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)
Jun 9, 2009
Their lungs still suffer the after-effects of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, but many veterans of Iran's devastating eight-year war with Iraq have thrown their influential voices behind the reformist contenders in Friday's presidential election.
As the men who saved the Islamic Republic from extinction, the "Basijis", or "volunteers", are hugely respected in Iranian society. Murals celebrate their deeds on countless street corners, while the hundreds of thou
Source: Lee P. Ruddin
Jun 9, 2009
Historians from the Centre for First World War Studies at Birmingham University are planning to publish the longest known memoir later this year.
Written by lance corporal Geoffrey Husbands, the 250,000-word manuscript gives detailed information on political, social, psychological and other aspects of the war not normally examined in such depth in other shorter memoirs.
Captain Alexander Stewart’s 260-page diary, “Somme: The Experiences of a Very Unimportant Officer,” w
Source: AP
Jun 9, 2009
But how did an innocuous Civil War-era memo bearing Abraham Lincoln's signature end up in the state archives of Hawaii, which was still a kingdom at the time? State researchers are trying to find out.
The memo dated Sept. 22, 1862, orders the secretary of state at the time to affix the U.S. seal to a separate piece of paper, a proclamation dated the same day.
Hawaii records indicate they've had the memo — but not the proclamation — for at least 74 years.
Source: The Times (UK)
Jun 9, 2009
A prehistoric complex, including two 6,000-year-old tombs, has been discovered by archaeologists in Hampshire.
The Neolithic tombs, which until now had gone unnoticed under farmland despite being just 15 miles from Stonehenge, are some of the oldest monuments to have been found in Britain.
Archaeologists say they will hold valuable clues about how people lived at the time and what their environment was like.
The discovery is also close to Cranborne Chase
Source: Science Daily
Jun 9, 2009
More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes.
The researchers located what they believe to be caribou-hunting structures and camps used by the early hunters of the period.
A paper about the findings is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors are O'
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 9, 2009
Thousands of stolen Italian artefacts, including ancient Etruscan treasures, medieval papal letters and even a book preface handwritten by Mussolini, have been discovered piled up in the Illinois home of an antique dealer, according to the FBI.
The secret collection of John Sisto ran to some 3,500 items and was discovered by relatives after his death in 2007, squirrelled away in hundreds of boxes stacked five feet high at his home in Berwyn.
Nearly half the items were
Source: BBC
Jun 9, 2009
A hoard of gold coins found by a builder in the cellar of an Oxfordshire flat has sold at auction for £76,360.
The 400-year-old coins, minted during James I's reign, were valued by auctioneers at about £50,000 and were found in Chipping Norton 30 years ago.
They were bought by private buyers and trade dealers in a specialist coin auction in London.
The coins were known as Unites, signifying James I's intention to unify England and Scotland, and were worth
Source: BBC
Jun 9, 2009
A sketchbook of some 32 drawings by Pablo Picasso worth about 8m euros ($11m; £6.8m) has been stolen from a museum in Paris, police have said.
The theft from the Picasso Museum was discovered on Tuesday afternoon but the exact time and circumstances have yet to be determined.
Initial investigations showed the sketchbook was held in an unlocked display case on the first floor.
Police sources told the Agence France-Presse news agency that the theft would pr
Source: AP
Jun 9, 2009
A group of Baltic Sea divers say they have found the wreck of a Soviet submarine that sank with a crew of 50 during World War II.
One of the divers, Marten Zetterstrom, says the S-class submarine was located near the Aland Islands between Sweden and Finland.
Zetterstrom says all crew members died when the vessel exploded in 1940, probably after hitting a mine.
Source: The Moscow Times
Jun 9, 2009
The only way to fight a real battle against the falsification of history -- something that President Dmitry Medvedev has made a priority after creating a special commission to handle this issue -- is to keep government archives as open as possible for historians. Unfortunately, the government is doing the exact opposite, depriving historians access to the most sensitive and important historical documents. Among other things, this is a violation of the Constitution.
Medvedev's commi
Source: AP
Jun 8, 2009
Archaeologists have pulled a 400-year-old slate tablet from what they think was an original well at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, a historic preservation group announced Monday.
