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 (UK)
January 9, 2011
American and German intelligences services knew where Adolf Eichmann – the logistical mastermind of the Nazi Holocaust – was hiding almost a decade before he was kidnapped and brought to trial, documents being released in Munich show.
Critics believe the inaction on the part of both countries was to protect both German officials and pro-Nazi clergy in the Vatican who helped him escape.
The newspaper Bild reported on Saturday that it had gained access to some of the fi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 9, 2011
A hidden clue in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa identifies the exact location of the landscape which provides the background to the world's best known painting, an Italian art historian claims.
Carla Glori believes that a three-arched bridge which appears over the left shoulder of the woman with the enigmatic smile is a reference to Bobbio, a village which lies in rugged hill country south of Piacenza, in northern Italy.
Her theory is based on the recent discovery by an
Source: Salon
January 8, 2011
Saturday’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was so startling in part because of how rare it is that an attempt it made on the life of a major American political figure. Four presidents in history have been assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy), with several others (including Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan) targeted.
Even though they aren’t protected by nearly as much security, attacks on members of Congress are, statistically speaking
Source: WaPo
January 7, 2011
Fairfax school officials have decided to pull a textbook in which historians have found dozens of errors.
Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Jack D. Dale said that fourth-grade history will be taught using supplemental materials until errors in "Our Virginia, Past and Present" are corrected in a subsequent edition.
The Washington Post reported in October that the textbook included a controversial assertion that thousands of African American soldiers
Source: USA Today
January 7, 2010
Clothing first appeared 170,000 years ago. That's what University of Florida researchers have deduced from an unlikely source - the annoying clothing louse.
David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus, worked with colleagues worldwide for five years to sequence the DNA of clothing lice to determine when they first began to diverge from the harmless but cringe-inducing head louse.
The study, in thi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 7, 2011
The family of dictator Francisco Franco are being sued by the family of Spain's first heart transplant patient, claiming the failed operation more than 40 years ago was carried out for political reasons.
Within a year of Christian Barnard performing the world's first human to human transplant in South Africa, a Spanish surgeon and the son-in-law of Spain's fascist dictator sought to repeat the feat and boost the country's international standing.
But the patient, a 41
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 7, 2010
A team of divers claim they have discovered the remains of the USS Revenge, a ship wrecked off Rhode Island in 1811.
The ship was commanded by US Navy hero Oliver Hazard Perry, known for defeating the British in the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie and Ontario in the War of 1812, as well as the line: "I have met the enemy and they are ours."
His battle flag bore the phrase "Don't give up the ship," and to this day is a symbol of the Navy.
The d
Source: CNN
January 7, 2011
On the day when much of the world was marking Christmas, I traveled with friends to a remote location deep in the Eastern desert in Egypt. Nestled in an oasis within the Red Sea Mountains is one of the world's oldest inhabited monasteries: The Coptic Orthodox St. Anthony's Monastery.
Festivities here were still some ways off; Christmas in the Eastern Orthodox tradition falls 13 days after the western one.
The founders of this monastery were disciples of St. Anthony the
Source: Bloomberg
January 4, 2011
The British Museum said it will prolong its loan to Iran of an ancient artifact for three more months, meeting a request by the Iranian authorities.
The Cyrus Cylinder, which went on show at the National Museum of Iran in September and was due back Jan. 16, will stay in Tehran until April 15 -- after late March celebrations of the Iranian New Year (Norouz), the museum’s press office said in an e-mailed statement.
“This decision has been taken in recognition of the fact
Source: The Examiner
January 5, 2011
By the time it boasts all its glory, the “Grand Central of the West” will actually sit on the site of an ancient village archeologists recently dusted off one relic at a time on their hands and knees.
They found dozens of vestiges — dolls, a piece of a tent, tableware and “many, many liquor bottles” — that tell stories dating as far back as 1848 under a roughly 100-square-foot portion of a parking lot near First and Minna streets by the future Transbay Transit Center. Underneath the
Source: Zahi Hawass (Personal Site)
January 6, 2011
Since 1880 a beautiful obelisk commemorating King Thutmose III has stood in Central Park in New York City. This obelisk is one of a pair - the other one currently stands in Westminster in London.
