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: The Daily Caller
February 22, 2011
Fast fact: It is illegal to deliver the Gettysburg Address on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial without permission from the U.S. National Park Service.
On President’s Day — standing where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” — Phillip Howell, 25, recited Lincoln’s famous address and was quickly stopped by a Park Police officer. He told Howell that he could not give speeches on the steps of the memorial without a permit.
“He called me Abe
Source: Fox News
February 23, 2011
Libya’s ex-justice minister claims the country’s leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi, ordered the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, according to the Swedish tabloid Expressen.
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil was quoted Wednesday telling an Expressen correspondent in Libya that he has “proof that Qaddafi gave the order about Lockerbie."
Abdel-Jalil, who stepped down as justice minister to protest violence against anti-government demonstrations, did not describe the proof.
He told Exp
Source: Medievalists.net
February 22, 2011
Several medieval churches in England have received funding the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage as part of their joint Repair Grants for Places of Worship program. In an announcement made earlier this month, over 153 Grade I and II listed places of worship across England were granted £15.7 million to support urgent repair work.
The churches include St Peter’s, Wilburton, in the Diocese of Ely, which has a tower dating from the 13th century. It has been offered at grant of
Source: Guardian (UK)
February 22, 2011
Bunhill Fields, the London cemetery where some of the most radical figures in history lie quietly side by side in unhallowed ground, will today be declared a Grade I park by the government, with separate listings for scores of its monuments.
The cemetery, founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for nonconformists, radicals and dissenters, holds the remains of John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and the poet and artist William Blake
Source: Guardian (UK)
February 16, 2011
James Cameron and his team of minions may have produced the high watermark for 3D technology in the 21st century, but it seems the Nazis got there first. The Australian film-maker Philippe Mora says he has discovered two 30-minute 3D films shot by propagandists for the Third Reich in 1936, a full 16 years before the format first became briefly popular in the US.
The first of the films, titled So Real You Can Touch It, features shots of sizzling stereoscopic bratwursts on a barbecue
Source: CBS News
February 22, 2011
MUNICH - John Demjanjuk says he will go on hunger strike if a German court does not pursue more evidence that he says could exonerate him of charges he served as a Nazi death camp guard.
A former Soviet soldier during World War II, the 90-year-old Demjanjuk is standing trial on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder on allegations that he agreed to serve as a guard in the Sobibor death camp after being captured. The retired Ohio autoworker denies having ever served as a guard....
Source: WaPo
February 22, 2011
FRANKLIN, TENN. - Among the Civil War buffs wandering through the tables of muskets and faded daguerreotypes of Union soldiers for sale here are four federal agents.
One raids houses and carries a gun. But right now he's handing out innocuous-looking brochures to the relic hunters walking by, as the sweet smell of glazed nuts wafts from a concession stand. "Does that document belong in the National Archives?" the brochure asks.
The agents have flown to a fair
Source: NYT
February 22, 2011
A set of important murals depicting events in African-American history will be restored and sent on tour for the first time through a collaboration of Talladega College in Alabama, which owns the murals, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. In 1938 Talladega, one of the country’s oldest all-black colleges, commissioned Hale Aspacio Woodruff, an African-American artist who had studied with Diego Rivera, to create the murals for the lobby of its new library....
Source: Ekathimerini (Greece)
February 23, 2011
Renovation work on the aged Piraeus-Kifissia electric railway (ISAP) on the stretch between the central Athenian neighborhoods of Monastiraki and Thisseio have brought to light one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of recent years.
