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: Jerusalem Post
Apr 29, 2008
An old Israeli mortar shell used during the 1948 War of Independence was uncovered Tuesday during an archaeological excavation at the Western Wall plaza, police said.
The homemade Davidka mortar, which was found in one piece, was taken by police sappers to an uninhabited site outside the city to be detonated and destroyed, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The mortar was used during the initial stages of the war sixty years ago.
Source: BBC
Apr 29, 2008
Shipwrecks, gold bullion, and a chance of a share in buried treasure... no, it's not the Caribbean, but Lough Swilly in County Donegal.
The owners of a ship which sank in the lough in 1917 are to sell shares in the 20 gold bars which it is believed are still in the wreck.
The SS Laurentic was a passenger ship but during the First World War it was used by the British government to transport gold to pay for munitions.
The majority of the 43 tons of gold the s
Source: BBC News
Apr 29, 2008
A rare portrait, believed to be of Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton--Shakespeare's only known patron--has been discovered using X-ray technology. Art historians from Bristol University have found what they believe is a picture of Wriothesley that was painted over in the 16th Century. To the naked eye, it is a portrait of his wife, Elizabeth Vernon, Queen Elizabeth I's maid of honour..
The hidden picture was uncovered when the work was X-rayed in preparation for an ex
Source: BBC
Apr 28, 2008
Archaeologists are hoping to unearth evidence of what they believe to have been one of Bronze Age Britain's largest axe-making "factories".
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said the axes, made from a distinctive type rock - known as picrite - had been found throughout the country.
A three-week survey at the 4,000-year-old site will start soon in Hyssington, near Welshpool, Powys.
Source: http://globalnation.inquirer.net
Apr 28, 2008
Filipino World War II veterans would have received $3.2 billion worth of benefits from the United States had it not been for the Rescission Act of 1946, which effectively dashed promises held out as they fought alongside American troops six decades ago.
“According to the Office of US Veterans Affairs in Washington, the US government saved $3.2 billion by passing the Rescission Act in 1946,” Defense Undersecretary for Veterans Affairs Ernesto Carolina told the Philippine Daily Inquir
Source: http://www.txcn.com
Apr 28, 2008
While to some the statue of a Confederate soldier that stands before the Denton County Courthouse represents a piece of history, others say they believe it just represents hypocrisy.
That stand has incited two University of North Texas students to start a petition for the removal of the historical landmark, a statue of a Confederate soldier holding his gun to represent the South in the Civil War.
"It's really very frustrating that so many people would look at this
Source: Press Release--World Jewish Congress
Apr 28, 2008
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) strongly criticized the continued sale by the leading US online retailer Amazon.com of T-shirts praising Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. I love Hitler shirts for children and women were still being sold on the Amazon.com website as of Thursday, 24 April 2008, 16:00 GMT. In January 2008, Amazon had pledged to remove offensive shirts following an article in the Czech weekly Tyden.
We are shocked and disgusted that Amazon.com is seemingly unwilling to stop t
Source: WNYT
Apr 28, 2008
Community leaders are rallying to preserve Saratoga Battlefield, because they don't want the land around the Saratoga National Park to become another Gettysburg.
The Saratoga-Washington on the Hudson Partnership's goal is to help draw tourists without making the area look like a typical tourist town.
The group doesn't want visitors to the park to see neon signs and billboards.
Armed with state funding, the partnership has now put its leadership team in plac
Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com
Apr 28, 2008
The fate of a 2,300-year-old Indian burial mound in McKees Rocks is drawing renewed attention from a recently formed historical society.
"If this was any other cemetery in this country, what an outrage (there would be)," said Eugene Strong of Derry, a member of the McKees Rocks Historical Society. "We're just trying to see the destruction stop. They're slowly chipping away until there won't be a mound."
The group is upset about borough plans to remov
Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au
Apr 28, 2008
A Turkish-Australian workshop in Istanbul on options for HMAS AE2 has decided not to recommend raising the wreck, which lies in 73 metres of water in the Sea of Marmara after being scuttled in an April 1915 battle.
Underwater surveys found the submarine's hull to be in sound condition and preserved in an environment where corrosion is inhibited by prevailing conditions, AE2 Commemorative Foundation chairman Peter Briggs said.
