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 Saratogian (NY)
December 29, 2010
SARATOGA SPRINGS — As the nation prepares to observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the New York State Military History Museum and Veterans Research Center is making capsule histories of 360,000 New York Civil War soldiers available online.
The entire roster of New Yorkers who served during the Civil War years, 1861-65, is now available online, as well as the five annual reports issued by the Bureau of Military Statistics from 1864 to 1868 that chronicle the accomplishments
Source: LA Times
December 31, 2010
ATLANTA — Murals of slaves harvesting sugar cane on a Georgia plantation and picking and ginning cotton are coming off the walls of a state building on the order of a new agriculture commissioner.
The murals are part of a collection of eight works painted by George Beattie in 1956 depicting an idealized version of Georgia farming, from the corn grown by prehistoric American Indians to a 20th century veterinary lab. In the Deep South, the history in between includes the use of slave
Source: Civil War Librarian
December 30, 2010
Civil War Medical Museum To Manage Missing Soldiers Office, National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Press Release.
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) will open the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum this year at 437 7th St. NW, Washington. The General Services Administration (GSA), which owns the building, chose the Frederick, Md., non-profit museum whose mission is preserving and researching the legacy of Civil War medicine, to operate the museum.
Source: Newsweek
January 3, 2011
In early November a building where athletes once trained to fight collapsed into a pile of rubble. Since then, structures have been tumbling down at an astonishing rate. Huge sections of a garden wall around the House of the Moralist fell on two separate occasions. In early December an ancient shop and the House of the Small Lupanare were reduced to heaps of mortar. Shelves regularly fall from the moldings, and a wooden scaffolding put in place a half-century ago is visibly rotting. Reports in t
Source: CS Monitor
January 2, 2011
That generation of Americans raised on “Leave It to Beaver,” who came of age during the battles over racial segregation, fought in (or over) the Vietnam War, joined the Peace Corps, marched for women’s rights, and populated suburbia with their offspring are now senior citizens.
We’re talking about baby boomers here – people born between 1946 and 1964, the first of whom turned 65 on New Years Day.
OK, so it’s mainly a big deal for demographers, wonkishly charting and gra
Source: NYT
January 3, 2011
Serbian prosecutors say they believe that Goran Hadzic, a former Croatian Serb rebel leader wanted for war crimes, may have tried to raise money for his life in hiding by selling a painting by Amedeo Modigliani, The Associated Press reported....
Source: NYT
January 3, 2011
TREMBLOIS-LÈS-CARIGNAN, France — The municipal council here on the edge of the Ardennes Forest recently voted to change a third of the village’s street names.
Tremblois has only three streets, and they are named for three French heroes of World War I: Marshals Ferdinand Foch, Joseph Joffre and Philippe Pétain.
The problem is that Marshal Pétain had a second act as head of state during World War II, when his administration in the unoccupied part of the country that was k
Source: NYT
January 3, 2011
JIMIJMA, Iraq — The damage done to the ruins of ancient Babylon is visible from a small hilltop near the Tower of Babel, whose biblical importance is hard to envision from what is left of it today.
Across the horizon are guard towers, concertina wire and dirt-filled barriers among the palm trees; encroaching farms and concrete houses from this village and others; and the enormous palace that Saddam Hussein built in the 1980s atop the city where Nebuchadnezzar II ruled.
Source: AOL News
December 31, 2010
When National Park Service rangers fired a New Year's cannon shot at this Civil War battleground to hail the arrival of 2011, they also ushered in the start of a four-year commemoration of the war's 150th anniversary.
The events include a multitude of battle re-enactments, lecture series, readings, concerts and plays that will be held on the battle fields tended to by the Park Service and in private estates from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to New York.
But the slat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2011
Archaeologists have unveiled the treasures of a 2,600-year-old Celtic tomb containing a wealth of art in Germany.
An ancient hill fort at Heuneburg found the 13-by-16-foot burial chamber in an excellent state of preservation and still containing gold and amber jewellery placed there seven years before the birth of Christ.
