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: AP
Jan 31, 2009
To mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth on Feb. 12, the long-lost positive transparency of this photograph (above) goes on display beginning tomorrow at the George Eastman House museum of photography in Rochester.
It was sent there for repair in December 2006 by a Midwestern collector of Lincoln materials who didn't realize
Source: BBC
Jan 31, 2009
Iran has begun 10 days of celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the US-backed former ruler, the Shah.
Speaking in the capital, Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the revolution was "lively and alive".
Despite the almost ritualistic chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!", on Saturday there was no longer the fervour of those early days of the revolution, our correspondent sa
Source: The Norway Post
Jan 31, 2009
The Norwegian Government has decided that the wreck of the WW2 German submarine U-864 which contains 65 tons of mercury, is to be raised, and that the contaminated seabed be covered with clean sand.
The wreck, which is located off the Norwegian west coast, near Fedje, north of Bergen, has long been considered an environmental hazard by the local population and environmental groups.
However, experts have long disagreed on whether or not the wreck should be raised or if
Source: The Jakarta Post
Jan 31, 2009
A 2,000-year-old sarcophagus lies in pieces where it fell, protected from the elements and scavengers by yellow police tape and a blue tarpaulin.
The sarcophagus, discovered earlier this month in a brick-making site in Kremes, Gianyar, was finally transferred to Bali's antiquities museum last Friday.
The skeleton preserved in this mudstone coffin for at least two millennia is now little more than a collection of bone shards, jumbled up with offerings of flowers and rice
Source: CNN
Jan 30, 2009
On Thursday, Joe Moser, 87, gained a new distinction. Moser was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, a commendation given to aviators for "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight."
The medal was a long time coming: 64 years after he earned it in a bombing mission.
Moser flew 44 missions in World War II, but he said he has no memories of the mission in which he earned the medal. He received it for a bombing run carried ou
Source: The Record(Troy)
Jan 30, 2009
Deep beneath the ice on Lake George, a newly designated national historic resource awaits exploration by scuba diving enthusiasts.
The U.S. Department of the Interior has listed the lake’s first-ever gasoline-powered motorboat on the National Register of Historic Places, making it part of an underwater state park called “Submerged Heritage Preserves” that includes boats from the French and Indian War.
The 45-foot long Forward, built in 1906, was owned by W.K. Bixby of B
Source: Detroit Free Press
Jan 30, 2009
The French government says it still owns the Griffin, a 17th-Century ship built by legendary explorer La Salle that may have been discovered in northern Lake Michigan.
France filed a claim to the vessel Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, escalating a legal battle over who owns and has authority to retrieve artifacts from the long-lost vessel.
Michigan also is seeking title, although state officials have raised doubts about whether the Griffin’s gravesite ac
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 30, 2009
Government move to boost tourism backfires as looters descend on antiquities.
For centuries they have lain forgotten and untouched in the murky depths of the Mediterranean. But the sunken glories of Greece are now threatened by modern treasure hunters, who are targeting their riches since the lifting of a ban on coastal scuba-diving.
At risk, say archaeologists, is an unseen part of the country's cultural patrimony, comprising thousands of shipwrecks dating from Classi
Source: Newsvine
Jan 30, 2009
Malaysian archeologists have unearthed prehistoric stone axes that they said Friday were the world's oldest at about 1.8 million years old.
Seven axes were found with other tools at an excavation site in Malaysia's northern Perak state in June, and tests by a Tokyo laboratory indicate they were about 1.83 million years old, said Mokhtar Saidin, director of the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Science Malaysia.
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 30, 2009
Gordon Brown's dream of creating a permanent museum of Britishness appears to be over after being savaged by sceptical curators, The Independent has learnt.
The Prime Minister championed plans for the £150m Museum of British History to be built with a mix of public and private funding to act as a centre of national identity.
But now the idea looks likely to be quietly shelved after a highly critical report into the proposal commissioned by the Department for Culture, M
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 30, 2009
The length of time confidential government records remain secret should be halved to 15 years as part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the rules that control the release of sensitive official information to the public, an independent inquiry ruled yesterday.
