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: Stone Pages
Nov 5, 2006
Archaeologists have identified fossils belonging to some of the earliest modern humans to settle in Europe. The research team has dated six bones, found in a cave in Romania, to 30,000 years ago. The finds also raise questions about the possible place of Neanderthals in modern human ancestry. Details of the discoveries appear in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: Stone Pages
Nov 5, 2006
The Unesco World Heritage site Stonehenge is 'a destination in trouble', a new survey has found. The National Geographic Traveler magazine marked the site 56 out of 100 against criteria including historic preservation and tourism management. Survey panellists said Stonehenge was a 'mess', 'over-loved' and 'crowded'. English Heritage, which looks after the site, said it was "actively seeking to revamp its visitor facilities" and improve the nearby A303 road.
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2006
Spain has sometimes been slow to recognize its own treasures. Miguel de Cervantes was slipping into obscurity after his death until he was rescued by foreign critics. El Greco’s paintings were pulled from oblivion by the French. The Muslim palace of Alhambra had fallen into neglect before the American author Washington Irving and others wrote about it in the 1800s.
Now, 500 years after expelling its Jews and moving to hide if not eradicate all traces of their existence, Spain has be
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2006
TEHRAN, Nov. 4 — Every year on this day, rallies in Tehran and around the country mark the anniversary of the takeover of the United States Embassy here in 1979. This year, with Iran’s fiery president at odds with the United States over the country’s nuclear program, is certainly no exception.
But it has been a long time since the three former student leaders who organized the takeover — and who became reformist politicians — have participated.
In a recent interview, on
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2006
They inhabit distant points on the political spectrum. But in one sense, privileged family pedigree, President George W. Bush and Ned Lamont, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Connecticut, could not be more alike.
For starters, their forebears were inducted into America’s ruling class at roughly the same time and place: Wall Street during the waning days of the robber barons a century ago.
Over the subsequent decades, the two families co-existed in strikingly simil
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2006
Two great-great-great-grandsons of Brigham Young presented to the Mormon church an heirloom rocking chair that one of Young's many wives likely sat in to soothe their children.
Brothers Bob and Skip Young say the chair has been cherished by their family, but its historical value would be better appreciated by the church and the residents of the city founded by their ancestor.
The Youngs are descendants of Lucy Decker Young, one of the wives of the church president who
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2006
More than half a century of fragile peace between North and South Korea has produced one of the world's most unusual tourist attractions.
As global leaders struggle to strike a balance between punishing the communist-led North for its Oct. 9 nuclear test and engaging the volatile state in arms talks, hundreds of tourists are still flocking to the front lines each week hoping for a glimpse across the last Cold War frontier.
Littered with land mines and encased in razo
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2006
Tens of thousands of Hungarians marched Saturday in a torch-lit procession organized by the center-right opposition on the 50th anniversary of the Soviet crackdown on Hungary's 1956 revolution.
Commemorations across the country remembered the end of the uprising, when an estimated 100,000 Soviet troops and up to 4,600 tanks overran the country.
There have been protests in the Hungarian capital since Sept. 17, after radio broadcasts of a leaked recording on which Sociali
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2006
Two of Martin Luther King Jr.'s children say a proposed civil rights museum should be near their father's grave instead of in the city's tourism hub.
The 2.5-acre site that Coca-Cola Co. offered two weeks ago for the museum is near the Georgia Aquarium, the CNN Center and the future World of Coca-Cola Museum. Some city leaders say the civil rights museum should be less than two miles away near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached, and the King Center, where he and his wife,
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 4, 2006
The reasons behind Sir Anthony Eden's mistake in dispatching British troops to Suez are among the most enduring mysteries of modern politics.
Rumours have circulated for decades that Eden, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957 and was suffering from a debilitating illness at the height of the crisis in 1956, was taking addictive, painkilling drugs that could have clouded his judgement.
Private papers just uncovered in the Eden family archives provide a definitive an
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 4, 2006
A war memorial to commemorate the 16,000 British servicemen who have died since the Second World War appears certain to be built after an about-turn by National Lottery chiefs last night.
