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: Telegraph
Aug 1, 2008
The bunker in which East German leaders including Erich Honecker hoped to survive a nuclear war is to open to the public for the first time.
But curious visitors to the long secret underground command centre will have only three months to inspect the site before it is sealed forever.
Bunker 17/5001, located in a forest 25 miles north of Berlin, is a chilling reminder of Cold War tensions that threatened mutually assured destruction in the confrontation between the US
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2008
After four years pursuing one former Army scientist on a costly false trail, F.B.I. agents investigating the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 finally zeroed in last year on a different suspect: another Army scientist from the same biodefense research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.
Over the last 18 months, even as the government battled a lawsuit filed by the first scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, investigators built a case against the second one, Bruce E. Ivins, a highly respe
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2008
The dusty documentation of the Anasazi Indians a thousand years ago, from their pit houses and kivas to the observatories from which they charted the heavens, lies thick in the ground near here at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.
Or so archaeologists believe. Less than a fifth of the park has been surveyed for artifacts because of limited federal money.
Much more definite is that a giant new project to drill for carbon dioxide is gathering steam on the park’s
Source: The Hill
Aug 1, 2008
Senior White House aides are planning to record notes from President Bush’s trip to the Middle East in what White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called “just a little bit of a blog.”
Perino announced the creation of “Trip Notes from the Middle East” in a briefing with reporters prior to the president’s departure.
“This is new to us,” Perino said. “We encourage you to log on and to check back often to read some of the updates that the staff will be posting throughout the
Source: The Hill
Aug 1, 2008
Internet giant Google on Tuesday rebuffed Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) request to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations, claiming the action would stifle the “free speech” the Google-owned site YouTube encourages.
On its blog, the company said that while it “respects his views,” it disagrees with Lieberman “about the details of our policies.”
“YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” the c
Source: Peer.org
Aug 1, 2008
Washington, DC — A plan to build an expanded visitor center and theater at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana violates both environmental and historic preservation laws, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The suit contends that the National Park Service (NPS) proposed construction will detract from the very historical setting it seeks to present to the public.
Plaintiffs include t
Source: Telegraph
Aug 1, 2008
The identity of this creature, which reportedly washed up on a New York beach last month, has captivated the blogosphere and is dividing animal experts.
The beast, dubbed the Montauk Monster after the Long Island resort where it was discovered, has a hairless, leathery body, sharp teeth and what appears to be a beak.
A photo of the animal appeared on the gossip website Gawker earlier this week under the headline “Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk”, and the story h
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2008
A major archive in Germany has purchased 15 custom-made scanners to digitize and catalog a huge collection of virtually untapped Holocaust records. The archive at the International Tracing Service in the German town of Bad Arolsen contains testimony from Holocaust survivors as dictated to humanitarian workers in displaced persons camps after World War II. Survivors detailed the horrors they endured in concentration camps and spoke of their plans for the future while workers recorded the testimon
Source: Telegraph
Aug 1, 2008
Dozens of Whitehall lines and calls to large armament contractors were eavesdropped for signs of careless talk following a request from MI5 during World War 2.
But records released under the Freedom of Information Act also offer a portrait of wartime Britain straining under the pressure of the war effort and air raids.
As well as conversations about shipments and plans, the Postal and Telegraph Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information recorded tense conver
Source: History Today (UK)
Aug 1, 2008
A ten-year project to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution is to be launched this week. A major new study of Russia’s involvement in the First World War and 1917 Revolution will be announced at a symposium at the University of Aberdeen from July 22nd-24th. Experts from across the world will agree to publish at least six new books by 2017, covering the military struggle, international relations, the home front and culture. Dr Tony Heywood, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the
Source: AP
Jul 31, 2008
A rare astronomy tool that helped medieval scientists tell time will remain in Britain after the British Museum scrambled to come up with the money to buy it.
