed throu
Source: Huliq
March 5, 2011
EUGENE, Ore. – A recent report out of Germany and a new book about Hitler’s master strategist, Erich von Manstein, sheds new light on how the Nazi’s could have won World War II; while, at the same time, students here at the University of Oregon in Eugene and elsewhere ask why it’s taken so long to expose yet more secret files from van Manstein that reveal a “dark cause” that’s sweeping the world today.
New documents released by the German government reveal it was not Adolph Hitler,
Source: Raleigh Telegram
March 4, 2011
WILMINGTON - A rare World Ward II rubber intelligence map of Iwo Jima was returned to the Battleship USS North Carolina this week. The battleship took part in the US Navy and Marine assault on the Japanese-held island during a brutal World War II battle.
Over the past six months, a conservation effort at East Carolina University preserved the rubber relief map by removing previous restorations that caused deterioration. The map is now stored in an oxygen free environment to ensure
Source: Fox News
March 4, 2011
Holocaust survivors struggling to collect what they say is $20 billion in Jewish life insurance policies never paid by European companies scored a major breakthrough this week when members of Congress filed legislation allowing them to sue.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., introduced two companion bills that would force European companies such as German's Allianz SE and Italy's Assicurazioni Generali to disclose lists of pre-World War II policies and e
Source: Past Horizons
March 6, 2011
Excavations have taken place at the National Trust for Scotland’s site at Bannockburn to see if there are any medieval finds from the famous 1314 battle in which the Scots led by Robert Bruce won a decisive victory over the English.
Archaeologists have investigated areas which are due to be planted with new trees. The planting is part of the advance landscaping works for a £5m joint project between the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland which aims to revamp the visito
Source: Charlotte Observer
March 3, 2011
What do you get if you tell middle schoolers about the Holocaust, an event that happened long before their parents were born? Shock. Horror. Disbelief that any government democratically elected to power could exterminate 11 million people living under its control.
What do you get if you don't tell middle schoolers about the Holocaust? Maybe, someday, another one. As philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Source: Jewish Chronicle
March 3, 2011
Each February, Gilbert Michlin invites fellow survivors and their spouses to his birthday party at his home in Paris. Before making a l'chaim, Mr Michlin remembers how, two days before his 18th birthday in 1944, he was deported from Paris and sent to a slave-labour sub-camp of Auschwitz.
This year, Mr Michlin turned 85. For decades, he has been asking: why did Siemens keep him and 87 other slave labourers alive? What happened to the other men who worked for Siemens, in the heart of
Source: AP
March 4, 2011
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America.
Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being "selfish" and he promoted Central America as an ideal location "especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being
Source: BBC
March 6, 2011
One of India's most historic landmarks is to be digitally recorded by a group of Scottish experts in an effort to preserve its every detail.
The team, from Glasgow School of Art and Historic Scotland, will scan the Rani Ki Vav Stepwell in Gujarat.
The site, which dates back to 1050, is made up of decorated stepped terraces descending into the ground.
The project is part of a global programme by the design team to record sites of historical significance.
Source: BBC
March 6, 2011
A rare original King James Bible has been discovered on a shelf in a Wiltshire church.
The discovery was made by residents researching the history of St Laurence Church in Hilmarton, near Calne.
Geoff Procter, a member of the parochial church council, said they read about a "fine chained Bible in a glass case" at the church.
They then made the link with a Bible that had been sitting on a shelf at the church for a number of years....
Source: BBC
March 6, 2011
"Phineas Gage had a hole in his head, and ev'ryone knew that he oughta be dead. Was it fate or blind luck, though it never came clear, kept keepin' on year after year…"
That song by banjo man Dan Lindner probably sounds like an outlandish myth, an old wives' tale passed around a small town.
But incredibly, his jaunty tune about Phineas Gage is true.
He did have a hole in his head, and against all the conceivable odds, he should have been dead. Bu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 6, 2011
Alberto Granado, the travel companion of leftist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara on their famed 1950s motorcycle trip through South America, died Saturday in Cuba, official media reported.
Mr Granado was a doctor and Guevara a medical student when they set out on their eight-month odyssey.
They left Buenos Aires in December 1951 and traveled through much of South America, where they witnessed poverty of local communities, lack of access to medical care,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 6, 2011
As Ukraine prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next month, its legacy remains as divisive as ever, writes Andrew Osborn.
Now 60 and the head of an organisation representing 450,000 people affected by the tragedy, Mr Andreyev's pessimism is understandable.
Proponents of nuclear energy, however, claim the fallout from Chernobyl was actually not as bad as first thought and pin the blame on shoddy Soviet management practices.
Safet
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 6, 2011
Argentines are being offered the chance to secure a final resting place next to the tomb of Eva Peron – if they have nearly £200,000 to spare.
Potential buyers can look forward to the prospect of up to 20 family members being interred in the mausoleum next to the black marbled monument which houses her remains.
Despite broken marble interiors and swarms of insects nearby, Damian Sabelli is asking Argentine patriots to pay ten times the amount that a tomb of similar si
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 6, 2011
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction, Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, is going on display show in the UK for the first time.
The 1932 painting, which sold at Christie's in New York last May for a world record price of $106.5 million (£65.5 million), will be displayed from Monday morning at the Tate Modern on London's South Bank.
The painting, which has been lent to the gallery by a private collector, will be on display in a new Pablo Picasso room in
Source: CNN
March 6, 2011
The last American veteran of World War I to die should lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol, his daughter said after lawmakers appeared to block the suggestion.
Buckles died on February 27, his family said, less than a month after his 110th birthday.
Late in his life, he became a public advocate for a national World War I memorial in Washington comparable to those for veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
He will receive an honors burial at Arlington Nat
