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: Daily Mail
Feb 18, 2008
The British National Party has the UK's most visited political website, a study shows.
The far-Right group received 51 per cent of all hits to party sites last year - seven times more than the online pages run by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
It was also twice as popular as the Conservatives' main website.
The report, for the Centre for Policy Studies, claims the site has flourished because it allows visitors to leave messages and interact with one anot
Source: Fox News
Feb 18, 2008
A suspect transcript of a conversation between John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald, are among the treasure trove of items found in an old safe at the Dallas County District Attorney's Office.
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins presented the items at a news conference Monday. Watkins says they were locked in a safe for nearly two decades and that investigators had made him aware of them after he took office in 2006.
Source: AFP
Feb 18, 2008
More than two million people have registered as descendants of Confucius, tripling the size of the celebrated Chinese philosopher's family tree, state media reported Monday.
The new list, which was last updated in 1930, has rocketed by more than 1.3 million, the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee (CGCC) said, according to a report in the China Daily.
The updated list, which includes overseas and female relatives for the first time, will be published next year to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 18, 2008
A mutilated body found in an abbey graveyard has been identified as that of a notorious medieval villain rumoured to have been the gay lover of Edward II.
The remains, which bear the hallmarks of having been hanged, drawn and quartered, are thought to be those of Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger, who was executed as a traitor in 1326.
Sir Hugh had been favourite of Edward II - who was widely believed to have been homosexual - but was brutally executed before a mob after t
Source: HNN Staff
Feb 18, 2008
Richard Nixon's partisans always resented the charge that there was a New Nixon, but his supporters at the Nixon Foundation have now started a blog in his name called,"The New Nixon Blog." Perhaps they are showing they have an ironic sense of humor. John Taylor, executive director of the Foundation, explained the purpose of the blog: [T]oday, many years after President Nixon has died, as President Nixon’s library prepares to become fully comparable to the other Presidential libra
Source: IHT
Feb 18, 2008
France's education minister on Monday softened a proposal by President Nicolas Sarkozy to make French 10-year-olds honor child Holocaust victims, amid heated criticism of the sensitive idea.Education Minister Xavier Darcos said Monday the plan could be adjusted so that an entire class could collectively honor an individual victim.
"Is it necessary to do one by one, for each pupil? Perhaps we could find other solutions," such as choosing one victim per
Source: Telegraph (London)
Feb 18, 2008
The mystery surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has taken a dramatic new twist following the discovery of new documents in an old safe at the Dallas County district attorney's office.Most intriguing among the new material is a transcript perportedly recording a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and his own killer Jack Ruby, in which the two discuss how to eliminate the president.
While the district attorney's office dismissed
Source: Beacon News (Illinois)
Feb 18, 2008
Historians at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library say they have identified an ax long housed at the Springfield facility as the last one ever used by "The Railsplitter."Illinois State Historian Thomas Schwartz says the ax that's been part of the library's collection since 1955 was wielded by Lincoln on April 8, 1865, while he was visiting wounded Union troops at City Point, Va.
That was just one week before he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth
Source: BBC
Feb 18, 2008
Indian archaeologists say they have found remains which point to the existence of a city about 7,000 years old in eastern India.The remains have been discovered at Sisupalgarh near Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern state of Orissa.
Researchers say the items found during the excavation point to a highly developed urban settlement.
The population of the city could have been in the region of 20,000 to 25,000, the archaeologists claim.
Th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 17, 2008
When the Princess Royal's son, Peter Phillips, marries his Canadian fiancee, Autumn Kelly, at St George's chapel in Windsor in May, he will give up any hope of being crowned king of England, Mandrake can disclose.
"Peter will renounce his place in the line of succession," says Canon Ivor Smith-Cameron, a former chaplain to the Queen. "Given that he has slipped down the line after the birth of Prince Edward's son, I'm sure that he is happy to agree to this."