The brass device, called an astrolabe quadrant, had been sold at auction last year, and the museum was outbid. But money from the National Heritage Memorial fund, The Art Fund and the British Museum Friends helped the museum purchase it recently for 350,000 pounds ($700,000).
"The quadrant will be a very impo
Source: Telegraph
Jul 31, 2008
Researchers looking into Mr Rudd's family history discovered that his fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Rudd, was transported to Australia in 1801 to serve a seven-year sentence for "unlawfully acquiring a bag of sugar".
However, his crime is eclipsed by that of the prime minister's paternal fifth great-grandmother Mary Wade, a London street urchin who made a pittance by sweeping streets and begging.
In 1788, aged 12, she and an older girl coaxed an eight-yea
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jul 31, 2008
A new museum is set to open at the site of Roman baths at Xanten near the German-Dutch border. The museum aims to help visitors immerse themselves in the architecture, sounds and smells of the Roman settlement.
Germanic and Celtic barbarians, accustomed to living in squat log huts, must have gasped in amazement when they first caught sight of the towering town center of Colonia Ulpia Traiana some 2,000 years ago.
The museum evokes the lofty Roman basilica, which served
Source: Spiegel Online
Jul 31, 2008
A musuem in Berlin has put the legendary Linz Collection, Hitler's private collection of art, online. It may be the first time since World War II that the all the pieces have been assembled in one place.
Adolf Hitler's notorious "Linz Collection" -- a private collection of art displayed in Linz and then stashed in salt mines at the end of World War II -- has now been put online in digital form by the German Historical Musem, not for casual viewing but to help track the pro
Source: Reuters
Jul 31, 2008
The world's oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests that toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.
It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
It heads the world's oldest top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton on Thursday.
A 1600 BC g
Source: http://www.newspostonline.com
Jul 31, 2008
Ruins recently discovered on Greenland may be the Vikings’ most northerly
year-round hunting outpost on the icy island.
According to Knut Espen Solberg, leader of ‘The Melting Arctic’ project
mapping changes in the north, the remains uncovered in past weeks in west
Greenland may also be new evidence that the climate was less chilly about
1,000 years ago than it is today.
“We found something that most likely was a dock, made of rocks, for big
ships up to 20-30 metres (60-90 ft)
Source: Science Daily
Jul 31, 2008
Swiss-Greek research team co-lead by Dr.
Frank Rühli from the Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich, found
evidence of embalming in Roman Greek times. By means of physico-chemical
and histological methods, it was possible to show that various resins,
oils and spices were used during the embalming of a female, approximately
55 years old, in Northern Greece.
This is the first ever multidisciplinary-based indication for artificial
mummification in Greece at 300 AD.
The rem
Source: http://www.iwpr.net
Jul 31, 2008
Architectural historians are ramping up efforts to restore Damascus’s
historic bathhouses, which experts say are crumbling and in danger of
disappearing altogether.
Ghazwan Yaghi, an expert on Islamic archaeology, believe only 17 communal
baths are still opening in the Syrian capital. Once a centre for
socialising, many of the estimated 200 bathhouses are in a state of
disrepair and neglect.
“The role of the bathhouse has shrunk, and they have been under a lot of
pressure, bo
Source: Telegraph
Jul 31, 2008
Forensic examination of the crew's skulls, which were found next the 16th century wreck in The Solent, has revealed that Henry VIII's flagship was mainly crewed by foreign sailors, thought to be either mercenaries or Spanish prisoners of war.
Historians have always believed that the warship sank when it performed a sharp turn during a battle with the French in July 1545 and heeled so steeply that water flooded through the open gun ports.
But the new theory suggests th
Source: WaPo
Jul 30, 2008
The House yesterday apologized to black Americans, more than 140 years after slavery was abolished, for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow" segregation.
The resolution, which passed on a voice vote late in the day, was sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white Jew who represents a majority-black district in Memphis. Cohen tried unsuccessfully to join the Congressional Black Caucus this year.
"I hop