The slate is covered with faint inscriptions of local birds, flowers, a tree and caricatures of men, along with letters and numbers, according to Preservation Virginia, which jointly operates the dig site with the National Park Service. It was found May 11 at the center
Source: www.sun-sentinel.com (South Florida)
Jun 8, 2009
Treasure Coast amateur fossil collector James Kennedy appears to have made an unprecedented archaeological discovery that might help confirm a human presence here up to 13,000 years ago.
A 15-inch-long prehistoric bone fragment found near Vero Beach contains a crude engraving of a mammoth or mastodon on it, said Dr. Barbara Purdy, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Florida.
The only comparable images are found in European cave paintings, she said in
Source: BBC
Jun 8, 2009
It's 200 years since the British-born "father of the American revolution" died. His words also helped shape modern Britain and France and yet few people know much about him at all.
There are statues of him in Paris and New Jersey and a monument to him in New York - though we still haven't reached a situation where, as French leader Napoleon Bonaparte said: "A statue of gold should be erected to him in every city in the universe."
Yet no high-level c
Source: AP
Jun 8, 2009
Crews on Monday began digging up an unmarked grave believed to be holding victims of the Spanish Civil War, in the country's first such court-ordered exhumation.
The Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory said volunteers were digging up part of a cemetery in the northwestern town of Santa Marta de Tera in search of the bodies of four men believed to have been assassinated by a right-wing militia at the beginning of the 1936-39 war.
The excavation was the first
Source: BBC
Jun 8, 2009
The Royal Mint is issuing a limited edition £5 coin to mark 500 years since Henry VIII ascended to the throne.
A few of the "coins fit for a king" are cast in platinum, with a hefty price tag of £4,400. For ordinary subjects, there are cupro-nickel ones for £9.99.
Featuring the robust figure of Henry himself, they carry the words Rosa Sine Spina, meaning "rose without a thorn", which featured on coins in 1509.
All of the coins show the
Source: CNN
Jun 8, 2009
Former first lady Laura Bush said Monday she knows why former Vice President Dick Cheney feels the need to attack President Obama's policies, and publicly defend his own administration's legacy.
"I think that's [Cheney's] right as a citizen of the U.S., and I think he also feels obligated, and so I understand why he wants to speak out," Laura Bush said in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America broadcast Monday. "On the other hand, George feels like as a former pre
Source: CNN
Jun 8, 2009
"National treasures," Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles said Saturday evening.
It marked the first time in history the U.S. Army recognized 350 soldiers held as slaves inside Nazi Germany. The men were beaten, starved and forced to work in tunnels at Berga an der Elster where the Nazi government had a hidden V-2 rocket factory. Berga was a subcamp of the notorious concentration camp Buchenwald.
"These men were abused and put under some of the most horrific conditio
Source: Foxnews
Jun 7, 2009
A U.S. Army veteran who has masqueraded as a D-Day paratrooper for the elite 82nd Airborne Division for decades is due to receive France’s highest military award despite discrepancies in his service accounts.
Howard Manoian told of landing behind enemy lines on D-Day as a paratrooper, but National Archives records prove he served as a member of a less glamorous chemical warfare unit that came ashore on Utah Beach and ran a supply dump.
The French government still plans
Source: CNN
Jun 7, 2009
When then-President-elect Barack Obama first asked Hillary Clinton to be his top diplomat, she turned him down and recommended others for the job, the secretary of state said in an interview broadcast Sunday.
When her name was mentioned in the media as a possible member of Obama's cabinet, Clinton said, she found the idea "absurd."
"And then when he called and asked me to come see him, and we had our first conversation, I said, 'You know, I really don't t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 6, 2009
As America's first black president attends D-Day commemmorations in Normandy, the Second World War's forgotten African-American soldiers say they enjoyed more freedom in Britain in the 1940s than in the segregated United States.
Their faces were missing from the Hollywood films that heaped glory on US forces and and their stories were missing from the books, exhibitions and museums that commemorated the Normandy landings.
“Where we were in The Longest Day or Saving Pr
