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: Baltimore Sun
Oct 12, 2007
Turkey, which is a key supply route to U.S. troops in Iraq, recalled its ambassador to Washington yesterday and warned of serious repercussions if Congress labels the killing of Armenians by Turks a century ago as genocide.After the House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the genocide measure, the summons of the ambassador for consultations was a further sign of deteriorating relations between two longtime allies and the potential for new turmoil in a troubled region.
Source: The Courier Mail (Australia)
Oct 12, 2007
Historians are divided over whether Prime Minister John Howard's blueprint for how history should be taught adequately covers the nation's past.Bond University history lecturer Shirleene Robinson described the guide as narrow and selective, whitewashing away the worst aspects of Australia's history, especially its sometimes racist past.
"I think in many ways it's a very white perspective," Dr Robinson said.
She said the guide appeared to u
Source: AP
Oct 11, 2007
In 1559, a hurricane sent up to seven Spanish sailing vessels to the bottom of Pensacola Bay, hampering Don Tristan de Luna's attempt to colonize this section of the Florida Panhandle. Now, almost 500 years later, a second of those ships has been found, helping archaeologists learn about the settlement, which ended in 1561.
Some 650 pieces of artifacts — mostly pieces of pottery and wood — were on display Thursday for about 100 people who gathered at the north end of Pensacola Bay B
Source: Daily Mail
Oct 11, 2007
A chilling new book about Hitler's Lebensborn programme - the sinister project to create the perfect Aryan race to rule the world for 1,000 years - shows the Nazis kidnapped thousands of children from occupied countries to fill the demand for future manpower.
Lebensborn, or Fount of Life, was hitherto thought to be just a breeding programme where S.S. "studs" mated with suitable female specimens in Nazi nursing homes.
Nine months later the offspring were
Source: http://www.saipantribune.com
Oct 11, 2007
Recently discovered rare Kodachrome slides taken on a remote Pacific Island during World War II will lead Gregg Hagley of Grand Rapids and his two sons on a historic journey.
Staff Sergeant Raymond H. Hagley of the 73rd Bombardment Wing of the 20th Air Force took the slide photos while stationed at Isley Field on Saipan in 1944/1945. Before Hagley passed away in January 1991, he gave the slides to his son, Gregg Hagley. “I knew they were special, just how special I wasn't sure until
Source: BBC
Oct 11, 2007
Plans have been unveiled to refurbish a visitor centre on the site where rebel leader Owain Glyndwr is thought to have set up his parliament 600 years ago.
The group behind the £2.7m project in Machynlleth, Powys, intends to bid for heritage lottery funding.
Source: The Age
Oct 11, 2007
Prime Minister John Howard has described the "neglect" of history teaching in Australian schools as "shameful", announcing that he would make the subject compulsory for all students in years 9 and 10.
Mr Howard said students would be made to attend 150 hours of Australian history lessons over two or three years from 2009.
The history guide, to be distributed across the nation, says it is intended for study in years nine and 10, but the first three of
Source: MSNBC
Oct 11, 2007
French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.
The painting, which measures about six feet by six feet, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, said team leader Eric Coqueugniot.
"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dat
Source: NYT
Oct 11, 2007
People started waiting at the Union Square Barnes & Noble at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, five hours before former President Jimmy Carter was scheduled to begin signing his latest book. By 5, the event was filled to capacity. In the line that snaked through the fourth floor was a couple who had dressed their toddler in a T-shirt that declared, “I’m nuts about Jimmy Carter,” and a man who had bought 50 copies of Mr. Carter’s “Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease and Building Hope” (
Source: NYT
Oct 11, 2007
Turkey reacted angrily today to a House committee vote in Washington on Wednesday that condemned the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as an act of genocide, calling the decision “unacceptable.”
In a rare and uncharacteristically strong condemnation, President Abdullah Gul criticized the vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee and warned that the decision could work against the United States.
“Unfortunately, some politicians in the United Sta
Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za
Oct 10, 2007
Mural paintings dating back 11 000 years have been found in a building on a bank of the River Euphrates in northern Syria, a French archaeologist said on Tuesday.
