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: WaPo
Jul 12, 2007
Two old steamer trunks sit in the rare-book room at the Virginia Historical Society, looking worn and forlorn. The smaller one was once red but the paint has faded to a dull rust. The larger one is brown with a piece of tin patching a hole in the top. On one side, a name is stenciled: "M. LEE."
That's Mary Custis Lee, Gen. Robert E. Lee's adventurous eldest daughter. In 1917, she stored these wooden trunks in the "silver vault" in the basement of Burke &
Source: BBC
Jul 12, 2007
Allied soldiers killed in one of the bloodiest battles of World War I have been remembered by the Queen during an official visit to Belgium.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh attended a commemoration service marking the 90th anniversary of the battle of Passchendaele.
The service at Tyne Cot cemetery, near Ypres, was also attended by Belgium's Queen Paola and around 4,000 locals.
Almost 11,000 servicemen are buried in the Commonwealth war cemetery.
Source: National Geographic News
Jul 12, 2007
Seven skeletons discovered in a remote New Mexico canyon were victims of a brutal massacre that may have been part of an ancient campaign of genocide, archaeologists say.
The victims—five adults, one child, and one infant—were members of an obscure native culture known as the Gallina, which occupied a small region of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100 (see New Mexico map).
The culture suddenly vanished around 1275, as the last of its members either left the region
Source: NYT
Jul 12, 2007
A Mexican judge issued an injunction on Thursday that could prevent former President Luis Echeverria from facing trial for his alleged role in a 1968 massacre of leftist students.
Echeverria, 85, has been under house arrest since late last year after a Mexican court ordered him to be tried over the so-called Tlatelolco massacre.
Echeverria's lawyer Juan Velasquez told Reuters a federal judge had granted him a type of injunction commonly used in Mexico on the grounds tha
Source: Earth Times
Jul 12, 2007
Thousands of marchers will be holding a gay rally outside a landmark department store in downtown Hamburg this summer, celebrating the fact that in Germany the mayors of the two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg, are gay and that same-sex couples can form legally recognized unions. But few of these marchers will be aware of newly released documents revealing that the Gestapo staged a lightning raid on this very department store 70 years ago this summer, hauling off about 40 store employees on s
Source: http://abc.net.au
Jul 12, 2007
Britain's World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says.
The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the Government said.
But although Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin and Martin Luther King
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jul 12, 2007
It set sail, sleek and graceful, from Oakland's Jack London Square and made its way into San Francisco Bay, gliding past Treasure Island. People waved from Pier 39. After all, this wasn't just any yacht but a part of presidential history. From 1936 to 1945, this former U.S. Coast Guard cutter served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidential yacht, after being renamed the USS Potomac and being recommissioned as a Navy vessel in 1936. During Roosevelt's term, it was a retreat for the p
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 12, 2007
Behind the Brunswick Zone bowling alley in Lowell, through the grass where a drive-in theater once stood, you can enter the woods through a narrow, brush-filled pathway.
For some, it may just be any woodsy area in Pawtucketville. But for Dracut teacher Rebecca Duda, rejuvenating this spot along Pawtucket Boulevard has become a mission.
Looking closer, past protruding branches and a mossy, leaf-ridden floor, the remnants of smashed headstones clutter the area. Remains of
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (Click here to see pictures.)
Jul 12, 2007
They are the most remarkable pictures of one of the most hellish places on earth.
Never seen before, these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life the nightmare of Passchendaele, were released this week to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the battle that, between July and November 1917, claimed a staggering 2,121 lives a day and in total some quarter of a million Allied soldiers.
Source: BBC
Jul 12, 2007
Ancient coins have been found on a beach in the Western Isles giving new clues to the far reaching influence of the Roman Empire.
Archaeologists believe the pieces of copper alloy date from the middle of the 4th Century.
They were found in a sand dune, but the location in the Uists has been kept secret to protect the site.
Archaeologists said it was a "lucky find" as the coins were at risk of vanishing in a high tide.
Source: NYT
Jul 12, 2007
The National Archives made available on Wednesday more than 11 hours of tape recordings that show President Richard M. Nixon maneuvering in 1972 to remake the Republican Party in his image, crush South Vietnamese opposition to his efforts to end the Vietnam War and dole out patronage to ethnic groups based on how much they supported his re-election.
