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
Mar 17, 2010
If you thought the marathon being run by NASA's Mars Expedition Rover Opportunity was impressive (the wheeled explorer has covered over 19 kilometers, or 12 miles, and still roving strong), spare a thought for the Russian Lunokhod 2 rover that explored the moon in 1973. It covered 37 kilometers (23 miles), holding the record for furthest distance traveled by a robot across an alien landscape.
And now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) -- with the help of a Canada-based resea
Source: GovernmentVideo.com
Mar 17, 2010
Flip-flopping politicians beware: C-SPAN has made available online its entire programming archive back to 1987, some 160,000 hours, including every program.
Now, everyone can research their favorite politicians and see if they changed their tune on major issues through the years in accordance with political winds.
The database is available now. A formal announcement is due Wednesday (March 17).
The archives continue to record all three C-SPAN networks nonst
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Mar 17, 2010
National History Day (NHD) is asking for your help to gain support from members of Congress for a $1 million National History Day appropriation that will help state programs grow and improve. NHD NEEDS YOUR HELP TODAY! We have two more days left and it is critical that you pick up the phone to contact your members of Congress and ask them to sign the NHD “Dear Colleague” letter.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Mar 17, 2010
Now, the 249 lost Diggers of Fromelles have not only been laid to rest with full military honours but 75 of the soldiers will have a name, a headstone - and a family to grieve their passing.
Yesterday, 93-year-old Marjorie Whitford smiled joyously when told that her DNA sample has confirmed the identity of her adored uncle, Private Harry Willis.
The Herald has been told the names of three other men that have been identified.
One is Private John Turner who w
Source: Style Weekly
Mar 16, 2010
Officials in Richmond’s economic development department want to streamline the city’s cacophony of old and new signs — many pointing to historic sites. But one man in the city’s parks and recreation department is quietly — or not so quietly — busting through the red tape.
Ralph R. White, manager of the James River Park System, doesn’t know how many directional, historical, interpretive, public safety and regulatory signs he’s put up around town in the 30 years he’s worked for the de
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 16, 2010
Beneath the grey veil used to cloak her awful secrets from the public gaze, "the widow" stands 14ft tall and the blade hangs menacingly over a hole designed for a neck. "One can have a certain indifference on the death penalty," read Victor Hugo's famous words nearby, "as long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes."
When France put an end to capital punishment in 1981, it also bid a not-so-fond farewell to the instrument of death that had
Source: LifeSiteNews
Mar 16, 2010
It is an inconvenient fact.
According to a pamphlet unearthed by the pro-life group Live Action, back in 1952, Planned Parenthood - today the largest abortion provider in the United States - told women that having an abortion was a danger to their lives, health, and fertility, and kills a baby.
Live Action’s investigative journalists have uncovered the pamphlet from Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) that emphatically espoused an anti-abortion position, wh
Source: USA Today
Mar 16, 2010
An archaeologist reports the ingredients of "Maya Blue" pigment beloved by Central America's ancients may have been widely mined, not traded as previously suggested.
In the Journal of Archeological Science report, Leslie Cecil of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, reports on "palygorskite" minerals, the chief ingredient in the bright and long-lasting pigment, found at the archaeological site of Ixlú in the Petén region of Guatemala. Maya B
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2010
Twenty years after two thieves walked into a Boston museum and pulled off the biggest art theft in history, investigators are making a renewed effort to recover a haul valued at up to $500 million (£330 million).
The fate of the 13 paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet has remained a mystery and a topic of feverish speculation in the art world since they were stolen in the early hours of March 18, 1990, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Exploiting the museum’s li
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2010
A man armed with a high-powered gas pistol tried to break into Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin's tomb on Red Square in Moscow, shooting a policeman in the process.
The man, named as Sergey Karpentsov, is quoted as saying he wanted to let loose a volley of bullets at Lenin's carefully embalmed corpse, one of the Russian capital's most popular and ghoulish tourist attractions.