Politicians and the public reacted furiously after the £7.4 million project failed to get lottery funding because it was deemed not to meet the criteria for "Living Landmarks".
After interventions by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, heads
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 4, 2006
A leading family historian urged Britons yesterday not to "wipe our collective memory" by relying on electronic means to communicate.
Nick Barratt's appeal came as a senior MP repeated warnings that, in a few years, digital records of government business might be unreadable because of the accelerating pace of technological change.
Mr Barratt, The Daily Telegraph's Family Detective and the researcher behind the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? series, said th
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 4, 2006
An unpublished aphorism from the pen of Oscar Wilde has come to light.
“One can exist without art, but one cannot live without it,” the flamboyant author wrote in 1882, the year he embarked on a grand lecture tour of America.
Having ventured into the Wild West in his pantaloons and velvets to discuss art and aesthetics, he scribbled the previously unseen words in ink on a scrap of paper, apparently for an adoring autograph-hunter of the day.
Source: National Security Archive
Nov 4, 2006
A series of war games held in 1999 specifically to anticipate problems following an invasion of Iraq assumed a deployment of 400,000 troops to maintain order, seal borders and provide for other security needs. But the games, known as Desert Crossing, were apparently ignored by the Defense Department. When CENTCOM commander Gen. Anthony Zinni, after his retirement, advised planners to refer back to Desert Crossing as they prepared for the 2003 invasion, the response reportedly was, "Never he
Source: AP
Nov 3, 2006
Something remarkable happened after the death of the ruthless and reviled P.W. Botha, apartheid South Africa's last hard-line president: The black government Botha toiled to prevent sent condolences, offered a state funeral and ordered flags flown at half staff.
The reaction to Botha's death pointed to the extraordinary strides toward reconciliation made by a country once bitterly divided. The gestures made this week also show a desire to relegate the wounds inflicted by apartheid
Source: AP
Nov 3, 2006
BERLIN -- For decades they suffered in silence, aging Germans who as children were selected by the Nazis for their Aryan qualities and handed over to SS families. Collectively known as "Lebensborn children," some will gather publicly Saturday for the first time.
Many are trying to make peace with pasts they long kept cloaked from shame. They are asking questions, tracing their roots and demanding that the truth be told about SS chief Heinrich Himmler's Lebensborn, or &quo
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Nov 3, 2006
Bad Arolsen, Germany -- The largest archive of Nazi files is supposed to provide documentation to former World War II slave laborers so they can qualify for compensation. Hope that the victims would benefit in their lifetimes was raised earlier this year when 11 nations, including Germany, Israel and the United States, agreed to make the archives more widely available.
But critics say the process remains so slow that tens of thousands -- now in their 80s and 90s -- will never see a
Source: AP
Nov 3, 2006
For Emily Dickinson, death was never too far from the imagination. The topic fueled her writing, making for some of the most memorable lyrics in American poetry.
Now, death is posing a bit of a puzzle for the caretakers of her homestead.
While making improvements to the grounds of the Emily Dickinson Museum on Halloween, workers unearthed the gravestone of one of the poet's relatives.
But exactly what Gen. Thomas Gilbert's headstone was doing under 18 inche
Source: Scotsman.com
Nov 3, 2006
TOURISTS exploring Britain's ancient spiritual heritage are better off visiting Scotland's stone circles than "noisy, overcrowded" Stonehenge, according to research by the National Geographic Traveller.
In a survey of the world's best-known heritage sites, the magazine described the famous Megalithic attraction in the south-west of England as a "mess", lacking "charm and magic".
Instead, the magazine recommends the unspoilt stone circles
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 3, 2006
One hundred years ago today, on 3 November 1906, Alois Alzheimer, psychiatrist and pathologist, presented the first case of the disease that later came to bear his name in Tubingen Germany. The patient, Auguste D, developed dementia in her 50s and was so restless and confused that doctors prescribed balneotherapy - day long immersion in a lukewarm bath - to soothe her. When she was at her worst they knocked her out with chloroform.
Today, treatment has changed, but little else. Alzh
