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: Times (of London)
May 14, 2007
A historic diary written by a prominent Jacobite as he plotted the 1715 rebellion has been severely damaged while in the care of the British Library, The Times has learnt.
Its private owner, a descendant of Thomas Tyldesley, the diary’s author, has described how he “wanted to weep” when he collected the 96-page manuscript last week and discovered that someone had spilt oil across its pages –- staining them and making some of them completely illegible. Its original leather front cove
Source: Washington Post
May 14, 2007
JAMESTOWN, Va. -- President Bush marked the 400th anniversary of Jamestown's founding Sunday by praising colonists' indomitable spirit in the face of disaster and holding up the English settlement as a milestone on the path toward building American democracy.
"The story of Jamestown will always have a special place in American history," said Bush, whose speech capped a three-day commemoration. "It's the story of a great migration from the Old World to the New. It is a
Source: Times (of London)
May 14, 2007
They were unnamed and forgotten: soldiers who gave their lives for their country but whose last resting place could not be identified.
But for one man’s vision 90 years ago, 1,700,000 dead or missing soldiers from both world wars would have faded into history with nothing to mark their sacrifice.
Major-General Sir Fabian Ware was the driving force behind the establishment of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is about to celebrate its 90th anniversary. It rec
Source: Guardian
May 14, 2007
ROME -- A planned hi-tech driverless underground railway line set to bring desperately needed transport links to the historic heart of Rome has run into a minefield of Roman remains.Planners aim to send the new C line under the city centre at a depth of 30 metres, well beneath the archaeological treasures that litter Rome. Stations will also be built deep underground, but even the simple task of digging entrances and exits is proving a headache and could mean the scrapping o
Source: New York Times
May 14, 2007
UNIVERSITY PARK, Tex. -— The prospect of the George W. Bush Presidential Library’s being built on the campus of Southern Methodist University received a lift over the weekend when voters in this Dallas suburb passed a proposition that paves the way for the city to sell a piece of parkland to the university.
The ballot proposal —- passed on a vote of 1,782 to 420 on Saturday —- will allow this city of some 23,000 residents to sell Potomac Park, an undeveloped strip that could prove i
Source: Newsweek
May 14, 2007
Susan Eisenhower is an accomplished professional, the president of an international consulting firm. She also happens to be Ike's granddaughter—and in that role, she's the humble torchbearer for moderate "Eisenhower Republicans." Increasingly, however, she says that the partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency—and the takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers—is driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP. Eisenhower says
Source: New Yorker
May 14, 2007
In October, 2005, a truck pulled up outside the National Archeological Museum in Athens, and workers began unloading an eight-ton X-ray machine that its designer, X-Tek Systems of Great Britain, had dubbed the Bladerunner. Standing just inside the National Museum’s basement was Tony Freeth, a sixty-year-old British mathematician and filmmaker, watching as workers in white T-shirts wrestled the Range Rover-size machine through the door and up the ramp into the museum. Freeth was a member of the A
Source: NYT Book Review
May 13, 2007
The old hands at the C.I.A.’s publications review board, who maintain the agency’s memory hole, must have had a mordant chuckle over [Watergate defendant E. Howard Hunt's] “American Spy,” and connoisseurs of literary crimes and misdemeanors will find much to savor here. Hunt describes a foreign president’s wife as “the true power behind the thrown.” He makes Dwight Eisenhower president in 1950, at the start of the Korean War, instead of 1953, at its end. He mangles the names of, among others, th
Source: Hampton Roads (Va.) Daily Press
May 13, 2007
PETERSBURG, Va. -- Twenty-two historic railings that surrounded the Pennsylvania Monument [at Petersburg National Battlefield] were stolen late last week. The railings, which are made of bronze, measure seven to eight feet in length and three to four inches in diameter.
Source: Lorraine Ahearn, Greensboro (N.C.) News-Record
May 13, 2007
Not that spring didn't come that May, warm and beautiful as it is now. The first rays of morning slanted in the window, bringing the full-throated music of songbirds and the forgotten scent of blossoms.
At last, the winter of 1945 was in ashes, and the war in Europe with it. In the camps outside town, corpses were piled in mounds, like rubble. In the cities, bricks of bombed-out buildings were stacked neatly along the sidewalks, ready to be put back together.
