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)
Feb 23, 2009
John F Kennedy fathered a secret lovechild while recuperating from a war injury and later offered to marry the boy's mother, she has claimed.
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 office
Source: CNN
Feb 23, 2009
Bidding failed to meet expectations Saturday on a uniquely complete skeleton of a Jurassic-era dryosaurus -- a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur -- so it was no-sale for the centerpiece at an auction of rare skeletons, fossils and other prehistoric memorabilia.
Auctioneers at the I.M. Chait Gallery had hoped the 150-million-year-old, 9-foot-long dryosaurus would sell for as much as $500,000, but the bidding did not add up.
Two museums are said to still be interested i
Source: Newsday
Feb 23, 2009
It's been decades, but Jane Fonda still can't shake her "Hanoi Jane" image from the Vietnam War.
About a dozen Vietnam veterans and other protesters picketed the theater where the 71-year-old actress is starring in the Broadway play "33 Variations," telling passersby that she had once visited their communist enemy in Hanoi, The Associated Press reports.
"Jane Fonda is a traitor," said Dan Maloney of the Gathering of Eagles, which bills itse
Source: AP
Feb 23, 2009
Long overlooked in favor of hot spots like Orlando and Miami, Pensacola hopes a yearlong 450th birthday bash will lure visitors to this city on the western edge of Florida's Panhandle.
Festivals, parades, battle reenactments, art exhibits and other events will commemorate Spanish explorer Don Tristan de Luna's 1559 arrival at Pensacola Bay.
King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain set the tone with a royal visit Feb. 19, touring the city of 60,000 and visiting Pensacola Nava
Source: Beaumont Enterprise (Texas)
Feb 23, 2009
Like a toy surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks - er, slightly water-logged Cracker Jacks, that is - a Civil War era shipwreck turned up among Hurricane Ike debris.
The discovery, thought to be previously uncharted, was made by crews last week scanning the bays around Galveston to chart debris.
While the find came as a kind of fun surprise to the contractors doing the work, State Marine Archeologist Steve Hoyt was pleased - but not terribly surprised.
Hoyt ad
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 23, 2009
A hoard of jewels and coins, probably hidden by Jews fearing reprisals when the Black Death plague sweeping Europe was blamed on them, has gone on display in Britain for the first time.
The collection, including a delicate 14th century wedding ring, intricately decorated cups and dazzling jewels, was unearthed in Erfurt, Germany, in 1998, close to the town's 11th century synagogue.
Although historians cannot be sure, they suspect that the treasures were concealed in or
Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Feb 23, 2009
Royal seal impressions were discovered in excavations of the Israel Antiquities Authority at Umm Tuba, in the southern hills of Jerusalem.
A large building that dates to the time of the First and Second Temples, in which there was an amazing wealth of inscriptions, was discovered in a salvage excavation conducted by Zubair Adawi, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in the village of Umm Tuba in southern Jerusalem (between Zur Baher and the Har Homa quarter), prior to cons
Source: The Times of India
Feb 23, 2009
Believed to be among the oldest brick shrines in India, Lucknow University’s department of ancient Indian history and archaeology has unearthed a 2,000-year-old Shiva temple as part of its excavation project recently in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district.
The temple site is a mound in Sanchankot in Unnao. The excavations have been going on since 2004, when UGC cleared the project for funding. ‘‘A lot of things have come to fore since we began, but the temple complex has suddenly given
Source: KCRA (Sacramento)
Feb 23, 2009
Abbey Of New Clairvaux Monks Work To Rebuild Structure.
History is being rebuilt in Tehama County as monks piece together stones from an 800-year-old building that will eventually become California's oldest standing structure.
Monks from the Abbey of New Clairvaux have been slowly putting together stones from a pre-Gothic meeting house built in Spain during the Middle Ages.
In 1931, millionaire newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst bought the original
Source: CNN
Feb 23, 2009
Norway's navy announced on Monday that it will help search for the missing plane of 20th century explorer Roald Amundsen, more than 80 years after his death.
The search -- scheduled for later this year -- will focus on a 40 square-mile (104 square-kilometer) area of the Arctic Ocean where researchers believe Amundsen's plane crashed in 1928.