Lenin's waxy presence at the heart of the Russian capital 86 years after his death continues to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2010
Twenty years after two thieves walked into a Boston museum and pulled off the biggest art theft in history, investigators are making a renewed effort to recover a haul valued at up to $500 million (£330 million).
The fate of the 13 paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet has remained a mystery and a topic of feverish speculation in the art world since they were stolen in the early hours of March 18, 1990, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Exploiting the museum’s li
Source: HamptonRoads.com
Mar 16, 2010
...The Star-Spangled Banner Geotrail combines an activity called geocaching (pronounced GEO-cashing) with the upcoming 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. Designed by three organizations, each with slightly differing motives, the geotrail encircles the Chesapeake Bay and, at one point, pops out to Tangier Island.
Basically, here's how it works: Someone hides a cache in a location significant in the War of 1812. The coordinates of said cache are posted online, along with a few clue
Source: AFP
Mar 16, 2010
Ruins in northern Israel previously thought to have been a synagogue have now been identified as a 7th century palace used by the Umayyad caliph who started construction of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, archaeologists said on Tuesday.
The site on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is that of the Al-Sinnabra palace, which was described by early Arab historians but whose precise location had long been unknown, according to Tel Aviv University, whose Institute of Archaeology led the rece
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2010
Hundreds of Latvian veterans who fought on the side of Nazi Germany in World War II have held a peaceful march in the capital, Riga.
The veterans laid flowers at Riga's Freedom Monument. Police said about 1,000 people took part.
The annual march is a flashpoint for tension between the veterans and ethnic Russians whose relatives fought against the Nazis.
Source: AP
Mar 16, 2010
Egypt's Culture Ministry says a team of archaeologists has unearthed two large red granite statues at the mortuary temple of one Egypt's most powerful pharaohs who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago.
A ministry statement Tuesday says the team discovered a 13-foot statue of Thoth, the ancient god of wisdom and the top part of a statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep III standing next to another god....
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2010
Three World War II veterans are among those to be given cash to return to their wartime locations after a new round of lottery grants were announced.
The men have received a share of grants of £7,925 from the Big Lottery Fund's 'Heroes Return 2' programme.
Alexander Jackson, from Tranent, Angus Galloway, from Edinburgh and James Peers, from Bearsden, will visit Italy, Canada and London respectively.
This summer marks the 65th anniversary of the end of the
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2010
A collection of previously unseen letters written by the famously reclusive Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger, who died in January, has gone on show at a New York museum.
Out of respect for the author's desire for privacy, the Morgan Museum & Library has kept the letters under lock and key since it acquired them in 1998.
But now, following Salinger's death, aged 91, the museum is making the manuscripts public, and shedding light on one of the 20th Century's mos
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2010
A US Congressional committee will vote later on a bill providing long-term healthcare for emergency workers who fell ill after working at Ground Zero.
Campaigners say 800 people died as a result of exposure to toxic materials at the site of the 9/11 attacks, and more than 10,000 are sick.
Thousands of rescue and recovery workers became severely ill after working in the debris.
Many have respiratory diseases and some have developed cancer.
Source: National Parks Traveler
Mar 16, 2010
There are some memorable living history programs to be found across the National Park System, such as the one you find at Scotty's Castle in Death Valley National Park. A new one has just popped up at Joshua Tree National Park, one set in the 1940s.
The program, offered at Keys Ranch, offers a first-person look into the life and times of the Keys Family – residents of a remote desert homestead at the end of the Great Depression.
The year was 1940. Europe and Asia were a
Source: BBC News
Mar 16, 2010
Swedish pop band Abba have been inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with British bands Genesis and The Hollies.
Abba's Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad accepted their trophies, but Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog did not attend the ceremony in New York.
Andersson said: "I speak for all of us, we are deeply, deeply honoured."
He added that the band, who had hits with Dancing Queen and Waterloo, would never perform togeth
