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: Memphis Commercial Appeal
Mar 19, 2009
Forrest Park has quietly been added to the National Register of Historic Places, and efforts to rename the park or disinter the bodies buried there have, for now, been laid to rest.
The park at Union and Manassas where Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are buried received the honorary designation this month from the National Park Service.
The park has long been a point of racial controversy in Memphis, with local officials and other groups periodicall
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 19, 2009
A unique historic landscape that has survived intact for 1,000 years will be lost to developers unless the Government honours a promise to make it part of Britain's newest national park, conservationists warned.
The Western Weald in West Sussex is one of the last remaining areas in the country to have retained field patterns from the early Medieval period. It is also home to the rarest bat in Europe as well as swathes of ancient woodland and a range of endangered birds and butterfli
Source: AP
Mar 19, 2009
A Montana paleontologist whose past dinosaur digs brought widespread acclaim intends to plead guilty to stealing fossils from federal land.
Court documents show that Nathan Murphy has reached a plea deal on a federal charge that he stole bones from public land near Malta. He had faced up to 10 years in prison.
The 51-year-old Murphy is a self-taught dinosaur expert who spent much of the last two decades searching for bones in the rocky wastelands of central Montana. He
Source: Baltimore Sun
Mar 19, 2009
Preservationists site encroaching gas plant, incinerator.
A proposed trash incinerator and a planned natural gas plant threaten to encroach on two Civil War battlefield sites in Western Maryland, a preservation group warned yesterday.
The Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust said recent developments have put the Monocacy National Battlefield near Frederick and South Mountain near Middletown on its list of the nation's most endangered battlefields from that war.
Source: The Journal (West Virginia)
Mar 19, 2009
A former arsenal is being partially reconstructed at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park - one that is part of what many historians call the match that lit a fuse on existing tensions that exploded into the Civil War.
The building is along Shenandoah Street in the park's old town area and it was built in 1806, said Marsha Wassel, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service. The structure served as one of two major arsenals in the area, and it housed thousands of weapons.
Source: LAT
Mar 19, 2009
California corrections officials released a photograph taken Wednesday of aging convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, replete with receding hairline, fading forehead swastika carving and a thick, heavily graying beard.
The photograph of the 74-year-old cult leader was taken at Corcoran State Prison, where he is serving a life sentence, and is part of periodic updates of inmate images by prison officials, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Correctio
Source: Huffington Post (Blog)
Mar 19, 2009
President Barack Obama, the best-selling author who received royalties of $2.5 million last year, has signed a deal for a youth-oriented version of his published memoir and a nonfiction book after he leaves office.
Obama reached a deal in early January, shortly before his inauguration, for an abridged version of "Dreams From My Father" that would suitable for middle school or young adult readers. Crown Publishing Group is giving him a $500,000 advance plus 15 percent of th
Source: CNN
Mar 19, 2009
Six years ago Thursday, then-President George W. Bush appeared on television screens across America and somberly addressed the nation.
"My fellow citizens," he began his four-minute speech, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger."
Six years later, the conflict in Iraq drags on -- with war-fatigued Americans shoving the mi
Source: BBC
Mar 19, 2009
The rug, known as the Pearl Carpet of Baroda, was created using an estimated two million natural seed pearls.
It is decorated with hundreds of precious stones, including diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds.
Bidding is expected to start at about $5m but experts say its eventual selling price could be far higher.
Tradition has it that the Pearl Carpet of Baroda was commissioned by India's wealthy Maharaja of Baroda as a gift to sit at the tomb of the
Source: Forbes Traveler
Mar 18, 2009
Attendance at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum rocketed to 7 million in 2008 — an increase of two million since our last report. The home of the Wright brothers’ 1903 Flyer, the Apollo 11 command module, and a fleet of other airborne wonders touched down in a tie for first place on the Forbes Traveler’s most-visited museum list.
