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
Aug 20, 2008
The date is etched in blood in Utah and Mormon church history and,
on a more intimate level, the family trees of people like Karen Maxwell, a
mother of eight and choir teacher from Salt Lake City.
On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon militiamen led the slaughter of 120 men, women
and children on a wagon train bound for California in an incident known as
the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Chief among the instigators was Isaac Haight, a local militia and church
leader. Several generations late
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 20, 2008
Charles Zentai, seventh on the list of most wanted Nazi war crimes suspects, faces trial after losing an extradition court battle in Australia.
Mr Zentai, 86, was deemed fit to be repatriated to his native Hungary, where he is accused of beating a Jewish youth to death in 1944.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre has named Mr Zentai seventh on its list of 10 most wanted Nazi war crimes suspects who are potentially still alive.
The list is topped by Ari
Source: Tehran Times
Aug 20, 2008
A team of Iranian archaeologists confirmed that the Sassanids used the ancient site of Bakhe-Nam as a permanent habitation.
The team led by Bayan Pirani was assigned by the Ilam Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department (ICHTHD) to precisely demarcate the site, which is located in the southern city of Ilam in western Iran.
“In the course of their excavations, the team has unearthed the remains of slag, the ruins of kilns, and a number of shards dating back
Source: Press Release--http://civilwarinteractive.com
Aug 20, 2008
Facing a lawsuit, the National Park Service announced Tuesday that it would abandon a controversial plan to build a theater expanding the visitor center on the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Late last month, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of retired battlefield superintendents and Park Service historians contending the plan violates both environmental and historic preservation laws.
In today’s announcement,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 20, 2008
Records of staff at a Jacobean mansion in Essex in the late 19th century have disclosed that many carried on working long after most of their social class would have died.
One lodge keeper was still manning the entrance gates to Audley End at the age of 71, while a housekeeper who was doing the rounds into her sixties survived until she was 81.
The average life expectancy in England and Wales was just 41 for men and 44 for women at the time, and was even less for those
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 20, 2008
A campaign to save Bletchley Park, the legendary site where code-breakers toiled in secret to hasten the defeat of the Nazis and end the Second World War, is launched by The Independent today.
A coalition of public figures, politicians and veterans bound up in its history is supporting the campaign to save the park, which is maintained by a charitable trust.
Large parts of the park are in a state of advanced decay, with its iconic wooden huts – in which the elite recrui
Source: CNN
Aug 19, 2008
1. Anna Sage: Dillinger's deadly date
The Tale: Anna Sage was a Romanian immigrant who came to America in 1909
and found work in a brothel in East Chicago, Indiana.
Although she was successful in this venerable and established field (she
opened several of her own houses of ill repute in Indiana and Illinois),
the Department of Labor sought to deport her as an"alien of low moral
character."
But when famed bank robber John Dillinger -- whom she met through mutual
gal pal
Source: AP
Aug 19, 2008
Maudie White Hopkins, who grew up during the Depression in the hardscrabble Ozarks and married a Confederate army veteran 67 years her senior, has died. She was 93.
Hopkins, the mother of three children from a second marriage who loved to make fried peach pies and applesauce cakes, died Sunday at a hospital in Helena-West Helena, said Rodger Hooker of the Roller-Citizens Funeral Home.
Other Confederate widows are still living, but they don't want any publicity, Martha B
Source: http://www.mnbiketrails.com
Aug 19, 2008
UPPER SIOUX AGENCY STATE PARK - A mother and daughter were taken into custody when they protested a historical re-enactment at the Upper Sioux Agency State Park on Saturday.
Dr. Angela Wilson of Granite Falls, who has a doctorate in Dakota history and studies and goes by her Dakota name Waziyata Win, and her daughter, Autumn Wilson who also goes by her Dakota name Winuna, were part of a counter event to protest the historical re-enactment of life at the Upper Sioux Agency in 1858. T
Source: History Today
Aug 19, 2008
The modernisation of the ancient pyramids at Giza has begun with the building of a high-tech security fence. The £14m project at the World Heritage Site includes CCTV, security alarms and sensors to alert guards about peddlers encroaching on the area and harassing tourists. The 12-mile fence is the first stage to update the last remaining ancient Wonder of the World; visitors will now arrive at the c.2575 BC site near Cairo through security gates with x-ray machines
Source: UPI
Aug 19, 2008
Who did presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois choose as his running mate? Was it Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware or Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? Or will it be some surprise dark horse?