Amundsen, who is a national hero in Norway, led the first successful expedition to the South Pole from 1910 to 1912. He is also cr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 23, 2009
The 10-minute reels feature the wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and future American president.
The clips show Churchill and Eisenhower visiting the 101st Airborne which was stationed in North Devon. There is also film footage of Russians at Putsborough beach.
The Russians can be seen with the American Army and is believed to be looking at plans for the Omaha landing during the Soviet military miss
Source: Deutsche Welle
Feb 23, 2009
The European Court of Human Rights was established in 1959 to protect civil and political rights when the horrors of previous decades were still fresh in Europe's mind. The aim was to provide a basis of trust and solidarity to burgeoning European unification and provide a safeguard against any erosion of human beings' basic rights and dignity.
It proved so successful that since its inception, the court has seen its case load brought by individuals, organizations and nations grow to
Source: AP
Feb 23, 2009
BAGHDAD –- Iraq's restored National Museum reopened Monday with a red-carpet gala in the heart of Baghdad nearly six years after looters carried away priceless antiquities as American troops largely stood by in the chaos of the city's fall to U.S. forces.
The ransacking of the museum became a symbol for critics of Washington's post-invasion strategy and its inability to maintain order as Saddam Hussein's police and military unraveled.
But Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al
Source: LAT
Feb 23, 2009
Quick spending to repair America's infrastructure is the priority for most of the bill's $787 billion. Instead of grand public works, officials seek to fix roads, schools, sewer lines and the like.
Compared with the epic approach of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, President Obama's economic recovery strategy could be summed up as: Think small -- in a huge way.
FDR left a legacy of engineering marvels that still adorn the landscape: the San Francisco-Oakland
Source: Times Online
Feb 23, 2009
What may be a hitherto unknown portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in middle age shows that the Renaissance genius had piercing blue eyes, a long nose and long greying hair with a droopy moustache.
The damaged oil-on-panel portrait was discovered by Nicola Barbatelli, a medieval historian, while he was researching the archive and picture collection of an aristocratic family at Acerenza (population 3,000), an ancient village perched on a rock above the river Bradano near Potenza in the so
Source: Chicago Tribune
Feb 22, 2009
The desperate times of the Great Depression called for desperate measures -- or at least measures that had never been tried before as means to boost the country from its economic malaise.
President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 pushed Congress to establish several "alphabet agencies" designed to put people to work as part of his New Deal. Some worked, some were derided, some failed and some were eliminated.
The legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works P
Source: IHT
Feb 22, 2009
Vasily Reutov had never set foot in Russia until a few months ago, but the moment he did, he knew he had finally made it home.
His ancestors, members of an ascetic offshoot of Russian Orthodoxy known as Old Believers, fled this region in the 1920s after the Communist Party violently suppressed religion. They settled in cloistered villages in South America that they turned into Little Russias, as if by preserving the ways of the past, they would somehow, someday, be able to return.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 22, 2009
Former prisoners of the German POW camp immortalised in the film 'The Great Escape' will return this week to pay homage to the men who were murdered after the breakout.
Adolf Hitler ordered 50 recaptured Allied airmen to be shot as a deterrent to others seeking to escape after their spectacular bid for freedom from Stalag Luft III.
Tuesday will be the 65th anniversary of the spectacular freedom bid and the men involved will be honoured by several prisoners who were in
Source: Science Daily
Feb 22, 2009
A student at Miami University has discovered what experts say is a fingerprint belonging to Abraham Lincoln from nearly 150 years ago.
Lydia Smith, a first-year psychology major from Granville, Ohio, was transcribing a letter written by Lincoln on Oct. 5, 1863, for a class project when she noticed a smudge that she suspected could be the 16th president’s thumbprint. Lincoln historians have confirmed the print.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, a project of the Illinois His
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Feb 22, 2009
Britain's archaeological heritage is being plundered by metal detector users who are illegally raiding protected sites across the country, it has been claimed. The first comprehensive national survey of its kind revealed thieves armed with state-of-the-art equipment are raiding some of the nation's most sensitive heritage sites. Researchers found knowledgeable criminals, dubbed nighthawks, are using auction websites such as eBay to cash in on what was once an illicit hobby. Police said some thie
