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)
October 1, 2010
The Flintstones is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Here is a round-up of other classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
1) Yogi Bear
The fictional bear got his own show in 1961 after appearing in The Huckleberry Hound show in 1958. Yogi, together with collar hat, and girlfriend Cindy, is one of the pair's most popular and long-running animated characters.
Yogi gets up to most of his escapades in the fictional Jellystone Park along with his ever-present friend Boo-Boo Be
Source: Fox News
October 1, 2010
An Israeli high school principal has been summoned for a hearing by the country's Education Ministry for using a textbook that presents the Palestinian narrative about events surrounding Israel's creation in 1948, officials said Friday.
The controversy at the school in southern Israel reflects how charged the events surrounding the Jewish state's birth remain more than six decades later. Israeli Jews celebrate 1948 as the year of their independence, while Palestinians and Israel's A
Source: BBC News
October 1, 2010
Turkish nationalists have said Muslim prayers inside the ruins of a historic Christian cathedral in a move likely to cause friction with Armenians.
Hundreds of nationalists travelled to the ruins of the 11th Century cathedral at Ani in eastern Turkey to commemorate a Muslim victory there.
The action is being seen as a response to the reopening of another historic Armenian church last month in Turkey.
Armenians from across the world came to hear Mass at the
Source: bbc News
September 30, 2010
The Royal Spanish Academy has invited people around the world to record short chunks of the classic novel Don Quixote and upload them to YouTube.
Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote is often described as Spain's most famous novel - and yet few have ever read it.
Now the academy, the official guardian of the Spanish language, has divided the work into more than 2,000 segments.
They will be read and recorded - in Spanish only - by volunteers visiting a special Y
Source: BBC News
October 1, 2010
A computer game set in the Cold War which allows people to play East German border guards who shoot political fugitives has caused controversy in Germany.
The game 1378 awards medals to "guards" if they shoot a high number of East Germans trying to escape to the West.
23-year-old Jens Stober created the game as part of his university degree.
It was due to be released this Sunday, the 20th anniversary of German reunification.
However,
Source: BBC News
October 1, 2010
The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru.
Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution.
The team told Science magazine that the animal's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins.
It was about 1.5m (5ft) tall and nearly twice as heavy as an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species.
Source: NYT
September 30, 2010
ERFURT, Germany — The air here used to stink from the low-grade coal people burned for heat. That is easy to forget 20 years after East and West reunited and well more than a trillion dollars has been spent to prop up and rebuild the dilapidated region that was the German Democratic Republic....
“You could barely breathe,” said Ms. Kummer, a lifelong resident of this history-rich city, where Martin Luther studied, Napoleon met Czar Alexander and the first small step toward unificati
Source: NYT
September 30, 2010
When drafts of a United Nations study recently surfaced accusing Rwandan forces of committing atrocities against Hutu refugees in Congo in the 1990s — crimes that could constitute acts of genocide — the Rwandan government protested vociferously. It even threatened to withdraw its peacekeepers from Sudan and elsewhere if the report was published....
In the fall of 1994, just after nearly a million people had been killed in the Rwandan genocide, a team of United Nations investigators
Source: National Geographic
September 29, 2010
Sorry, archaeologists. A new study says animal footsteps might have made artifacts seem thousands of years older than they are.
Around the world, the hooves of water buffaloes, goats, and other large animals may have propelled countless Stone Age artifacts back in time, at least as far as archaeologists are concerned.
In wet areas, wild or domestic animals' heavy footfalls can push stone artifacts deep into the ground, making them seem older than they really are—i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 29, 2010
A new computer game based on the Iron Curtain has been accused of being 'tasteless and inappropriate' by victims of the former East Germany regime.
The game is called 1378 KM, named after the 1,378 kilometre long Iron Curtain that stretched across Europe from 1945 to 1991.
It is based on the real-life tragedy of 1,000 victims from the German Democratic Republic who were shot while trying to escape.
