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
Apr 28, 2010
The Dallas-Fort Worth skies were once dominated by Aetodactylus halli, a new toothy genus and species of pterosaur, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The 95 million-year-old flying reptile, also known as a pterodactyl, lived during the Cretaceous Period when most other pterosaurs were toothless. As you can see in the below, Aetodactylus halli was an exception to that toothless trend.
It's one of the youngest members of t
Source: BBC
Apr 28, 2010
A road has been named in honour of the first man to fly from London to Manchester - on the 100th anniversary of his achievement.
Louis Paulhan, from France, made the 195-mile (298km) flight in his Farman biplane, landing in a field in Burnage, Manchester, on 28 April 1910.
The flight took four hours and 12 minutes and made news across the world.
A road by the Aviation Viewing Park at Manchester Airport will now be known as Louis Paulhan Way.
Source: CNN
Apr 28, 2010
Laura Bush suggests she, her husband, and several aides were poisoned during a 2007 visit to Germany for the G8 summit - one of several new details in the former first lady's forthcoming memoir, "Spoken for the Heart."
Due to hit bookshelves May 4 but acquired early by the New York Times, Mrs. Bush says she and former President George W. Bush became mysteriously sick on the Germany trip to such a degree that the president became bedridden. According to Mrs. Bush, doctors a
Source: AP
Apr 28, 2010
Russia's state archives posted documents on the Internet for the first time Wednesday about the Soviet Union's World War II massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens.
The step was a gesture to Poland in a case that looms large in Polish history and has soured relations between the two countries for decades.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the documents posted on the archives' Russian-language website, reflecting a new willingness in Rus
Source: ABC News (AU)
Apr 27, 2010
Dozens of World War I photographs, including some from Australia's Gallipoli campaign, have been saved by a quick-thinking removalist in Canada.
Max Madden, an Australian who operates a removalist business in Vancouver, was helping relocate Canadian man Trevor Pilley to a retirement home when he came across the historic black and white photos.
They were contained inside an album marked, "Dardanelles - Landing of Australians and New Zealanders at Anzac", which
Source: Haaretz.com
Apr 27, 2010
U.S. soldiers who liberated a Nazi concentration camp in April 1945 were amazed to discover, among the countless famished and dead, seven Jewish mothers and their babies, who had somehow avoided execution or starvation.
This week, six of those former babies are to gather for an emotional reunion at Dachau on the outskirts of Munich.
German television is to air a television documentary which explores the miracle of how these three infant boys and four infant girls slippe
Source: Times-Georgian.com
Apr 27, 2010
Confederate battle flags, placed on the graves of Civil War veterans in the Abilene Baptist Church Cemetery, keep disappearing. Church officials and members, who deem the flags offensive, have been removing them.
Rev. Gregory Drake, pastor of Abilene Baptist Chuch, said members of the church have taken the flags down each year for the past 20 years, in part because groups like the Ku Klux Klan have given a negative connotation to the flag.
He said the cemetery, located
Source: Wisconsin State Journal
Apr 27, 2010
Burning your toast in the morning may not seem like the best way to start your day, but it just might prove interesting to posterity.
In 2002, while excavating a site called Alden’s Corners in Dane County, archaeologists uncovered several pieces of what appeared to be the oldest toast in Wisconsin. They unearthed the fragments of bread, which are at least 130 years old, during an excavation of the town post office, dating them somewhere between 1850 and 1880. The slices are composed
Source: Times Online (UK)
Apr 27, 2010
The existence of the Loch Ness Monster was “beyond doubt” in the mind of one of Scotland’s most senior police officers, according to a file released yesterday by the National Archives of Scotland.
William Fraser, chief constable of Invernessshire in the 1930s, was convinced that not only was “some strange creature” bobbing about in Scotland’s second largest loch but it was in danger of being hunted to extinction. He contacted the Under Secretary of State at the Scottish Office in 19
Source: FOX News
Apr 27, 2010
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say wooden remains they have discovered on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey are the remains of Noah's Ark.
The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.
