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: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 1, 2010
Volcanic activity may have led to nearly a third of marine life being wiped out around 100 million years ago, research suggests.
It is thought that sulphur produced by volcanoes erupting led to oxygen disappearing from large areas of the oceans.
This caused up to 27 per cent of ocean life being destroyed, according to a report published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
It is feared that a similar effect is being witnessed today as rising sea temperatures a
Source: The Northern Echo (UK)
Feb 1, 2010
NEW light is being shed on Adolf Hitler’s taste in interior design by a chance discovery in the archives of one of the region’s museums.
A fragment of the carpet from Hitler’s bunker has been found in the archives of the Green Howards Regimental Museum, in Richmond, North Yorkshire. As part of the regular cycle of refurbishment at the museum, the rooms where the archives are stored have been emptied.
And one of the items to turn up as staff moved cabinets and boxes was
Source: Daily Democrat (Woodland, CA)
Feb 1, 2010
Bill Petty's father fought for voting rights in North Carolina the 30s, and Petty fought to buy a house in Woodland after fighting in World War II.
For Petty, black history is an integral part of his life, and he's lived to tell about some of it.
"It's not Black History Month; it's American history that was left out of the history books," Petty likes to say....
Petty helped write Yolo County's Affirmative Action Plan when the Conciolo brought a di
Source: BBC
Feb 1, 2010
"He was just in a green uniform with 25 others - he was there for half a minute, and then gone."
This is all Maurice Sangan remembers of the German prisoner who traded him a hand-carved wooden pipe for tobacco.
He got in touch with BBC Guernsey when he heard the A History of the World project was looking for your objects....
Maurice still has the pipe to this day - having only smoked it once.
"Well I didn't want to damage it - di
Source: AP
Jan 31, 2010
...Saturday's celebration was the first in which the dwindling remnants of Iran's once plentiful Zoroastrian religious minority were joined by thousands of Muslims, reflecting a growing interest in the strict Islamic society for the country's ancient traditions.
The festival, known as Sadeh, celebrates the discovery of fire and its ability to banish the cold and dark, and it is held in the frigid depths of winter.
Sadeh was the national festival of ancient Persia when Z
Source: CNN
Jan 31, 2010
No decision has been made on whether to change the current plan to hold the September 11 terrorist attack trial in a civilian court in lower Manhattan, White House officials said Sunday.
Last week, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other politicians expressed concern over the costs and disruption of holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four accomplices at a New York City courthouse.
David Axelrod, the senior adviser to President Obama, and White House Pres
Source: AFP
Jan 31, 2010
Japanese and Chinese scholars published the results of a three-year joint study Sunday which showed they could not resolve differences on controversial modern events including the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
In a government-backed project aimed at soothing strained ties, 10 historians from each country have reviewed the history of China-Japan relations over 2,000 years.
The 549-page report showed both sides agreed that the 1937-1945 Sino-Japanese War was an "act of aggression
Source: Time
Jan 31, 2010
The Jerusalem syndrome is a psychological disorder in which a visit to the holy city triggers delusional and obsessive religious fantasies. In its extreme variety, people wander the lanes of the Old City believing they are biblical characters; John the Baptist, say, or a brawny Samson, sprung back to life.
Archaeologists in the Holy Land like to joke that their profession is vulnerable to a milder form of the syndrome. When scientists find a cracked, oversize skull in the Valley of
Source: The Canadian Press
Jan 31, 2010
Egypt will soon reveal the results of DNA tests made on the world's most famous ancient king, the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, to answer lingering mysteries over his lineage, the antiquities department said Sunday.
Speaking at a conference, archaeology chief Zahi Hawass said he would announce the results of the DNA tests and the CAT scans on Feb. 17. The results will be compared to those made of King Amenhotep III, who may have been Tutankamun's grandfather.
The effort is
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 31, 2010
Diana, Princess of Wales, told her divorce lawyer that she should never have married into a “German family”, he has claimed in a new book.
Anthony Julius, who represented the Princess in legal proceedings against the Prince of Wales, said she was trying to empathise with him as Jew.