The release of the tapes along with 78,000 pages of newly disclosed documents should be a trove of fascinating detail and context for
Source: NYT
Jul 12, 2007
KRAKOW, Poland — There is a curious thing happening in this old country, scarred by Nazi death camps, raked by pogroms and blanketed by numbing Soviet sterility: Jewish culture is beginning to flourish again.
“Jewish style” restaurants are serving up platters of pirogis, klezmer bands are playing plaintive Oriental melodies, derelict synagogues are gradually being restored. Every June, a festival of Jewish culture here draws thousands of people to sing Jewish songs and dance Jewish
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 12, 2007
Between the open sewers and bullet-scarred walls of Kabul's old city a perpetually hurrying Englishman in a battered but impeccably cut Savile Row suit is a familiar yet incongruous site.
Many Westerners in the city choose to travel in armoured four-wheel-drive vehicles surrounded by armed guards. Rory Stewart eschews such caution.
A 33-year-old Eton and Oxford-educated former diplomat, affectionately known as "Lawrence of Belgravia", Mr Stewart arrived in Kab
Source: Montgomery Advertiser
Jul 12, 2007
Medical negligence, not a bullet, caused the death of a black civil rights worker in 1965, according to the attorney for a former state trooper indicted in his death.
James Bonard Fowler, 73, of Black, a town in Geneva County, admits he shot Jimmie Lee Jackson on Feb. 18, 1965, but said it was in self-defense. He has pleaded "not guilty" and remains free on a $250,000 bond. Historians say that Jackson's death was the catalyst for the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march.
Source: Live Science
Jul 12, 2007
Fierce warriors once occupied the famous complex where the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, new research suggests. Ruins of the Qumran site—in the present-day West Bank—resemble a monastery, but scholars have argued over its uses before the religious sect who penned the scrolls moved in somewhere between 130 and 100 B.C. Using the world's first virtual 3-D reconstruction of the site, historians recently found evidence of a fortress that was later converted into its more peacef
Source: Bloomberg
Jul 12, 2007
Bruno Lohse, a German art dealer appointed by Hermann Goering to acquire looted art in occupied France, dispersed his private collection of Dutch 17th-century masterpieces and expressionist paintings among friends and relatives in his will, the lawyer handling his estate said. Lohse died on March 19, aged 95, and has since become the focus of a three-nation investigation into a looted Camille Pissarro painting discovered in a Swiss bank safe that was seized by Zurich prosecu
Source: LiveScience
Jul 11, 2007
An ancient volcanic super-eruption, one of the largest known in Earth's history, may not have devastated the world and humanity as much as once thought.
The eruption at what is now Lake Toba in northwestern Sumatra roughly 75,000 years ago was the largest of the last 2 million years.
The gigantic blast released at least 7.7 trillion tons, or 670 cubic miles, of magma, equivalent in mass to more than 19 million Empire State Buildings.
Source: Vancouver Sun (BC)
Jul 11, 2007
Broken spear tips and flakes of raw materials unearthed near Prince George are believed to be the remnants of a stone-tool manufacturing camp dating back more than 400 years.
Students at the University of Northern B.C. have discovered more than 200 artifacts at a protected archeological site at Beaverley, about 30 km west of Prince George.
The group, which has been digging for the past month, will now try to figure out who was making the tools, and when.
Source: BBC
Jul 11, 2007
Plans are taking shape to set up a museum that celebrates Britain's role in the origins of the digital age.
The National Museum of Computing will be based at Bletchley Park where World War II code breakers built the first recognisably modern computers.
The museum's centrepiece is the rebuilt Colossus computer that broke high-level German communications during WWII.
The museum's founders are seeking funds and backers to exhibit more machines from its extensive col
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jul 11, 2007
Bunkers built decades ago are costly to maintain and, according to the Interior Ministry, the concrete rooms would no longer protect their inhabitants from terrorist attacks, so the government has decided to sell them.
The German Interior Ministry has announced it will sell 2,000 bunkers and shelters formerly in place to protect civilians. The ministry said such rooms were no longer necessary because threat scenarios had changed.
