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.huliq.com
Apr 3, 2008
An archaeological dig in Cambridge has uncovered surprising ancient remains and the foundations of the world’s largest telescope of the late Victorian era.
Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit, recently working at the site of the new Kavli Institute for Cosmology in the grounds of the University’s observatory in west Cambridge, have unearthed an extraordinary series of deposits.
The Observatory hill-top has long been known as both a locati
Source: Reuters
Apr 3, 2008
Using written symbols such as hearts, arrows and hands, the ancient Aztecs maintained an arithmetic system that was far more complex than previously understood, scientists said on Thursday.
The Aztecs, an empire in central Mexico toppled by Spanish invaders in 1519, has long been recognized for its sophistication in architecture, engineering, astronomy and other fields. And the new research confirms arithmetic can be added to the list.
The researchers examined hundreds
Source: AP
Apr 3, 2008
The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover.
Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?
For his children, however, the speculation is more personal. They know their lives would h
Source: Boston Globe
Apr 3, 2008
Fossilized excrement found in an Oregon cave has given scientists the hardest evidence to date that humans roamed the New World at least 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.
The prehistoric poop, deposited in a cave some 14,300 years ago, contains DNA from the forebears of modern-day Native Americans, according to the research.
The discovery reported today by the journal Science added fresh weight to emerging theories that Stone Age people from Asia somehow byp
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 3, 2008
Rome's ancient monuments are so poorly guarded that tourists are taking away mementos of their visit to the Eternal City with impunity.
Archaeologists said yesterday that Trajan's Forum, in the heart of the city's classical ruins, had been stripped of all the fragments of statues and shards of amphorae that adorned the site until recently.
To highlight the problem, a reporter from Il Messaggero newspaper carried away large boxes full of ancient artefacts during the dayt
Source: NYT
Apr 3, 2008
About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.
Source: CNN
Apr 3, 2008
Christine King Farris was sewing an Easter dress for her daughter in their Atlanta home one rainy April evening when the nightly news was interrupted by a special report.
The newscaster announced that Farris' younger brother, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Another update came minutes later: King was in critical condition.
"It was a horrible moment," Farris said of that night in 1968. "I tried to call my sister-in-law
Source: AP
Apr 3, 2008
A history enthusiast has sued the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, claiming it lost several of his World War II-era photographs, including the shot of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
The man, Rodney Hilton Brown, says the photos were part of the World War II memorabilia that he lent to the museum, which is sited on a retired aircraft carrier usually docked in the Hudson River, initially in 1995 and again in 2005.
Mr. Brown, a mortgage broker who coll
Source: Politico
Apr 3, 2008
Since the public supposedly can’t stand the media, and newspaper circulation keeps dropping, it seems an inauspicious moment to open a $450 million museum dedicated to the news.
However, that’s what happens next week, when the Newseum unlocks its doors along Pennsylvania Avenue, the tourist-friendly strip linking the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
But with journalism being about ideas, not artifacts, how does the Newseum justify a $20 admission fee to inform visitor
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 3, 2008
FIA president Max Mosley has escalated the "sick Nazi orgy" row threatening to engulf Formula One by alluding to the links between BMW and Mercedes and Adolf Hitler's regime in a response to criticism from carmakers.
Mosley, 67, who has come under fire following revelations in the News of the World at the weekend, issued a swift response to earlier statements this morning from four car manufacturers that refers to the history of the two German companies, "particularly
Source: NBC News
Apr 3, 2008
Related Links
Jeff Cohen: This NBC report leaves out the media's attacks on MLK in the last year of his life
Source: AP
Apr 3, 2008
Abraham Lincoln's heartfelt letter to youngsters who asked him to free America's "little slave children" was sold at auction Thursday for $3.4 million.
The 1864 letter set a record for a Lincoln manuscript, as well as for any presidential and American manuscript, Sotheby's said.
It was purchased by an anonymous American private collector bidding by telephone.
Lincoln's hand-penned reply was contained in a letter to a woman who had mailed the child
Source: Justin Ewers in US News & World Report
Apr 3, 2008
Five years into the war in Iraq, military history seems to be experiencing a golden age. Hollywood has been cranking out war movies. Publishers have been lining bookstore shelves with new battle tomes, which consumers are eagerly lapping up. Even the critics have been enjoying themselves. Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military histo
Source: Daily Mail
Apr 2, 2008
An extraordinary insight into the private life of one of Hitler's most feared henchmen has come to light after more than 60 years hidden in a British home.
Viktor Lutze was a key figure in the Nazi leader's rise to power and served as chief of staff of the reviled SA - more commonly known as the brownshirts.
Yet intimate pictures seized from his house by Allied forces cast him in the unlikely role of a family man who enjoyed day trips and games of table-tennis.
A
Source: http://www.uaf.edu
Apr 2, 2008
Recent findings by a Russian-American research team suggest that prehistoric cultures were hunting whales at least 3,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than was previously known.
University of Alaska Museum of the North archaeology curator Daniel Odess presented the team's findings at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia last week.
"The importance of whaling in arctic prehistory is clear. Prehistoric settlements were si
Source: Scoop.com
Apr 2, 2008
The many New Zealanders who lost their lives fighting on foreign fields are being remembered and honoured in New Zealand Post’s latest Stamp Issue; The ANZAC Series – Stories of Nationhood.
While the acronym ANZAC - Australia and New Zealand Army Corps - is now synonymous in New Zealand and Australia with service people who have served as peacekeepers in international hotspots and supported allied forces in international conflicts, it originated from those soldiers who were brought
Source: Nature News
Apr 2, 2008
The fate of a fourteenth-century pocket calculator is hanging in the balance between museum ownership and private sale.
The device is a brass astrolabe quadrant that opens a new window on the mathematical and astronomical literacy of the Middle Ages, experts say. It can tell the time from the position of the Sun, calculate the heights of tall objects, and work out the date of Easter.
Source: The Root (webzine published by Henry Louis Gates for the WaPo)
Apr 2, 2008
D.C. had its riot at last. For years, Negroes in the capital had watched as Watts, Detroit, Newark -- even Rochester, New York -- exploded in racial outrage. And though it shared the frustrations expressed in cities elsewhere, black Washington had held calm, either because its second-class citizens were intimidated by proximity to such concentrated power, or because they were too comfortable in the middle-class advantages of federal jobs.
All the way down 7th Street that night, we w
Source: The Root (webzine published by Henry Louis Gates for the WaPo)
Apr 2, 2008
Forty years later there are two particularly poignant and enduring images associated with Dr. King's assassination. The first is the circle of men surrounding Martin's body on that Memphis balcony as they point in the direction of the shooter. The second is Coretta Scott King's mournful and resolute face beneath her widow's black veil.
Both images capture the radicalizing power of Dr. King's murder. Together they reveal how responses to racial terrorism are often gendered. Many b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 2, 2008
The Royal Mint has unveiled the biggest changes to Britain's coinage in 40 years to a chorus of disapproval.
Historians, designers, and MPs have criticised the changes which show elements of the Queen's coat of arms on the reverse of seven coins from the penny to the pound.
In pictures: The designs which will feature on the reverse of seven British coins
The six designs on the 1p through to the 50p coins can be pieced together to form a complete image of the roya
