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: National Geographic News
May 15, 2007
The discovery of a major prehistoric site where experts believe an open-air royal temple once stood has stalled construction of a controversial four-lane highway in Ireland.A large circular enclosure estimated to be at least 2,000 years old was exposed at Lismullin in County Meath, by road-builders working on a 37-mile-long (60-kilometer-long) road northwest of Dublin...just 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) from the Hill of Tara, once the seat of power of Ireland's Celtic kings...
Source: 'Spy,' Telegraph
May 15, 2007
For the first time, Prince William joined his brother Harry at the annual Combined Services Memorial service in Hyde Park on Sunday, both decked out in traditional Savile Row style. But where did they get their [bowler] hats?
Spy picked up the trail at Lock & Co, the famous St James's hatters which has supplied the Palace for more than 300 years.
"Actually bowlers are pretty popular right now," says a spokesman."A lot of the fashion press are starting to feature them. For women it's a
Source: Independent
May 15, 2007
...A study by the Cambridge Classic Project has discovered that there are now 459 state secondary schools teaching Latin. That is not very many, out of a total of 4,000, but in 2003...Latin was available in only 200 state schools.
It is a rare bit of good news for those who worry about the chronic decline of classical education.There was a protest yesterday outside the House of Commons by sixth-form girls from Godolphin and Latymer school, in Hammersmith. Dressed in an
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
UNITED NATIONS -- Indigenous people are being pushed off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, threatening to destroy their cultures by forcing them into big cities, the head of a U.N. panel said Monday.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said some of the native people most at risk live in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce 80 percent of the world's palm oil -- one of the crops used to make
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- Darwin Coon is constantly reminded of his time on Alcatraz. The former bank robber can see the notorious island prison from just outside his front door in the city's North Beach district.
Coon remembers thinking he'd never get out alive, and was among the last inmates to leave when U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy closed the federal penitentiary in 1963. Years later, when a niece asked him to show her his old cell, he responded: "I never wanted to go back t
Source: New York Times
May 14, 2007
The prosecutor who put Charles Manson behind bars now wants to solve another crime —- a really simple one, he insists. So simple that it takes only 1,612 pages to prove his case.
Vincent Bugliosi, whose prosecution of Charles Manson in 1970 led him to write one of the best-selling true-crime books of all time, Helter Skelter, has now turned his attention to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
And that is his full attention: 20 years of research, more
Source: BBC News
May 14, 2007
ROME -- The Emperor Augustus said he found Rome a city of brick -- and he left it a city of marble.
But 2,000 years on, the cracks in his legacy are beginning to show.
The Forum, the Colosseum and the palaces of the Palatine Hill still stand as proud testament to the Roman builders' genius. Yet today they are betrayed by monumental neglect...One of the latest closures came in November 2005, when a 16th-Century wall collapsed without warning in a wel
Source: Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch
May 14, 2007
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Dana Gadeken, 17, hand-decorated about 20 of the more than 1,000 luminarias that were lined up in neat rows on the vacant lot at the corner of South Washington and Church streets.
The luminarias -- brown lunch bags containing small tea lights held in place in a bed of sand -- were set out Saturday for each man, woman and child believed to have been buried on the grounds, rediscovered in the 1990s as a cemetery.
Those buried there, historians say, were
Source: LiveScience
May 14, 2007
No man is an island, but it turns out all Alexander the Great needed to take over an entire island was a little help from Mother Nature.
A half-mile-long spit of sand once linked the ancient Lebanese island of Tyre to the mainland, according to a new study of the area's geological history. Alexander used the natural sandbar to build a causeway, allowing his army to overwhelm the island stronghold during a siege in 332 BC.Alexander's conquest of Tyre has long bee
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 14, 2007
NEW YORK -- United Nations information officers will be given lessons this week on the history of the Holocaust, it was announced Monday, continuing a trend by the world organization to recognize the mass murder of Jews during World War II.
