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: Guardian (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
At the age of 113 Henry Allingham, the oldest surviving veteran of the first world war, has officially been proclaimed the oldest man alive by Guinness World Records, after the death today of Tomoji Tanabe in Japan.
His friend Denis Goodwin, a founder of the First World War Veterans Association, who has escorted Allingham to innumerable parades, memorial services and presentations, said: "It's staggering. He will take it in his stride, like he does everything else. He withdraws
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
It is no surprise that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, put the “evil British Government” at the top of his list of Western powers that he accuses of fomenting the biggest street demonstrations in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Britain has been a convenient scapegoat and whipping boy for Iranian leaders when things go wrong at home. According to an old Persian proverb, if you trip over a pebble, you can be sure it was put there by an Englishman.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
Adolf Hitler's obsessive hatred for Jews was sparked by his experiences after World War One, according to a new book.
Respected historian Ralf-George Reuth argues the dictator blamed them for both the Russian revolution and the collapse of the German economy.
The claim is a stark contrast to previous theories that Hitler's anti-Semitism was spawned on the back streets of Vienna when he was a down-and-out in the lead up to 1914.
Historians have even specula
Source: AP
Jun 18, 2009
Ancient human remains found by hikers outside the small town of Trinidad, Wash., in Eastern Washington will be turned over to local tribes for reburial.
State officials have determined the bones found June 4 are of Native American heritage and could be hundreds to thousands of years old.
Source: Las Cruces Sun-News
Jun 18, 2009
Artifacts have been found near White Sands Missile Range of the Jornada Mogollon, who lived mostly in the Tularosa Basin more than 650 years ago.
The archeological find was discovered last year during preliminary site preparation for construction of facilities for the 2nd Engineer Battalion, which was activated at White Sands in October. Archaeologists consider the artifacts "a significant discovery" because they suggest that the Jornada Mogollon temporarily occupied the s
Source: AP
Jun 18, 2009
President Obama launched his campaign from Abraham Lincoln's hometown, used his Bible to be sworn in and quotes Lincoln at the drop of a stovepipe hat.
Now it seems the two share something else: an encounter with a fly.
Daniel Weinberg, the owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, has a photograph of Lincoln with a house fly on him.
Weinberg doesn't know if the fly survived the encounter or if it suffered the same fate as the one that had the audacity to land on Ob
Source: NYT
Jun 18, 2009
In this, the 20th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s government is preparing for a host of celebrations and
commemorations leading to the November anniversary. The official story
of an eastern revival was reinforced by President Obama’s recent visit
to Dresden in all its reconstructed glory.
But outside big cities like Dresden, Leipzig or Berlin, in places like
this former industrial mining town, the story of decline and departure
has changed little i
Source: Bangkok Post
Jun 18, 2009
The government is renewing its campaign against the registration of Preah Vihear temple as a Cambodian World Heritage site.
The move comes as Cambodia plans to present a report to the World Heritage Committee, which last year approved its sole application to list the temple as a heritage site.
Thailand protested unsuccessfully that the site should be listed in a joint application by both countries.
Source: http://www.monstersandcritics.com
Jun 18, 2009
Serbian archaeologists have uncovered a seven-millienia old grave in a Neolithic village in the west of the country, the daily Blic reported Thursday.
The grave contains well-preserved skeletons of a child and an adult, buried in a curled position and placed on top of each other, archaeologist Radivoje Arsic said.
'It is unusual because the double grave is within the village - they emptied a mud hut and used it as a burial site,' he said.
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 18, 2009
One small old building in Kashgar, at least, may escape destruction. It is the former home of the British consul, a diplomat who lived for 28 years in this remote, pivotal outpost, playing a leading role in the Great Game.
Sir George Macartney’s home is now hidden behind a soulless concrete bock of a hotel, the Qini Bagh – or Chinese garden, in the local Uighur tongue.
