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: International Herald Tribune
Nov 11, 2007
The spectacle of the queen in a long evening dress and diamond-laden crown holding forth in a mellow monotone about "unclaimed money in dormant bank accounts" and other urgent legislative topics is unsettling enough.
But anyone watching the queen unveil the government's new legislative agenda at the State Opening of Parliament here last week, where that very scene took place, would have noticed something even more jarring. There was the Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw - former
Source: Earth Times
Nov 11, 2007
A new visitors' centre was opened on Sunday at the former Ravensbrueck concentration camp north of Berlin. The 400-square-metre glass-walled structure fits in well with the historic atmosphere of the complex, said Insa Eschebach, head of the Ravensbrueck Memorial Centre.
Tours of what was once the largest women's concentration camp on German soil begin at the new visitors' centre and also end there.
More than 133,000 women and children from Germany, Poland and other cou
Source: http://www.indystar.com
Nov 11, 2007
Just a dull list of kings and dates? No relevance to problems of today? Think again.
Try some unfamiliar work by two of the best novelists of the 1800s: Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. They tell the tale -- facts not fiction -- of complex plots by Mary Queen of Scots, and of the little dog who hid beneath her skirts as she waited for the executioner's ax. Queen Elizabeth I of England convened the court that condemned Mary, who had long been her prisoner, for trying to take Elizabet
Source: Reuters
Nov 11, 2007
Flanked by bustling cafes in downtown Recife on Brazil's northeastern coast is a little-known treasure of Jewish history in the New World -- the oldest synagogue in the Americas.
Sephardic Jews built the two-story Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue before 1641 -- most likely in 1636 -- when they enjoyed religious freedom under the Dutch, who ruled part of the northeast region from 1630 to 1654 to control sugar production.
The Mikve Israel Congregation in Curacao, a Dutch Antill
Source: BBC
Nov 11, 2007
An artist turned to a famous World War II German commander's photographic collection in her research for a mural recalling a former Scots regiment.
Tracey Shough's work commemorating the Seaforth Highlanders covers the walls of Invergordon Railway Station.
She had struggled to find evidence of how Seaforth Highlanders were attired at St Valery-en-Caux in France in 1940.
However, images once belonging to Field Marshal General Erwin Rommel - the Desert Fox -
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Nov 11, 2007
U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, has tried since 1992 to pass the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill, which would give the Filipino WWII veterans full recognition and some better benefits. "Fifty years of injustice still burn in their hearts and memories. They want justice in their last years. It is time that this country adequately recognized their contributions, recognize the injustice, and act to correct it. We must do this to establish our honor - and the honor and dignity of these veteran
Source: NYT Book Review
Nov 11, 2007
Quick! What is the best-selling children’s picture book of all time? You might be surprised to learn it’s “The Poky Little Puppy,” by Janette Sebring Lowrey, originally published in 1942. One of the first 12 Little Golden Books, it has sold more than 15 million copies and is still in print. For her efforts, Lowrey was paid a fee of $75. This and many other delightfully entertaining nuggets of information are included in Leonard S. Marcus’s enthusiastic history of Golden Books.
Marcu
Source: Salon
Nov 11, 2007
King Albert laid a wreath Sunday at the
Monument to the Unknown Soldier while thousands flocked to the site of one of
bloodiest battles of World War I in western Belgium to mark the anniversary of
the war's end.
Ceremonies across Britain, France and Belgium were held on Armistice Day to
commemorate the end of the war on Nov. 11, 1918.
In London, Queen Elizabeth II paid silent tribute at the Cenotaph memorial to
those who have died serving Britain since World War I. For the first
Source: http://www.thestar.com
Nov 11, 2007
Like that old axiom about riddles, enigmas and mysteries, perhaps some of the soldiers bogged down in the World War I fight for Passchendaele saw in the battle futility, wrapped in recklessness, wrapped in death.
At least that's how the hindsight of history remembers it.
The drive for the tiny, already burnt-out Belgian village, which would offer little in the way of a prized capture, had already annihilated entire divisions of exhausted Britons, Australians and New Zea
Source: WaPo
Nov 10, 2007
The Wall stands between the girl and a War.