Game players become border guards along the hated 'inner Ge
Source: Huffington Post
September 29, 2010
Henry Kissinger, who helped steer Vietnam policy during the war's darkest years, said Wednesday he is convinced that "most of what went wrong in Vietnam we did to ourselves" – beginning with underestimating the tenacity of North Vietnamese leaders.
Offering a somber assessment of the conflict, which ended in 1975 with the humiliating fall of Saigon, Kissinger lamented the anguish that engulfed a generation of Americans as the war dragged on.
And he said the co
Source: USA Today
September 29, 2010
WASHINGTON — A letter from two senators is the only thing blocking congressional approval of a decade-long effort to build a women's history museum in the nation's capital.
Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C., have placed a "hold" on a bill that would sell land near the Smithsonian Institution for the National Women's History Museum. A "hold" is a Senate practice that prevents bills from passing with unanimous consent — and implicitly threatening a
Source: AP
September 22, 2010
Officials at a Mystic sea research and education foundation think they’re close to finding the Revolutionary War ship of John Paul Jones.
The Ocean Technology Foundation reported it is launching a fifth expedition soon to search for the wreck of Bonhomme Richard in the North Sea near England....
Source: Jewish Exponent
September 30, 2010
The sun rose over Mount Sinai, illuminating the other-worldly landscape and imbuing the unusually thin parchment with a translucent glow. Reciting the Ten Commandments on the spot in Egypt that represents perhaps the best guess of where God, according to tradition, revealed the law to Moses amounted to a sort of homecoming for a 200-year-old Torah scroll, recalled Rabbi Marcia Prager.
A decade ago, the Mount Airy religious leader and her husband, Jack Kessler, a cantor, led an inter
Source: Kennebec Morning Sentinel
September 30, 2010
MADISON -- The town can't change the history that comes with the site of one of the largest slaughters of native Americans in Maine. But it can mend the landscape and teach people about the area's significance.
"The Pines," an area next to the Kennebec River on Father Rasle Road, is near where the Norridgewock Indians, a band of the Abenaki tribe, were massacred by the English in 1724. The conflict, pitting the French and Abenakis against the English, marked the end of the
Source: Downtown Express
September 29, 2010
Revolutionary war hero Nathan Hale was honored last Wednesday in a ceremony at City Hall Park. The event marked the 234th anniversary of Hale’s execution at the hands of the British soldiers in 1776.
A wreath was laid at the foot of the 13-foot bronze statue of Hale depicting the 21-year-old patriot’s final moments....
Source: LA Times
September 11, 2010
Reporting from Litchfield, Conn. — The scenic village green of Litchfield has long symbolized the charms of Connecticut small-town life. Settled in 1721, it hosts tourists drawn by its Revolutionary War history: Litchfield served as a "safe town" for Continental forces seeking refuge while the British occupied New York City.
But this fall, the celebrated tourist town of about 8,500 will receive publicity for quite a different reason: charges of religious discrimination.
Source: NJ.com
September 9, 2010
SANDYSTON TOWNSHIP — A rutted dirt road that once carried American troops on their way to fight the British in the Revolutionary War became a different sort of battleground when the federal government sued two New Jersey couples who blocked the road where it traversed their property.
Eighteen months later, a settlement is imminent in a case that has rekindled memories of more recent clashes in the picturesque Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area over an abandoned federal dam
Source: NY Daily News
September 28, 2010
Exactly 234 years ago this month, a Revolutionary War general died from wounds incurred during a defiant showdown with the British - a gripping tale of patriotism that began in Queens.
But the spot where Nathaniel Woodhull was mortally wounded in 1776 does not bear tribute to the first high-ranking colonial officer to become a prisoner of war and die in enemy captivity.
"It needs to be preserved as a reminder of his sacrifice," said John Mauk Hilliard, preside
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 22, 2010
MI6 was “dumbfounded” when Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact with communist Russia in August 1939 starting the Second World War, according to the new official history of the service.
They had every reason to believe Hitler would never side with Stalin after listening to 20 years of his anti-communist rhetoric.
However an agent called “Baron,” run from Helsinki, Finland, had warned them of secret negotiations in the spring of 1939 and repeated his warning in Jun
