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: Times (UK)
Nov 8, 2008
Seventy years on, the memories have not faded. Kitty Suschny was a terrified schoolgirl of 13 when the Nazis unleashed a night of violence against Vienna's Jews on November 9, 1938.
"I saw the brown shirts marching from our window but my mother pulled me inside. I heard them shouting 'Jews go to hell'. There was screaming, shouting, the synagogues were set on fire. Many people committed suicide," recalled Mrs Suschny, who was evacuated to Britain but returned to Vienna whe
Source: Deutsche Welle
Nov 8, 2008
Officials from the Simferopol Art Museum in south Ukraine told Germany's Foreign Ministry the museum "had no plans to give up" the 87 paintings thought originally to have belonged to the Suermondt- Ludwig Art Museum in the German city Aachen, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
A pair of Bavarian tourists photographed the paintings during a 2007 visit to Ukraine's Crimea province and sent copies of the shots to the Aachen museum after finding the paintings listed as "
Source: Deutsche Welle
Nov 8, 2008
Ceremonies were to be held Sunday to recall Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis smashed up Jewish-owned shops, burned or ransacked synagogues and killed 91 people throughout Germany, according to the official toll.
The late November 9, 1938 pogrom, a precursor to the Holocaust, ultimately led to more than 1,300 deaths from injuries, by suicide or in concentration camps, official historians add.
Merkel, in a weekly video podcast, said Sunday would be
Source: Times (of London)
Nov 8, 2008
The Ministry of Defence has issued the last medal for service in the First World War. It had been requested by the family of a soldier who had kept his war service secret from them.
The Silver War Badge was issued posthumously to Alfred Gibbins, who was seriously injured during the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Mr Gibbins denied even to his own family that he had fought in the war, claiming that his injuries were sustained in childhood and had kept him out of the Army.
Source: Gannett News Service
Nov 7, 2008
A proposal to replace the cracked and weathered white marble monument that crowns the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery has stirred up a years-long controversy.
The always-guarded tomb to the nation’s war dead is a potent symbol of sacrifice and patriotism and the above-ground monument, which has cracks running 48 feet around it, is the most visible part of it.
Source: Esquire
Nov 7, 2008
Fifty years ago, a Republican senator from New York [Jacob Javits] predicted that by the year 2000, America would elect its first black president. Close enough. Read this extraordinary essay from December 1958 to see where we were as a nation -- and how far we’ve come.
[The Essay]
... Fantasy? To be sure, a speculation into the future as we look ahead from 1958. But a speculation based on realistic appraisal of fact for the march of progress and world events make it qui
Source: BBC
Nov 7, 2008
The report of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday has been delayed until the autumn of 2009, causing huge disappointment to relatives.
January 30 1972 - forever Bloody Sunday in the annals of the Troubles in Northern Ireland - was not the bloodiest day, but perhaps the most significant in helping to decide the direction and progress of the bitter conflict in the decades that followed.
Nearly 37 years later and at a cost of £172m and still counting, the most definitiv
Source: FoxNews.com
Nov 7, 2008
Switzerland's president expressed regret Friday that his country failed to use diplomatic channels to stop the Nazis from executing a Swiss theology student who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler 70 years ago.
Student Maurice Bavaud, 25, who was from the western Swiss town of Neuchatel, was executed in Berlin's notorious Ploetzensee prison after failing in his attempt to shoot Hitler at a Nazi parade in Munich on Nov. 9, 1938.
By coincidence, Bavaud made his attempt just
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 7, 2008
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a coalition of lawyers, academics and activists from round the country, has grown in the shadows of state suppression in the last two years.
Its survival is a token of the courage of its members, who have been harassed, imprisoned and beaten as they taken up difficult cases and attempt to promote legal reform.
"Twenty years after China ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishme
Source: History Today
Nov 7, 2008
Two recent archaeological stories show that humanity has been using drugs on opposite ends of the earth for thousands of years.
