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)
Jan 20, 2010
Dinosaur tracks in Oxfordshire have become the first feature in Britain to be given special protection for its geological features alone.
The trackways, formed 165 million years ago by a herd of Jurassic dinosaurs moving along part of an ancient shoreline, is the first SSSI to be designated purely because of its geological interest.
The site, which includes footprints from large, vegetarian dinosaurs related to Brontosaurus and also from carnivorous dinosaurs similar to
Source: AP
Jan 20, 2010
Archaeologists have found evidence that pre-Hispanic groups in Mexico's Baja California peninsula dug up their decomposing dead, dismembered the bodies and then reburied them.
A report by the National Institute of Anthropology and History says Indians at the Conchalito site apparently did that to release the dead from what they considered a state of suffering.
The report says many of the 157 graves studied since 1991 show evidence of the practice. The graves date from a
Source: NYT
Jan 20, 2010
The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.
Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge.
Source: Discovery News
Jan 20, 2010
The so-called "relics of Joan of Arc," overseen by the Archbishop of Tours in Chinon, France, do not contain the charred remains of the Catholic saint.
Rather, the artifacts consist of a mummified cat leg bone and human rib, both dating to the 6th-3rd century B.C., according to a new study.
The "relics," which have fooled onlookers for decades, did resemble burnt bones, in keeping with historical accounts of the death of Joan of Arc (ca. 1412-1431),
Source: BBC News
Jan 20, 2010
Remains of one of the earliest members of the English royal family may have been unearthed in a German cathedral, a Bristol University research team says.
They believe a near-complete female skeleton, aged 30 to 40, found wrapped in silk in a lead coffin in Magdeburg Cathedral is that of Queen Eadgyth.
The granddaughter of Alfred the Great, she married Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, in 929. She died 17 years later, at 36.
The team aims to prove her identity by
Source: Medieval News
Jan 20, 2010
A nail-pierced skull believed to belong to the legendary medieval pirate Klaus Störtebeker has been stolen from a museum in the northern German port city of Hamburg, authorities said Tuesday.
The skull was stolen from the Museum for Hamburg History on January 9, but the museum didn't immediately announce the theft so as not to hamper the investigation. It wasn't clear how the exhibit was stolen, or why.
"We are all very upset about the theft," museum director
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Jan 20, 2010
The Hernando Historical Museum Association is supposed to teach people the truth about our past.
So how can it justify its signature event and primary fundraiser, the annual Brooksville Raid Re-enactment?...
Without context, the museum association's event, with its flags, gunfire and uniforms, is romanticism pure and simple — glossing over history, stirring people up about it, not teaching it. And this starts with the portrayal of the raid itself.
The re-en
Source: History Today (UK)
Jan 20, 2010
The University of Bristol announced today, January 20th, the recent discovery of the remains of the Saxon Princess Eadgyth, possibly the oldest member of the English royal family whose remains have survived. They were excavated from beneath an elaborate 16th-century monument bearing her name in Magdeburg Cathedral as part of a wider research project into the cathedral.
Eadgyth of Wessex was born in 910. She was the daughter of Edward the Elder, King of Wessex from 900 to 924, and hi
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 20, 2010
The wager between Eisenhower and Montgomery is a fitting memento of their turbulent relationship: they disagreed about when the war would come to an end, just as they argued about almost everything else.
It would be hard to imagine two more contrasting characters. The American general: likeable, diplomatic, balanced and gregarious. The British general: egotistical, prickly, brilliant and caustic.
Yet despite their very different personalities, and frequent disagreemen
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 20, 2010
Courtroom 101 took on the air of a macabre seance yesterday when the lights were dimmed and one of the last survivors of Sobibor concentration camp guided a stunned, often weeping audience back in time to the Holocaust.
His hand shaking, Thomas Blatt, 82, traced a pen along a map of the camp projected on to the wall of the court. In a corner, almost forgotten, was the figure of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, 89, accused of being a Sobibor guard and complicit in 27,900 murders.