Employees of the UN's public information department on Monday began a week-long program of discussion with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington under a program known as "Holocaust and UN outreach program."
The s
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 14, 2007
STOCKHOLM -- Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko are to visit Sweden between May 21 and 24 as part of the 300th anniversary celebrations of the birth of Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus.
In March, Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia made a state visit to Japan and met with the emperor and empress.
Uppsala county governor Anders Bjorck, chairman of the National Linnaeus Commission who also visited Japan, recently told Deutsche Presse-Agentur tha
Source: NASA press release
May 14, 2007
WACO, Texas -- On May 21, Charles Lindbergh's grandson Erik will help NASA dedicate a special 747 astronomy aircraft to the trailblazing aviator. May 21 is the 80th anniversary of Lindbergh's historic solo New York-to-Paris flight...
The unique Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, incorporates a 98.4-inch infrared telescope mounted in a highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. The airborne observatory is a partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- This city almost erected a billboard outside Jamestown, Va., to congratulate it on its 400th birthday -- and remind everyone St. Augustine passed that milestone four decades ago.
It would have said, ''Happy birthday to our younger brother,'' former Mayor George Gardner said.
Jamestown is celebrating the anniversary of its founding on May 14, 1607, making it the oldest English settlement in the nation. Queen Elizabeth paid a visit, greeted by Vice
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Everything is in place for gala celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the moment many Israelis see as their most glorious -- the dramatic unification of Jerusalem under their control in the 1967 Middle East war.
But the guest list keeps getting shorter, because the world doesn't recognize Israel's claim to the whole city.
The anniversary celebrations, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, are underlining the controversy surrounding Israel's hold on t
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 14, 2007
NEW YORK -- Anyone who watched Rudolph Giuliani preside over ground zero in the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, glimpsed elements of his strength -- decisiveness, determination, self-confidence.
Those qualities were also on display over the months he directed the cleanup of the collapsed World Trade Center. But today, with evidence that thousands of people who worked at ground zero have become sick, many regard Giuliani's triumph of leadership as New York's mayor
Source: Discovery News
May 14, 2007
The earliest known dental prosthesis from ancient Rome may not have been very functional, but it gave its wealthy wearer a million dollar smile.The gleaming grin resulted from multi-karat gold wire, which was used to string together "artificial teeth," according to the team of Italian researchers who analyzed the ancient bridgework.
They found the object, which dates from the 1st to the 2nd century A.D., in the mouth of an unidentified woman who was bu
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
MOSCOW -- Russian and foreign preservationists expressed alarm Monday at the destruction of Moscow's historic and architecturally significant buildings as the Russian capital undergoes massive development fueled by the country's economic boom.
''We have come into the phase of continual and daily changing of the city environment,'' Marina Khurstaleva of the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society told a news conference. ''It's really a very critical situation.''
A repor
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
SHARPSBURG, Md. -- Buried beneath a sun-dappled corn field in western Maryland lies detritus from the millions of rounds fired during the battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day in American history.
For an archaeology team from the National Park Service that surveyed a part of the field with metal detectors recently, every spent round they unearth tells a story _ a story of the men who died there and of the ebb and flow of the two vast armies that tore at each other on Sept. 17
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
ST. AUGUSTINE - This city almost erected a billboard outside Jamestown, Va., to congratulate it on its 400th birthday - and remind everyone St. Augustine passed that milestone four decades ago.
It would have said, "Happy birthday to our younger brother,'' former Mayor George Gardner said.
Jamestown is celebrating the anniversary of its founding on May 14, 1607, making it the oldest English settlement in the nation. Queen Elizabeth paid a visit, greeted by Vice Pres
Source: Washington Times
May 14, 2007
Kurdish authorities have removed hundreds of families, cleaned up their trash and have begun development in an ancient citadel, which they say is the site of the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world.
Their plans -- to establish a cultural centerpiece in northern Iraq that will attract tourists and archaeologists from around the globe -- extend well beyond the fortress itself.
