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: Fox News
Nov 28, 2007
An Ohio high school has canceled its student theater production of "Ten Little Indians" after local residents complained about a racial slur in the original title of the Agatha Christie novel, which never has been published under that name in this country.
The best-selling murder mystery originally was named "Ten Little N---ers" when it was published in England in 1939.
The name of the book was changed for production in the United States, and the sch
Source: AP
Nov 28, 2007
Deep in Richard Nixon's White House files sit letters from a long-forgotten lobbying campaign to make Mark Felt head of the FBI. Instead, Felt became Deep Throat.
The National Archives released more than 10,000 pages of documents from the Nixon presidency on Wednesday and among them are the urgings of past and present FBI agents and other interested citizens to appoint Felt, then the No. 2 FBI official, as director. Associates described his "outstanding loyalty."
Source: BBC
Nov 28, 2007
The chance to travel through millions of years of history, step into mines over 200 years old and use the world's first underground inclined lift - all possible if a Black Country site is lucky enough to receive a £50m lottery grant.
Mines at Wren's Nest National Nature Reserve in Dudley are part of the bid for the Black Country Urban Park - a project competing against three others for the Big Lottery's Living Landmark Award.
The mines, formerly quarried for their limes
Source: NYT
Nov 28, 2007
In July 1969, while the world was spellbound by the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, President Richard M. Nixon and his close advisers were quietly fretting about a possible nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Their main worry was not a potential enemy of the United States, but one of America’s closest friends.
“The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear wea
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 28, 2007
He is a French aristocrat who created a stir in America as a precocious teenager, and then returned decades later to the United States to be celebrated in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston.
The Marquis de Lafayette? Yes, of course. But that was then. This time, it is his great-great-great grandson.
Arnaud Meunier du Houssoy arrived in New York from Paris on Saturday to be celebrated at events in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the nation's capital to mark
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nov 28, 2007
Like the grimy, black dust that coats coal mines, grief and misery blanketed a West Virginia town and two Western Pennsylvania communities in December 1907.
That was the U.S. coal mining industry's darkest month because during those 31 days, five disasters extinguished the lives of more than 700 men. In Pennsylvania, two separate explosions, one at the Darr Mine in Westmoreland County and another at the Naomi Mine in Fayette County, killed 273 men.
But the deadliest coa
Source: Daily Mail
Nov 28, 2007
In a politically correct age, they seem like outrageous anachronisms.
And there is no doubt these adverts - many taken from the first half of the last century - reveal just how much women used to be caricatured as downtrodden housewives or hair-brained office girls.
Now, a new book [actually: a reissue of an old book] - You Mean A Woman Can Open It?: The Woman's Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising - brings together images which would surely cause a howl of protest
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 28, 2007
The missing section of a 17th century cabinet worth £1 million has been found outside the toilets of a pizza restaurant in Yorkshire.
The cabinet will go on auction at Sotheby's next month
It had been feared that the stand used to hold the intricate piece of furniture featuring scenes of Rome had been lost forever.
But the carved wooden table which forms the bottom half of the cabinet was recently discovered in an Ask pizzeria, in York, by the Head of Sotheby’s M
Source: NYT
Nov 28, 2007
The final five designs in the popular State Quarters series were announced yesterday by the United States Mint.
The new coins will be minted and issued in 10-week intervals throughout 2008 with designs honoring Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii. These coins wrap up the series that began in 1999 with a quarter honoring Delaware. Surveys by the Mint have found that nearly half of all Americans collect the state quarters, either in casual accumulations or as a serious nu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 28, 2007
A macabre 17th century book about the execution of Gunpowder Plot conspirator Father Henry Garnet believed to be bound in the priest's own skin will go under the hammer this Sunday.
Perhaps most spooky of all, some claim to see an image of the priest's tortured face peering out of the anthropodermic binding of 'A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederats'.
Source: In These Times
Nov 27, 2007
In late October, Jackson County, Ore., re-opened the doors to 15 of its public libraries after a lack of funds had forced them shut on April 6 - the largest library closure in U.S. history. However, as patrons returned to the bookshelves in the southern Oregon county, they learned that their libraries are now under private, for-profit management.
