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: Harper's
Nov 26, 2008
Some astonishing figures in an item by Barry Ritholz (via Andrew Sullivan):
The cost to the United States of helping defeat Adolf Hitler, liberate Europe from fascist rule and halt the holocaust came to roughly $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation. The cost of the bailout, to date, comes to about $4.6 trillion. World War II was a steal — and with the $1 trillion difference there’s still enough left over to cover the past costs of the Marshall Plan and the The New Deal.
Source: http://www.informationweek.com
Nov 26, 2008
Once upon a time, it may have been that history was written by the winners. But in the information age, history is written by the persistent. Digital information is subject to constant revision, unless care is taken to document its state over time.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at Wikipedia, where government agencies, public companies, private organizations, and concerned individuals continually revise the online encyclopedia's entries to suit their respective agendas.
Source: AP
Nov 26, 2008
A Florida man's quest to find hundreds of U.S. Marines buried anonymously after one of World War II's bloodiest battles could lead to the largest identification of American war dead in history.
Researchers used ground-penetrating radar, tediously reviewed thousands of military documents and interviewed hundreds of others to find 139 graves. There, they say, lie the remains of men who died 65 years ago out in the Pacific Ocean on Tarawa Atoll.
Mark Noah of Marathon, Fla.
Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com
Nov 26, 2008
In American History, November 19, 1863, might be considered a day of wind and fire.
The place was the Gettysburg battlefield, four and a half months after the bloody and pivotal victory of the Union's Army of the Potomac over Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The event was the dedication of a cemetery for those who had died on those rolling fields. The wind was a two-hour speech by Edward Everett, a renowned orator and former senator from Massachusetts. And the fire wa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 26, 2008
Women forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the Second War have joined forces to urge politicians to pass a resolution demanding a formal apology.
Backed by politicians and activists, a group of surviving former sex slaves from across Asia demanded that the Japanese government enact legislation to compensate victims.
The government was also urged to issue a formal apology and provide a balanced account of the issue in school textbooks as the group ga
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 26, 2008
A lost jungle thought to have been planted by a Victorian explorer nearly 170 years ago has been discovered at a country estate by gardeners clearing shrubs and trees.
The half-acre forest of tropical plants, palms and foliage was found "massively overgrown" on a hillside at Trebah Gardens in Falmouth, Cornwall.
Workers found the secret jungle - including a 25ft tree - as they cut back bushes, shrubs and trees on the side of a steep valley.
They d
Source: AP
Nov 26, 2008
SEATTLE – Authorities have recovered a stolen 18-carat gold bookmark that reportedly was given to Adolf Hitler by his longtime mistress, Eva Braun. Christian Popescu, a Romanian national, was arrested Tuesday outside a Bellevue Starbucks after trying to sell the bookmark to an undercover agent for $100,000, according to papers filed in U.S. District Court.
Federal prosecutors said the bookmark was among several items taken in an auction-house heist in Madrid, Spain, six years ago. A
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 26, 2008
Almost 200 Africans survived the sinking of the Spanish ship Trouvadore off the British-ruled islands, where the slave trade was banned.
Once ashore, the former slaves were apprenticed to trades for a year and then allowed them to settle on the islands, many on Grand Turk.
The Spanish crew was arrested and turned over to authorities in Cuba, then a Spanish colony.
But over the years the ship's story had been forgotten, said researcher Don Keith.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 25, 2008
Oh, the swing of the kilt and the skirl of the bagpipes! The tens of thousands who gather annually to try their strength at tossing Scottish cabers around ... in Leipzig.
A mania for "the heedrum-hodrum Celtic twilight", which is afflicting parts of northern Europe, is one of the topics to be researched at a new centre for the study of the Scottish diaspora at Edinburgh University.
But since its launch at the end of last month, the new centre, funded by a £1m
Source: CNN
Nov 25, 2008
WILLIAMSTON, S.C. -- A World War II veteran who survived the Bataan death march died of exposure Tuesday morning after he fell in his front yard.
Friends said that 86-year-old Ralph M. Knox was a living legend from WWII. His war experience was so amazing, a few years ago, he wrote a book about it.
