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: Jewish Telegraph Agency
December 20, 2010
SOLOTVYN, Ukraine (JTA) -- On a sloping green hill tucked between small farmsteads, the mottled graves of Jews buried here since the 1600s rise up like a forgotten forest.
Trudging through the mud between the tilted stones, their chiseled Hebrew lettering and renderings of menorahs sometimes barely visible, Vladimer Levin, an animated young historian who specializes in Jewish art, wants to save the gravestones.
"When we talk about preserving Jewish history, it's no
Source: Boston Globe
December 20, 2010
Though climate change seems a particularly modern predicament — one that generates alarm about the fate of the planet and how people and businesses will adapt — scientists are finding evidence that climate fluctuations influenced cultural changes among inhabitants of prehistoric New England.
Research is revealing the interconnected relationship between environmental shifts and changes in prehistoric people’s tools and settlement patterns. At the end of a cold period came the end of
Source: Medievalists.net
December 20, 2010
A chapel in the Welsh town of Llantwit Major has been awarded nearly £300,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to transform the ruined 13th century building into a new learning and exhibition centre. The Galilee Chapel adjoins the Grade I listed St. Illtud’s Church, has been described as the Westminster Abbey of Wales for its unique collection of Celtic carved stones and statues of prominent individuals.
A place of worship was first established in Llantwit Major in 500AD, includin
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 19, 2010
It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant's legacy that Ir
Source: BBC News
December 20, 2010
Spain has spent much of the last decade re-examining the past, exhuming mass graves from its devastating civil war.
It is thought there are around 2,000 unmarked burial sites across the country, but only a fraction have been opened.
The government now provides some funds for the search, but the work is left to relatives and volunteers.
As Sarah Rainsford reports, for some people, time is running out....
Source: AP
December 17, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia's southern coalfields, known to many outsiders for recent mining disasters, are also rich with American labor history and tales of bravery that Doug Estepp believes will rivet the tourists he plans to take there next summer.
Estepp, a Mingo County native, has launched a company that could be the first to share the rugged region's history with tourists. Coal Country Tours LLC is planning at least two tours for the summer of 2011, including a three-da
Source: Fox News
December 18, 2010
Break out the flashlights. When a full lunar eclipse takes place on the shortest day of the year, the planet may just get awfully dark.
The upcoming Dec. 21 full moon -- besides distinguishing itself from the others in 2010 by undergoing a total eclipse -- will also take place on the same date as the solstice (the winter solstice if you live north of the equator, and the summer solstice if you live to the south).
Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 17, 2010
The 11am Eucharist at St Philip's, Cosham, tomorrow will be celebrated under a starry sky. That is because the altar stands beneath a canopy spangled with stars on a dark blue background, against which four angels shine in gold....
Cosham is a very English suburb of Portsmouth and its architect was Sir Ninian Comper, who died 50 years ago next Wednesday. He is counted one of the greatest architects of the 20th century by some, though others see him mainly as a church furnisher, perh
Source: Culture24
December 12, 2010
When archaeologists working through the Victorian spoil heaps at Creswell Crags in 2006 uncovered a stone with a familiar carved geometric pattern, it opened yet another aspect of the ever-developing story of the important prehistoric caves.
What the experts from Sheffield University had unearthed was in fact a medieval incarnation of the strategy board game Nine Men’s Morris, which had been popular since Roman times.
Its discovery provided a glimpse into medieval activ
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 17, 2010
Worshippers at a 12th century village church have launched a bitter battle to oust their vicar.
Some members of the congregation at St Nicholas Church in Tillingham, Essex, are 'at war' with vicar Lorna Smith, claiming that her modernisation plans will be the 'ruination' of the historic church.
A petition has been started calling for the Reverend Lorna Smith to quit her post as vicar after she pushed ahead with proposals to rip the pews and replace them with informal pl
Source: PhysOrg
December 16, 2010
The largest surviving family-owned library of medieval manuscripts in Britain can now be enjoyed by everyone thanks to the publication of a new book telling its fascinating story.