The jewellery allowed archaeologists to pinpoint a precise date - the first time they’ve been able to do so with early Celtic remains. It also stron
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2011
Robin Hood, the archetypal English hero, may actually have been Scottish, according to new research.
Nottinghamshire is generally thought to have been the home of the outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor, with neighbouring counties Yorkshire and Leicestershire also claiming links.
But historical novelist Jack Whyte claims that the roots of the character forever associated with Sherwood Forest may be north of the border.
He found what he cla
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 2, 2011
The birthplace of Ringo Starr could be saved from demolition after an intervention by a government minister.
Grant Shapps, the housing minister, has asked Liverpool City Council to halt the planned destruction of 9 Madryn Street, where the Beatles' drummer was born in 1940.
The address was due to be bulldozed under plans by the council to make way for new housing in the city's Welsh Streets estate.
Mr Shapps has called for the demolition to be postponed
Source: CNN
January 2, 2011
President Barack Obama signed the 9/11 health bill into law in Hawaii on Sunday, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
Obama signed the bill during his Hawaiian vacation, with no signing ceremony held. In a statement issued later, the president said he was "honored" to sign the bill, which pays for health care for responders believed to have been sickened by pollution at the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York.
The bill made a long journey in order
Source: BBC
December 31, 2010
Sri Lanka's government has decided to change the names of all state institutions still bearing the nation's former British colonial name, Ceylon.
The government wants the country's modern name to be used instead. The decision comes 39 years after the country was renamed Sri Lanka.
The change will be made as early as possible in 2011.
Reaction has been mixed to the new year's resolution that gets rid of what some see as a vestige of colonialism.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2010
Survivors of the Holocaust have warned of the first stirrings of neo-fascism in Israel following the emergence of a Right-wing campaign to cleanse Arabs from predominantly Jewish parts of the country.
Until this month, the shadowy Lehava organisation was best known for issuing an eccentric demand in March urging Bar Refaeli, an Israeli model, not to marry Leonardo DiCaprio, the American actor, because he is a gentile.
But in recent weeks it has taken on a more siniste
Source: CNN
January 1, 2011
Brazil's first female president was sworn in Saturday amid cheers and tears from supporters, many of whom followed her rise from freedom fighter brutally persecuted in the 1960s to leader of her country.
Addressing the nation as president for the first time, Dilma Rousseff said she felt the historic weight of her presidency.
Rousseff, 62, replaces Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the most popular president in Brazil's recent history. Rousseff served as his chief of staff.
Source: CNN
December 30, 2010
Some say he was a cold-blooded killer and a callous thief. Others dismiss his penchant for gun battling and horse stealing as merely "the way it was" in the Wild West. Some celebrate his legendary disdain for authority.
One thing that is hard to disagree on is that William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, is an enduring figure in American lore.
Whether America's most infamous Wild Westerner gets his posthumous walking papers or not, Tim Sweet will sh
Source: BBC News
December 28, 2010
There was an unofficial lull in the Blitz attacks on London, for Christmas in 1940. But by 29 December, the German bomber planes had returned with renewed vigour. St Paul's Cathedral famously survived, but how?
It became known as the Second Great Fire of London - the night 70 years ago that devastating air raids turned the capital into a conflagration.
It had been a Christmas underground for many people, who slept in Underground stations or festively-decorated air raid
Source: Science Daily
December 29, 2010
Rodents get a bad rap as vermin and pests because they seem to thrive everywhere. They have been one of the most common mammals in Africa for the past 50 million years.
From deserts to rainforests, rodents flourished in prehistoric Africa, making them a stable and plentiful source of food, says paleontologist Alisa J. Winkler, an expert on rodent and rabbit fossils. Now rodent fossils are proving their usefulness to scientists as they help shed light on human evolution.
Source: CNN
December 31, 2010
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico will not pardon legendary Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid in the death of a law enforcement officer more than a century ago, he said Friday.
Richardson made the announcement on ABC's "Good Morning America" the same day he leaves office.
The issue facing Richardson was whether one of his predecessors, Gov. Lew Wallace, promised about 130 years ago to pardon Billy the Kid -- known more formally as William H. Bonney -- for killin
