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: Andrew Wagner in The Breeze, James Madison University's student newspaper
Apr 7, 2008
[Andrew Wagner is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis.]
Should anyone cherish a society in which 40 percent of the population was once enslaved? A society in which the proportion of slaves to freedmen was one to 25? That, after all, was the reality of life in the Confederate States of America.
Of course, the answer to this question is a personal one. However, when governments start getting involved in answering this question, the situation r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 7, 2008
The earliest-known printed book bearing the stamp of William Caxton, the father of British printing, has been saved for the nation by the National Trust at a cost of almost £500,000.
The book, dated 1487 and printed in Latin, is the only surviving example of the earliest edition of the Sarum Missal, the most commonly used rite for celebrating Mass in pre-Reformation Britain.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 7, 2008
Gordon Brown is considering repealing the 1701 Act of Settlement as a way of healing a historic injustice by ending the prohibition against Catholics taking the throne.
But doing so would have the unforeseen consequence of making a 74-year-old German aristocrat the new King of England and Scotland.
Without the Act, Franz Herzog von Bayern, the current Duke of Bavaria, would be the rightful heir to the British Crown under the Stuart line.
The bachelor, who l
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 7, 2008
Margaret Thatcher at her peak would sweep to power in a general election held today, according to an opinion poll for The Daily Telegraph.
The YouGov survey emphatically confirms the enduring political appeal of the country's first woman prime minister, who left office undefeated 18 years ago.
Baroness Thatcher comfortably surpassed Tony Blair when people were asked who they would pick to lead the country at the height of their powers if they had the choice. David Camer
Source: Reuters
Apr 7, 2008
A large cache of stone tools estimated to be up to 35,000 years old has been discovered on the site of one of Australia's largest iron ore mines, sparking calls on Monday for the site's preservation.
Archaeologists uncovered the tools on the site of the A$1 billion ($920 million) Hope Downs iron ore mine, about 310 kilometres (192 miles) south of Port Hedland, in western Australia's ore-rich Pilbara region.
Source: NYT
Apr 7, 2008
Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page exposé and accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex “dungeon.”
But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in London’s fashi
Source: Oxford Mail
Apr 6, 2008
Archaeologists now believe a dozen skeletons discovered in a mass grave in the centre of Oxford may have belonged to executed criminals from Saxon times.
A team of three archaeologists have been digging in the quadrangle of St John's College in Blackhall Road, off St Giles, for nearly two weeks since the discovery was made.
The bones of 12 or 13 bodies have gradually been uncovered after a body part was discovered 80cm below ground level by diggers excavating the plot b
Source: AP
Apr 6, 2008
It's so much a part of the landscape that metro-east residents often don't even notice it, except when a visiting relative notices: 'Look, there's the mound.'
Rising from what once was an endless grass sea parted by the Mississippi River, Monks Mound isn't even named after the Native American Indians who built it centuries ago, but the Trappist monks who lived there for only five years in the 19th century.
No one knows what the long-vanished people who built the mounds
Source: NYT
Apr 6, 2008
Is it even possible for a grown man to bowl a 37?...
Like presidents and would-be presidents who have come before, Mr. Obama had sought to assure voters he was just like them by attempting to play a game. Beginning with William Howard Taft, who was a comically bad golfer, and continuing through George W. Bush, who bruised his face after falling off his mountain bike, presidents and candidates have risked all self-respect in the relentless pursuit of sport. Along the way, they usuall
Source: http://www.wvgazette.com
Apr 6, 2008
Standing outside the First Bank of Charleston, it's hard to picture exactly where Col. Joseph Andrew Jackson Lightburn dug in his log breastworks and aimed his cannons across the Elk and Kanawha rivers to slow the advancing Confederate army.
