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: WRAL (SC)
Feb 21, 2010
South Carolina archaeologists believe they might have unearthed the first octagonal house in the United States. The ruins were found last fall on the banks of the May River in the southern coastal town of Bluffton. A letter written in 1796 by a visitor mentions the octagonal house and helps date the structure.
Archaeologists Heather Cline and Mary Socci say the 900-square-foot house was owned by Scottish immigrant William McKimmy and was built about 1790.
Source: The Leaf Chronicle (TN)
Feb 21, 2010
They fought in the largest war in history at the same time they were fighting a "war" just as large — the fight against a racial divide between whites and blacks.
For some African-American veterans of World War II, the segregation and animosity between the two races was something of a mystery.
Lloyd Morrison, 92, grew up near Boston, and he didn't know much about segregation until he tried to enter the military.
Morrison scored a 98 percent on his
Source: Mail on Sunday (UK)
Feb 21, 2010
The oldest Canadian veteran of World War I has died at the age of 109.
The death of John Babcock leaves only two Great War veterans still alive: Britishborn Australian Claude Choules, who is 108, and American Frank Buckles, 109.
Mr Babcock was among 650,000 men and women who served in the Canadian forces during WWI.
The last remaining soldier to serve in the British Army was Harry Patch, who died in July at age 111.
Source: BBC
Feb 21, 2010
King Mohammed of Morocco has ordered structural examinations of all the country's ancient mosques after a minaret collapsed, killing 41 people.
The centuries-old minaret fell as hundreds of worshippers were attending Friday prayers at a mosque in the central city of Meknes.
Rescue workers recovered the last body from the rubble on Saturday.
There has been public criticism of the apparent lack of maintenance of the minaret.
Source: BBC
Feb 21, 2010
A California peak formerly known as Negrohead Mountain has been officially renamed in honour of the black pioneer who settled there in 1869.
The 619-metre peak near Malibu, became Ballard Mountain after John Ballard, a blacksmith and former slave.
Dozens of Ballard's relatives attended the renaming ceremony on Saturday.
The name originally contained an even more offensive racial slur which appeared on federal maps, but was changed to "negro" in
Source: AP
Feb 21, 2010
For more than a century, there was no playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Goshen College — a small Christian college with ties to the Mennonite Church.
That's about to change. For the first time in the school's history, Goshen College will play an instrumental version of the U.S. national anthem before many campus sporting events.
The decision to reverse the ban on the anthem is aimed at making students and visitors outside the faith feel more welcome, bu
Source: Archaeo News
Feb 21, 2010
Bricks dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years have been unearthed in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, adding between 1,000 to 2,000 years onto Chinese brick-making history, archaeologists claimed. "The five calcined bricks were unearthed from a site of the Yangshao Culture Period dating 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest known bricks in the country were more than 4,000 years old," Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher Yang Yachang said. Only parts of the bri
Source: Medieval News
Feb 20, 2010
English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) announced this week more than £15.7 million to support urgent repair work to 154 churches across England, including many dating back to the Middle Ages. The grants were awarded under the organisations’ joint Repair Grants for Places of Worship scheme.
Nationally, since 2002, £123 million of grants have been awarded for more than 1,300 Ghistoric places of worship through the partnership scheme, which is the largest single source of
Source: Salon
Feb 20, 2010
There was really only one way the weird conservative carnival called CPAC 2010 could end Saturday night: with Glenn Beck stalking around the stage for an hour, scribbling paranoid wordplay on his trademark chalkboard, praising Calvin Coolidge and giving dramatic readings of a poem by a bona fide Socialist to stir an overflowing, anti-government crowd into a frenzy....