Archaeologists believe that remnants found during construction in the area of the Ancient Agora, on the northwestern slope of the Acropolis, belong to the famed Altar of the Twelve Gods, one of Athens’s most ancient monuments and a landmark
Source: NY Times
February 17, 2011
There are various types of archaeology: small test pits, wide-area exposures, architectural reconstruction, regional survey, etc. Our strategy at the Maya site of Ceibal (also written as Seibal in English literature), in the tropical lowlands of western Guatemala, is decidedly a vertical pursuit. Dig deep and trace 2,000 years to Ceibal’s occupation history back to its beginning. This is our fifth season, and this year we have been working in the jungle since early January. Some of our excavatio
Source: Artinfo/AFP
February 17, 2011
Much international concern has focused on acts of looting of cultural artifacts during the current revolutionary unrest in Egypt. However, in Tunisia, a far more spectacular cultural crime is making news, this one carried out by the agents of the state themselves. Recently ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family stand accused of illegal appropriation and plundering of the site of the ancient city of Carthage. A pair of activists are publicizing the crimes in a petition they have l
Source: Fandomania
February 22, 2011
After too many movie myths and promotional episodes over the last few months, the MythBusters finally managed to pull themselves together and go out with a bang in their last episode of the year, both figuratively and literally. Adam and Jamie address an interesting historical “what if” — what if the location for Hitler’s briefing on July 20, 1944 hadn’t been changed from the underground bunker to an above-ground, windowed conference room?
Would we still be remembering the martyrs b
Source: Der Spiegel (Germany)
February 22, 2011
John Demjanjuk, the 90-year-old former auto worker accused of helping to murder 27,900 Jews in the Holocaust, has threatened to go on hunger strike to to force the court to admit KGB documents he claims will exonerate him. In a statement, he has protested against what he calls his "political show trial."
John Demjanjuk, accused of helping to kill 27,900 Jews in the Holocaust, will go on a hunger strike unless the Munich court allows him to present documents that could exon
Source: BBC News
February 22, 2011
A parliamentary commission in Georgia says the country's first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, may have been murdered in 1993.
Gamsakhurdia died from a gunshot to the head after being ousted from power and pursued by an enemy militia.
The authorities previously concluded that he had killed himself.
The commission wants a new official inquiry. But there are some doubts about its research, as it is run by Mr Gamsakhurdia's son and his associates.
Source: BBC News
February 22, 2011
There is a dawning in Europe. A growing awareness that events have thrown up one of history's moments.
The German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, said the awakening in the Arab world was a "historic watershed". "Nothing," in his view, "will be as it was before".
The UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said it was "a historic test for the EU". If democracy and stability could take root in North Africa then it would be "t
Source: BBC News
February 22, 2011
Scientists have named a new dinosaur species "thunder-thighs" because of the huge thigh muscles it would have had.
Fossil remains recovered from a quarry in Utah, US, are fragmentary but enough to tell researchers the creature must have possessed extremely powerful legs.
The new species, described in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, is a sauropod - the family of dinosaurs famous for their long necks and tails.
It could have given other a
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
February 20, 2011
For centuries, historians have puzzled over the disappearance of a legion of 5,000 battle-hardened Roman soldiers in northern Britain around 108 AD.
The ancient riddle, which has captivated storytellers, has just been dramatised by Hollywood in The Eagle, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell.
Now, experts have revealed that the children’s book on which the film is based is more fact than fiction.
Historians were left baffled how thousands of heavy infantr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 21, 2011
A previously unknown painting by Walter Sickert - the artist believed by author Patricia Cornwell to be Jack the Ripper - is set to fetch up to £60,000 when it goes under the hammer next month.
The work, entitled The Blind Sea Captain, has only emerged once before - with no title except a label on the back - at an exhibition 80 years ago.
Sickert, who Patricia Cornwell has investigated at length and named as the serial killer, was notorious for his paintings of nudes.
Source: BBC
February 21, 2011
Excavations are beginning at the site of a former medical school in Japan which could yield evidence of war-time experiments on prisoners.
The site in western Tokyo is said to be linked to Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army, which used prisoners for biological warfare experiments.
The excavation was ordered after a former nurse came forward.
Toyo Ishii said workers were made to bury dozens of bodies there after the surrender at the end of World War II
Source: AP
February 20, 2011
George Washington's name is inseparable from America, and not only from the nation's history. It identifies countless streets, buildings, mountains, bridges, monuments, cities and people.
In a puzzling twist, most of these people are black. The 2000 U.S. census counted 163,036 people with the surname Washington. Ninety percent of them were African American, a far higher black percentage than for any other common surname.
Some historians theorize that large numbers of bl
