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: Deseret News
December 6, 2010
SALT LAKE CITY — In a big glass house overlooking the Utah State Capitol, Ted Nagata, 75, sits in front of his Macintosh and clicks through the scenes of his childhood. Here he is, smiling, with his sister and mother, he says. Here he is with a good friend. Here he is with his schoolmates, behind barbed wire under armed watch.
In the Avenues of Salt Lake City, sandwiched between two $1 million homes, Raymond Uno, 80 — sans photos — recounts a similar story. He was in middle school i
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 6, 2010
People living in medieval England were more prosperous than modern day residents of the world's poorest nations, a study into Britain's economic history has found....
The paper, British Economic Growth 1270-1870, is published by the university's Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, and estimates that per capita income in England in the late middle ages was about $1,000 or £634 a year when compared with currency values in 1990.
According to the World Ba
Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press
December 6, 2010
Dr. David O’Neal said it was just another casualty at the time, but one wrong move might have ended his life and that of his patient.
The retired Chattanooga physician was the chief of orthopedic surgery aboard the USS Repose, moored at Da Nang, South Vietnam, when the incident occurred in 1969.
The 14-year-old South Vietnamese boy who was brought aboard had a live gas canister buried in his thigh, between two parts of a shattered femur, after absorbing what was thought
Source: WaPo
December 5, 2010
HELENA, Mont. -- Native Americans who sued the federal government over lost royalties have been waiting nearly 15 years for the $3.4 billion settlement Congress passed last month. Now they'll have to wait some more.
The plaintiffs expect it will be at least next August before Indian trust landowners see a dime, and six months after that before the last claims are settled with trust account holders....
The dispute began over property owned by the Indians and held in trus
Source: WaPo
December 6, 2010
LINCOLN, Mont. -- A 1.4-acre parcel of land in western Montana that was once owned by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is on the market for $69,500.
The listing - by John Pistelak Realty of Lincoln - offers potential buyers a chance to own a piece of "infamous U.S. history."
"This is a one of a kind property and is obviously very secluded," the listing says. It doesn't say who owns the property....
Source: Press Release
December 3, 2010
WASHINGTON - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton presented 21 historical documents to the Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak of the Russian Federation to the United States, in a ceremony at the Russian Embassy in the nation's capital. The documents, many of them signed by czars and czarinas, emperors and empresses, ranged from the 18th to the 20th century and were reported stolen from national archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg between 1994 and 2002.I
Source: NYT
December 6, 2010
PHILADELPHIA — A galloping horse weather vane sold for about $20,000, and the cigar store Indians brought in more than $1 million. A Thomas Sully oil painting of Andrew Jackson netted $80,500, and a still life by Raphaelle Peale, part of the family that put portraiture in this city on the map, was auctioned at Christie’s for $842,500.
These were just a few of more than 2,000 items quietly sold by the Philadelphia History Museum over the last several years, all part of an effort to c
Source: Global Arab Network
November 30, 2010
The Syrian archaeological mission working at al-Gharia village unearthed nine cemeteries and a number of findings from the Byzantine and Roman eras.
Hussein Zein-Eddin, head of the mission, said the findings included coins, pottery lanterns, bronze jewelry, beads, wood decorative pieces and a large pottery plate.
The uncovered cemeteries, however, were found to contain remains of semi-complete skeletons, as well as bones and skulls still in shape, added Zein-Eddin.
Source: National Parks Traveler
December 5, 2010
How can Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument better interpret the history it seeks to preserve? That's a relatively simple question, but one not so easily answered.
The monument that seeks to interpret Custer's Last Stand in June 1876 against the Sioux Nation is undersized, needs a larger visitor center with room for artifacts in a more appropriate location, and currently leads visitors in a backward direction tracing the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry defeat at the hands of the Si
Source: Cnet News
December 4, 2010
If you've ever taken Lincoln Boulevard through the Presidio here, you almost certainly didn't know that you passed within feet of one of the best-preserved World War II-era anti-aircraft machine gun nests in the country.
In fact, all around the Presidio are dozens of these original trenches and fox holes, most of which are completely grown over with weeds and other vegetation, but many of which still have the pillars on which Army crews once mounted their .50 caliber guns in prepara
Source: BBC News
December 5, 2010
A rare window into life in imperial Russia is due to open on Monday, when hundreds of letters, postcards, photographs and even menus from the court of Tsar Alexander III are put up for auction in Geneva.
