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: Daily Mail (UK)
February 26, 2011
In the Twenties, Margaret Powell worked as a kitchen maid, the lowest level of the servants’ hierarchy.
With unusually sharp observation, Margaret — who died in 1984 — recalled in a fascinating memoir what it was like to be treated as less than human by her wealthy employers in London and at Hove in East Sussex.
As her book, republished next week, reveals, the animosity was very much mutual...
One morning, as I was polishing the brass kn
Source: Guardian (UK)
February 27, 2011
In Utah, women used to marry young. In particular they married Brigham Young, leader of the Mormon Church. The religious leader had 55 wives by whom he had 56 children before he died, aged 76, in 1877. His followers had similar polygamous marriages.
But scientists have now uncovered an odd fact about 19th-century Mormons: the more women in a household, the lower the average birthrate. In other words, the more sister-wives a Mormon woman had, the fewer children she was likely to prod
Source: Guardian (UK)
March 1, 2011
Archaeologists say six cannons recovered from a river in Panama that could have belonged to legendary pirate Henry Morgan are being studied and could eventually be displayed.
The group of Panamanian and foreign archaeologists say the cannons were found at the mouth of Panama's Chagres river, the site where Morgan's flagship, the Satisfaction, was wrecked in 1671 while carrying him and his pirates to raid Panama City....
Source: Reuters
March 1, 2011
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Workers at a Google data centre combined 12 century know how and space age technology to trigger a medieval weapon that was used to hurl rocks, balls of fire and dead animals over castle walls.
They used an Android cellphone, a computer the size of a credit card and a Blue Tooth receiver to trigger the wooden weapon, known as a trebuchet, during the first "Storm the Citadel Trebuchet Competition" in Charleston over the weekend.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 26, 2011
'I am so very fond of him. He is so good and gentle and understanding… and is a real comfort to me.”
These were the words of Queen Victoria speaking to her daughter-in-law, Louise, Duchess of Connaught, on November 3, 1888, at Balmoral. Perhaps surprising, though, is who she was talking about – not her beloved husband, Albert, who had died in 1861. Nor John Brown, her loyal Scottish ghillie, who in many ways filled the void left by Albert, since Brown had died in 1883.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 1, 2011
Rescuers searching the ruins of Christchurch cathedral have made found a century-old time capsule under a status of the city's founder.
Two items – a glass bottle containing rolled-up parchment and a metal cylinder – were found in the plinth of a statue felled in last Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake in New Zealand, which is believed to have killed up to 240 people.
Rescuers combing the site made the discovery Tuesday morning and immediately called in local museum s
Source: University of South Carolina
February 27, 2011
For more than a century, archaeologists have believed that ancient Mesopotamian cities – places like Uruk and Ur – were born along the banks of the great rivers of the Middle East and depended mainly on irrigation of surrounding deserts for their survival.
Dr. Jennifer Pournelle, a research assistant professor in the School of the Environment at the University of South Carolina, has a different theory. She believes that the great cities of southern Iraq grew and thrived in vast lowl
Source: Business Week
February 25, 2011
Tom Hunge knows he's living in the heyday of the modern sutling business. The 67-year-old from Winchester, Va., can't seem to keep enough of his authentic-looking 19th century military supplies—from vintage pencils (25 cents each) to Whitworth rifles ($1,000 and up)—on the shelves. "There have been days when I never put the phone down," he says. "I keep it next to my ear and write new orders for eight hours straight."
This April marks the 150th anniversary of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 24, 2011
The grandson of a Second World War soldier felt "sick inside" as Muslim demonstrators burnt replica poppies on the anniversary of Armistice Day, a court heard yesterday.
Tony Kibble said tears of anger and rage welled in his eyes as members of Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) chanted "British soldiers burn in hell" while he attempted to mark a two-minute silence.
At Belmarsh magistrates' court, sitting at Woolwich Crown Court, two members of the Islam
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 27, 2011
A tourist who thought it was amusing to have himself photographed outside the Reichstag in Berlin giving the Heil Hitler! salute has been arrested.
The 30-year-old Canadian was standing on the steps of the German parliament building with his right arm raised as his girlfriend, 29, photographed him in the forbidden pose.
Police arrived within seconds, handcuffed him and took the memory card of the camera.
