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 (UK)
Jun 24, 2008
Adolf Hitler took time out from running Nazi Germany to make jokes at the expense of his henchmen, a new book claims.
The dictator would often break from the serious nature of waging his campaign to "pull the legs" of his entourage of generals and hangers on.
His favourite victim was the Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering, who was notoriously fond of awarding himself medals and decorations.
According to the book by the last surviving member of his bun
Source: NYT
Jun 24, 2008
Although a majority of Americans say religion is very important to them, nearly three-quarters of them say they believe that many faiths besides their own can lead to salvation, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The report, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths.
For example, 70 percent o
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 24, 2008
The body of the first female soldier to be killed in Afghanistan was returned to British soil poignantly draped in a Union flag.
In a moving repatriation ceremony six members of Corporal Sarah Bryant's unit struggled to contain their emotions as they slowly shouldered her coffin from a Hercules transport aircraft on to the sun lit runway at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire.
The bodies of three SAS reservists, who died with the 26-year-old last week, also made their final journe
Source: WJZ
Jun 23, 2008
Virginia has added 25 listings to its landmarks register, a catalog of historic sites and districts.
The latest listings include three former Confederate camp sites and two historic bridges. One includes the High Bridge, which spans the Appomattox River between Cumberland and Prince Edward counties.
Among the unusual listings is the Winchester Coca-Cola Bottling Works, a familiar sight along U.S. 11. The Art Deco plant was built in 1940 and operated for 36 years as a bo
Source: Cronaca
Jun 23, 2008
A cherished image of the Roman emperor Hadrian as a gentle, philosophical man wearing the robes of a Greek citizen has been shattered with one blow of a conservator's chisel at the British Museum.
The head, with its neatly trimmed beard and fringe of exquisitely crimped curls, is certainly Hadrian but it seems the body it has been attached to for almost 150 years belongs to somebody else. The statue, a unique piece that has been cited in many biographies of Hadrian as proof of his l
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jun 23, 2008
BREST, Belarus: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev condemned on Sunday what he described as attempts to rewrite wartime history -- an attack the Kremlin said was aimed at Ukraine and the three Baltic states.
In a joint declaration marking the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Medvedev and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko denounced a "politicised approach to history".
Their countries "strongly condemn any attempt at rewriting history and rev
Source: Civil War News
Jun 23, 2008
By Kathryn Jorgensen
FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The Lincoln Financial Foundation will determine how to donate its extensive Lincoln Museum collection by the end of the year. In the meantime, the Fort Wayne museum will close on June 30.
A foundation spokesman said more than 30 organizations attended an April meeting to discuss disposition of the collection. Those interested in receiving the collection will submit proposals by June 16. The foundation will chose those that will c
Source: AP
Jun 23, 2008
CENTREVILLE, Md. (AP) — For four centuries, they were the ultimate pack rats. Now a Maryland family's massive collection of letters, maps and printed bills has surfaced in the attic of a former plantation, providing a firsthand account of life from the 1660s through World War II.
"Historians are used to dealing with political records and military documents," said Adam Goodheart, a history professor at nearby Washington College. "But what they aren't used to is politic
Source: AP
Jun 23, 2008
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan turned over Sunday nearly 2,500 stolen Iraqi artifacts to Iraq's top antiquities official, in the latest effort to recover the war-torn nation's stolen heritage.
In the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, looters snatched some 15,000 priceless artifacts and smuggled them out of the country. In the last few months, Jordanian authorities seized 2,466 items as they were being taken across the border.
Samples of the silver coin
Source: Reuters
Jun 23, 2008
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev condemned on Sunday what he described as attempts to rewrite wartime history -- an attack the Kremlin said was aimed at Ukraine and the three Baltic states.
In a joint declaration marking the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Medvedev and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko denounced a "politicised approach to history".
Their countries "strongly condemn any attempt at rewriting history and revision of the res
Source: Media Matters (liberal watchdog group)
Jun 23, 2008
Reporting on the forthcoming book The Case Against Barack Obama (Regnery, 2008), authored by former Human Events writer and National Review Online staff reporter David Freddoso, a June 23 Politico article stated that Marjory Ross, the president and publisher of Regnery Publishing, "likens the goal of Freddoso's book to that of 'Unfit for Command' " (Regnery, August 2004), which was co-authored by Swift Vets and POWs for Truth co-founder John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi. As Media Mat
Source: Independent (UK)
Jun 23, 2008
They've been talking about the gold in California's hills since 1849, when tens of thousands of pioneers rushed across the continent or even sailed round Cape Horn to join the fabled gold rush that transformed this remote rural backwater into the beating heart of the American dream.
Today, record gold prices, widespread economic turmoil, and the enduring optimism of America's entrepreneurial classes have combined to entice fresh swarms of prospectors to head west in search of hidden
Source: Media Matters
Jun 23, 2008
Shelby Steele, author of A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win (Free Press, December 2007), acknowledged that he thinks Sen. Barack Obama "can definitely win" the presidential election, despite the claim in the book's subtitle -- "Why He Can't Win" -- which he said was an "afterthought" that he "regret[ted]" and which he said did not represent the book's thesis.
Appearing on the June 22 edition of Fox News' Hannity's
Source: Press Release--David S. Wyman Foundation
Jun 23, 2008
One hundred and twenty Israeli political and cultural leaders --including former Supreme Court justices, cabinet ministers, and cultural figures-- have signed a petition to Yad Vashem, Israel's central Holocaust institution and museum, urging it to add to its exhibits material about the Holocaust rescue activists known as the Bergson Group.
The petition was organized by the Washington,D.C.-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
The Bergson Group was a mav
Source: Guardian
Jun 23, 2008
Extra staff have been dispatched to guard the great cultural gems of Greece as the government in Athens tries to deflect growing criticism of its handling of national treasures.
Amid unprecedented protests from tour guides, travel companies and tourists irritated by conditions at prime archaeological sites, the ruling conservatives last week rushed hundreds of additional personnel to staff museums and open-air antiquities.
"The situation at museums and sites around
Source: NYT
Jun 23, 2008
In the long-running culture war between evolution and creationism, Philadelphia is firing the latest shot.
Nine academic, scientific and cultural institutions around the city are holding a Year of Evolution, a series of exhibitions, seminars and lectures to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin next February, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, “The Origin of Species.”
Events will include a talk by John E. Jones III
Source: http://www.fwf.ac
Jun 23, 2008
The discovery of an ancient city buried beneath the sands of modern-day
Syria has provided evidence for a Hellenistic settlement that existed for
more than six centuries extending into the time of the Roman Empire. The
site provides a unique insight into the structures of a pre-Roman
Hellenistic settlement. The project, funded by the Austrian Science Fund
FWF, sheds new light on city life in the Hellenistic period.
The Syrian deserts have long kept an important secret hidden deep b
Source: USA Today
Jun 22, 2008
Don't tell Indiana Jones, but most archaeologists pack spades, not bullwhips, and big discoveries usually come after lots of digging, not looting. Maya discoveries in Mexico that are rewriting the history of this classic civilization, for example, are coming from years of careful digging, not looted idols.
The classic Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in
Source: Guardian
Jun 22, 2008
They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an 'undiscovered tribe' in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.
Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an ar
Source: AP
Jun 22, 2008
Germans who care about their relations with the United States are in an upbeat mood this week, looking both to the past and the future.
Thursday is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Berlin Airlift—the daring American-led operation to feed some 2 million West Berliners under Soviet blockade.
As they celebrate the event with fond reminiscences of American courage and generosity, many Germans are filled with excitement at the possibility of Barack Obama capturing th