The Central Park obelisk of Thutmose III. (Photo: Richard Paschael and Dorothy McCarthy)
It has recently been brought to my attention that this incredibly valuable monument has been severely weathered over the past century and that no efforts have been made to conserve it. Because on
Source: Discovery News
January 4, 2011
This is no ordinary mummy. It did not originate from ancient Egypt or the Inca. It is not thousands of years old, nor is it wrapped in bandages. (In fact, if you look closely, you'll see this person died wearing knee-high stockings.)
This mummy is from North America. When he was alive, this person live in 18th-century Philadelphia. During a construction project in Philadelphia in 1875, the body was unearthed by accident.
But that's not what makes this mummy special.
Source: National Parks Traveler
January 7, 2011
The history of any national park includes stories of people, places and even empires that predate the parks themselves. Virgin Islands National Park's history involves international politics from centuries past, and a trip to the Spanish archives by the park historian yielded some important new insights.
Thanks to funds provided by the Friends of Virgin Islands National Park, Park Historian Milagro Flores traveled to Spain last summer to conduct research and compile documentation fr
Source: AP
January 7, 2011
Germany's Nazi government was so angry about a dog trained to imitate Hitler that it started an obsessive campaign against its Finnish owner, according to newly discovered documents.
In the middle of World War II, the Foreign Office in Berlin commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly Nordic country to gather evidence on the dog, and even came up with plans to destroy the pharmaceutical wholesale company of the dog's owner.
Historians had not been aware of the strange
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 6, 2011
With the Monte Carlo rally just around the corner Simon Arron explains how you can relive the event's glory days thanks to the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique.
If you were introduced to rallying during the recent past, you might struggle to spot a link between the modern version of the sport and its forebear.
Today, Britain's world championship round runs over a weekend in Cardiff. Its predecessor lasted five days and covered much of the UK. Damaged cars were not refettle
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 7, 2011
The family of a student who was murdered close to where Joanna Yeates was strangled said they believe both women could have been victims of the same killer.
Detectives are investigating the possibility that Miss Yeates’s killer could also have throttled Glenis Carruthers, 20, who was murdered in 1974 after leaving a party just 350 yards from where Miss Yeates lived.
A cold case review team set up last year to reinvestigate Miss Carruthers’ murder is liaising closely wit
Source: BBC News
January 7, 2011
Vang Pao, the former general and leader of his Hmong ethnic group in Laos, has died in exile in the US, aged 81.
He had been in hospital for about 10 days before his death late on Thursday.
As a young man, he had fought against the Japanese during World War II, and with the French against the North Vietnamese in the 1950s.
He led a 15-year CIA-sponsored secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War and, when it was lost, led tens of thousands of his people into
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 6, 2011
Archaeologists hail oldest wooden structure ever found on river, despite security services' armed response to researchers.
When MI6 set up home on the banks of the Thames one secret escaped its watchful eyes. The oldest wooden structure ever found on the river, timbers almost 7,000 years old, have been discovered buried in the silt below the windows of the security services' ziggurat headquarters at Vauxhall, south London.
The archaeologists who uncovered the six hefty
Source: BBC
January 4, 2011
An extinct flightless bird from Jamaica fought rivals and predators using wings evolved into clubs, scientists suggest.
The boney bludgeons carried by Xenicibis xympithecus are unlike anything else known in the bird world - or in mammals, reptiles or amphibians.
Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, the scientists report finding bones that had apparently been broken by another bird's club.
The species may have survived until less than 10,000 y
Source: BBC
January 6, 2011
Republicans have opened the second day of their rule in the House of Representatives with a full reading of the US Constitution, the first time the entire document has been read aloud in Congress.
The reading was prompted in part by Tea Party activists concerned that the document has been somewhat sidelined.
Representatives from both parties took turns reading different sections.
It is both the shortest and oldest constitution of any of the world's major