Beck spends a lot of his time on his TV show talking about the 1920s; his CPAC speech was no different. It didn't ta
Source: NYT
Feb 20, 2010
...We’re lucky to have Mr. Simpson, a University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist and former Chicago alderman, who humorlessly chronicles corruption here just as Edward Gibbon, the 18th-century English historian, detailed the Roman Empire’s rise and fall. Mr. Simpson’s latest handiwork is a directory of skulduggery, with the tales of nearly 150 convicted county politicians and officials.
And, yet — as I listened to the presenters talk about documented misdeeds being just t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 20, 2010
A major new exhibition is to cast doubt on the inspiration for some of artist Henry Moore's most famous works by suggesting he copied several drawings from magazine photographs rather than coming from his own war time experiences.
They are the images that affirmed Henry Moore as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, inspired, he claimed, by a moving journey on the London Underground during the Blitz.
But a major new exhibition on Moore's work is to cast dou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 20, 2010
A prehistoric "lost world" ruled by miniature dinosaurs has been discovered by palaeontologists.
The creatures lived on an island – a kind of pigmy Jurassic Park – and were up to eight times smaller than some of their mainland cousins.
One of the island-dwelling dinosaurs, named Magyarosaurus, was little bigger than a horse, but was related to some of the largest creatures to ever walk the Earth – gigantic titanosaurs such as Argentinosaurus, which reached up
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 20, 2010
The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is living with his family in a luxury villa in Libya six months after he was released from jail on compassionate grounds because he had less than three months to live.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending the course of chemotherapy that he had been given after returning to his homeland last August.
Professor Karol Sikora, the Londo
Source: AP
Feb 20, 2010
Darfur's most powerful rebel group has initialed a truce with the Sudanese government, officials said Saturday, marking the rebel group's return to peace talks aimed at ending the Darfur conflict.
The truce between the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese government takes effect immediately, said Idriss Deby, Chad's president, in a statement.
The rebel group has been the most significant holdout in efforts to end the seven-year conflict in Darfur, in whi
Source: CNN
Feb 20, 2010
The murder in a Dubai hotel room of a Hamas leader has grabbed headlines around the world as rumors and speculation swirl about the team that allegedly assassinated him.
Fingers -- in the media and the intelligence community -- point toward Israel's spy agency Mossad as responsible. The agency is keeping quiet but has a history of operations in the Middle East, South America and Europe.
Dubai's police chief told the Dubai newspaper, The National, he was confident that a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 20, 2010
The Prince of Wales inspected treasures from the country's largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold, becoming the first royal to handle the artefacts for more than 1,300 years.
The Prince was given the chance to examine three items from the Staffordshire Hoard, including a crumpled cross and a sword handle, during a visit to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent.
Accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall, the Prince also chatted with the farmer on whose land th
Source: CNN
Feb 20, 2010
Alexander Haig, the former military officer, secretary of state and adviser to presidents, has died, a Johns Hopkins Medical Center spokesman said.
Haig, 85, was admitted to the Baltimore, Maryland, hospital on January 28 and died at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, hospital spokesman Gary Stephenson said.
Haig was a top official in the administrations of three presidents -- Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. was born December 2, 1924
Source: AFP
Feb 19, 2010
The buried antiquities of Ur, Biblical birthplace of Abraham and one of the cradles of civilisation, could one day outshine those of ancient Egypt, archaeologists and workers on the site believe.
With Iraq ravaged by war and strife since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Baghdad's struggling government has had greater priorities than funding large-scale digs at Ur, where only small teams have been working since 2005.
Inside he found some of the great
Source: Newsweek
Feb 19, 2010
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.
Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for "potbelly hill"—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a "Rome of the Ice Age," as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Acros
Source: NYT
Feb 19, 2010
Even in the midwinter mess of 2010, it’s not hard to imagine a Washington that works. It wouldn’t even seem to require that much change.
Politicians in both parties would display a little more regard for one another, and the institutions they serve. The institutions themselves would impose a little more discipline and efficiency. Voters would give leaders a little more trust.
In fact, that’s a pretty good description of how Washington functioned for two decades after Wo
