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: Discovery News
July 8, 2010
Egyptian archaeologists unveiled on Thursday two rock-hewn painted tombs belonging to a man who had a supervising role in the construction of pyramids -- and his son.
It's considered among the most distinguished Old Kingdom tombs.
Dating from around 4,300 years old, the burials feature vividly colored wall paintings -- as fresh as if they were just painted. They were found in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo by an Egyptian team working in the area since 19
Source: BBC News
July 8, 2010
On the other side of the wood, the fighters soared and looped in a bright blue sky.
I was standing in a cornfield and thought of how, in another time, that sound would have sent me running in terror for any cover I could find.
But I was not in south Lebanon now, or Iraq or Afghanistan. When the French military jets, practising for an air show, eventually wheeled away, the song of a skylark filled the air.
The soldier poet, Isaac Rosenberg, heard that song.
Source: LA Times
July 9, 2010
When my niece, Sarah, was little, she returned from a long trip to Europe with her parents and announced she never wanted to set foot in another museum. Children who travel abroad are lucky, but on another level you have to pity the poor kids dragged through ancient ruins, art galleries, cathedrals and castles, until they're ready to drop, when all they really want is a Game Boy and a hot dog.
But in the Burgundy region of France, there's a castle that fascinates children — and it i
Source: Orange County Register
July 12, 2010
Police evacuated City Hall and shut down busy Beach Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon after an elderly woman turned up with a carload of World War I era rifles and shells.
The woman told police she had discovered the antique weapons when she cleaned out her garage. Her late husband – who died 20 years ago – had apparently collected them, Buena Park Police Sgt. Bill Kohanek said.
The woman took the weapons – which included rifles, handguns and bayonets – to the Police Depa
Source: Copenhagen Post (DK)
July 9, 2010
The Heritage Agency has given 18th Century Trekroner Fort a full digital makeover complete with light and sound shows
The makeover of Trekroner Fortress was dubbed fully complete on 25 June when Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary inaugurated the former navy installation, which will now serve as a living, interactive historical museum for visitors....
Source: Lex18 (KY)
July 8, 2010
Kentucky officials announced Thursday that a settlement has been reached to return the historic Indian Head Rock to Kentucky.
An Agreed Order between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, its former mayor Gregory Bauer, Steven Shaffer and David Vetter, dismissing the civil suit, was filed Thursday in federal district court.
As part of the settlement, the city of Portsmouth will relinquish custody and control of the artifact and permit its trans
Source: CNN.com
July 11, 2010
A University of Texas at Austin student dormitory named after a man prominent in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1800s may soon have its name changed, university officials said.
University President William Powers Jr. will ask the university system's board of regents to rename Simkins Residence Hall, following a recommendation by a 21-member advisory group, according to a press release from the university.
Gregory Vincent, the university's vice president of diversity and commun
Source: AP
July 11, 2010
Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town was dug out with graves, waiting for 775 coffins covered in green cloths to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.
Still, that was less than a tenth of the total number of
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 9, 2010
The Census, the official population count carried out by the Government, is to be scrapped after more than 200 years, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said the Census, which takes place every 10 years, was an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring the number of people in Britain.
Instead, the Government is examining different and cheaper ways to count the population more regularly, using existing public and private databa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 10, 2010
Ten historic Spitfire aircrafts have taken to the sky to mark the 70th anniversary of
the start of the Battle of Britain.
Their impressive display formed part of the Flying Legends air show at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, on Saturday.
It showcased the fighter’s development throughout the Second World War, from the rare Mk I Spitfire, one of the first designs, through to the Mk XIX, which became the last of the specialised photo reconnaissa
Source: Washington Times
July 8, 2010
A statue of three soldiers installed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial after critics thought the V-shaped memorial wall was too abstract has been restored to its original finish in a six-week project completed Thursday.
A private foundation that built the memorial raised about $125,000 to restore the bronze "Three Servicemen" statue of three soldiers for the first time. After 25 years, weather and the hands of millions of visitors wore down the patina finish on the soldiers
Source: Guardian (UK)
July 7, 2010
Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator, was sentenced to seven years in jail today after a French court found him guilty of laundering €2.3m (£1.9m) worth of drug profits during his time in power.
Noriega, who was ousted by Washington in 1989 and has spent the past 20 years in jail the United States, looked startled as the verdict was read out in the austere Tribunal correctionnel in Paris and had to be helped from the court by gendarmes.
During his trial last w
Source: Politico
July 1, 2010
A new poll of leading presidential scholars ranks Barack Obama as the 15th best president of the United States, just below Bill Clinton but ahead of Ronald Reagan.
The Siena College poll, which surveyed 238 presidential scholars at U.S. colleges and universities, asked scholars to rate the nation’s 43 chief executives on 20 attributes ranging from legislative accomplishments to integrity and imagination.
In the overall ranking, Obama rated two places below Clinton, who
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2010
Its most historic attractions may well be the jokes in the end-of-the-pier show, and children rather than archaeologists dig in its sands for lost treasures. But Blackpool could soon boast the same exalted status as the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China.
The Lancashire bucket and spade resort, famed for its tower, the illuminations and its amusement park, is on a typically eccentric list of British locations that could be put forward as new World Heritage sites.
Source: Great Falls Tribune
July 11, 2010
Word spread far and wide that gold was discovered in Yogo Creek more than 130 years ago, calling miners to its remote riverbeds with greed gleaming in their eyes.
At one point, newspapers — perhaps falsely — boasted that the approximately 70 acres that made up Yogo Town was home to 1,500 miners.
Two years after the first flood of prospectors, the 1880 census recorded only a few dozen people in the area....
Six University of Montana archeology students spent
Source: NYT
July 11, 2010
You could certainly make the argument that New York’s upper classes hardly want these days for personal attention, surrounded as they are by helicopter pilots who fly them to the Hamptons and private stylists who make haircut house calls. But even with today’s apparently recession-proof forms of conspicuous consumption, it would be hard to find a servant with the all-encompassing talents — the cradle-to-grave service — of Isaac H. Brown.
Mr. Brown, who died 130 years ago, was the lo
Source: Daily Progress
July 10, 2010
At James Madison’s house, Montpelier, archaeologists are unearthing the undisturbed remains of slave dwellings.
The actual dwellings of house, stable, garden and field slaves were abandoned abruptly in about 1840. But the sites on which they had stood were never dug up again, leaving a trove for researchers.
Researchers are in the first year of a three-year program backed by a $250,000 We the People grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The digging has
Source: AP
July 11, 2010
Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children's swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood.
A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It's also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, par
Source: BBC
July 11, 2010
A Scottish bishop has criticised Prime Minister David Cameron for failing to act quickly to scrap the law preventing Catholics from taking the throne.
Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell, said the Act of Settlement was a "scandalous" law that discriminated against members of his faith.
The act was passed by the English parliament in 1701 and extended to Scotland after the union.
It applies in countries where the Queen is head of state.
Source: BBC
July 9, 2010
A painting that depicts the body of Nelson Mandela undergoing an autopsy has been condemned by South Africa's ruling party.
The African National Congress (ANC) said the artwork, which is being completed at a Johannesburg shopping centre, violated Mr Mandela's dignity.
The piece shows Mr Mandela's body being cut open, while prominent leaders crowd around.
But artist Yiull Damaso says his aim is to make people confront death....