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 20, 2010
Among other things Lucian Freud is a reformed brawler, a quintessential Londoner, a recluse, a workaholic, a survivor and the greatest portrait painter of his generation.
All of which makes this newly rediscovered Self-Portrait with a Black Eye something of an emblematic work: a breathtaking painting, made straight after a fight with a London taxi driver and then kept secret from the world for 30 years.
With an estimated value of £3million to £4million it is the most
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 20, 2010
To young Australian women, he is a bit of a heart-throb. To the country’s republicans, he is a symbol of an ancient system that should be swept away. But as Prince William arrived in Sydney yesterday, it emerged that to the Aboriginal people he is nothing short of a royal lost property office.
Within hours of touching down, he was asked by Aboriginal elders to take up the cause of two separate symbols of their people’s struggle for recognition and equal rights that have gone missin
Source: Tehran Times
Jan 20, 2010
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast criticized some countries’ efforts to deny Iranian history.
“Some actions are carried out to deny history and the United Nations’ ratifications about the Persian Gulf,” he told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday.
He also criticized the attempts to steal the credit for Iranian historical and literary figures’ achievements by deliberately misidentifying these figures’ nationality....
Source: Discovery News
Jan 19, 2010
A Neanderthal infant was discovered alongside two adults, potentially representing a prehistoric family.
Neanderthal youngsters that made it to the "terrible two's" were large, sturdy and toothy, suggests a newly discovered Neanderthal infant. The child almost survived to such an age, but instead died when it was just one and a half years old.
The remains of this infant -- a lower jaw and teeth unearthed in a Belgian cave -- are the youngest Neanderthal ever f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 19, 2010
Archaeologists have begun the search for an ancient civilization in southern Spain that some believe could help pinpoint the legendary lost city of Atlantis.
A team of researchers from Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Study (CSIC) are examining a marshy area of Andalusian parkland to find evidence of a 3,000-year-old settlement.
They believe that Tartessos, a wealthy civilization in southern Iberia that predates the Phoenicians, may have had its capital in the hea
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 19, 2010
The first farmers to arrive in Britain outbred the native hunter-gatherer men and have left their mark in modern males' Y chromosome.
Ancient farmers left their genetic mark on modern males by breeding more successfully than indigenous hunter-gatherer men as they made their way west, a study has found.
As a result, more than 60% of British men, and nearly all of those in Ireland, can trace their Y chromosome back to the agricultural revolution, or more precisely the sex
Source: National Geographic News
Jan 19, 2010
The dreaded wood-eating shipworm is invading northern Europe's Baltic Sea. The animal threatens to munch through thousands of Viking vessels and other historic shipwrecks, scientists warn.
Shipworms, which can obliterate a wreck in ten years, have already attacked about a hundred sunken vessels dating back to the 13th century in Baltic waters off Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, reported study co-author Christin Appelqvist.
Why shipworms are suddenly able to spread there
Source: St. Augustine Record
Jan 19, 2010
Three years after St. Augustine was founded, Alvara de Mendana, nephew of the governor of Peru, set out with two ships and 150 soldiers and sailed west to find gold and a new trade route to China.
Mendana's 1568 voyage found nothing, so he returned to Peru.
But a relentless lust for gold pushed the Spanish to dispatch more colonizing fleets. And one founded a colony somewhere in the Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia.
No one knows its exact location or
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 19, 2010
Israel's cabinet has convened for the first time in Berlin, in a joint meeting with the German cabinet to symbolise the nations' strong bond 60 years after the Holocaust.
The focus, though, was not on threats gone by but on one that may loom in the future — the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran.
After the joint session, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Iran will face new sanctions if it doesn't change course o
Source: WaPo
Jan 19, 2010
State Sen. Scott Brown won a remarkable upset victory over state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) tonight in a Massachusetts Senate special election, a victory likely to spawn broad-ranging political and policy consequences heading into the midterm elections.
With 71 percent of precincts reporting, Brown held a 53 percent to 46 percent lead over Coakley. Coakley called Brown to concede the race moments ago, according to a Democratic aide.
Brown's victory is the first