The name is no coincidence. It stands on the spot where Lady Macartney, brought to Kashgar as a 21-y
Source: NYT
Jun 18, 2009
Together, Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers set out to give the second half of their lives new meaning. At first, disillusioned with the pace of change in Washington, the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time was a State Department contract employee, and the housewife turned political activist moved to South Dakota, where they embraced a counterculture lifestyle, even growing marijuana in the basement. They marched for legalized abortion, promoted solar energy, and repaired relation
Source: National Security Archive
Jun 18, 2009
A report issued by the Air Force Audit Agency that was released to the National Security Archive this week identifies significant mismanagement in the Air Force Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program. The findings demonstrate a pattern of noncompliance with statutory timeframes to respond to records requests from the public and misrepresentations about the state of the Air Force FOIA program. In particular, the Air Force audit agency found that the Air Force:
* Did not properly t
Source: WaPo
Jun 18, 2009
President Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, said Wednesday that the Sudanese government is no longer engaging in a "coordinated" campaign of mass murder in Darfur, marking a shift in the U.S. characterization of the violence there as an "ongoing genocide."
"What we see is the remnants of genocide," Gration told reporters at a briefing in Washington. "The level of violence that we're seeing right now is p
Source: History Today
Jun 18, 2009
‘Refugee Voices’ will be launched this evening during a reception at the Wiener Library as part of Refugee Week 2009. ‘Refugee Voices’ is an audio-visual Holocaust testimony archive featuring a collection of 150 filmed interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees, who escaped and survived Nazi-occupied Europe and rebuilt their lives in Britain. The interviews, in English, focus on the personal life stories of Holocaust survivors in Britain after the Second World War. The collection includes
Source: Editorsweblog.org
Jun 18, 2009
From today, web users will be able to access more than two million pages of 19th and 20th century history by browsing a selection of 49 British and regional newspaper titles, courtesy of the British Library.
Included in the collection are archives from the Graphic, an illustrated weekly publication which ran from 1869 to 1932. Writing on October 13 1888 after the Jack the Ripper murders, one journalist said: "To the general public it is some comfort to reflect that the late atr
Source: The Tennessean
Jun 18, 2009
Lewis' modern-day relatives have spent years seeking permission from a reluctant federal government to remove his body from its Tennessee grave, examine it and answer the question once and for all.
Now they're pushing even harder — hiring a publicist, launching a Web site and opening new lines of dialogue with the National Park Service, the agency that would permit the exhumation.
Some historians have criticized the effort, and how much evidence is in Lewis' grave is a
Source: U.S News and World Report
Jun 18, 2009
The president has said he wants to reach out to all of his predecessors.
Americans are fascinated by their ex-presidents. The public has been through so many experiences with them that even when they leave office, the "exes" remain celebrities and, more important, compelling reminders of the recent high and low points in our history.
There are four of them alive now—Carter, Bush, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush. There are two Democrats and two Republicans, each
Source: BBC
Jun 18, 2009
The design for a memorial statue dedicated to the nurse and Crimean War heroine Mary Seacole has been chosen.
Artist Martin Jennings created the winning sculpture, which will stand in the grounds of St Thomas' Hospital in central London.
The Jamaican-born nurse was voted the greatest Black Briton of all time in a poll in 2004. The Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal was set up to create a permanent reminder of the 19th Century nurse.
Source: BBC
Jun 18, 2009
Chefs searching for an authentic medieval way to roast a porpoise can now look up the recipe online.
The Forme of Cury, compiled by master cooks to Richard II, is part of a collection of medieval texts held by the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
Now an edition of the cookbook dating from the early 15th Century, compiled in about 1420, has been digitalised and uploaded to the library's website. John Hodgson, keeper of manuscripts, said
Source: CNN
Jun 18, 2009
In his most critical comments to date of the Obama administration's policies, former President George Bush Wednesday warned against the nationalization of healthcare, government overreach in the country's financial system, and the potential effects of closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Asked directly if he thought his successor was embracing "socialist" polices, Bush stopped short of weighing in one way or the other, instead saying: "We'll see.&