Mr Julius’s book, Trials of the Diaspora, examines the history of anti-Semitism in England
Source: Global Arab Network
Jan 30, 2010
The archaeological discoveries of the excavation expeditions working at 17 archaeological sites in Aleppo city (north Syria) contribute to highlighting Aleppo's role in the human civilization during various eras.
Chairman of the Ruins Excavation Section in Aleppo Ruins and Museums Department Youssef Kanjo pointed out that the Syrian-Japanese joint expedition working in Didarieh Cave, northern Aleppo, unearthed lots of stony tools dating back to the Yabroudi civilization.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 30, 2010
No one may ever know how valiantly he fought. Nor how fearfully he faced his death on the battlefield.
But on a snow-capped hillside in northern France, a soldier who died in the carnage that was the Western Front during the First World War was finally laid to rest with full military honours.
His body, as yet unidentified, was the first of the 250 remains of soldiers that were found in mass graves at the site of the Battle of Fromelles, one of the most fiercely fought
Source: NYT
Jan 30, 2010
Before there was a Super Bowl, there was Super Bowl hype.
The A.F.L.-N.F.L. championship game was a hard sell in 1967, when the leagues were separate and unequal. N.F.L. Commissioner Pete Rozelle needed a prestigious championship game to legitimize a newly minted merger with the less-established American Football League. So Rozelle, a former public-relations specialist, used his marketing expertise to surround the game with hype, or hoopla or ballyhoo, as it was called at the time.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 30, 2010
A portrait of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, part of the Royal Collection, has been moved in preparation for an exhibition showcasing the Royal couple's love for art.
The exhibition, including more than 400 items from the Royal Collection, aims to challenge the image of Victoria as a melancholy widow, revealing her as a passionate young woman.
The exhibition will celebrate ''one of history's great love stories'' and reflect the royal couple's mutual delight in colle
Source: CNN
Jan 30, 2010
A new book about former Sen. John Edwards paints him as a cold, calculating and reckless politician willing to deny fathering a daughter, risking his marriage and putting the Democratic Party in potential political jeopardy -- all in the name of trying to win the presidency.
In "The Politician," former Edwards' aide Andrew Young details his efforts to conceal an ongoing extra-marital affair and the birth of a child out-of-wedlock.
On Friday, John Edwards' law
Source: CNN
Jan 30, 2010
An unknown World War I soldier was buried in Fromelles, France, on Saturday, the first of some 250 bodies recovered from a string of mass graves dating back to a bloody -- and largely pointless -- battle that claimed thousands of lives in a single night.
The soldier buried Saturday has not been identified, but DNA samples have been recovered from many of the bodies, often from the teeth, said Peter Jones, the DNA consultant on the project.
Some 800 people from Britain
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 30, 2010
California laid a historical claim to over 100 objects left behind on the moon Friday when the State Historical Resources Commission voted unanimously to name the objects a state historical resource.
The action is mostly symbolic, but is intended to show that objects on the moon might need protection from commercial exploitation. It also draws attention to California's role in the development of space exploration.
The first landing on the moon by humans,
Source: UCL
Jan 30, 2010
[University College London] will mark Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month with a series of events, talks, film screenings and lectures from 8–12 February.
The majority of events will be open to the public and media.
Peter Tatchell, who has been campaigning for human rights, democracy and global justice since 1967, will be speaking on ‘The global struggle for queer rights – fighting political and religious fundamentalism worldwide.’
John Johnstone of th
Source: AP
Jan 30, 2010
...Violating a social custom as rigid as law, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond sat near an older white woman on the silver-backed stools at the F.W. Woolworth. The black students had no need to talk; theirs was no spontaneous act. Their actions on Feb. 1, 1960, were meticulously planned, down to buying a few school supplies and toiletries and keeping their receipts as proof that the lunch counter was the only part of the store where racial segregation still rule
Source: Science News
Jan 30, 2010
Excavations at the Sanctuary of Zeus atop Greece’s Mount Lykaion have revealed that ritual activities occurred there for roughly 1,500 years, from the height of classic Greek civilization around 3,400 years ago until just before Roman conquest in 146.
“We may have the first documented mountaintop shrine from the ancient Greek world,” says project director David Romano of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
