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: http://www.salisburypost.com
May 10, 2008
The site of the Yadkin River bridge has been named one of the nation's 25 most endangered Civil War battlefields by a publication that specializes in such designations.
The designation appears in the most recent copy of "History Under Siege," subtitled: "A Guide to America's Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields." The publication is part of an annual report by Civil War Preservation Trust (www.civilwar. org), based in Washingto
Source: AP
May 10, 2008
The Navy's newest guided missile destroyer was christened Saturday with the name of the fighter pilot who spent 7 1/2 years in captivity in North Vietnam, received the Medal of Honor and served as presidential candidate Ross Perot's running mate.
Four Medal of Honor recipients and seven former prisoners of war attended the ceremony at Bath Iron Works that marked a milestone in construction of the 9,200-ton ship named for Vice Adm. James Stockdale.
Stockdale's widow Sybi
Source: BBC
May 10, 2008
The world of computing could have been very different to that of today had a machine that was designed over 150 years ago been built at the time.
That is the view of Doron Swade, the man who is behind realising the creation of the famed Difference Engine No 2 which has just gone on display in Silicon Valley.
The reason the machine is so highly regarded is because it is seen as the first attempt at automated computing and viewed as something of a missing link in techno
Source: BBC
May 10, 2008
US police are to carry out excavation work at a Californian ranch to search for more possible victims of notorious mass murderer Charles Manson.
They believe more bodies may be buried at the ranch in the Death Valley national park where Manson and his followers hid after the killings.
Manson was convicted in 1969 of killing seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant.
She was married at the time to the film director, Roman Polanski.
Source: Times (UK)
May 10, 2008
Lessons in the “story of our land” will replace history, geography and religious education at a leading independent school.
Richard Cairns, the Headmaster of Brighton College, told a conference there that he wanted to inspire children and teach how Britain influenced the world. He likened the current teaching of history to a car journey that stopped on only three occasions — 19th-century women, the First World War and Nazi Germany — and said that there was too much focus on other cu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 10, 2008
A seaside town is to put right an ancient wrong by giving a cross to Spain 600 years after an English pirate stole one from a church.
The privateer Harry Paye, from Poole, Dorset, was employed by a Spanish count in about 1400 to help his cause against the monarch.
However, Paye instead helped himself to the countess while her husband was away, fleeing when royal armies arrived – though not before burning the towns of Gijon and Finisterre and stealing a cross from the Ch
Source: NYT
May 10, 2008
France puts great stock in anniversaries. On your Paris map, you’ll find streets named “8 Mai 1945” and “4 Septembre” and squares called “8 Novembre 1942,” “18 Juin 1940,” “19 Mars 1962,” and, most recently, “Place du 8 Février 1962” — this one so christened last year on the anniversary of a protest for peace in Algeria. Flags come out, like the mammoth Tricouleur under the Arc de Triomphe for today’s Victory Day; newspapers groan under weighty ruminations; officials don sashes.
May
Source: Peter Steinfels in the NYT
May 10, 2008
Even without retrieving that bundle of yellowing French newspapers from the top shelf in a closet, it is easy to remember the night of May 10, 1968, in Paris. It is far less easy, 40 years later, to discern what it was all about. Adolescent hormones, the death of Communism, the death of capitalism or, as Andre Malraux suggested at the time, the death of God?
Malraux may have been alone in invoking God’s death as an explanation, but no one doubted that May 10 provoked an entire socie
Source: Canadian Press
May 9, 2008
Ukrainian Canadians closed a painful chapter in their community's history Friday as the federal government announced a $10 million grant to recognize the internment of Eastern European immigrants in Canadian work camps during the First World War.
The money is going into an endowment fund that will allow the community to better educate Canadians about the forced labour camps.
"After more than two decades of community pressure and a string of broken political promise
Source: Canwest News Service
May 9, 2008
Canadian scientists will lower robotic probes to the bottom of Lake Ontario next week to conduct the most detailed examination ever of two American ships that sank in a storm during the War of 1812.