He risked being formally charged with making a forbi
Source: Fox 40 (Sacramento)
February 27, 2011
A group of people looking to wipe a racial epithet off of headstones in the Negro Hill section of the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery met Sunday afternoon to come up with a game plan.
The "N" word has been on 36 headstones in the El Dorado Hills cemetery since 1954 when the federal government relocated the tombstones to create Folsom Dam and Folsom Lake.
The question now plaguing the process to change the headstones is: who's in charge? The cemetary straddle
Source: Fox News
February 28, 2011
LOS ANGELES -- More than four decades after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, his convicted murderer wants to go free for a crime he says he can't remember.
It is not old age or some memory-snatching disease that has erased an act Sirhan Bishara Sirhan once said he committed "with 20 years of malice aforethought." It's been this way almost from the beginning. Hypnotists and psychologists, lawyers and investigators have tried to jog his memory with no useful result.
Source: Yahoo News
February 25, 2011
LONDON – Papers relating to codebreaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing will go to a British museum after the National Heritage Memorial Fund stepped in to help buy them for the nation.
The government-backed fund said Friday it had donated more than 200,000 pounds ($320,000) to a campaign to stop the notes and scientific papers from going to a private buyer.
The fund's chair, Jenny Abramsky, said the collection would be a permanent memorial to "a true war hero.&qu
Source: Yahoo News
February 24, 2011
Fairfax, Va. – History lights a path out of partisan morass, if we will but see. The new Republican House has read the Constitution, reverently, voted to repeal and defund health-care reform, defiantly, and listened to the president’s views on health care and our union, dutifully.
As a next step, I highly recommend they read Pauline Maier’s masterful “Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-88,” before plunging back into business as usual. Two lessons in particular sp
Source: Reuters
February 25, 2011
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Writings by Franz Kafka and his friend Max Brod which have been hidden away for decades have been brought to light at an Israeli court and could reveal more on the life of one of the 20th century's greatest authors.
The long-awaited inventory, obtained by Reuters, details contents of safes in Tel Aviv and Zurich. It was submitted on Thursday to a family court in Tel Aviv where a legal battle is being waged over ownership of Max Brod's estate.
Kafka
Source: Yahoo News
February 25, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ancient megadroughts that lasted thousands of years in what is now the American Southwest could offer a preview of a climate changed by modern greenhouse gas emissions, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The scientists found these persistent dry periods were different from even the most severe decades-long modern droughts, including the 1930s "Dust Bowl." And they determined that these millennial droughts occurred at times when Earth's mean annual te
Source: Seattle Times
February 28, 2011
MCNEIL ISLAND, Pierce County — When the prison that eventually would become McNeil Island Corrections Center opened more than 135 years ago, a tight-knit community of fishermen and loggers, brothel owners and bootleggers, and prison employees and their children developed around it.
As in any small town, everybody knew their neighbors' business — even if their neighbors were serving 15 to life.
"It was a wonderful place to grow up," recalls Tim Taylor, 60, of L
Source: National Parks Service Press Release
February 22, 2011
DELANO, CA — Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez, and Paul Chávez, César Chávez’s son and president of the César Chávez Foundation, celebrated the life and legacy of the legendary farm labor and civil rights leader in a ceremony to officially dedicate the “Forty Acres” site as a National Historic Landmark. Forty Acres saw many historical events from the 1960s farm worker movement that Chavez championed and which dramatically improved the lives of
Source: The State (SC)
February 17, 2011
The long process for deciding whether the Battle of Camden Site and Historic Camden Revolutionary War Site are worthy of becoming a National Park Service unit took a step forward with public meetings on Wednesday.
About 75 people packed the afternoon meeting room at the Historic Robert Mills Courthouse, and a second meeting was planned in the evening.
The enthusiastic turnout in favor of the proposal prompted Tom Thomas, who is coordinating the Battle of Camden Special
Source: Inside Nova (VA)
March 1, 2011
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. --
The average American might not know that a teenaged James Monroe participated in the Battle of Trenton in the Revolutionary War – more than 40 years before he became president.
Probably even fewer know that a biracial man from Prince William County named John Sidebottom helped carry the injured Monroe from the battlefield, likely saving his life.
Bravery like this from the black populace in the Revolutionary War has large