Source: Independent (UK)
Feb 17, 2008
A year after the Romans packed up their shields in AD410 and left Britain to the mercy of the Anglo-Saxons, a scribe in Edessa, in what is modern day Turkey, was preparing a list of martyrs who had perished in defence of the relatively new Christian faith in Persia.
In a margin he dated the list November 411. Unfortunately for the martyrs, history forgot them. At some point, this page became detached from the book it belonged to. Since 1840, the volume has been one of the treasures
Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz
Feb 17, 2008
A museum has been opened in Arras, France to commemorate the astonishing work of 450 New Zealanders who built a network of tunnels between Arras and the German front lines during World War 1.
The Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Mahara Okeroa, and the NZ Ambassador to France, Sarah Dennis, represented New Zealand at the opening ceremony in the weekend (Saturday evening, France local time).
Source: BBC
Feb 17, 2008
A 104-year-old Dutch cabaret singer who once performed in Nazi Germany has given a concert in the Netherlands for the first time in four decades.
There were protests and tight security around the theatre in Amersfoort where Johannes Heesters appeared.
Although Heesters insists he never espoused Nazi politics, he performed for Adolf Hitler and visited the Dachau concentration camp.
Correspondents say many Dutch people have never forgiven him.
"He
Source: http://www.smh.com.au
Feb 17, 2008
AN AUSTRALIAN payroll plane that went missing at the end of World War II with 19 people on board might have been found in just 20 metres of water in Papua New Guinea.
Divers in Milne Bay have reported seeing the remains of a twin-engined plane in the exact same spot pinpointed by documents that were recently uncovered by an aviation historian in Canberra.
Now a diving boat skipper, who has found other plane wrecks in PNG waters, is planning an expedition to find the mis
Source: AOL
Feb 17, 2008
Far and away, Abraham Lincoln is ranked by Americans as the nation's greatest president, according to a poll conducted by Harris Interactive and released this week, just ahead of Presidents Day. What's surprising is that President George W. Bush, whose approval rating has plunged to just 30 percent, also sneaks into the top ten list.
The Harris poll points out that recent presidents tend to be listed more often as both the best and the worst. In a separate poll asking Americans to n
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Feb 17, 2008
Silbertal | The mayor of this tiny Alpine village, where Ernest Hemingway once skied down majestic slopes, has started an unprecedented project that most Austrians would rather forget: confronting the nation's Nazi past.
Mayor Willi Saly is intent on finding out whether there's anything in the historical record that would provide a clue to what drove a village farmer named Josef Vallaster to become one of the most brutal concentration camp guards of World War II. The records, which surfac
Source: NYT
Feb 17, 2008
It’s far too soon to know what role Mr. Obama will play in history, let alone whether he can be compared to F.D.R., or, as he is most commonly, to John F. Kennedy. But it is perhaps time to look more closely at this label that attaches to him, and how it has been applied in the past.
The “cult of personality” is used in the pejorative. But recast as a different name — call it charisma — and, as Roosevelt and other examples show, it can be a critical element of politics and its pract
Source: NYT
Feb 17, 2008
AS Bill Clinton was the first baby boomer president, Barack Obama could be the first Generation X president.
Or, depending on how you figure it, Mr. Obama, born in 1961, could be the third boomer in chief, following Presidents Clinton and Bush. In theory, the candidate Obama belongs in the boom, defined by the Census Bureau as births during the years 1946 to 1964.
But the practice of defining generations is more complicated than the theory. Often their labels are about
Source: WaPo
Feb 17, 2008
The Lucasville School opened in 1885, just south of Manassas on a small plot owned by a former slave. It was an austere one-room building with a cast-iron stove and a blackboard and probably had portraits of Frederick Douglass, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on the walls.
For the next 40 years, black students in grades one through six took classes there in subjects such as domestic science, nature study and agriculture. It wasn't fancy, but for children whose parents and gran
Source: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk
Feb 16, 2008
A WORLD War One underground shelter built by Scottish troops has been discovered in Ypres, Belgium.
The Vampire Dugout was found by a team of archaeologists on the site of the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele.
