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.24dash.com
Nov 20, 2007
A royal Anglo-Saxon burial ground and some of the finest gold jewellery ever unearthed in the country has been discovered by a freelance archaeologist.
The 109-grave cemetery is arranged in a rectangular pattern and dates from the middle of the 7th Century.
The cemetery, bed burial and high status objects are considered to all indicate the people buried must have connections with Anglo-Saxon royalty.
Traditionally, Anglo Saxon royalty were always buried in
Source: Scotsman
Nov 20, 2007
PEOPLE wanting to spend £25,000 on an antique Bible usually head to a top auction house, where they are given a glossy catalogue and fed canapés to nibble while they study it.
But now eBay, the no-frills internet auction site, has just such a rarity up for grabs.
Any would-be buyer surfing the net from their bedroom can bid for a leather-bound Bible carried by Sir Patrick Hume in the 17th century.
Bidding started at £12,000, and a bid of £25,000 will secure
Source: EdWeek.org
Nov 20, 2007
National tests in several core subjects could be eliminated or scaled back over the next five years without more federal funding, the officials who set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress said last week.
Scheduled exams in economics, foreign language, geography, and world history could be canceled if funding remains flat, as is projected.
Moreover, some grade levels would not be tested in civics, U.S. history, and writing, and the next administrat
Source: NYT
Nov 20, 2007
The Supreme Court agreed today to consider an issue that has divided politicians, constitutional scholars and ordinary citizens for decades: whether the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual right to “keep and bear arms.”
The justices agreed to hear an appeal from the District of Columbia, whose gun-control law — one of the strictest in the nation — was struck down by the lower federal courts earlier this year. The case will probably be argued in the spring.
Source: Washington Times
Nov 20, 2007
Is America ready for a first spouse? Voters will decide next year, but the U.S. Mint isn't taking any chances.
The Mint yesterday, with help from first lady Laura Bush, released the fourth coin in its new First Spouses series.
Mrs. Bush referred to the coin collection as the "First Lady" series in her prepared remarks. But the U.S. Mint named the series the "First Spouse" collection when it was announced last year.
Could the gender-neutr
Source: AP
Nov 20, 2007
Archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled an underground grotto believed to have been revered by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the city's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.
Decorated with seashells and colored marble, the vaulted sanctuary is buried 52 feet inside the Palatine hill, the palatial center of power in imperial Rome, the archaeologists said at a news conference.
In the past two years, experts have been probing the space with end
Source: NYT
Nov 20, 2007
The Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents voted Monday to undertake a major capital campaign to help raise the $2.5 billion needed to improve and repair its buildings. It is the first large-scale private fund-raising effort in the organization’s history.
Because the Smithsonian gets 70 percent of its $1 billion operating budget from the federal government, raising money from private sources will be a significant departure for the institution.
The plan also promises
Source: BBC
Nov 19, 2007
The Canadian city of Quebec wants to get hold of part of the wreckage of a wooden sailing ship submerged off the north Wales coast for 101 years.
The vessel, the City of Ottawa, has been laid up on a sandbar in Rhyl's Foryd harbour since 1906, where it was taken to be broken up.
Built in Quebec in 1860, one of the city's councillors, Rainer Bloess, wants a beam or relic from the ship.
Denbighshire Council said it was happy to work with the Canadian authorit
Source: AP
Nov 19, 2007
Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state and charged him Monday with crimes against humanity and war crimes, a spokesman said.
Khieu Samphan was the last of five senior officials of the brutal regime to be taken in custody ahead of a long-delayed genocide trial.
Police arrested Khieu Samphan, 76, at a Phnom Penh hospital where he had been undergoing treatment since Nov. 14 after a stroke. Officers held his arms to support h
Source: Washington Times
Nov 19, 2007
Say this about Bruce Salisbury — he knows how to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Five years ago, the World War II veteran and his wife, Dottie, stopped for a sandwich after driving through the Rockies near Telluride, Colo., when she had an idea.
"She looks at these mountains and she says, 'Wouldn't it be nice if one of these mountains were named after all the guys who didn't make it home?' " Mr. Salisbury said.
Last month, it finally happened.
