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: BBC News
Jun 17, 2007
Fifty seven years ago, the author Ernest Hemingway inaugurated a big game fishing competition in Cuba. Held almost annually and despite tensions between the US and Cuba, the four-day event is still proving popular.
Like all the best fishing stories, mine began in a bar.
One evening in Havana I was introduced to a man called Stewart, an affable commercial manager in a London building firm. It turned out he was part of the English team i
Source: BBC News
Jun 17, 2007
A Roman road has been found by workers building a controversial £840m natural gas pipeline across Wales.
The historic roadway was discovered in the Brecon Beacons, on the path of the 190-mile (320km) National Grid pipe from Milford Haven to Gloucestershire. Neil Fairburn, archaeology project manager for National Grid, said the road was found as digging began, but the pipe would still have to cross it.
A local community councillor said
Source: BBC News
Jun 17, 2007
Vienna-based historian Dr Barry McLoughlin never expected to find an Irish name while researching the fate of Austrians who died in Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union of the 1930s.
But when the name Patrick Breslin appeared in a Moscow News newspaper article in 1989, it was to begin a journey of discovery which would tell the tragic stories of three of Stalin's victims. Millions died in the purges, but few realised that among them were a number of
Source: The Montreal Gazette
Jun 16, 2007
You wouldn't think that a rusty old barrel is much of an attraction. But the one that sits near the entrance of the U.S. National Second World War Museum in New Orleans manages to draw crowds. Why? Because it represents the death knell for Nazi Germany's attempt to make a nuclear weapon.
This particular barrel was one of 29 aboard a ferry crossing Lake Tinnsjo in Norway on its way to Germany. The "Hydro" was sunk by Norwegian saboteurs in 1944 and the barrel languished at
Source: Philadelphia Daily News
Jun 16, 2007
TULSA, Okla. - A concrete vault encasing a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried a half-century ago may have been built to withstand a nuclear attack but it couldn't beat back the natural onslaught of moisture.
At a Friday ceremony complete with a couple of drum rolls, crews removed a multilayered protective wrapping caked with red mud, revealing a vintage vehicle that was covered in rust and wouldn't crank.There were a few bright spots, literally: shiny chrome w
Source: Charlotte Observer
Jun 16, 2007
Most politicians would love a chance to edit their page in the history books. Gov. Mike Easley's staff actually did.
Last year, members of Easley's press office heavily rewrote an entry on him in a book by state-employed historians on North Carolina's governors. Over several drafts, they deleted a reference to a failed U.S. Senate bid, speculation that he dislikes campaigning and a note that he had a boyhood reputation "for making mischief." They added a quote from Easley
Source: BBC News
Jun 15, 2007
The US has handed over more than 400 Incan and pre-Columbian artefacts to the government of Peru.
The items, which are believed to be worth millions of dollars, had been stolen from several Andean nations. They include a cape made from macaw and parrot feathers, gold and silver jewellery and a clay vessel believed to be more than 3,500 years old.
The artefacts had been stolen from South America by grave robbers and came into the US via
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2007
Being the direct descendant of Rochambeau, known hereabout as the Maréchal, for the title of field marshal that was bestowed on him by Louis XVI on his return from America, would be almost a full-time occupation. But the count has supplemented it with the role of a kind of representative of trans-Atlantic relations, which he and his wife, Madeleine, have taken particularly to heart in recent years, when ties between Washington and Paris have been strained. (Those relations have been getting bett
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2007
Year after year, Vang Pao, the most recognized leader of Hmong people in the United States, described his dream when he appeared at Hmong New Year celebrations, ceremonies for new refugees, memorial dedications. Someday, he said, he would carry his people home to a free Laos.
So when he was arrested on June 4, accused of conspiring to overthrow the government in Laos, many older Hmong-Americans said they were stunned — not so much at the accusations but at the American prosecutors f
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2007
When President Bush declared last week that political openness naturally accompanied economic openness, his counterparts in Beijing and Moscow were not the only ones to object. Liberal and conservative intellectuals, even once ardent supporters, have backed away from the century-old theory that democracy and capitalism, like Paris Hilton and paparazzi, need each other to survive.