The recommendation, from a review panel headed by Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, would see the earlier publication of records on key events from the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major such as the Falklands War,
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 30, 2009
Richard Williamson, the ultra-conservative bishop whose denial of the Nazi Holocaust caused outrage this week after he was reinstated by Pope Benedict XVI, has expressed his "sincere regret", asking the pontiff to forgive him for the "anguish" he has caused him.
In a posting on the web Bishop Williamson, a member of the traditionalist Society of St Pius X, apologised for the "imprudent phrases" he used last week in an interview broadcast by Swedish tel
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 30, 2009
Tony Blair thinks every day about the soldiers and civilians who died in the war in Iraq, he has told The Times.
The former Prime Minister, now Middle East envoy for the Quartet group of the US, UN, EU and Russia, does not know whether history will vindicate him over the decision to invade. “I don't know. Nobody knows,” he told Ginny Dougary in an interview to be published tomorrow.
He said that he was not haunted by it “but of course I reflect on it, and am troubled b
Source: History Today
Jan 30, 2009
61 years ago today, Gandhi was shot whilst taking his evening public walk around the grounds of Birla House in New Delhi. The assassin was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical who had links with the Hindu extremist group Hindu Mahasabha, which notably blamed Gandhi for weakening India and sacrificing Hindu interests by insisting upon payment to Pakistan. He immediately surrendered himself to the police and was put on trial. He was sentenced to death for murder and hanged at Ambala Jail, on November 1
Source: Spiegel Online
Jan 30, 2009
According to the recipe, the meat was to be cut into small pieces or slices, sprinkled with "myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe" and then soaked in spirits of wine for a few days.
Finally, it was to be hung up "in a very dry and shady place." In the end, the recipe notes, it would be "similar to smoke-cured meat" and would be without "any stench."
Johann Schröder, a German pharmacologist, wrote these words in the 17th century
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jan 30, 2009
German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said on Thursday, Jan 29, that the government had reached agreement with representatives of the eastern state of Saxony to set up a memorial to mark German unity and freedom in Leipzig by 2014 as the country gears up to mark 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"We want to take shared responsibility to honor the outstanding contribution of the citizens of East Germany in the peaceful revolution of 1989," Neumann said after the meet
Source: Washington Post
Jan 30, 2009
The National Museum of African American History and Culture yesterday named six award-winning architecture teams that will compete to design its signature building on the Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument.
The list includes luminaries of the field: I.M. Pei and Sir Norman Foster.
The final selection, based on a preliminary design, will be one of the most closely watched architectural contests in the city's recent history because of its location, the challeng
Source: Washington Post
Jan 30, 2009
Even with three locations in its empire, the National Museum of the American Indian can display barely 1 percent of its 800,000 objects. To help close that gap, the museum has decided to set up a digital showcase.
On Monday, the museum plans to launch its "Fourth Museum" to give scholars, students, teachers, cultural historians and those far away from the museum's homes in Washington and New York the opportunity to look into its archives.
The move has been in
Source: MSNBC
Jan 29, 2009
Bulgaria is demanding that Russia return important World War II documents taken in 1944 as the Soviet army swept through eastern Europe.
The government said Thursday the archive is more than 30,000 pages of documents, including details of Bulgaria's preparations to side with Nazi Germany in the war.
The Soviet army said it took the documents to use as evidence in war-crimes trials at Nuremberg.
Bulgaria says its request complies with a 1995 Russian federal
Source: IHT
Jan 29, 2009
A long-awaited reconciliation plan for Northern Ireland provoked a wave of anger across the province - and in the House of Commons in London - with a provision for payments of about $16,800 to families of all of the 3,700 people killed during 30 years of sectarian violence, including paramilitaries killed by their own bombs.
A news conference accompanying the release of the plan in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital, became the stage for an eruption of the anger and grief still bur