Source: AP
Nov 19, 2007
Twenty years after her accusations of a racially charged rape became a national flash point and made the Rev. Al Sharpton a national figure, Tawana Brawley's mother and stepfather want to reopen the case, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Glenda Brawley and Ralph King want to press New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo to re-examine the reported November 1987 incident, which a state grand jury concluded was a hoax, according to the Daily News.
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2007
At Berkeley Plantation [where the president went today to celebrate Thanksgiving], Bush got a little history lesson.
The site claims America's first official Thanksgiving in 1619, when a group of British settlers knelt in prayer of thanks for a healthy arrival across the Atlantic. Their proclamation of thanks is carved into the ''Thanksgiving Shrine'' that Bush visited.
Of course, Plymouth, Mass., is best known as the home of Thanksgiving, as the place where Pilgrims an
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 19, 2007
The flood associated with the story of Noah's Ark led to the spread of agriculture across Europe, researchers have discovered.
Archaeologists have dated the flooding of the Black Sea to around 6,300BC and believe the sudden rise in sea levels in south-east Europe pushed communities west, where they continued to farm and make pottery.
The date at which the Black Sea was connected to the Mediterranean had previously been placed at somewhere between 5,600BC and 7,600 BC, b
Source: http://www.dewsburyreporter.co.uk
Nov 19, 2007
THE first evidence of a Bronze Age settlement in Dewsbury has been uncovered at a sewage works in Earlsheaton.
The dig, which is being carried out at the Mitchell Laithes water treatment works on Headland Lane, has uncovered a possible burial ground, called a barrow, and items thought to date back to Roman times.
One item archaeologists uncovered was a pot thought to contain human ashes, which is believed to be about 3,500 years old.
Source: Newsweek
Nov 19, 2007
Bill Clinton is never at a loss for company. When he's not globe-trotting or charming audiences for as much as $400,000 a speech, he's often schmoozing visitors in his suite of offices in Harlem. Last July, the former president sat down with a billionaire impressed with the William J. Clinton Foundation's campaign against AIDS in Africa. The two men chatted amiably over lunch for more than two hours, and the visitor pledged to write Clinton's foundation a generous check. But there was something
Source: Newsweek
Nov 19, 2007
The 1968 election is four decades old, and yet we're still rehashing that moment—that era—in the 2008 contest. Why do we come back to it? And why won't it leave us alone?
Barack Obama was born in the 1960s but is not of them. Such is the constant promise of his presidential campaign. Announcing his candidacy last January, he vowed to lead a "new generation" unencumbered by the divisive struggles of the past. By last week, when a Fox News reporter asked him to define the di
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2007
WHEN Dan Crews was 15, he struck a deal that few boys his age would have considered. He swapped $20 worth of baseball cards with a neighbor for a musty World War II uniform brought back from Europe 30 years earlier....
For collectors of World War II memorabilia like Mr. Crews — who specializes in collectibles from British, American or German soldiers who served during the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge — the war has never really ended. The collectors scour the Intern
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2007
In the fall of 2005, Charles Hack, a New Yorker who has made a fortune in real estate and spent a lot of it on old master paintings and Renaissance sculpture, noticed a newspaper advertisement for an auction of a rare stamp.
The 24-cent airmail stamp issued in 1918, popularly known to collectors as the Inverted Jenny, became famous — and valuable — because of an error: the airplane in the center of the design, a Curtiss JN-4, is printed upside-down. Only 100 of the misprints are kno
Source: http://www.missoulian.com
Nov 18, 2007
The oversized cartridge was lying on ground left black by last summer's Jocko Lakes wildfire.
When Anya Minetz spotted it last month, she could see it was something special.
“Come look at this one,” she called to C. Milo McLeod, who was sifting through the detritus of a modern-day hunter's camp west of Seeley Lake. He came, saw and performed a double-take.
“That's from a Spencer rifle,” McLeod said.
He knew because he owns one of the 1860s-vint
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2007
All big accomplishments in sports are seen through a contemporary prism, suggests John Thorn, a baseball historian and an editor of “Total Baseball.” “By definition, your view is distorted when you have your nose up against the glass,” he says.
In baseball, the plot has a cyclical familiarity. In almost every case, the new record holder is seen as a villain, an exemplar of new and dangerous times, while the previous record holder is an unburdened hero. “It’s such a simple story, you