From China, where astounding economic growth persists despite Communist Party rule, to Russia, where Pr
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2007
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has largely steered clear of criticizing President Bush as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, took an indirect swipe at the president on Thursday, suggesting that Mr. Bush was failing to provide strong leadership.
“What we’re lacking is strong, aggressive, bold leadership like we had with Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Giuliani told supporters at a Flag Day rally in Wilmington, Del.With Mr. Bush’s job-approval rat
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jun 15, 2007
[A group of] women, some from western Germany, others from the former communist east, have been meeting...once a month since 1996. They share memories, celebrate birthdays and above all struggle to have their past recognized.
"We are Germany's forgotten wartime prisoners," said Edith Protze, 79.
All of them had been seized at random by Red Army soldiers during the spring of 1945 and transported across Russia to Siberia, where they spent years in labor camps. A
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2007
To the casual observer, Europeans -- who often seemed short, even to me (I'm 5-foot-7), when I first began traveling a lot in the 1970s -- now often seem tall by American standards. And that casual observation matches what careful researchers have found.
The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were ''tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20t
Source: DefenseLink
Jun 15, 2007
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that an electronic database listing the names of servicemembers still unaccounted for from World War II is now available for family members and researchers.
This new listing will aid researchers and analysts in WWII remains recovery operations. Prior to this three-year effort, no comprehensive list of those missing from WWII has existed.This database, listing nearly 78,000
Source: DefenseLink
Jun 15, 2007
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Lt. Michael T. Newell, U.S. Navy, of Ellenville, N.Y. He will be buried today in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
On Dec. 14, 1966, Newell was flying an F-8E Crusader aircraft as wingman in a flight of two on a c
Source: The Age (Australia)
Jun 15, 2007
An advertisement, signed by 44 members of Japan's parliament, appeared in the Washington Post newspaper seeking to share "the truth with the American people" about the 200,000 "comfort women" who were driven into brothels during WWII.
The ad was signed by professors, journalists, political commentators and 29 members of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, 13 from the Democratic Party of Japan and two independents."No historical document has eve
Source: Reuters
Jun 14, 2007
Chinese archaeologists have found an ancient sunken ship in the South China Sea laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain, the Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
Divers used satellite navigation equipment to find the vessel, dubbed South China Sea II, which is about 17 to 18 meters (yards) long and lying at a depth of 20 meters."A preliminary study of the sunken ship shows it may have sunk 400 years ago after striking a reef," archaeologist Dr W
Source: Village Voice
Jun 14, 2007
According to several Internet sites, white supremacist groups around the country had called for "patriot" get-togethers over the three-day weekend. The one organized for the New York area included a Saturday barbecue and a Sunday visit to "the incomparable Metropolitan Museum of (White) Art." Visiting the preeminent art museum, these patriots believed, would be a terrific way to celebrate white culture. But first, there was the barbecue,
Source: Time
Jun 14, 2007
"Nanyadoyara! Nanyaonasareno! Nanyadoyara!" the elderly women chant, clapping and spinning in careful circles in their white kimonos with orange sashes. They are performing a bon odori ritual summer festival dance in the farming village of Shingo, northeast of Tokyo. The scene is typical of similar pastoral celebrations throughout the Japanese countryside, as the geriatric audience on the town green pay more attention to the free-flowing sake and the glad-handing candidates trawling fo
Source: BBC News
Jun 14, 2007
An international team of climbers has scaled Everest by retracing the steps of two British men who disappeared just short of the summit in 1924.
The team says its success shows that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine may have been the first to climb the peak.
They say that it adds weight to the theory that the pair may have made it to the top in 1924, 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing's historic feat. The climbers wore replica 1920s clothes for all but the last part of the