The two-day workshop, convened by the Turkis
Source: http://www.thelocal.se
Apr 28, 2008
Nine-year-old Alexander Granhof and his grandfather Jens have made what is believed to be the largest ever find in southern Sweden of silver coins from the Middle Ages.
Alexander and his granddad were out exploring the site of the Battle of Lund (1676) when the boy happened on some silver coins coated in verdigris. The buried treasure had likely come to the surface when the field in which they were wandering was recently ploughed.
A day later, archaeologists from the
Source: http://www.fortmilltimes.com
Apr 28, 2008
Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois each lay claim to part of Abraham Lincoln's youth.
Now, a North Carolina county is trying to get in on the act.
A group in Rutherford County, N.C., opened the Bostic (N.C.) Lincoln Center and are petitioning the federal government to run a DNA test of Lincoln's father, Thomas, to see if it matches some of the 16th president's saved genetic material.
Keith Price, president of Bostic Lincoln Center Inc., said Lincoln was born in rural
Source: http://wjz.com
Apr 28, 2008
The view across the Potomac from George Washington's Mount Vernon estate will remain pristine, as it was more than 200 years ago, thanks in part to a purchase of 63 acres by the National Park Service on the banks of the river.
The purchase, announced Monday, conserves the last major block of shoreline on the Maryland side of the river that can be seen from Mount Vernon, which sits in Virginia just a few miles south of the nation's capital.
Source: AP
Apr 28, 2008
Paul Strnad and his wife Hedvika desperately wanted to leave Czechoslovakia in 1939, the year Adolf Hitler threatened Jews in his speech to the Nazi Reichstag.
He wrote to his cousin Alvin Strnad in Milwaukee, hoping he could help get his wife a job as a dress designer. He also sent colorful drawings of her designs.
"You may imagine that we have a great interest in leaving Europe as soon as possible because there is no possibility of getting a position in this coun
Source: AP
Apr 28, 2008
Investigators seeking fabled Nazi plunder said Monday that geophysicists have discovered something unusual buried near a town in eastern Germany — possibly remnants of the long-lost Amber Room.
Treasure hunters speculate that remains of the room — along with gold, paintings and other items stolen from a Russian palace outside St. Petersburg during World War II by the invading Nazis — could be buried near the town of Deutschkatharinenberg.
Source: Fox News
Apr 28, 2008
He conceived of the tank, the machine gun and the helicopter, but few of Leonardo da Vinci's sketched designs have truly been tested.
Except one: The prototypical Renaissance man's famous 1485 design for a rudimentary parachute.
On Saturday, in what appeared to be a first, Swiss adventurer Olivier Vietti-Teppa proved that Leonardo's pyramidal-design parachute could carry the weight of a man all the way to the ground.
Source: AP
Apr 28, 2008
Twenty-two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, work is under way on a colossal new shelter to cover the ruins and deadly radioactive contents of the exploded Soviet-era power plant.
For years, the original iron and concrete shelter that was hastily constructed over the reactor has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse. The new one, an arch of steel, would be big enough to contain the Statue of Liberty.
Once completed, Chernobyl will be saf
Source: http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk
Apr 28, 2008
A TOP North Yorkshire police officer has come under fire for keeping a Nazi clock on his office wall.
Deputy Chief Constable, Adam Briggs, pictured, was criticised by MPs and Holocaust historians for keeping the clock in such a prominent position at the force's HQ near Northallerton.
The timepiece was bequeathed to him by his father, who served in the Royal Navy,
Mr Briggs has said that if the force or North Yorkshire Police Authority felt it was causing o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 28, 2008
Unseen files from some of the most sensational criminal trials in history are to be made available to the public today.
Transcripts from Old Bailey cases, including Oscar Wilde's trial for gross indecency and the infamous case of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who killed his wife, form part of 110,000 pages of records made available online, free of charge. The London court's records include details of more than 210,000 criminal trials from 1674 to 1913.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 28, 2008
A family who once ruled a princely state of the Raj want a neglected British monument to be moved 200 miles to their mountain kingdom for safekeeping.
The memorial, standing on a hillock beside the Kabul River outside Nowshera in Pakistan, commemorates one of Britain's most famous military feats - the race to lift the siege of Chitral in 1895.
Daubed with graffiti and defaced by some who are offended by its proximity to a Muslim graveyard, it is in danger of collapsing.