"My guess is it was over there, in the bank's parking lot," says John Bullock, an engineer, member of the Charleston Land Trust and, on this day, amateur historian and Civil War buff. After walking around a bit, Bullock decides the for
Source: http://www.shreveporttimes.com
Apr 6, 2008
Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover and Bossier City Mayor Lorenz Walker will declare Confederate History Month in the two cities next week, repeating a similar declaration from last year.
Shreveport was the prize sought by Union President Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 Red River Campaign that culminated in the back-to-back battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. In June 1865, Shreveport was the last capital city of the Confederate States to surrender to Union forces, carving a unique spot
Source: Reuters
Apr 6, 2008
Vandals desecrated 148 graves in the Muslim section of a military cemetery in northern France, hanging a pig's head on one of the headstones, police said on Sunday.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the attack "a hateful act" and around 100 police were sent to the Notre-Dame de Lorette cemetery near Arras to hunt for clues.
State prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi said the vandals struck overnight, daubing insults on the graves.
"They direc
Source: International Herald Tribune
Apr 6, 2008
ROME: In ancient times the Appian Way, which links Rome to the southern city of Brindisi, was known as the regina viarum, the queen of the roads. But these days its crown appears to be tarnished by chronic traffic congestion, vandalism and, some of its guardians grumble, illegal development.
"Look at this!" bristled Rita Paris, the Italian state archaeological official responsible for the Appian Way, peering through a weathered bamboo screen lining the road while bumpily m
Source: WaPo
Apr 6, 2008
T he intersection where it all began that catastrophic night, the once-ragged corner of 14th and U streets, is now a crossroads at the center of Washington affluence.
Seventh Street is a neon-lit pathway lined with boutiques, taverns, restaurants serving fusion cuisine and a world-class convention center.
On H Street, east of Union Station, condos sell for more than $1 million, and new nightclubs throb with the young and hip.
Forty years ago, the conditions
Source: NYT
Apr 5, 2008
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a cabinet-level poverty czar and Senator John McCain said he was wrong to have voted a quarter century ago against a federal holiday in memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as both presidential candidates converged here on Friday to appeal to black voters on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination.
Senator Barack Obama, who polls show is the overwhelming choice for president so far among African-American primary voters, spe
Source: http://www.wtopnews.com
Apr 5, 2008
SCOTLAND, Md. (AP) - Civil war buffs are headed to St. Mary's County this morning to work on restoring the last remaining earthen walls of Fort Lincoln.
Fort Lincoln was the site of Hammond Hospital, built by the Union Army after General George McClellan's unsuccessful campaign to capture Richmond. The site later became a prison for Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2008
Germany's foreign minister has suggested that Germany and Poland could organize an exhibition that would examine "the whole spectrum" of the two neighbors' history.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested in an article for Saturday's edition of the Polish daily Dziennik that the show could mark the 40th anniversary in 2010 of a groundbreaking visit to Poland by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
Brandt dropped to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto monument in a dramat
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2008
One of Quebec's most historic buildings was caught up in a massive fire and collapsed late Friday. No injuries were reported, police said.
Witnesses said there was a fire followed by an explosion at the Quebec City Armory, which was built in 1884 and houses the Voltigeurs, a Canadian Forces reserve unit and the oldest French infantry regiment in the country.
Source: http://www.thelocal.de
Apr 4, 2008
Bulgaria confirmed for the first time on Friday that East Germans and others trying to flee the Soviet bloc for the West were killed on its soil during the Cold War.
"We came upon two cases of East German citizens killed while attempting to escape via Bulgaria - one in 1974 and another in 1988," Ekaterina Boncheva, a member of an official committee looking into communist-era secret service archives, told journalists.
Border police officers were rewarded for ca
Source: http://www.pr.com
Apr 4, 2008
More than 9 million World War II army enlistment records are now searchable online at WorldVitalRecords.com through a shipment provided by National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), one of the largest archives in the US.
“The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC, preserves and provides access to billions of genealogical and historical records, photographs, and computerized resources. I am pleased that WorldVitalRecords.com is including these NARA
