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
Aug 15, 2008
He wears whiskers and a stovepipe hat as he stares proudly from the pages of the journal that he kept during 40 years at sea.
The self-portrait is the only known likeness of George Hodge, ordinary seaman, and one of the very few pictures of a humble sailor in Nelson’s navy. While officers and admirals were immortalised in oils, most sailors lived, and died, out of sight.
Hodge’s journal records the ships he served on, the oceans he sailed, the ports he visited and the
Source: Telegraph
Aug 15, 2008
The Real IRA bomb which ripped through the town centre that busy Saturday afternoon in August 1998 claimed the lives of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured hundreds more.
Ten years on the killers have not been caught with the police on both sides of the Irish border having faced heavy criticism for their handling of the investigation.
The plans for the anniversary have also been dogged by controversy and today's memorial service is being boyc
Source: http://www.thenational.ae
Aug 14, 2008
On January 31 1949, when the People’s Liberation Army came marching into Beijing – heralding the imminent demise of Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang regime in mainland China – Sidney Shapiro, a bespectacled 33-year-old lawyer from Brooklyn, New York, rode his bicycle up to Xizhimen, the city’s north-west gate, to take a look at the soldiers.
There, he remembered years later, he saw a parade of “clean, smartly stepping, smiling young men” being welcomed by cheering crowds, and a line of
Source: Telegraph
Aug 14, 2008
Jeremy Paxman has provoked fury by dismissing Scottish poet Robert Burns as "no more than a king of sentimental doggerel".
His description of Scotland's defacto national poet was included in the introduction to the new edition of The Chambers Dictionary.
Defenders of the bard have reacted with anger to his comments, calling them "absolute nonsense" and "a disservice" to Scotland.
The Newsnight presenter, who revels in a litt
Source: CNN
Aug 14, 2008
James Hoyt delivered mail in rural Iowa for more than 30 years. Yet Hoyt had long kept a secret from most of those who knew him best: He was one of the four U.S. soldiers to first see Germany's Buchenwald concentration camp.
Hoyt died Monday at his home in Oxford, Iowa, a town of about 700 people where he had lived his entire life. He was 83.
His funeral was Thursday at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Oxford, with about 100 people in attendance. The Rev. Edmond Dunn offic
Source: BBC
Aug 14, 2008
Lebanon and Syria have agreed to resume work on formally demarcating their common border as part of efforts to repair years of strained relations.
However, Syria said the work on borders would not cover one of the most contentious areas, the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, until Israel withdrew.
Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman is currently in Damascus for talks with his counterpart Bashar al-Assad.
They also confirmed the setting up of diplomatic ties
Source: AP
Aug 14, 2008
A wall of one of the nation's first railroad tunnels has been excavated in Schenectady.
Workers using a backhoe uncovered part of the tunnel's western wall on Wednesday under the direction of City Historian Don Rittner.
The 1,500-foot-long tunnel was built in 1832. Horses pulled trains through the tunnel because they were considered too much of a fire hazard to travel through city streets.
The tunnel was filled in six years after opening.
The t
Source: AP
Aug 14, 2008
Tommy DeFoe wore his Southern pride on his Confederate flag belt buckle Wednesday as he argued in federal court that a school dress code banning such items violated his free speech rights.
"I am fighting for my heritage and my rights as a Southerner and an American," said the lanky DeFoe, 18, during a break in his trial.
DeFoe says his great-great uncle served in the Confederate army and "died for the South" in the Civil War.
But heritag
Source: AP
Aug 14, 2008
A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert. The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.
Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains
Source: History Today
Aug 14, 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: Independent
Aug 14, 2008
A federal appeals court Wednesday reversed a ruling that awarded one of John Steinbeck's sons and a granddaughter publishing rights to 10 of the author's early works, including "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men."
The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will leave the rights in the hands of Penguin Group Inc. and the heirs of John Steinbeck's widow, Elaine. Author John Steinbeck died in 1968; his wife in 2003.
The appeals court
Source: The Times
Aug 14, 2008
Campaigners are trying to save a ramshackle Tuscan villa where the poet Lord Byron lived towards the end of his life, but which has fallen into ruin despite its rich history.
Conservationists in Livorno have appealed to the Tuscan regional authorities to preserve the Villa Dupouy where Byron stayed for three months until his friend Shelley's death by drowning in the nearby Gulf of La Spezia in July 1822.
A year later Byron stopped again at Livorno while sailing from G
Source: Independent
Aug 14, 2008
Its jagged, bomb-shattered belfry towers above the busy streets at the centre of west Berlin like an enormous broken tusk – a ruin that remains one of the most famous and potent symbols of the horrors of war in Europe.
But now Berlin's landmark Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, nicknamed the "Hollow Tooth" by Berliners, is threatened with closure unless at least €4m (£3.2m) can be found to restore its rapidly disintegrating neo-gothic facades.
City officials adm
Source: Fox News
Aug 14, 2008
They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday — all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time
Source: Farragut Press
Aug 14, 2008
David Sink, a visitor to Campbell Station Park, got the surprise of a lifetime when he stumbled upon a Civil War-era artillery shell in North Fork Turkey Creek, Tuesday night, Aug. 12.
At 7:08 p.m., Knox County Sheriff’s Office dispatch received a call from Sink, who had found what he believed to be a piece of mortar in the park.
Sink had retrieved the shell from the creek, carried it up the hill toward the Farragut Library, and then decided to call 9-1-1.
Source: Civil War Interactive
Aug 14, 2008
Former Senators Howard H. Baker, Jr. (R–TN) and J. Bennett Johnston, Jr. (D–LA) yesterday announced the formation of the National Parks Second Century Commission, a first-in-a-generation effort to examine the national parks today and chart a vision for their future.
“More than one hundred years ago America invented the national park idea with the designation of Yellowstone as the first national park,” said Commission Co-Chair Senator Baker, former Senate Majority Leader. “Guid
Source: Times
Aug 14, 2008
The Office of Strategic Services was the vast American espionage organisation created by President Franklin Roosevelt in the Second World War and directly modelled on Britain’s intelligence services.
The OSS, which evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after the war, was created virtually from scratch in 1942, and swiftly evolved into a wide intelligence-gathering network, employing soldiers, lawyers, actors, sportsmen, academics and many others.
The full
Source: Times
Aug 14, 2008
One was a historian and assistant to John Kennedy, another was the chef who first introduced French cuisine to American households, and a third was the father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.
In their every day lives they had nothing in common but Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Julia Childs and Miles Copeland shared a secret life - serving in an international spy ring at a time when Hitler was threatening the world.
Their work and that of thousands of othe
Source: Telegraph
Aug 14, 2008
The mammoth 33 tonne sculpture, which features "the father of communism" staring out from a multitude of figures, once adorned Leipzig University.
But the academy, known as Karl Marx university in honour of the socialist philosopher until 1991, later mothballed the vast installation.
Plans to reinstall it unveiled earlier this year prompted fierce debate between fans of the monument and those who believe that the tribute to Marx ought to remain under wraps.
Source: Telegraph
Aug 14, 2008
Japanese researchers are hoping to trace British prisoners of war who appear in photographs that have been kept secret since the end of the Second World War
