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: AP
Feb 12, 2008
Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is.
The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure....
On Tues
Source: PR Newswire
Feb 11, 2008
In commemoration of the
75th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the National Archives
Experience, in collaboration with the Library of Congress's American
Folklife Center, is pleased to present programs in remembrance of the New
Deal and its enduring legacy. These events are free and open to the public.
National Archives events will be held in the William G. McGowan Theater of
the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., which is located on the
National Mall at Consti
Source: Boston Herald
Feb 11, 2008
A restoration effort at the historic African Meeting House in Boston is getting a big boost courtesy of Wal-Mart.
The retail giant is donating $250,000 to the effort to restore the meeting house to its original 19th century glory.
The donation was accepted at a ceremony Monday at the Museum of African American History.
Source: Courier-Journal
Feb 11, 2008
One floor below what was once Abraham Lincoln's office, President and Mrs. Bush last night hosted a White House celebration of the 16th president's legacy.
Two days before Lincoln's 199th birthday and the Kentucky kickoff of the bicentennial of his birth, Bush paid tribute to a man who "remains a presence here in the house."
"Of all the successors to George Washington, none had a greater impact on the presidency or on the country," Bush said.
Source: NPR
Feb 11, 2008
Along the coast of Peru, a mysterious civilization sprang up about 5,000 years ago. This was many centuries before the Incan Empire. Yet these people were sophisticated. They cultivated crops and orchards. And they built huge monuments of earth and rock.
Archaeologists are trying to prove that an abrupt change of climate created this new culture.
The culture has no official name yet. It flourished in a series of dry coastal valleys called Norte Chico. The place is a moo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 11, 2008
It was lampooned by Monty Python and spurned by British shoppers, but Spam is fuelling a "raging epidemic" of diabetes, strokes and heart disease among the previously lithe inhabitants of the South Pacific.
Another of Britain's colonial culinary legacies - corned beef - is also being blamed for a rise in obesity-related illnesses in countries once known for muscled warriors and slim-hipped maidens.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 11, 2008
Definitive evidence that Napoleon did not die of arsenic poisoning is published today.
After nearly 200 years of debate about what killed the French emperor, researchers at Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) have examined his hair to shed light on the suggestion that he was poisoned by guards during his exile in Saint Helena, an island in the South Atlantic, following the Battle of Waterloo.
In 1961, an elevated level of arsenic was found in Napoleon's
Source: Reuters
Feb 11, 2008
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro took on front-running U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Monday, accusing him of lying about Cubans torturing American prisoners of war in Vietnam.
At a campaign stop in Miami last month, the Arizona senator told anti-Castro exiles that American POWs held with him in Hanoi were tortured by "a couple of Cubans."
"His accusation against the Cuban revolutionaries ... are completely unethical," Castro w
Source: Baltimore Sun news story
Feb 11, 2008
In campaign literature and speeches, each of the three leading presidential candidates has trumpeted the experience that makes him or her best suited for the job.
A biography on Sen. John McCain's campaign Web site proclaims his "remarkable record of leadership and service." Sen. Barack Obama's Web site describes the "rich and varied experiences" of his life. Sen. Hillary Clinton has spoken of her "35 years of change" and told supporters, "We need
Source: AFP
Feb 11, 2008
Immigration will drive the population of the United States sharply upward between now and 2050, and will push whites into a minority, projections by the Pew Research Center showed Monday.
"If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005," an increase of nearly 50 percent, the study by the Washington-based think-tank said.
More than 80 percent of the increase will be due to immigrants ar
Source: Independent (UK)
Feb 11, 2008
He was Pol Pot's trusted henchman, the brilliant mathematician who calmly fashioned an efficient apparatus of torture and death out of a Phnom Penh high school and who oversaw, during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, the interrogation and cudgelling to death of some 17,000 Cambodians.
In the West he has been called "Cambodia's Heinrich Himmler"; since Pol Pot himself and his lieutenant Ta Mok cheated justice by dying, he is the most vivid symbol of the Khmer Rouge left a
Source: BBC
Feb 11, 2008
The government of Nepal says that the closest airport to Mount Everest has been renamed to honour the first two men known to have climbed the mountain.
The minister of culture and tourism told the BBC that the cabinet had decided that Lukla airstrip will now be known as Tenzing Hillary Airport.
It commemorates the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay and the New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary.
They climbed the peak in 1953. Sir Edmund died last month in New Zeala
Source: LAT
Feb 11, 2008
Bouncing down an empty country road, past browning cotton fields lined with signs advertising church services and cheap guns, historian John A. Lupton hunches over a minivan's steering wheel and ignores his aching back.
He has been traveling for six days -- covering five states and more than 1,400 miles -- in a mentally exhilarating and physically exhausting pursuit of anything handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, as well as documents addressed to him: a frayed envelope the president ad
Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za
Feb 11, 2008
Traffic backed up on a main autobahn through Germany, the A2, on Sunday as bomb disposal experts gingerly tugged the detonator out of a World War 2 Allied bomb.
The recovery of the unexploded 500kg bomb from the soil of Hanover, northern Germany, had been planned weeks in advance, with 12 000 people ordered to leave their apartments nearby for part of the day.
Most went for walks or excursions.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 11, 2008
As many as 50,000 pilgrims are expected to descend on Lourdes on Monday as the Roman Catholic shrine celebrates its 150th anniversary.
It was in the town in the foothills of the Pyrénées on Feb 11, 1858, that 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous claimed to see the first of 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
Despite initial scepticism, she was canonised in 1933. The tourist boom which has since accompanied the town's development has been staggering.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 11, 2008
The Domesday Book is available free online for the first time after the 900-year-old parchment papers were turned into a database that can be read on the internet.
The Domesday Book, the oldest and most famous public record in Britain, was based on the 1086 survey of England which covered 13,418 settlements south of the rivers Ribble and Tees.
Source: CNN
Feb 11, 2008
- A fire has destroyed Namdaemun, South Korea's oldest wooden structure and a national treasure, fire officials said Monday.
Police have arrested a 70-year-old man in connection with the fire, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency.
The fire started around 9 p.m. Sunday and burned for hours.
More than a hundred firefighters poured water on the more-than-600-year-old structure, trying to save it.
Source: NYT
Feb 11, 2008
An eight-ton rock rested for generations at the bottom of the Ohio River, minding its own business as time and currents passed. It favored neither Ohio to the north nor Kentucky to the south. It just — was.
Occasionally, when water levels dropped, the boulder would break the surface long enough to receive the chiseled tattoos of mildly daring people seeking remembrance. But it stopped playing peek-a-boo nearly a century ago, leaving only ephemera in its wake, including a sepia photo
Source: NYT
Feb 11, 2008
The Army is accustomed to protecting classified information. But when it comes to the planning for the Iraq war, even an unclassified assessment can acquire the status of a state secret.
That is what happened to a detailed study of the planning for postwar Iraq prepared for the Army by the RAND Corporation, a federally financed center that conducts research for the military.
After 18 months of research, RAND submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called “Rebuilding Ir
Source: Newsweek
Feb 11, 2008
In the summer of 2003, Warren Bass, an investigator for the 9/11 Commission, was digging through highly classified National Security Council documents when he came across a trove of material that startled him. Buried in the files of former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, the documents seemed to confirm charges that the Bush White House had ignored repeated warnings about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden. Clarke, it turned out, had bombarded national-security adviser Condolee