The girl presses her fingers against the granite. Her fingers run along the names cut into the black stone.
"That is Nana's brother," a man is explaining to the girl.
"But how did he get inside the wall?" the girl asks.
Her question hangs near the Wall. It is an innocent question, the kind of question the Wall must have heard often since its dedication 25 years ago next week. Simpl
Source: Baltimore Sun
Nov 10, 2007
Avoiding the glare of a media spotlight he once craved, Arthur H. Bremer was quietly released from a state prison in Hagerstown in the predawn hours yesterday - 35 years after shooting and paralyzing former Alabama Gov. George Wallace at a 1972 campaign rally in Maryland.
Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said Bremer will stay in Maryland but would not say where he will reside.
"The department feels that the pu
Source: NYT
Nov 10, 2007
A Chinese government panel announced plans on Friday to revamp the holiday schedule to re-emphasize traditional festivals at the expense of the Marxist May Day celebration.
The new schedule aims to address the severe overloading of China’s air, rail and road links in the first week of May, when virtually the entire country goes on vacation. But gridlock may remain around the two other major holidays — essentially a week each — at the Chinese New Year and in the first week of October
Source: Reuters
Nov 10, 2007
A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday.
The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig.
It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthe
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nov 10, 2007
Letters have always been the lifeblood for soldiers and their families back home.
The ones from Roy E. Kidd to his folks in Emsworth are yellowed from the 90 years that have passed since he wrote them in 1918 as a young infantryman with the American Expeditionary Force in war-ravaged Europe.
As a first-hand account of the horrors of World War I trench warfare, they're too mundane to offer much insight. The sentiment of the day was to avoid nasty descriptions of life at
Source: AFP
Nov 10, 2007
A synagogue in the western German city of Cologne yesterday reclaimed a Torah roll damaged 69 years ago to the day during the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, pogrom against Jewish citizens and businesses.
The valuable Hebrew Bible Scripture arrived in Cologne after being restored in Jerusalem and was formally presented to the city's Jewish community during a memorial ceremony.
During the night of Nov. 9 to 10, 1938, a German Catholic priest, Gustav Meinertz, ri
Source: LiveScience
Nov 9, 2007
Jezebel, the queen whose name became synonymous with all things lewd and wicked, probably wielded a fair bit of power in ancient Israel, suggests a stone document seal newly traced to the Biblical "bad girl."
Originally discovered in Israel in 1964, the intricate seal was suspected all along to belong to Queen Jezebel, but confusion over the letters engraved on the stone left some uncertainty.
Recently, closer scrutiny of the seal's engraving revealed markings
Source: AP
Nov 9, 2007
The family of man who held a fragment of a more than 1,000-year-old manuscript of the Hebrew Bible for six decades as a good luck charm will present it to a Jerusalem institute next week, officials said Thursday.
The parchment, about "the size of a credit card," is believed to be part of the most authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, the Aleppo Codex, said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben Zvi institute.
It contains verses from the Boo
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 9, 2007
Turkana Boy, considered the most complete early human fossil, is being removed from his bomb-proof vault to take centre stage at an exhibition that curators say will provide the most complete record of the evolution of Man.
However, the collection, to be show-cased for the first time at the Nairobi National Museum after a £5 million renovation financed by the European Union, has drawn sharp criticism from evangelical Christians who deny the theory of evolution.
They, in
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Nov 9, 2007
On November 7, 2007, the House Administration Committee held a hearing on the role slave labor played in the construction of the United States Capitol. The Slave Laborers Task Force, chaired by Representative John Lewis (D-GA), submitted a report and recommendations to the Committee on how to best commemorate the contribution of enslaved African Americans in building the Capitol.
The Task Force recommended:
Commemorative plaques and building stone, quarried by slave lab
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Nov 9, 2007
This week, Congress sent to the President, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill (H.R. 3043; H. Report 110-424). The conference agreement includes $120 million for the Teaching of Traditional American History program at the Department of Education, a $210,000 increase over the FY 2007 level. The conferees also recommended that the Department provide initial three-year grants, with two additional years if a grantee is performing effectively.
