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: Telegraph
March 1, 2011
Last week, a rare, mint condition dagger was sold to the visiting American Rare Collectibles Association.
All over the world, collectors support the association and decide what to buy. Their representatives make the purchase.
The representatives didn't have the first name of the man who brought in the dagger. However, they were able to explain how it came to be in his father's - and then his - possession.
During World War II, Robert Vieregge was a soldier f
Source: AP
March 1, 2011
German scientists said Monday it may be possible to reconstruct one of two giant 1,500 year-old Buddha statues dynamited by the Taliban in central Afghanistan 10 years ago, which prompted a worldwide outcry and left behind only towering cliff caverns.
Researchers have studied several hundred fragments of the sandstone statues that once towered up to 180 feet (55 meters) high in Bamiyan province, and found that they were once brightly colored in red, white and blue, said Erwin Emmerl
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 sta
Source: BBC News
February 28, 2011
Items once owned by Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom Edward VIII renounced the throne, are set to be sold in an auction.
A collection of her lingerie, handbags and luggage will be auctioned next week in central London.
A scarlet chiffon nightdress from the 1940s to early 1950s is expected to fetch up to £1,000.
Proceeds from the sale, at Kerry Taylor Auctions, will go to the Dodi International Charitable Foundation.
It helps children in need
Source: BBC News
March 1, 2011
A new film about King John further underlines history's judgement of the medieval English monarch as a cruel tyrant. But among the dozens of bad kings and despots, why is John always the pantomime villain?
Surrendering lands in France, forced into a humiliating climbdown with the nobility and ex-communicated by the Church. Not to mention being blamed for the murder of his nephew.
The medieval reign of King John has been characterised by disaster and his reputation langu
Source: BBC News
March 1, 2011
Former Hollywood actress and sex symbol Jane Russell has died at the age of 89.
The brunette was discovered by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who cast her in his 1943 Western The Outlaw.
Some of her most memorable films include the The Paleface (1948) with Bob Hope, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) with Marilyn Monroe.
She died on Monday at her home in California of a respiratory-related illness, her daughter-in-law confirmed.
"Sh
Source: The New Republic
March 1, 2011
Charles Darwin considered the evolution of the human eye one of the toughest problems his theory had to explain. In “On the Origin of Species,” he wrote that the idea that natural selection could produce such an intricate organ “seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
But Darwin dispelled that seeming absurdity by laying out a series of steps by which the evolution could take place. Making this sequence all the more plausible was the fact that some of the tr
Source: NYT
February 25, 2011
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a child cremated in central Alaska about 11,500 years ago. They are the earliest known human remains from the North American Subarctic and Arctic region.
The fragments were found in a fire pit in an ancient dwelling and provide new insight into the burial practices of ice age people. The findings appear in the current issue of the journal Science.
Although only about 20 percent of the child’s remains was recovered, leaving t
Source: NYT
March 1, 2011
The specter of the 1995 government shutdown hangs over Capitol Hill, a memory many hoped to leave behind, along with beepers and episodes of “Baywatch Nights.”...
for some lawmakers in the new Republican freshman class, the circumstances and stakes of a budget showdown are quite different today. They frame their mission less as a one-term spending fight than as a crusade to redefine the role of the federal government in American life.
Many freshmen believe a government
Source: Salon
February 28, 2011
Did Haley Barbour misremember an episode in which he claimed to have seen Martin Luther King speak in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1962? A growing body of evidence is pointing in that direction.
The controversy centers on comments made by Barbour, the Mississippi governor and likely presidential candidate, to a Weekly Standard writer last year. The resulting profile already landed Barbour in trouble because he lauded the racist White Citizens Council of his hometown as a force for go
Source: AP
February 28, 2011
An FBI file contends that a young Edward M. Kennedy arranged to rent a brothel for a night while visiting Chile in 1961, a year before he was elected to the Senate.
