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: San Francisco Chronicle
Apr 16, 2008
[A]s important as Benedict's words will be in introducing the pope to an American audience that knows little about him, it may be just as important to check out what he's wearing. The pope's choice of liturgical vestments and other papal accouterments speak volumes not only about his personal tastes but also about his vision of the church's future, and its past.
With increasing regularity, Benedict has been reintroducing elaborate lace garments and monarchical regalia that have not
Source: LAT
Apr 16, 2008
FELICITY, CALIF. -- A stiff wind blows grit across Jacques-Andre Istel's latest and greatest undertaking, a History of Humanity etched on hundreds of granite panels a few turns of a tumbleweed from the Arizona border. ...
"You've got to admit, that's interesting," Istel says.
He doesn't mean himself. Istel is talking about his History of Humanity, eight horizontal monuments spread out like spokes of a wheel between the church and the pyramid. When completed, i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 16, 2008
Neanderthals have spoken out for the first time since they were wiped out or outcompeted by our ancestors tens of millennia ago.
It may only sound like one small burp, but for scientists the Neanderthal "E" sound marks a 50,000 year step back in time.
Prof Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has used Neanderthal vocal tracts reconstructed from fossils to simulate the voice with a synthesizer, reports NewScientist.com
Source: AP
Apr 16, 2008
A German prosecutor has filed murder charges against an 86-year-old former member of the Waffen SS for alleged Nazi-era killings in the Netherlands.
Dortmund prosecutor Ulrich Maass said Wednesday he has charged Heinrich Boere with three counts of murder for the 1944 slayings of Dutch civilians.
Boere was part of a Waffen SS death squad composed mostly of Dutch volunteers tasked with killing compatriots in reprisal for attacks by the anti-Nazi resistance.
Source: http://www.progress-index.com
Apr 15, 2008
One hundred and forty three years after the Battle of Five Forks, visitors to the battlefield could soon have a more comprehensive understanding of the conflict.
A new visitor station at Five Forks Battlefield will help tourists gain a better understanding to one of the climatic battles of the Civil War.
The $3 million visitor center complex will nearly double the amount of exhibit space — from 388 square feet in the former gas station currently used to 730 square feet
Source: AP
Apr 15, 2008
Yale University is holding some 40,000 artifacts from the famed Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a government official heading efforts to return the pieces told the state news agency Andina on Sunday.
Peru's government and Yale University reached an agreement last September to return 4,000 pieces — including mummies, ceramics and bones — that were taken a century ago from what has become one of the world's most famous archaeological sites.
The tally of 40,000 artifacts app
Source: AP
Apr 15, 2008
Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw ghetto by a handful of scrappy, poorly armed Jews against the Nazi army, becomes emotional when he speaks of the fighters he led.
"I remember them all — boys and girls — 220 altogether, not too many to remember their faces, their names," says the 89-year-old doctor, who still works in a Lodz hospital. Edelman will lay a wreath in their honor at the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto on Saturda
Source: Press Release--John William Templeton
Apr 15, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO -- On April 14, 1858, hundreds of
African-Americans gathered in Zion Methodist Episcopal
Church here to respond to a backlash against their
activism against slavery. Although the almost 5,000
blacks had accumulated $2 million in property during
the Gold Rush, they did not have the right to vote or
to testify in court; their children could not attend
the best public schools and they lived in fear of
being returned to slavery under the fugitive slave
act. They decided their
Source: WaPo
Apr 15, 2008
Virginia's governor is proposing to spend $5 million to preserve several sites where armies of the North and South clashed nearly 150 years ago, including such renowned battlefields as Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Cold Harbor.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's proposal would provide funding over the next two years for the endangered Civil War sites.
Kaine (D) included the request Monday among his amendments to the two-year budget that the General Assembly approved last m
Source: LAT
Apr 15, 2008
Fascination with the pre- Islamic has run in trends since the 1979 revolution. Religious leaders first tried to blot out a past embraced by the man they overthrew, Mohammed Reza Shah. But they soon realized the appeal of Persian identity and now occasionally co-opt the past for tourism and national pride.
