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: LiveScience
Aug 27, 2007
Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says.Historical evidence, including legal documents and gravesites, can be interpreted as supporting the prevalence of homosexual relationships hundreds of years ago, said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
If accurate, the results indicate socially sanctioned same-sex unions are nothing new, nor were they taboo in the past. For example, he f
Source: McClatchy
Aug 26, 2007
If Harry S Truman did it, why can’t George W. Bush?
Truman came back from the political abyss — his public approval rating sank as low as 22 percent thanks in large part to America’s entry into the Korean War and his handling of labor disputes at home — to become regarded by historians as one of the nation’s top 10 presidents. Lately, some Bush administration officials and White House associates have predicted that President Bush — mired in an unpopular war in Iraq and saddled with
Source: Houston Chronicle
Aug 26, 2007
Drifting down Buffalo Bayou in a pontoon boat on a humid summer afternoon, Louis Aulbach sees 300 Comanches camping out at the Wortham Center and tall grass rippling south past bumper-to-bumper traffic on Prairie, as far as the eye can see.
Aulbach's not hallucinating from the Bayou City's intense summer heat — he's a history buff.
"In Houston, it's very easy to ignore the history, but that's not to say that there isn't any," said Aulbach, 59. "You just h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 26, 2007
As battle raged across the fields of Flanders, British soldiers found brief respite from the horrors of the First World War in "underground towns" far below the mud and gore. Now, more than 90 years after the armies left and the extraordinary networks of tunnels were flooded, the task of finally revealing their secrets has begun.
The prize, archaeologists and historians believe, is an unprecedented insight into the lives of British troops on the Western Front.
Source: http://www.zwire.com
Aug 26, 2007
Henry McCabe said it's been more than 30 years since the wreckage of the Acadia, a Confederate side-wheeler, has been visible in the Yazoo River.
Now - with the river's water level so low - this piece of Civil War naval history has once again come into view.
"It was about two and half or three weeks ago when I saw it for the first time. I saw that axle sticking up in the river. Then I started watching the river," said McCabe, a lifelong Civil War buff.
Source: http://www.novinite.com
Aug 26, 2007
Bulgarian archaeologists discovered a Christian necropolis outside the ruins of the medieval fortress near the rock sanctuary of Perperikon, located in southern Bulgaria near the town of Kardzhali.
The team lead by Nikolay Ovcharov found 15 tombs dating back to the 14th century, most likely the resting place of the fortress' defenders executed following its siege by Turkish emir Orhan in 1362.
Source: AP
Aug 26, 2007
After six decades in which the venerable greenback never changed its look, the U.S.
currency has undergone a slew of makeovers. The most
amazing is yet to come.
A new security thread has been approved for the $100
bill, The Associated Press has learned, and the change
will cause double-takes.
The new look is part of an effort to thwart
counterfeiters who are armed with ever-more
sophisticated computers, scanners and color copiers.
The C-note, with features the likeness of Benja
Source: NYT
Aug 26, 2007
THEY were a handful of Russians in their 50s, these children of the old intelligentsia who gathered from around Europe this summer in a birch forest 100 miles south of Moscow for something somewhat surprising: a joyous journey back into their Soviet past.
Source: Clark Hoyt, public editor of the NYT, in the NYT
Aug 26, 2007
A BUSINESS strategy of The New York Times to get its articles to pop up first in Internet searches is creating a perplexing problem: long-buried information about people that is wrong, outdated or incomplete is getting unwelcome new life.
People are coming forward at the rate of roughly one a day to complain that they are being embarrassed, are worried about losing or not getting jobs, or may be losing customers because of the sudden prominence of old news articles that contain erro
Source: NYT
Aug 26, 2007
AS the nations of Europe leapt to arms in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson’s mind turned to President James Madison and the war with England in 1812.
“Madison and I are the only two Princeton men who have become president,” Wilson observed ominously in a letter, noting that tensions with Great Britain over its naval blockage of Germany recalled earlier disputes with England about freedom of the seas. “The circumstances of the War of 1812 and now run parallel. I sincerely hope they wil
Source: NYT
Aug 26, 2007
RICHARD NIXON had definite views about how the wife of a presidential candidate should campaign. In 1992, he was watching a lawyer named Hillary Clinton aggressively defend her husband in New Hampshire.