He was a war hero, decorated with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. At the age of 20, he survived the death march, dropping from 175 pounds to 89. Until Tuesday, he was the youngest U.S. so
Source: NYT
Nov 25, 2008
YPRES, Belgium — Ninety years after it ended, the First World War still hangs over this small Flemish town, a focal point of slaughter during the Great War, as they called it when they thought it would be the last. Monuments to the war’s fallen sprouted like mushrooms after the armistice, but it took nearly 85 years to erect a monument to a different group of dead: soldiers executed by their own side for refusing to continue the fight.
Five miles from Ypres, in a quiet court
Source: AP
Nov 25, 2008
LONDON – Eleanor Rigby: fact or fiction?
That question, which has bedeviled Beatles' fans for decades, may be answered in part by a 1911 hospital payroll sheet to be auctioned in London on Thursday.
The document, sent by Paul McCartney in 1990 to the director of a music charity who had asked for funding, contains the signature of a scullery maid named "E. Rigby" who worked in a Liverpool hospital.
The director of the company auctioning the documen
Source: LAT
Nov 25, 2008
Some say having students dress up as pilgrims and Native Americans is 'demeaning.' Their opponents say they are elitists injecting politics into a simple children's celebration.
For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.
Parents in th
Source: AP
Nov 25, 2008
People in 18th century dress greeted visitors Tuesday at Federal Hall, commemorating the end of the Revolutionary War.
The costumed reenactors were busy answering questions about the 225th anniversary of Evacuation Day, the day in 1783 when the last British redcoats boarded ships in New York Harbor and sailed away, and Gen. George Washington and his victorious troops marched down Broadway.
At the Wall Street building, where a statue of Washington marks the site of his 1
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nov 25, 2008
Pittsburgh is no longer the smoke-filled place of its industrial heyday. But it was a smoky place from its inception, 250 years ago this week.
On the evening of Nov. 24, 1758, a Native American scout entered the British camp about 15 miles to the east to inform them that a "Cloud of Smoke" stood above the Point. Another scout arrived shortly to report that Fort Duquesne had been burnt and abandoned by the French. Henry Bouquet ordered cavalry to advance immediately in the
Source: AP
Nov 25, 2008
WASHINGTON – Marine archaeologists have found the remains of a slave ship wrecked off the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1841, an accident that set free the ancestors of many current residents of those islands. Some 192 Africans survived the sinking of the Spanish ship Trouvadore off the British-ruled islands, where the slave trade was banned.
Over the years the ship had been forgotten, said researcher Don Keith, so when the discovery connected the ship to current residents the first r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 25, 2008
In an operation lasting around eight hours, pathologists removed the body of Wladyslaw Sikorski from its two-ton marble sarcophagus in the crypt of Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, the resting place of many of Poland's national heroes.
The general's coffin was then taken to a laboratory to undergo tests as part of a criminal investigation to determine whether General Sikorski, who was prime minister of Poland's government in exile and commander of its armed forces, was murdered or died whe
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
It was hailed as an archeological discovery of global importance showing, among other things, the oldest representation of Christ on the cross and proof that ancient Egyptian influences had survived deep in Roman Spain.
For traditional Basques the pictures, symbols and words found scraped onto pieces of third century pottery dug up near the town of Nanclares, in northern Spain, included miraculous evidence that their unique language of Euskara was far older than ever thought. Eighte
Source: http://www.military-world.net
Nov 24, 2008
With Iraqi Christians a threatened and dwindling minority, U.S. forces are safeguarding a 1,400-year-old monastery — Iraq's most ancient — for a time when peace, reconciliation and archaeological detective work can occur.
St. Elijah's Monastery, with its main fortress-like structure looming atop a barren hillside, sits inside a sprawling U.S. military base.
Its bloody history makes clear why the monastery needs protection. In 2003, it was damaged during the U.S.-led inv
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Nov 24, 2008
Voter turnout among Americans under the age of 30 rose to between 52 percent and 53 percent in this fall’s election, up from 48 percent in the previous presidential election, according to updated estimates released today by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
The highest participation rate on record for that age group is 55.4 percent, which was achieved in 1972, the first presidential election after the voting age was lowered
