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: The Virginian-Pilot
Apr 6, 2010
It was a race against the tide to dig the 12-ton remains of the shipwreck, more than 300 years old, free of the soft sand and get it up on a homemade wooden sled and down the beach to high ground, where it would not disappear or break apart any further.
This ship is one of a dozens along the coast visible in the surf or just offshore and among some 5,000 recorded wrecks along what’s known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. But this wreck of hand-hewn beams of various sizes fastened
Source: Live Science
Apr 6, 2010
A prehistoric town that had remained untouched beneath the ground near Syria for 6,000 years is now revealing clues about the first cities in the Middle East prior to the invention of the wheel.
The town, called Tell Zeidan, dates from between 6000 B.C. and 4000 B.C., and immediately preceded the world's first urban civilizations in the ancient Middle East. It is one of the largest sites of the Ubaid culture in northern Mesopotamia.
Now archaeologists from the Universit
Source: Spiegel Online
Apr 6, 2010
Wewelsburg Castle, once a pseudo-religious sanctum for Hitler's SS, has been shrouded in mystery since 1945. Its echoing crypt and mysterious occult symbols have spawned fantasies of pagan, torch-lit ceremonies held by the murderous brotherhood. A new exhibition at the site aims to dispel such myths -- and reflects Germany's new approach towards explaining its darkest places.
Wewelsburg Castle in northwestern Germany was the spiritual home of Hitler's murderous SS and ever since 194
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 6, 2010
A dazzling pink and grey crystal discovered in an Alpine crevasse and described as the "mineral Mona Lisa" has just been made a national cultural treasure – a historic first for a mineral.
The 11lb (5kg) crystal made of cognac fluorite on a smoked quartz base was found more than 3,000m (10,000ft) up Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain range.
Mr Peray found the rock on the Aiguille Verte (Green Needle), one of the most beautiful and perilous peaks in the Mo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 6, 2010
The Turin Shroud, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, was secretly hidden in a Benedictine abbey during the Second World War because the Vatican feared that Adolf Hitler wanted to steal it.
The shroud was transferred for its safety to the Benedictine sanctuary of Montevergine in Avellino, in the southern Campania region of Italy in 1939 and was only transferred to Turin in 1946.
The current director of the library at the abbey, Father Andrea Cardin, said the reason
Source: AP
Apr 6, 2010
The only prisoner known to have died in the CIA's network of secret prisons once rescued Hamid Karzai, wading through rocket and small-arms fire to take the wounded future president to safety in Pakistan, according to his brother and former associates.
The prisoner, Gul Rahman, died in the early hours of Nov. 20, 2002, after being shackled to a cold cement wall in a secret CIA prison in northern Kabul known as the Salt Pit, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the case co
Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
Apr 6, 2010
The World Monuments Fund announced Monday the donation of $1 million to Peru for preservation of the Huaca de la Luna site, the WMF’s biggest-ever donation to a project in Latin America.
The grant coincided with the formation of a committee for conservation of Peru’s heritage sites under the leadership of Marcela Perez de Cuellar, the wife of former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
“World Monuments Fund has been working in Peru for more than 10 years and
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 6, 2010
Recent visitors to Kilinochchi, the former capital of the Tamil Tigers, had noticed something unusual — there was a single, new building standing among the bombed-out ruins of the abandoned city in northern Sri Lanka.
It was a whitewashed Buddhist shrine, strewn with flowers. “We thought it strange because there was no one there except soldiers — the civilians had all fled,” one of the visitors said.
Officers told them that the shrine had been damaged by the Tigers and
Source: BBC Newsq
Apr 6, 2010
A predatory Velociraptor has been caught in the act of eating another larger plant-eating dinosaur.
Palaeontologists have uncovered fossil fragments of Velociraptor teeth alongside scarred bones of the large horned herbivore Protoceratops .
The teeth of the predator match marks on the herbivore's bones, suggesting Velociraptor scavenged its carcass.
The discovery is further evidence that predatory dinosaurs both hunted and scavenged their plant-eating relat
Source: CTV Montreal
Apr 6, 2010
A Montreal store has come under fire from Jewish groups for selling Nazi memorabilia, including a bar of soap that is rumoured to be made from the remains of Holocaust victims.
Inside a cramped collectibles shop on St. Laurent Blvd., Abraham Botines claims he bought the bar of soap off a Canadian soldier who found it in a concentration camp.