Eric Coqueugniot said they were the oldest murals found in the Middle East.
"Geometric paintings - black, white and red - have been found on the wall of a house in Jadeh," he said, adding that they were discovered in late September in a circular house with a diameter of about seven metres.
Source: AP
Oct 10, 2007
Archeologists in Portugal have found more than 4,500 Roman coins bundled together inside the wall of a blacksmith's house dating from the fourth century.
Antonio Sa Coixao, who is leading excavations in Coriscada in northeastern Portugal, said Wednesday by telephone the 4,526 copper and bronze coins were inside a hollow wall.
Source: AP
Oct 10, 2007
Archaeologists have discovered a Roman cemetery from about 300 A.D. in suburban Copenhagen with about 30 graves, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"It is something special and rare in Denmark to have so many (ancient Roman) graves in one place," archaeologist Rune Iversen was quoted as saying by the Roskilde Dagblad newspaper.
The graveyard's exact location in Ishoej, southwest of downtown Copenhagen, was being kept secret until the archaeologists from the near
Source: NYT
Oct 10, 2007
... [His] Jehovah-like Daddy dominates the early chapters of “My Grandfather’s Son,” Justice Thomas’s selectively revealing, often harshly self-critical memoir. It’s a strange hybrid. The book begins as a moving evocation of a difficult childhood in the Deep South and, as Justice Thomas works his way though college and law school, takes on the outlines of an inspirational American success story.
The tone changes when Justice Thomas, fed up with liberal policies on race, accepts Ron
Source: AP
Oct 10, 2007
A U.S. congressional panel defied President George W. Bush on Wednesday and approved a measure calling the killings of Armenians early in the last century genocide. Bush had warned this would damage U.S. goals in the Middle East.
The measure that would recognize the killings of Armenians as a genocide had been strongly opposed by Turkey, a key NATO ally that has provided support to U.S. efforts in Iraq.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee's 27-21 vote now sends the meas
Source: AP
Oct 10, 2007
A first edition book by 18th-century writer Phillis Wheatley, who published her first poem when she was 13, was acquired by the University of South Carolina.
There are roughly 100 first editions of Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," Patrick Scott, director of rare books and special collections at the university's Thomas Cooper Library, said Thursday.
Wheatley, who was born in 1753 in Africa, was kidnapped by slave traders and sold on
Source: AP
Oct 10, 2007
Catholic priest accused in a series of deaths and kidnappings during Argentina's Dirty War was convicted and sentenced to life in prison Tuesday
Former police chaplain Christian von Wernich was found guilty of being a "co-participant" with police in seven homicides, 31 torture cases and 42 kidnappings, ending a trial that has focused attention on the church during the 1976-83 military rule.
Hundreds of people beat drums and set off fireworks outside the feder
Source: LiveScience
Oct 9, 2007
Ancient Greek craftsmen didn't need fancy math to cobble together the first catapult, a new study of ancient texts suggests. Archimedes' laws and theories just helped make the weapon better.
The first catapult in Europe flung into action around the fourth century B.C., prior to the invention of mathematical models that revolutionized ancient technologies, said Mark Schiefsky, a Harvard University classics professor who led the study.
"It seems that the early stages
Source: JTA
Oct 9, 2007
The first and only team in 70 years is conducting field research on Jewish folklore in the historic region of Podolia, the only place in the Pale of Settlement where Jewish life survived the Holocaust intact.
The visiting scholars from St. Petersburg aren’t here to dwell on Jewish demise, however. They have come to document Jewish life in what expedition leader Valery Dymshits calls “the last Jewish city in the Soviet Union,” Mogilev-Podolsky.
As recently as the early 1
Source: Voice of America
Oct 9, 2007
A new book explores how global warming is linked to the worst mass extinctions in earth's history. In Under a Green Sky, paleontologist Peter Ward recounts how a sharp CO2 rise accelerated dramatic environmental changes in the past, and what that can tell us about our future.
