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 5, 2009
It could be one of the nation's oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 5, 2009
By day they were ordinary civilians — from dentists and clergymen to
gamekeepers and roadmenders – in a Britain gripped by fear of imminent
invasion by Hitler’s blitzkreig troops.
The only clue to their alter egos might have been the pieces of paper in
their pockets – informing any police officer suspicious of their behaviour
“to ask no questions of the bearer but phone this number”.
But new details have now emerged of the highly secretive role played by a
“resistance” army of f
Source: Britannica Blog
Jan 5, 2009
Who’s benefiting from the current economic meltdown?
Karl Marx! Call him the “comeback kid” of the current economic crisis.
His works are selling in record numbers across Germany; publishers cannot reissue his works especially (Das Kapital) fast enough to keep up with the demand, as German universities have made him a prime topic of study in an attempt to understand the crisis affecting capitalist economies.
As this video explains, German scholars are quic
Source: Reuters
Jan 5, 2009
NEW YORK -- U.S. first lady Laura Bush has agreed to publish her memoirs with Scribner, the publisher said on Monday, giving the normally soft-spoken former librarian a chance to offer her views on the Bush presidency.
The book is expected to be published in 2010, said Scribner, an imprint of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, itself part of CBS Corp.
Scribner said it would offer "an intimate account of Laura Bush's life experiences, including eight years in th
Source: CNN
Jan 4, 2009
Archaeologists have found more than 600 relics from a huge battle between a Roman army and Barbarians in the third century, long after historians believed Rome had given up control of northern Germany."We have to write our history books new, because what we thought was that the activities of the Romans ended at nine or 10 (years) after Christ," said Lutz Stratmann, science minister for the German state of Lower Saxony."Now we know that it must be 200 or 250 after that."
Source: McClatchy
Jan 4, 2009
President George W. Bush's "after-life," as Laura Bush calls the post-presidency, is shaping up to be pretty comfortable, with a Dallas office, staffers, Secret Service protection, a travel budget, medical coverage and a $196,700 annual pension, all at taxpayers' expense.
However, Bush will be the first president not to benefit from one former lifetime benefit: Secret Service protection.
"He'll be the first one to receive it for 10 years," said Malco
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jan 4, 2009
On Fox News, the former President George H.W. Bush seemed to catch an
interviewer, Chris Wallace, by surprise when he said that he would like to
see another Bush occupy the Oval Office.
He said that he thought that his son Jeb, the former governor of Florida,
should consider seeking the seat that Senator Mel Martinez of that state
will vacate in 2010.
He then added,"I'd like to see him run for president some day."
The former president, who is 84, had just been talking ab
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 4, 2009
British, Afghan and coalition forces battled the Taliban at close
quarters, knee-deep in mud, over Christmas in fierce trench battles
reminiscent of the First World War, it has emerged.
The offensive in Afghanistan's central Helmand province involved more than
1,500 troops and was one of the largest operations mounted by Royal
Marines since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Ministry of Defence (MoD)
said.
It was fought over 18 days around the town of Nad-e-Ali to capture four
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 4, 2009
The monument has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history but academic Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves.
Mr Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University, West Yorks., believes the standing stones had the ideal acoustics to amplify a "repetitive trance rhythm".
The original Stonehenge probably had a "very
Source: CBS News
Jan 3, 2009
How Significant Will 2009 Appear in the Lens of History? Jeff Greenfield Focuses on How Another Iconic Year Played Out.
Now, consider the year 1959. Could that really be a year that changed everything?
The last year of the fifties, a decade whose image is all but etched in stone: men in grey flannel suits, Stepford wives in suburban complacency, a veritable white bread sandwich of a time?
Journalist Fred Kaplan thinks 1959 is exactly that kind of landmark
Source: McClatchy
Jan 3, 2009
George W. Bush was supposed to be a president schooled in consensus building and tough, effective management.
However, the first chief executive with a master's in business administration — from Harvard, no less, and the son of a president known for his foreign-policy expertise — is leaving President-elect Barack Obama a nation that's arguably in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover left Franklin Roosevelt the Great Depression and a world in which fascism was on the march 76 years
Source: CNN
Jan 3, 2009
Gertrude Baines, a 114-year-old California resident, will likely be
crowned the world's oldest woman, according to the organization that keeps
track of such honors.
The previous oldest woman was Maria de Jesus, who died this week in
Portugal at age 115, Guinness World Records said.
Baines -- born to former slaves in a small town south of Atlanta, Georgia,
in 1894 -- now lives in a Los Angeles nursing home.
Baines appeared cheerful and talkative when the Los Angeles Times
Source: AP
Jan 3, 2009
WASHINGTON –- President George W. Bush will be judged on what he did. He will also be remembered for what he's like: a fast-moving, phrase-mangling Texan who stays upbeat even though his country is not.
For eight years, the nation has been led by a guy who relaxes by clearing brush in scorching heat and taking breakneck bike rides through the woods. He dishes out nicknames to world leaders, and even gave the German chancellor an impromptu, perhaps unwelcome, neck rub. He's annoyed w
Source: Washington Post
Jan 3, 2009
For seriously predicting that the United States will break into six parts in June or July of 2010, Igor Panarin has suddenly become a Russian state-media celebrity. Hardly a day goes by without another interview or two for the KGB-trained, Kremlin-backed senior analyst. The clamor in Russia for his ideas is growing, he says.
Panarin's disintegration divination comes complete with a map. In it, Alaska goes to Russia. Hawaii goes to Japan or China. "The California Republic"
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 3, 2009
The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, once told his British counterpart that Nato was making all the same mistakes that the Soviet army did in the country in the 1980s.
When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, asked if Mr Kabulov would explain what those mistakes were, the reply was a quick and simple “No!”. It was a joke, but, like most Russian ones, it was rooted in an uncomfortable truth.
“The Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to A
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 3, 2009
Sure, 2008 was bad. But for Americans it was nowhere near as bad as 11,000BC – according to research published in Science magazine yesterday.
At about that time, say scientists, a massive comet struck the atmosphere somewhere above North America, broke into pieces and rained down fire and death – wiping out the early Palaeo-Americans, also known as Clovis people, and making creatures such as the woolly mammoth, mastodon, short-faced bear, sabre-toothed cat, ground sloth and giant a
Source: AP
Jan 2, 2009
Jeanette Scola Trapani, one of the oldest survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, has died at age 107.
Dolores Legge told the San Francisco Chronicle that her mother had been suffering from pneumonia and passed away at her home in El Dorado Hills on Monday.
Trapani had clear memories of the disaster, even though she was only four years old at the time, Legge said.
Source: BBC
Jan 2, 2009
For more than three decades his name has been synonymous with the worst
excesses of the sort of dictators who have bedevilled post-colonial
Africa.
History largely remembers Jean Bedel Bokassa - or Emperor Bokassa I as he
crowned himself in 1977 - as one of the continent's most colourful yet
bloodthirsty monsters.
He was a demagogue as ruthless as Mobutu and more flamboyant than Amin.
When Bokassa was overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds vented their hatred
on a giant st
Source: AP
Jan 2, 2009
LOCUST GROVE, Va. —- Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
Source: AP
Jan 2, 2009
A college student dressed in a vintage German military uniform who was fatally shot by police on New Year's Day was a harmless, eccentric history buff
Miles Murphy, a University of Washington senior, was shot several times at his apartment early Thursday after police said he pointed a rifle affixed with a bayonet at officers and refused orders to drop the weapon.
Seattle police had converged on Murphy's apartment after receiving complaints that several men were firing r
