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)
December 13, 2010
The Leaning Tower of Pisa has been returned to its former glory after an eight-year restoration project in which it was cleaned and partially straightened.
Restorers used chisels and hi-tech laser technology to scrub grime from the more than 24,000 blocks of stone that make up the 183ft tall tower.
The world famous monument has also had its famous list partially corrected after engineers managed to straighten it by 18 inches from the vertical, returning it to its 1838 p
Source: BBC News
December 11, 2010
The historic document spelling out the original rules for basketball has fetched $4.3m at auction - a record for any item of sports memorabilia.
The two, signed typescript pages that set out the 13 rules were drawn up by the sport's Canadian founder, James Naismith, in 1891.
The rules were sold by the Naismith International Basketball Foundation at Sotheby's in New York.
They were bought by Kansas basketball fans David and Suzanne Booth.
The sa
Source: BBC News
December 13, 2010
Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.
The liquid and bones were in a sealed bronze cooking vessel dug up near the ancient capital of Xian - home to the country's famed terracotta warriors.
Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found.
The pots were discovered in a tomb being excavated to make way for an extension to the
Source: NYT
December 12, 2010
It was the accident pilots and passengers in the still-new jet age had feared the most — a distinctly new kind of catastrophe, one that had never happened over a major urban area, one that would have seemed far less terrifying a few years earlier, when planes were smaller and slower.
Two airliners feeling their way through a sloppy mess of fog and sleet collided over New York City, sending down a devastating shower of flaming wreckage.
On a street of brownstones in Park
Source: NYT
December 11, 2010
The phrase that would emerge as the most enduring legacy of what became, arguably, the most famous farewell address since George Washington’s evolved over 20 months and was agreed to only a few days before it was delivered.
The words, in a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were transformed from a warning against a “war-based industrial complex” into a “vast military-industrial complex” and finally into a more vanilla “military-industrial complex,” which seemed controversial
Source: WaPo
December 11, 2010
Richard M. Nixon made negative comments about Jews, blacks and other ethnic groups during informal discussions with top aides and his personal secretary that were recorded before he resigned as president, according to a newly released batch of tapes.
"I've just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits," Nixon said during a Feb. 13, 1973, conversation with Charles W. Colson that was included among 265 hours of tapes released on Thursday by the Nixon Preside
Source: NYT
December 11, 2010
After World War II, American counterintelligence recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans and Nazi collaborators to an even greater extent than had been previously disclosed and helped many of them avoid prosecution or looked the other way when they escaped, according to thousands of newly declassified documents.
With the Soviet Union muscling in on Eastern Europe, “settling scores with Germans or German collaborators seemed less pressing; in some cases, it even appeared count
Source: NYT
December 12, 2010
WASHINGTON — By the end of last week, it certainly looked as if Barack Obama had outsourced his presidency to Bill Clinton. First, he cut a Clintonian-style deal with Republicans on tax cuts and then he literally turned over the White House lectern to his predecessor.
Equally riveting and astonishing, Mr. Clinton’s blast-from-the-past performance in the White House briefing room on Friday afternoon reinforced the impression of political déjà vu, the sense that once again a Democrat
Source: New Scientist
December 6, 2010
Sacrifice is an age-old ritual, but the inhabitants of 10th-century Peru brought sinister novelty to their rites by slaughtering children.
In the Lambayeque valley on the north coast of the country, the earliest definitive evidence of ritual child sacrifice has been uncovered. The bloodletting took place at a site called Cerro Cerrillos.
This practice, which emerged between 900 and 1100 AD, may have been a way for a particular ethnic group – the Muchik – to solidifying
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 10, 2010
A battalion of German combat troops is to be officially stationed in eastern France on Friday for the first time since Nazi forces ended the Reich's occupation at the end of the Second World War.
The battalion, part of the joint Franco-German Brigade, will be stationed at Illkirch-Graffenstaden outside Strasbourg, near the German border, and will eventually consist of 600 soldiers.