The Conventional Wisdom states that a vice presidential pick really isn't that important. There's a lot of evidence to support that view: A bad CW pick, who either proves hapless or emba
Source: AP
Aug 19, 2008
Portwood Williams didn't know what kind of reception the children in his car would receive when they sat down at a segregated lunch counter in downtown Oklahoma City to order some soft drinks.
"I didn't care," Williams said Tuesday on the 50th anniversary of the peaceful sit-in, which lasted for days and inspired similar actions elsewhere, helping to propel the nation's civil rights movement.
Williams, now 93, was one of several chaperones who drove a group of
Source: World Science
Aug 19, 2008
Poor medical care didn’t kill George Washington, a new study concludes--his final illness was a hopeless situation.
The death of the U.S. founding father from a throat infection at 67 triggered an immediate and still-smoldering debate over whether doctors contributed to his demise, in particular through their copious blood extractions. Blood letting was standard medical practice then, though it was already questioned in some quarters.
The author of the new study [Michae
Source: AP
Aug 19, 2008
Pakistan: Pervez Musharraf dominated Pakistan after taking
power in a high-altitude coup nearly nine years ago and led a reluctant
Islamic nation into the U.S.-led war on terror — a step that earned him
plaudits in the West but hatred at home.
Although Musharraf's decision to side with Washington after the Sept. 11
attacks helped rescue Pakistan from the status of a pariah nation, it was
followed by an explosion in Islamic militancy at home. Combined with his
fumbled efforts to stay
Source: CNN
Aug 19, 2008
As a young man, Barack Obama idolized the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
"Reading about people not that much older than me who had gone to jail and suffered beatings in order to liberate a people," he said, "I thought there's something powerful about that."
Fellow Harvard University student Kenneth Mack remembered walking around the Harvard Law campus with his friend, who was constantly quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
&quo
Source: Tehran Times
Aug 19, 2008
Bigfoot remains as elusive as ever. Results from tests on genetic material from alleged remains of one of the mythical half-ape and half-human creatures, made public at a news conference on Friday held after the claimed discovery swept the Internet, failed to prove its existence.
Its spread was fueled by a photograph of a hairy heap, bearing a close resemblance to a shaggy full-body gorilla costume, stuffed into a container resembling a refrigerator.
One of the two sa
Source: Tehran Times
Aug 19, 2008
A team of archaeologists working at the Sarab-e Mort site has recently discovered the ruins of a manor house dating back to the Parthian era.
Located near the city of Gilan-e Gharb in Iran’s western province of Kermanshah, the site is being threatened by a dam construction project.
The manor consists of sections for official ceremonies, administration, and private residence, team director Yusef Moradi told the Persian service of CHN on Monday.
Moradi des
Source: Independent
Aug 19, 2008
The Children's authors Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl have been named as the nation's best-loved writers – over Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, according to a poll of 2,000 people.
The creator of the Famous Five books topped the poll, followed by Dahl and the Harry Potter author J K Rowling. Austen, the author of enduring favourites such as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma, is fourth in the nationwide survey of readers.
She is followed by S
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Aug 19, 2008
A self-proclaimed men’s rights lawyer on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court charging that Columbia University is engaged in illegal discrimination against men by maintaining women’s studies programs, and that these programs amount to a religion that should disqualify Columbia from receiving certain state and federal funds. The lawyer, Roy Den Hollander, is currently engaged in a series of suits against what he perceives as anti-male bias. For example, he is challenging the legality of “ladi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 19, 2008
The discovery is one of the largest and best-preserved Roman villas yet discovered in the country.
Shaped like a church, the building was discovered on the Isle of Wight, and has been likened to a medieval hall.
Its remains were discovered at the site of another Roman villa in Brading, and are believed to have been constructed 150 years before the other building.
The later Brading villa's remains had disappeared from sight until 1879 when a couple of local men st