The investigation of the wrecks of the Hamilton and the Scourge - part of the buildup to bicentennial commemorations of the 1812-1814 war between Britain and the United States, fought largely in Canada - could include the first glimpses inside the sunken vessels, which contain the remain
Source: Frontpagemag.com
May 9, 2008
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Howard Rotberg, the author of The Second Catastrophe: A Novel about a Book and its Author (Mantua Books). The novel explores the problems faced by a pro-Israel historian after he wrote a book comparing Islamists to Nazis, and the situation for Israeli Jews today with that of Jews in 1939. Rotberg is a Canadian author who has faced the manufactured wrath of Islamists after they made up allegations against him.
FP: Howard Rotberg, welcome to Frontpage In
Source: National Geographic News
May 9, 2008
Builders clearing land for a housing project in Colombia have uncovered an ancient burial site containing nearly a thousand tombs linked to two little-known civilizations. (See photos.)
The site covers some 12 acres (5 hectares) in the impoverished Usme district in southeast Bogotá (see map) and includes one set of remains that some researchers believe could be a victim of human sacrifice.
The possible victim is a young woman who seems to have been buried alive, said A
Source: http://politicalwire.com
May 9, 2008
In his long-awaited memoirs, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, former JFK aide Ted Sorensen admits he "collaborated" on Profiles in Courage with then Sen. John F. Kennedy.
According to a Wall Street Journal review, Sorensen says, for the first time, that he "did a first draft of most chapters," "helped choose the words of many of its sentences" and likely "privately boast
Source: AP
May 9, 2008
A mother and child separated. A father's war wound. An uncle's name on a list.
The unrelated and disparate items are among the discoveries made by 40 Jewish genealogists who spent the past week plumbing a trove of Nazi documents made public after 60 years.
For genealogists of Jewish families, the Holocaust is both a tragedy and a black hole, because so many of the 6 million Jewish victims disappeared without a trace. For years, researchers hoping to fill the gaps have l
Source: BBC
May 9, 2008
Russian tanks and intercontinental missile launchers have been paraded through Moscow for the first time since the collapse of the USSR.
The Russian leadership has decided to revive the Communist-era custom of featuring military hardware in the annual Victory Day parade.
New President Dmitry Medvedev said the army and navy were getting stronger.
Observers say the point of the parade was to demonstrate that Russia is a serious military force.
Source: WaPo
May 9, 2008
A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too "confrontational" and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries," commission secretary Thoma
Source: NYT
May 9, 2008
Did Senator John McCain not vote for George W. Bush in 2000?
That question has kicked up a minor ruckus in political circles this week as Arianna Huffington and the McCain campaign have traded he-said, she-said barbs.
On her Huffington Post Web site on Monday, Ms. Huffington, the liberal blogger, said she had heard Mr. McCain say at a Los Angeles dinner party shortly after the 2000 election that he had not voted for the president he has now publicly embraced in his own
Source: Scoop.com
May 9, 2008
Viewing original papers written by Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. in Atlanta - the city he called home - Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon today paid tribute to the renowned United States
civil rights leader, saying the values he lived and died for
are shared by the United Nations."Dr. King remains an
unsurpassed advocate of all the UN stands for: peace,
economic and social justice, and human rights," Mr. Ban told
an audience of dignitaries, students, faculty and members of
the UN Association o
Source: Economist
May 8, 2008
DOUG MCFADDEN, an archaeologist, walks through the site of a future suburb picking up shards of pottery more than a thousand years old. The 280-acre field in south-west Utah is littered with Indian artefacts. Last year a trench was dug through part of the site that was not expected to contain many remains. It revealed a grave, pit houses and part of a building.
Southern Utah is one of the archaeologically richest parts of America. The Anasazi Indians who lived there until the 14th c
Source: Justin Ewers in US News & World Report
May 8, 2008
As the last of those who remember camp life reach their 70s and 80s, their efforts to commemorate their experience have expanded: Former internees are determined not just to preserve the stories of internment; they also are trying to save the camps themselves. In 2006, President Bush signed a bill authorizing up to $38 million for a grant program to preserve the camps. But nearly two years later, swamped in election year politics, the funds have yet to be appropriated. The delay worries internee