The documents were all sent by Alexander's children, Nicholas (who later became Nicholas II), George, Michael, Olga and Xenia to their Swiss tutor Ferdinand Thormeyer.
Mr Thormeyer was born and brought up in Geneva, but emigrated to Russia as a young man where - in 1886
Source: BBC News
December 5, 2010
A newly-discovered poem by Philip Larkin will be heard for the first time on a BBC TV documentary about his relationship with his secretary.
The unpublished poem, Dear Jake, was among other rarely-seen works found in a lost notebook by producers of Philip Larkin and the Third Woman.
The poems, sent in 1976 to his secretary of 28 years Betty Mackereth - now 87 - reveal her as a muse.
In the programme, she speaks for the first time about being his lover.
Source: BBC Magazine
December 3, 2010
During World War II, the Nazis fell for an audacious British plot to pass off a dead tramp as an officer carrying secret documents. How - and are such tactics still in use today?
Rat poison does not furnish the desperate with an easy death. But this was how Glyndwr Michael, jobless and homeless in the winter of 1943, ended his life.
Found in an abandoned warehouse in King's Cross, London, one cold January night, his death certificate noted the cause of death as "ph
Source: BBC Sports
December 6, 2010
Marion Jones says she did not deserve a prison term for lying about steroid use and involvement in a drugs fraud case.
Jones, 35, who won three gold medals at the Sydney Olympics, was given a six-month prison sentence in January 2008.
"I know I broke the law and committed a crime by lying," the former fastest woman in the world told Inside Sport.
"My reputation, fame and fortune was lost. Learning that lesson would have benefitted society more than
Source: NYT
December 5, 2010
They came in throngs. On Friday afternoon hundreds of residents from this tiny hilltop town in eastern Sicily excitedly trekked up the steep slope to the town’s archaeology museum to celebrate the return to Aidone of a treasure trove that was buried nearby some 2,200 years ago and illegally whisked away in more recent times.
This year this cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects known as the Morgantina silver was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For decade
Source: BBC
December 5, 2010
A rare window into life in imperial Russia is due to open on Monday, when hundreds of letters, postcards, photographs and even menus from the court of Tsar Alexander III are put up for auction in Geneva.
The documents were all sent by Alexander's children, Nicholas (who later became Nicholas II), George, Michael, Olga and Xenia to their Swiss tutor Ferdinand Thormeyer.
Mr Thormeyer was born and brought up in Geneva, but emigrated to Russia as a young man where - in 1886
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 5, 2010
From small-town boy to leader of the free world, disgraced US president to rehabilitated elder statesman, the life of Bill Clinton has been one of dramatic turns.
An opera about him is being performed in the state where in 1946 he was born, as he once said, "in a place called Hope".
Yet 'Billy Blythe' eschews the melodramatic tumult of the late 1990s, when Mr Clinton faced public and political humiliation over his affair with Monica Lewinksy, a White House i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 5, 2010
Michelangelo scribbled jokes, thoughts and mundane shopping lists in the margins of his artistic sketches, providing a fascinating insight into his moods and artistic genius, a new book reveals.
The Renaissance artist is best known for great works such as the statue of David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling but he also left behind around 600 cartoons and drawings.
The scraps of writing on about a third of the drawings include lines of poetry, memos to his assistants, ex
Source: AP
December 5, 2010
Danish actor Palle Huld, who reportedly inspired a Belgian cartoonist to create the comic book reporter Tintin, has died. He was 98.
Huld died Nov. 26 in a retirement home in Copenhagen. The cause of death was not given.
Huld was a stage actor with Denmark's Royal Theater, and he appeared in 40 Danish films between 1933 and 2000....
Source: AP
December 5, 2010
Maria Esther Gatti de Islas, a human rights activist who helped found Uruguay's organization of relatives of people who disappeared during South America's "dirty wars," died Sunday at age 92, her group said.
A photograph of the eyes of her missing 18-month-old granddaughter became a symbol of the struggle of Uruguayan families to find out what happened to their loved ones who were taken away by a military dictatorship.
The girl was taken at the same time Gatti