Described as yellowish and adorned with a swastika, his son, Ivan, who owns the store, said its ingredients are uncertain, but pot
Source: The Sun (UK)
Apr 6, 2010
ONE of Hitler's closest surviving relatives has been tracked down by The Sun - living on a cattle farm.
Gerhard Koppensteiner looks remarkably like the Führer.
But he is desperate to play down the connection as he quietly rears his cows in a remote village in northern Austria....
Neighbours in the mountain village near the Czech border know of the link. But one said: "You can't hold Hitler's crimes against them."
Source: CBC News
Apr 6, 2010
Activist Tamaki Matsuoka is challenging Japanese perceptions of the country's war record with a new documentary on the atrocities known as the Rape of Nanking.
Her film, Torn Memories of Nanjing, combines the memories of Japanese war veterans with accounts by Chinese survivors of the massacres of 1937-38, after Japan captured the former capital city of Nanking.
The film was shown at the Hong Kong International Film Festival on Sunday in its first screening outside Japan
Source: Medieval News
Apr 6, 2010
A recent article has shed new light into a Welsh rebellion against English king Edward I in 1294-5. It reveals the only surviving document issued by one of the Welsh leaders during the revolt.
"The Penmachno Letter Patent and the Welsh Uprising of 1294-95" by G. Rex Smith appeared in the most recent issue of Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies. The article details a letter patent signed by Madog ap Llywelyn, one of the main leaders of the revolt, in December 1294. Smith provi
Source: Fredericksburg.com
Apr 6, 2010
The lonely tombstone of U.S. Colored Cavalryman Nelson Ballard stands near a parking lot at Sentara CarePlex and is often missed by passers-by.
But according to the Contraband Historical Society, the tombstone is part of a cemetery site for slaves that marks an important chapter in the history of Hampton and the United States.
The society is stepping up its efforts to secure a cemetery on the grounds of Sentara CarePlex hospital as a public memorial to the slaves who su
Source: Steve Aftergood at Secrecy News
Apr 6, 2010
The origins and development of North Korea’s military forces, from the vantage point of 1952, are described in a declassified U.S. Army intelligence report (large pdf).“Although the North Korean Army was not officially activated until 8 February 1948, the backbone of the armed forces was forged in 1946 under the mask of Central Peace Preservation Units and Youth Training Organizations. Using battle-hardened Ko
Source: Discovery News
Apr 5, 2010
The oldest known example of a man-made structure was found within a prehistoric cave in central Greece, according to the Greek culture ministry.
The structure is a stone wall that blocked two-thirds of the entrance to the Theopetra cave near Kalambaka on the north edge of the Thessalian plain. It was constructed 23,000 years ago, probably as a barrier to cold winds.
Excavated since 1987, the Theopetra cave is well known to palaeontologists as it was used and inhabited c
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2010
Cuba has released photos of one-time exile cause celebre Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform and attending a Young Communist Union congress.
Gonzalez, now 16 with closely cropped black hair, is shown serious-faced with fellow youth delegates during last weekend's congress at a sprawling and drab convention center in western Havana. The images were posted Monday on Cuban government Web sites, then widely picked up by electronic, state-controlled media.
Source: Iceland Review Online
Apr 5, 2010
One of the things that makes Iceland unique in Europe is the fact that Icelanders know the year the first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson, came to Iceland from Norway. The Icelandic script, Íslendingabók (Book of Icelanders), written by Ari the wise, tells of the first men coming to Iceland on explorations.
Three expeditions came to Iceland, but the first men who came to Iceland to live there permanently were Ingólfur and Hjörleifur. The two came to Iceland in 874. Hjörleifur was killed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 5, 2010
Sir Winston Churchill called battlefields "the punctuation marks of history", but the Battle of Hastings is more like a full-blown chapter. On the grassy slopes of Senlac Hill, with the leafy Sussex countryside unfolding below, the future path of English government was decided on October 14, 1066.In a conflict lasting from early morning to late afternoon, the crop-headed army of Duke William of Normandy put paid to Harold and his "womanish" Saxons, with their flowing moustach
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2010
North Korea accused the United States on Monday of ignoring its efforts to return remains of American soldiers who were killed in the Korean War in the 1950s and threatened to stop collecting and returning the bodies.
The North's military said it informed the U.S. twice this year of "a number of" remains of U.S. troops found during land realignment and farming preparations in 10 different locations. But the U.S. Defense Department has not offered a concrete response and as