In fact, the Smithsonian’s overall headcount was up two million compared with the 2006 numbers, for a grand total of 25.2 million visits. The vast and
Source: ABC News
Mar 18, 2009
Well, here's another way President Obama has put his historic stamp on the presidency. With no fanfare or media attention, President Obama last month added a new decoration to the Oval Office: a 12 5/8" bronze bust of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
The work, titled "Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)," is by celebrated African-American sculptor Charles Alston -- the first African-American instructor at the Art Students League -- who died in 1977....
Source: AP
Mar 18, 2009
Forget the baby boom. More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any year in the nation's history — and a wedding band made increasingly little difference in the matter.
The 4,317,119 births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of the baby boom.
Behind the number is both good and bad news. While it shows the U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend, the teen birth rate was up for a
Source: KBIA (Missouri)
Mar 18, 2009
Numerous Native American artifacts dating back more than 800 years have been discovered outside a Kirksville museum. KBIA's Bobby Meeder has more.
Construction workers in Kirksville were working outside of a historical museum on Wednesday when they found some artifacts of their own.
Workers were digging for a water main outside of the Washington Museum of Natural History when museum director Charles Tharp decided to take a closer
look.
The numerous f
Source: Yemen News Agency
Mar 18, 2009
A Yemeni archaeologist team has discovered a mosaic statue of a women sitting on a throne with here chest engraved with Musnad letters.
The archaeologists also found other relics including a stone board with faith signs engraved on it.
Two pulls separated by a tree were carved on the stone board, a symbol that was know as "Life's Tree" in ancient Yemeni civilization, director of the authority Ali al-Sanabani said.
The discoveries were revealed
Source: AP
Mar 18, 2009
The U.S. government knew that top Guatemalan officials it supported with arms and cash were behind the disappearance of thousands of people during a 36-year civil war, declassified documents obtained by a U.S. research institute show.
The National Security Archive, a Washington D.C.-based institute that requests and publishes declassified government documents, obtained diplomatic and intelligence reports from the U.S. State Department under the Freedom of Information Act and posted
Source: Spiegel Online
Mar 18, 2009
The most catastrophic war of the 20th century may have claimed another victim, after the detonation of what appears to have been a World War II shell in a German town on Monday night.
One man died and another was seriously injured in the incident which took place in the small town of Niemegk, near Berlin. On Wednesday, Christoph Lange, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Potsdam, told reporters that the explosion had probably been caused by a World War II shell. However,
Source: Tehran Times
Mar 18, 2009
On this day, the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent pledged to create an independent homeland, where they could live in accordance with their religious and cultural values.
From 22 to 24 March, 1940, the All India Muslim League held its annual session at Minto Park, Lahore. The session proved to be historical.
On the first day of the session, father of the Pakistani nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah narrated the events of the last few months. And then in an off the cuff spe
Source: Sky News
Mar 18, 2009
The 20-year old photo depicts two world leaders - US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - in Moscow.
But, according to the man who took the photo, it also captures Mr Putin disguised as a tourist.
Pete Souza, now President Obama's official photographer, captured the moment when he worked for President Reagan during the political thaw that soon ended the Cold War.
Mr Reagan took a stroll around Red Square accompanied by the Russi
Source: BBC
Mar 18, 2009
A discovery in China has prompted researchers to question the scaly image of dinosaurs.
Previously, experts thought the first feathered dinosaurs appeared about 150 million years ago, but the find suggests feathers evolved much earlier.
This has raised the question of whether many more of the creatures may have been covered with similar bristles, or "dino-fuzz".
Hai-Lu You, a researcher from the Insitute of Geology in Beijing, was part of the t
Source: CNN
Mar 18, 2009
Their public positions seemed largely in harmony for eight years, but George Bush and Dick Cheney are striking markedly different tones in their initial months away from the White House.
While the former vice president has been highly critical of the new administration — most recently in an interview with CNN's John King — the president has refrained from disparaging his successor, and is mostly ducking the national spotlight altogether.
Tuesday night, in his first appe
