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: NYT
Mar 23, 2009
In Chicago, a city that adores its architectural legacy, a
state appellate court found that the city's landmark
ordinance was "vague, ambitious and overly broad."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 23, 2009
In the latest claim to emerge about the former US president's energetic love life, Lisa Lanett, an Austrian-born American, said she had a two-year affair with Kennedy after they met in Phoenix, Arizona, during the Second World War.
Now 87, she told the Austrian newspaper Kurier that Kennedy, then a young and single US navy officer and long before he earned his reputation as a notorious womaniser, had offered to marry her when she became pregnant with their son, Tony, but she had tur
Source: AP
Mar 23, 2009
A Greek fisherman must have been expecting a monster of a catch when he brought up his nets in the Aegean Sea last week.
Instead, Greek authorities say his haul was a section of a 2,200-year-old bronze statue of a horseman.
Source: Noah Mendel, reporting for HNN. (Mr. Mendel is an HNN intern.)
Mar 23, 2009
After months of back-and-forth, it seems Confederate President Jefferson Davis might find a final resting place.
In the summer of 2008, the Southern Confederate Veterans, the self-proclaimed “guardians of Confederate history and heritage,” commissioned Lexington-based sculptor Gary Casteel to create a statue in honor of the bicentennial of Davis’s birth. Costing upwards of $100,000, the statue depicts Davis with his biological son, Joe, and adopted black son, Jim Limber.
Source: Truthout.org
Mar 23, 2009
The CIA has about 3,000 documents related to the 92 destroyed videotapes that showed "war on terror" detainees being subjected to harsh interrogations, the Justice Department has disclosed, suggesting an extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and officials of the Bush administration.
The Justice Department said the documents include "cables, memoranda, notes and e-mails" related to the destroyed CIA videotapes. Those tapes included 12 that sh
Source: The National
Mar 23, 2009
It sits atop a man-made hill overlooking the ancient city of Babylon. In its prime – with its swimming pool, Roman-inspired columns, chandeliers and bathrooms complete with jacuzzis – it was a testament to the gluttony of the Baathist regime.
Today, gutted and looted, Saddam Hussein’s three-storey palace that overlooks the Euphrates River only hints at its former glory. The windows are smashed, the chandeliers broken and the swimming pool empty. The furniture is gone and the walls a
Source: BBC
Mar 23, 2009
"Looking for Nazi war criminals is the ultimate law enforcement race against the clock."
Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the United States, has a list of thousands of suspects.
But working out whether any of them are alive and in the US is a laborious job.
A full check could take 100 years at current rates, he says - but in 10 years "the World War II biological clock will come to an end".
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 23, 2009
Eyes bleared from gunsmoke and salt spray, the face of the man who may have sunk the Mary Rose has been revealed, more than 400 years after he went to the bottom of the Solent in the wreck of Henry VIII's flagship.
The head has been modelled by the internationally renowned forensic artist Richard Neave from a skull recovered from the wreck. Only a handful of the more than 400 crew and soldiers survived when the ship sank so fast and so close to shore that helpless watchers on the cl
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 23, 2009
Mr Brown will meet Cristina Kirchner on Friday at a progressive forum of left-of-centre leaders in Vina del Mar, Chile, during his visit to Latin America.
Mrs Kirchner has made the issue of the islands a personal priority, announcing in her inaugural speech that Argentina's sovereignty was non-negotiable and repeating the claim on the 26th anniversary of the 1982 invasion last year.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 23, 2009
Historians at Cambridge unearthed a series of six financial record books which reveal intriguing insights into the naturalist's day-to-day college life.
They show that Darwin, who studied at Christ's College between 1828 and 1831, lived the life of a 19th century gentleman and paid people to carry out tasks such as stoking his fire and polishing his shoes.
He also paid extra to buy vegetables to supplement his college meals, the records show.
Darwin's colle
Source: NYT
Mar 22, 2009
ROOSEVELT, N.Y. — The weathered copper box from 1929 was always meant to be opened sometime in the future, but too many years and failing memories had relegated it to a forgotten past.
So that copper box — a time capsule, really — stayed unopened year after year in its resting place behind the cornerstone of Centennial Avenue Elementary School here on Long Island as teachers and students rushed by unaware. It might still be there if not for the demolition of part of the original bui
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 22, 2009
Declassified government files have revealed how Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials launched a top-level probe into a diamond shaped aircraft seen hovering above a Scottish village.
Officials were so alarmed by the object, which was captured on camera, that they broke with established procedures and referred the sighting to ministers.
They also overrode rules prohibiting investigations into UFO sightings not considered an immediate threat to national security, and spent
Source: PC World
Mar 22, 2009
The Internet Archive organization plans next week to announce the opening of a new data center to house two petabytes of information for its Wayback Machine, the digital time capsule that stores archived versions of Web pages dating back to 1996.For example, this is what
Source: AP
Mar 22, 2009
Egypt will soon file an official request with U.S. authorities to return a 3,000-year-old wooden coffin illegally smuggled out of the country more than a century ago, the country's top archaeologist said Sunday.
In a statement, Zahi Hawass said the nearly 5-foot-long coffin was taken from Egypt in 1884 after it was stolen from a tomb in Luxor, an ancient pharaonic capital in southern Egypt.
Hawass says the ornamented coffin belonged to Pharaoh Ames of the 21st Dynasty, which
Source: BBC
Mar 22, 2009
Khadijeh Saqafi, who was known as the "mother of the Islamic revolution", died on Saturday at the age of 93.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior officials took part in the funeral prayer, led by current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
She was buried at Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine in Tehran.
Source: nola.com
Mar 21, 2009
Armed with a site plan to guide his search, Plaquemines Parish historian Rod Lincoln recently led his latest expedition through Fort St. Philip in search of a bomb-proof hidden amid the historic fortification's 60 acres along the Mississippi River's east bank.
Likely built during the mid-1800s, the bunker-like structure where soldiers sought refuge during bombardments has been overtaken by brush and debris like much of the outpost.
"It's a shame," Lincoln said
Source: Newsweek
Mar 21, 2009
The night of September 11, 2001, had come and gone in Saudi Arabia,
and the dawn prayers had been said in Jidda. But at midmorning, when a
visitor to Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz al-Saud found him in
one of the vast rooms of his palace, the de facto ruler of the country
was still bent on the floor."He was alone," remembers the visitor,
insisting on anonymity."He prayed long, long, long—much longer than I
have ever seen." At last the man who is now the king of Saudi Arabia
(he woul
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Mar 21, 2009
At a news conference on March 18, the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) unveiled its annual report on the status of the nation’s historic battlegrounds. The report, entitled History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields, identifies the most threatened Civil War sites in the United States and what can be done to save them.
History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields is composed of two parts. The first section p
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Mar 21, 2009
Archaeologists announced they have begun underwater excavations of the prehistoric site of Limantepe in western Turkey. The underwater research, headed by Professor Hayat Erkanal of the Archaeology Department of the Ankara University, explores the prehistoric settlement located in the coastal town of Urla near İzmir in western Turkey.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Mar 21, 2009
A new dating method finally is allowing archaeologists to incorporate rock paintings into the tapestry of evidence used to study life in prehistoric times. In the study, Marvin W. Rowe points out that rock paintings, or pictographs, are among the most difficult archaeological artifacts to date. They lack the high levels of organic material needed to assess a pictograph's age using radiocarbon dating, the standard archaeological technique for more than a half-century. Rowe describes a new, highly