Yeung Wing-Cheung, fro
Source: City Hall News
Apr 27, 2010
This article has been updated
He's fresh," went John Lindsay’s mayoral campaign slogan from 1965,"everyone else is tired."
Now, 45 years after the dashing silk-stocking Republican first hit the hustings, a cadre of former Lindsay aides and family members are launching a media blitz in an attempt to keep the former mayor’s image fresh in the minds of New Yorkers.
On May 4, the Museum of the City of New York will open an exhibit entitled “America’s Mayor: John
Source: BBC
Apr 27, 2010
Evidence found at the Roman site of Silchester could mean it was the site of one of Boudicca's battles.
Professor Michael Fulford said that 13 years of excavations at Calleva had revealed evidence of the first gridded Iron Age town in Britain.
The site also bears the scars of possible early Roman military occupation, and evidence of later, widespread burning and destruction.
This suggests the site could have been destroyed at the hands of Boudicca.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 27, 2010
The last rat was seen on the tiny island of Canna four years ago after specialist pest controllers were brought in from more than 11,000 miles away to deal with the problem.
But now islanders are complaining that the rodent's disappearance has led to thousands of rabbits invading the island because there are no rats to keep their numbers down.
The problem is so bad that locals say historic monuments are being "devastated" by the rabbits and they are devouring
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 27, 2010
Four Roman sculptures are to be withdrawn from auction tomorrowamid claims that they were stolen from archaeological sites overseas.
Photographs seized by police suggested that the sculptures – funerary busts and a marble statue of a youth from the second century AD – were illicitly excavated, archaeologists told the Guardian.
A spokesman for Bonhams auctioneers said: "Whenever a serious question is raised about an item's provenance we withdraw it from sale pending
Source: MSNBC
Apr 27, 2010
Web sites are buzzing over claims that remains from Noah’s Ark may have been found on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. The finders, led by an evangelical group, say they are "99.9 percent" that a wooden structure found on the mountainside was part of a ship that housed the Biblical Noah, his family and a menagerie of creatures during a giant flood 4,800 years ago.
But researchers who have spent decades studying the region – and fending off past claims of ark discoveries – caution th
Source: Live Science
Apr 27, 2010
Ancient Mayans farmers, builders and servants left records of their daily lives with the objects they embedded in the floors and walls of their homes during rituals in which their houses were burned down and then rebuilt, giving archaeologists today a window into everyday Mayan life.
Many of the more famous records of the Mayan civilization come from the writing and images about royals carved into monuments.
Even though the records differed between the classes
,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 27, 2010
Noriega, Panama's former dictator, appeared at Paris's Palais de Justice a day after being extradited to France straight from an American prison, where he had served a 17-year sentence for helping Colombian drug barons smuggle cocaine to the US.
A French court in 1999 sentenced him to 10 years in prison after convicting him in absentia for laundering $7 million of drug money through French bank accounts and by buying luxury flats in Paris.
The 76-year-old now faces a
Source: WaPo
Apr 27, 2010
The Confederate prisoners were lined up 15 paces from the Union firing squad. The order was given, and the six rebels died instantly. Five of them were shot through the heart, the Union officer in charge reported, adding that the execution was conducted to "my entire satisfaction."
So what if they were innocent POWs. A band of rebels had massacred captured Union soldiers and their commanding officer a few weeks before. Now, Union commanders just needed to select a Confede
Source: Medieval News
Apr 27, 2010
A beautiful and definitive new guidebook on Norwich's outstanding collection of medieval churches has been published this month, celebrating what is the largest collection of urban medieval churches in northern Europe.
The Medieval Churches of the City of Norwich published by Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust (HEART) reveals the city's compelling ecclesiastical set, celebrating the churches as medieval works of art and valuable social documents, as well as ancient pla
Source: Medieval News
Apr 27, 2010
Vikings had the same concerns about choosing their children’s names as we do, says a researcher from the University of Leicester who delivered his paper at a recent Viking conference. The sixth Midlands Viking Symposium was held at the University of Nottingham on April 24th, with eight talks by Viking experts.
Dr Philip Shaw, a Lecturer in English Language and Old English, offered his expertise on how the Vikings named their children. He discussed the practice of giving names derive