Oregon suffered a $150 million budget shortfall - and Jackson County a $23 million loss - in fiscal year 2007, after the federal gove
Source: AP
Nov 27, 2007
A thief broke into offices at a Berlin church during Sunday services and stole a valuable 300-year-old illuminated bible, police said.
In addition to the richly illustrated 1704 bible, the thief, or thieves, also made off with an undisclosed amount of money, police said Tuesday.
Priest Dieter Spanknebel wrote an appeal on Web site of the Neukoelln neighborhood's Martin Luther church, saying the bible would be difficult for a thief to sell.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 27, 2007
Even though they achieved independence more than a century ago, the Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America often look to Spain as a reference point. Sometimes the mother country is a foil, sometimes a support, sometimes a mirror, for what unfolds on this side of the Atlantic.
In recent weeks, Spain clearly has been cast as both a punching bag for Latin America's leftists and a bastion of valor for its moderates, after a dissing match in which a king of Spain took offense at a Ve
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 27, 2007
A former curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum was acquitted Tuesday of conspiring to acquire an ancient funerary wreath that Greek officials say was illegally removed from Greece about 15 years ago, judicial officials said.
The former curator, Marion True, 59, was not present at the hearing. But the ruling, issued unanimously by the three-member criminal appeals court, followed a motion of dismissal that her lawyer, Yannis Yannides, submitted at the start of the trial last week, cit
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2007
The German government invited architects yesterday to submit proposals for the task of reconstructing Berlin’s Stadtschloss, a Baroque royal palace torn down in 1950, Bloomberg News reported. The project is to include the partial re-creation of its facade and a towering cupola. A panel of specialists, including the architects David Chipperfield, Giorgio Grassi and Petra Kahlfeldt, is to judge entries in a competition lasting until November 2008, the German building minister, Wolfgang Tiefensee,
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2007
What may be medicine’s most famous feud — and certainly one of its longest-lived — has apparently ended.
It involved two of the world’s greatest heart surgeons, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey and Dr. Denton A. Cooley. As partners, they pioneered operations at Baylor Medical College and Methodist Hospital in Houston in the 1950s that have stood the test of time.
But for 40 years, until a surprise reconciliation a month ago, these men with Texas-size egos exchanged few words, eve
Source: Reuters
Nov 27, 2007
Residents of an Orlando neighborhood of $500,000 homes are stepping gingerly these days since finding live World War II explosives next to a middle school, a day care center, homes and businesses.
"We are stressing what we call the three Rs," said Nancy Sticht, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which she said means to recognize, retreat and report suspected bombs. "They're old but being old doesn't make them any less dangerous. They can become more u
Source: Wired.com
Nov 27, 2007
Hangovers rarely inspire scientific breakthroughs. But Billy Quinn's eureka moment occurred on just such a head-pounding morning in 2003. After a night spent carousing at a pub in Galway, Ireland, he and colleague Declan Moore were discussing their plans for the day over a traditional breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, white pudding, beans, and fried potatoes. The two archaeologists were scheduled to excavate a nearby grassy mound known as a fulacht fiadh (pronounced "full-o
Source: AP
Nov 27, 2007
When Matthew Kuehne dives to the sandy bottom of Pensacola Bay, he reaches back 450 years to Spaniard Don Tristan de Luna's hurricane-doomed effort to form the first colony in the present-day United States.
Archaeologists say the buried hull of a ship from de Luna's fleet of 11 ships holds crucial clues to the 1559 expedition, which sailed from Mexico to Florida's Panhandle.
The ship's discovery was announced in October after lead sheeting and pottery from the wreck sit
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nov 27, 2007
The young men and women toiling in jeans, bandannas and cargo pants to the side of Ga. 372 in Cherokee County look more like hikers or a Grateful Dead audience than road-builders. Their metal detectors and dirt sifters hanging from bamboo tripods look more like camping gear than the tools of transportation.
The workers are archaeologists, and under federal law, they are as critical to laying asphalt as the machines that make a roadbed or laborers who spread tar.
Georgia