“If the wife comes through as being too strong and too intelligent,” Mr. Nixon observed, “it makes the husband look like a wimp.”
Now, 15 years later, strong and intelligent women are out in force on the campaign trail, and the focus is not just on how they reflect on th
Source: WaPo
Aug 26, 2007
You've heard of the Staten Island ferry, and perhaps even ridden it, but the adventure is hardly over once you've docked.
The 59-square-mile Staten Island sits at the entrance to New York harbor between New Jersey and Brooklyn. Named after the Dutch parliament by explorer Henry Hudson, in 1898 it became one of the five boroughs that make up New York City. Since its settlement in the 17th century, its bucolic hills and shoreline have given it an almost rural ambiance. It is the least
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 25, 2007
It's been an emotional week for relatives of the 70 men who died aboard the USS Grunion during World War II.
First, late Wednesday, the son of the submarine's commander spotted what is almost definitely its wreckage, in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Kiska, Alaska.
Then yesterday, the mission to inform the crewmembers' relatives that the ship had been found was completed. After articles appeared in Detroit newspapers yesterday, a woman called in to a local radio station and
Source: Toronto Star
Aug 25, 2007
In the face of damning evidence in the form of a YouTube video and police surveillance footage, Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday to planting undercover police officers amid protesters at this week's North American leaders' summit in Montebello, Que.
To many of the protesters who witnessed three men in masks holding rocks get overpowered by police – the same trio later identified by the Sûreté du Québec as cops in disguise – the implicating video only confirmed what they al
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2007
A British re-enactment society that has portrayed the SS in films and on television has been infiltrated by neo-Nazis, according to a BBC investigation.
People associated with the Second Battle Group, which featured in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, claimed they were members of the far-Right Blood and Honour organisation and complained of German blood being tainted by "jigaboos".
The claims were made in footage filmed by the BBC Panorama unit, which f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2007
Legend has it that the royal tombs of ancient Egypt were sealed with monstrous curses against all those who trespassed into the domain of the afterlife....
Howard Carter, the lead archaeologist who opened the tomb in 1923, wrote that "all sane people should dismiss such inventions with contempt".
But a German man has decided the curse of the mummies is definitely not a myth - and has therefore returned a plundered ancient Egyptian carving which he says has fat
Source: http://greatreporter.com
Aug 25, 2007
The grandiose mansions Adolf Hitler erected in Germany may have vanished, but their vast bunkers remain largely intact..
More than 60 years have passed, but the quaint Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, nestled amidst a stunning Alpine panorama, still struggles with its heritage of having been Adolf Hitler's favourite hideaway.
The Berchtesgaden Tourism Office is reluctant to actively promote the former Obersalzberg site just above the town and is not particularly eager to answe
Source: NYT
Aug 25, 2007
Reputed Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale showed no emotion Friday as he was sentenced to three life terms in prison for his role in the segregation-era abduction and killing of two black teenagers.
Seale, 72, was convicted June 14 on federal charges of kidnapping and conspiracy in the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, two 19-year-olds who disappeared May 2, 1964. Seale and other Klansman beat them, then dumped them into the Mississippi River still alive, accordi
Source: Today's Zaman
Aug 24, 2007
Bavaria, one of Germany’s federal states, has won a legal battle to get the publication and sale of Adolf Hitler’s infamous book “Mein Kampf” banned in Turkey after the book became a best-seller here, a Turkish news report said yesterday.
The court case was the latest attempt on the part of Bavaria to stop Turkish publication and sale of the book written by Hitler in prison before he rose to power, reports the daily Hürriyet. After becoming a best-seller in Turkey earlier this year,
Source: CNN
Aug 24, 2007
German police have charged the leader of a leading far-right political party with inciting racial hatred after he recommended Adolf Hitler's former deputy for the Nobel peace prize.
Police in the eastern city of Jena said on Friday they had filed the charge against Udo Voigt, head of the National Democratic Party (NPD), after he proposed the late Rudolf Hess for the prestigious award during a speech last weekend.
If convicted of incitement, Voigt could face a jail term