The historic move, aimed at cementing friendship between the neighbours who fought three
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 10, 2010
A giant stork big enough to eat human infants roamed the island of Flores in Indonesia 18,000 years ago, scientists have discovered.
Fossilised bones belonging to the oversized bird were found on the island, which was home to the tiny "hobbit" humans during the same period.
The 6ft stork, which weighed up to 35lbs and would have been too big to fly, would have been larger than the adults hobbits, who only grew to 3ft tall, the Indepdendent reports.
Source: AP
December 10, 2010
At South Carolina's Secession Gala, men in frock coats and militia uniforms and women in hoopskirts will sip mint juleps as a band called Unreconstructed plays "Dixie." In Georgia, they will re-enact the state's 1861 secession convention. And Alabama will hold a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Across the South, preparations are under way for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. And while many organizations are working to incorporate both the b
Source: CNN
December 10, 2010
Senate Democrats failed Thursday to win a procedural vote to open debate on a bill that would provide medical benefits and compensation for emergency workers who were first on the scene of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The motion for cloture, or to begin debate, needed 60 votes to pass due to a Republican filibuster, but fell short at 57-42 in favor.
While supporters said they would try to bring the bill up again, either on its own or as part of other legis
Source: CNN
December 10, 2010
The Genocide Archive of Rwanda opened its doors to the public Friday at the Kigali Genocide Memorial grounds in the country's capital, offering an in-depth look at the horrors of the country's 1994 genocide.
The new site rests on the slopes above the mass graves containing the bodies of 250,000 Rwandans murdered in 1994.
The physical archive at the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, showcases 1,500 audiovisual recordings and more than 20,000 documents and photographs from geno
Source: CNN
December 10, 2010
A flag that accompanied Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry into their final battle 134 years ago will be put up for auction by the auction house Sotheby's on Friday.
Custer led more than 200 other other soldiers into battle against thousands of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors on June 25, 1876, at the Little Bighorn River in what is now Montana. None of the U.S. soldiers survived the battle.
The flag is tattered and fragile, measures 27½ by 33 inc
Source: CHE
December 10, 2010
It is a gusty autumn day on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and two deer carcasses lie stretched on the lawn of a small farm, gutted and ready to be butchered.
Twelve students from an experimental-archaeology course at nearby Washington College crouch over the animals with razor-sharp stone blades that their professor, Bill Schindler, helped them produce weeks earlier using flint-knapping techniques that are as much as 2.5 million years old.
"Are we all set, or are we ki
Source: Science Mag
December 6, 2010
Earth is warming, climate researchers say, and sooner or later we will have to adjust our lifestyles if we want to adapt and survive. Perhaps we should take a cue from earlier occupants of North America. A new study finds a strong correlation between changing climate and changing culture in the prehistoric United States.
Archaeologists divide the prehistory of North America into three broad cultural phases: the Paleoindian, Archaic, and Woodland periods. They are characterized by an
Source: AP
December 7, 2010
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter said Tuesday he is not aware of any evidence of war crimes committed by a 97-year-old former SS officer, despite a newspaper report that he allegedly admitted his signature is on an order to kill thousands of Jews.
Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said there is evidence that Bernhard Frank was a devoted Nazi, but that he has seen nothing to indicate he was involved in ordering that Jews be killed.
Frank is best known as the SS offi
Source: BBC Magazine
December 7, 2010
John Lennon's death 30 years ago was one of those shocking, poignant "where were you when" moments that fashion collective memories out of historic events.
Many are sudden deaths - that of JFK being the most notable. Outbreaks and conclusions of war, scandalous resignations of heads of state, sporting miracles, and audacious crimes can all become a "where were you when".
But why do we remember where we were when we heard Princess Diana had died, or M
Source: BBC
December 7, 2010
Israel has reacted angrily to Argentina's recognition of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.
Monday's move by Argentina comes days after a similar step by South American neighbour Brazil.
The Argentinian foreign ministry said recognition was in line with the Palestinians' right to build an independent state.
More than 100 states around the world recognise Palestine, their mission at the United Nations says....