In Chile, new tests on members of an ancient pre-Hispanic civilisation are showing clear signs of drug use. Graves of the Tiwanaku are often found to contain equipment for using hallucinogens, such as pipes. Recent experiments by the University of Tarapaca on the remains of an adult male buried with an elaborate snuffing kit have shown that his body contain
Source: NYT blog
Nov 7, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama called Nancy Reagan tonight, reports our colleague Jeff Zeleny, who passed along this statement from the transition team:
“President-elect Barack Obama called Nancy Reagan today to apologize for the careless and off-handed remark he made during today’s press conference. The President-elect expressed his admiration and affection for Mrs. Reagan that so many Americans share and they had a warm conversation,” said Stephanie Cutter, transition team spokeswom
Source: NYT
Nov 7, 2008
After a career of deception, Isaiah Oggins died in an executioner’s dirty trick.
An aspiring American professor turned spy for the N.K.V.D., Stalin’s intelligence service, Mr. Oggins had been convicted of treason and espionage by the Soviet Union and completed an eight-year sentence in the gulag.
It was the summer of 1947. He was past due for release. A few months before in New York, his wife and young son had pleaded with George C. Marshall, then the secretary of state
Source: AP
Nov 7, 2008
It ought to be a proud milestone in the Dutch seafaring heritage — the construction of a new ship its owner claims will be the world's largest. But there's one problem: its name.
Edwin Heerema, founder of the company that has commissioned the $1.7 billion vessel, wants to name it the Pieter Schelte after his late father, Pieter Schelte Heerema, who was renowned as a maritime engineer but was condemned for his service in the murderous Nazi Waffen SS.
The choice of name h
Source: USA Today
Nov 7, 2008
Barack Obama's election has inspired a wave of optimism about the future of race relations in the United States, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken the day after the first African American won the White House.
Confidence that the nation will resolve its racial problems rose to a historic level. Two-thirds of Americans predict that relations between blacks and whites "will eventually be worked out" in the United States, by far the highest number since Gallup first a
Source: AP
Nov 7, 2008
he Kentucky attorney general, Jack Conway, has proposed a
settlement aimed at ending a squabble with an Ohio city
over a rock. The historic rock bears numerous carvings of
initials, names and a crude face and was once an attraction
for locals. It had been submerged since about the 1920s
until last September, when a local historian led a team to
extract it. The boulder now sits in a city garage in
Portsmouth, Ohio. Mr. Conway sent a letter to the city
solicitor in Portsmouth proposing tha
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 7, 2008
The Lockerbie bomber should be freed on bail pending appeal because he has prostate cancer and does not have long to live, judges heard yesterday.
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi’s lawyers told the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh that there was a “compelling case” for letting the former Libyan agent, 56, live with his family in Scotland. Prosecutors say the gravity of the offence means that he should stay in Greenock prison, where he is serving at least 27 years for blowing up Pan
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 7, 2008
The fate of the Wittelsbach diamond, worn by at least three of Europe's royal families, has been shrouded in mystery for almost a century.
Now the 35.56 carat stone, the second largest blue diamond in the world, has turned up again, offered for sale at Christie's by an anonymous seller. The guide price of £9 million is modest, given that a 13.39 carat blue diamond fetched $8.9 million (£5.6 million) at auction in May.
Collectors, convinced that diamonds are a recessio
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 7, 2008
The photographs belonged to, and may have been taken by, a naval surgeon, the late Sir Henry Norbury, who served in the 1879 war, which ended the Zulu nation's independence.
Sir Henry was later honorary surgeon to Kings Edward and George.
The album, which was given to Sir Henry by his wife Mina in 1868, for his birthday, includes photographs of female witch doctors, Zulu warriors, British camps, ships, and landscapes.
It has remained in the Dorset-based fam
Source: BBC
Nov 7, 2008
US playwright John Wolfson has pledged more than 450 works, including a first folio of 18 Shakespeare plays, to be handed over after his death.
Wolfson said he was "fortunate to have found a place as appropriate for my books as Shakespeare's Globe".
Chief executive Peter Kyle said the Bankside theatre was "delighted" to be bequeathed the "wonderful" collection.
In addition to the Shakespeare works, the archive includes plays
Source: Scotsman
Nov 6, 2008
THEY risked the wrath of their families, just by falling in love.
Former SS Stormtrooper Rudi Franzel and Betty Young initially kept their friendship a secret after meeting at Upperkeith Farm, in Humbie, East Lothian.
But the relationship between the PoW and the local farm girl blossomed and this week they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.
They met a few years after the end of the Second World War, when Rudi had been billeted to pick potatoes at