The previously redacted State Department memo, dated Dec. 28, 1961, was released by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based organization that said it obtained it through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
According to the memo, the Massachusetts Democrat made arrangements to rent the brothel "for an entire ni
Source: Discovery News
February 28, 2011
Remains of the Husky-like dog, buried 7,000 years ago in Siberia, suggest people saw it as a thinking, social being.
Burial remains of a dog that lived over 7,000 years ago in Siberia suggest the male Husky-like animal probably lived and died similar to how humans did at that time and place, eating the same food, sustaining work injuries, and getting a human-like burial.
For the study, Losey collaborated with excavation director Vladimir Bazaliiskii and researchers Sand
Source: Discovery News
February 23, 2011
Neanderthals living in what is now Italy may have used feathers as fashion accessories, according to a study on 44,000-year-old bird bones.
While investigating Neanderthal remains in the Fumane Cave near Verona in northern Italy, paleoanthropologist Marco Peresani from the University of Ferrara and colleagues discovered 660 bird bones in layers that were dated to around 44,000 years ago.
Belonging to 22 species of birds, the remains included several wing bones which, ac
Source: Reuters
February 27, 2011
Libyans appear determined to safeguard their rich cultural heritage during the popular unrest against leader Muammar Gaddafi, protecting it from the looting seen in neighboring Egypt's revolution just weeks ago.
Conquered by most of the civilizations that held sway over the Mediterranean, Libya's rich cultural heritage includes Leptis Magna, a prominent coastal city of the Roman empire, whose ruins are some 130 km (80 miles) east of Tripoli.
The birthplace of emperor Se
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
February 28, 2011
The remains of a 4,500-year-old sauna have been discovered by archaeologists excavating a Stone Age temple.
They unearthed the foundations of the building at Marden Henge, near Devizes in Wiltshire.
Located close to the River Avon, the neolithic ‘sauna’ was in a key position overlooking a ceremonial area at the site.
Marden Henge, which has no standing stones, is located on a line which connects stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury but remains a mystery
Source: ABC News
February 28, 2011
The most comprehensive research project into Tasmania's convict ancestry is scouring the globe for information.
An international team of demographers, historians and epidemiologists is collating Australia's biggest family history.
Led by the University of Tasmania, the team is following the fortunes of convicts transported to Tasmania in the 1800s.
Historian Hamish Maxwell-Stewart says convict records are proving a rich source of information.
R
Source: BBC
February 28, 2011
John Lennon and Yoko Ono's autographs secured by a Mayo teenager more than 40 years ago are to be auctioned next week.
Sheppard's Irish Auction House in the Republic of Ireland, is to sell the signatures in Durrow, County Laois, next Wednesday.
They have been valued at between 500 to 800 euros.
Auctioneer Michael Sheppard told the Irish Times that the autographs were being sold by a man who had asked the couple to sign his autograph book during a visit in 1
Source: BBC
February 28, 2011
Gulf War veterans have staged a protest in Westminster to call for greater help with their medical problems.
Campaigners say 1,000 British veterans have died because of Gulf War Syndrome and they want improved testing, treatment and compensation.
The government says there is no evidence of a specific illness caused by the war.
The march is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the end of Operation Desert Storm.
Many British veterans ha
Source: BBC
February 25, 2011
It is a spectacular work of art and a highlight at Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology.
The semicircle of gleaming green feathers held together by rows of golden beads was, it is said, the headdress of Mexico's last Aztec ruler, Moctezuma.
But the spectacular artefact is not real - it's a replica. The original lies thousands of kilometres away in a collection at Vienna's Ethnology Museum.
The exact origin of the headdress or "penacho" is disp
Source: BBC
February 27, 2011
Exactly 22 years after violent clashes between police and protesters killed hundreds of people in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, some of the victims have been reburied in a special monument in the city's biggest cemetery.
The bloody clashes in February 1989 became known as the Caracazo - literally the big one in Caracas - as security forces loyal to the then president Carlos Andres Perez cracked down on protesters demonstrating over price rises.
Official figures put t