But to Bob
Source: Focus Information Agency
May 13, 2007
SOFIA -- “A large share of the Bulgarians know about their historical heroes”, director of the National Museum of History, Prof. Bozhidar Dimitrov told Focus News Agency. He was asked to comment on the words of EU Commissioner Meglena Kuneva, who expressed her concern over the fact that Bulgarian children don’t know who Gotse Delchev is.
“Meglena Kuneva was just unlucky to meet children who don’t know about historical heroes. Still, I’m shocked that there are children from the town
Source: AP
May 13, 2007
AMSTERDAM -- As the Third Reich headed to defeat in World War II, the Germans burned millions of records to cover up history's worst genocide. But the fraction that survived was enough to make up the largest Nazi archive in existence.
This week, efforts to lift the 52-year-old blanket of secrecy from this historical treasure are likely to take a big step forward.
The 11-nation commission governing the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee
Source: Times (of London)
May 13, 2007
China has sent its navy to protect marine archeologists on an expedition that salvaged more than 10,000 pieces of antique porcelain from a sunken junk in a campaign against looters and art smugglers.
It is believed to be the first time that China has deployed its armed forces to stop the plunder of its undersea cultural heritage along the ancient shipping routes, which are known in Chinese as the “silk road of the seas”.
Source: Times (of London)
May 13, 2007
Spain is being forced to look again at the bitter schisms created by its civil war, as thousands of bodies are exhumed from the mass graves of republicans killed without trial. But will unearthing the past lead to reconciliation? Report by Christine Toomey
There is a place of eerie silence close to the centre of Malaga. Outside its walls, the roar of traffic tearing at speed to tourist destinations is almost constant. But inside this sad oasis of calm, the only sounds are the delica
Source: Independent (UK)
May 12, 2007
For 44 years, the assassination of John F Kennedy has been the favourite subject of bar stool commentators, private investigators and, latterly, internet conspiracy theorists.
But a book out this week threatens to torpedo the most popular parlour game of them all by providing the definitive proof that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the 35th president with no help from anyone else.Vincent Bugliosi, one of America's leading prosecutors, has spent 21 years writing the 1,
Source: Independent
May 12, 2007
Bryan Ferry, the voice of Roxy Music, has been dropped as the face of Marks & Spencer's menswear collection.
The move follows criticism of the singer over remarks he made about Nazi Germany and his admiration for the work of Leni Riefenstahl, notorious for her Nazi propaganda films...The male style icon provoked outrage in the Jewish community after The Independent...revealed the contents of an interview he gave in Germany.
In the piece, publish
Source: Press Association
May 12, 2007
Baroness Thatcher met Falkland veterans and unveiled a commemorative arch in Hampshire on Saturday to mark the 25th anniversary of the conflict.
The former Conservative Prime Minister led the country during the 1982 crisis when Argentina invaded the islands. A total 255 British and around 649 Argentinians lost their lives in the 74-day battle.
Hundreds of residents lined the streets for the Iron Lady's guest-of-honour appearance in Fareham, Hampshire. The town is close
Source: Reuters
May 12, 2007
TOKYO -- A film celebrating Japan's wartime "kamikaze" suicide pilots and written by Tokyo's nationalist governor opened in theatres on Saturday, sparking more of a pacifist than a patriotic response from audiences.
The movie comes as Japan's government edges towards a vote on revising the U.S.-drafted constitution that has strictly limited the country's military activities for six decades following its World War Two defeat.
"For Those We Love," writ
Source: Washington Post
May 12, 2007
Walter McKenzie's assignment toward the end of the Cold War was to mop up after mishaps at a nuclear weapons factory. With a crew of other laborers from rural Georgia, he swabbed away leaks and spills inside the secret buildings, until one day his body became so contaminated with radiation that alarms at the factory went off as he passed.
"They couldn't scrub the radiation off my skin -- even after four showers," McKenzie, 52, recalled of his most terrifying day at the Sav
Source: New York Times
May 12, 2007
On a recent sunny Sunday morning, Michael M. Honda was kicking back at his 90-year-old mother’s house here, some green tea and rice crackers within arm’s reach. She was off to church, and his younger brother had dropped by to fix the plumbing.
“Oh yeah, I ran across a buddy of yours — he says he golfs with you — a big-set hakujin guy,” Mr. Honda told his brother, using the Japanese word for Caucasian.
Mr. Honda, a Democratic congressman and third-generation Japanese-Ame