Unemployment, high inflation, political oppression and a distrust many Iranians have for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have stoked reflections on bygone centuries. And those who ca
Source: Independent (UK)
Apr 15, 2008
It looks like a neglected zoo. But the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy has its own macabre chapter in the history of the Soviet Union....
But the years of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, then the Georgian-Abkhaz war, took a heavy toll on the centre. Most of its scientists left to set up a new centre in Russia, along with most of the monkeys that were not killed. What is left today is a disturbing shadow of the institute's former glory....
Legend has it that th
Source: http://www.thebostonchannel.com
Apr 15, 2008
A German baroness living in Providence is appealing a court decision forcing her to give a portrait auctioned by the Nazis to the estate of a late Jewish art dealer.
An attorney for Maria-Luise Bissonnette filed the arguments Monday with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
Among other points, Bissonnette's attorney said the estate of Max Stern may have waited too long before seeking the return of the oil painting "Girl from the Sabine Mountains."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 15, 2008
A hat company has broken a German taboo by advertising its products using an image of Adolf Hitler.
The campaign for the Hut Weber company places the iconic hair and moustache of the Nazi leader next to a bowler-hatted sketch of Charlie Chaplin, star of The Great Dictator, with the caption in English: "It's the hat."
Source: WaPo
Apr 15, 2008
The head of the Smithsonian Latino Center resigned in February after an internal investigation found that she violated a variety of rules and ethics policies by abusing her expense account, trying to steer a contract to a friend and soliciting free tickets for fashion shows, concerts and music award ceremonies, according to records released yesterday by the Smithsonian.
Pilar O'Leary, who was hired in 2005 by then-Secretary Lawrence M. Small to be the institution's key representativ
Source: NYT
Apr 15, 2008
Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.
The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic and two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.
Source: Mercury News
Apr 14, 2008
That's the controversial conclusion reached by Palo Alto physician and amateur historian John Sotos, who says that President Abraham Lincoln was suffering from a lethal genetic cancer syndrome when he was shot at Ford's Theatre 143 years ago today.
"Lincoln was a rare man with a rare disease," said Sotos. He has self-published a 300-page book and 400-page database to support his conclusion, based on an exhaustive analysis of Lincoln photographs and historical eyewitness de
Source: http://www.mpnnow.com
Apr 14, 2008
The town and the American Legion have formed committees to oversee the restoration of Naples’ pre-Civil War era cannon — each without the other knowing.
Part of the problem may be that it’s no longer clear who owns the historic ordnance.
It all started when Rochester resident Charles Baylis, the director of the American Civil War Artillery Association, approached the Town Board with an estimate for restoring the carriage. The town turned him down.
The town formed
Source: NYT Editorial
Apr 14, 2008
The nonprofit History News Network is reporting that in an informal survey of 109 historians, 98.2 percent considered President George W. Bush’s presidency to be a failure, while 1.8 percent called it a success.
On the question of whether he is the worst president in history, there was greater difference of opinion: 61 percent said he was, while others disagreed or are withholding their opinions. (The survey also made clear that James
Source: LAT
Apr 14, 2008
THE POST-POW YEARS: FIRST OF TWO PARTS -- When John McCain limped home from a Hanoi prison camp in 1973 with a badly injured knee that he could not bend, Navy doctors gave him the bad news: His 15-year career as a jet pilot was over. He would never fly again.
But McCain surprised his doctors by making a dramatic comeback. With a ferocious determination to fly again and a tough physical therapy regimen, he got his wings back and not long after was awarded command of the Navy's larges
Source: AFP
Apr 14, 2008
Israel's Polish-born President Shimon Peres on Monday remembered the hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered by occupying Nazi Germans during World War II at Poland's Treblinka death camp.
Peres and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski lit candles at the memorial to the 800,000 people murdered at Treblinka, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of the capital Warsaw.