The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts… Texts, Owners and Readers is the culmination of a major research project at The University of Nottingham into this nationally important regional collection.
The large, beautifully illustrated hardback volume tells the story of Nottinghamshire’s landowning
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 18, 2010
A multi-millionaire who was accused of spiriting away three Nazi-era gold bars as part of an attempt to conceal assets from his ex-wife was ordered to hand her a £2.4million divorce settlement yesterday.
Businessman Peter Brandon, 67, had claimed the ruling would leave him ‘impoverished’ because his total wealth stood at £2million, while his ex-wife Christina continues to live in the £2million marital mansion.
But the Court of Appeal yesterday backed the award made by M
Source: LA Times
December 5, 2010
Reporting from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. —
Saul Dreier and Lucy Weinberg lost their families in the Holocaust, and for more than half a century they'd lost each other too.
The cousins emigrated to separate countries, where they learned English, fell in love, married, had children and led happy lives.
Each thought the other had died at the Nazis' hands. But on Thursday, they hugged for the first time since the 1940s.
"Is this Lucy? Is this Lucy?"
Source: NYT
December 19, 2010
The same people driving the lawsuits that seek to dismantle the Obama administration’s health care overhaul have set their sights on an even bigger target: a constitutional amendment that would allow a vote of the states to overturn any act of Congress....
Tea Party groups and candidates have pushed for a repeal of the 17th Amendment, which took the power to elect United States senators out of the hands of state legislatures. And potential presidential candidates like Mitt Romney an
Source: NYT
December 20, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — During the heady early days of the gay rights movement, there was no place in the nation with more righteous energy than 575 Castro Street.
A small, unremarkable storefront, 575 Castro was home to Castro Camera, owned by Harvey Milk, the trailblazing activist who in 1977 became the first openly gay man elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He ran that campaign — and others for gay and lesbian rights — from the shop and his apartment upstairs.
Source: NYT
December 18, 2010
LONDON — It was the worst of times in the siege of Sarajevo. No venture outside the Holiday Inn, which had become a media fastness in a city under siege, was safe from the daily staccato of sniper fire, mortars and artillery shells. And there at my door, in the first winter of the war, was Richard C. Holbrooke, asking if he could borrow space on my floor for him and his sleeping bag....
He had come to experience for himself Europe’s first war since the 1940s — and to prepare for a r
Source: NYT
December 19, 2010
When it comes to the future of the Obama administration’s health care plan, the judicial math can seem simple.
So far in three lawsuits against the plan, two federal judges appointed by Democrats have upheld the law; one Republican-appointed judge has declared an important part of it unconstitutional. Use party as your measure, send the cases up the appeals ladder, and you quickly get to a 5-4 decision at the Supreme Court: the justices appointed by Republican presidents will vote t
Source: NYT
December 18, 2010
...The founding fathers originally required Congress to convene on the first Monday in December — a mandate that automatically created a lame-duck session. And because Congressional terms did not expire until March, lame-duck sessions had the potential to run for three months. The 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933, dramatically shortened — but did not eliminate — the sessions by moving the swearing-in date for lawmakers to Jan. 3.
John Copeland Nagle, a law professor at the Universit
Source: Press Release
December 15, 2010
K-12 history, social studies and English teachers are invited to apply to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History 2011 Summer Seminars. Taught by renowned historians on college campuses in the US and the UK, these one-week seminars give educators the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of topics in American history—while gaining practical resources and strategies to take back to their classrooms.
Source: NYT
December 16, 2010
Richard M. Nixon has long been the Freddy Krueger of American political life. You know in your bones that he is destined to keep returning....
Nixon’s hard-wired anti-Semitism is an old story. What has caused many heads to swivel is a recording of Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser. Mr. Kissinger is heard telling Nixon in 1973 that helping Soviet Jews emigrate and thus escape oppression by a totalitarian regime — a huge issue at the time — was “not an objective of Ame
