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: ABC.net.au
Oct 19, 2006
Charles Dickens was so good at describing neurological disease in his characters that the symptoms were used word-for-word in medical text books of the day, says an Australian neurologist.
The 19th century novelist's interpretations of diseases of the nervous system even predated formal medical classification, some by more than a century.
In a paper to be published in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, Dr Kerrie Schoffer of the Austin Hospital in Melbourne says his o
Source: China.org
Oct 19, 2006
Archaeologists have discovered pottery bearing inscriptions dating back 4,500 years, which could prove to be China's earliest example of written language.
These pottery fragments, found in the ruins of an ancient city in Huaiyang County of Henan Province, are believed to be parts of a spinning wheel, according to a report released by the county government.
A photo, posted on the local government's website, showed a piece of black pottery bearing white strokes. The fragm
Source: AP
Oct 19, 2006
More than a half century after he died in the flaming crash of a CIA-owned cargo plane and became one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, a legendary soldier of fortune known as "Earthquake McGoon" is coming home.
The skeletal remains of James B. McGovern Jr., discovered in an unmarked grave in remote northern Laos in 2002, were positively identified on September 11 by laboratory experts at the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii
Source: Independent (UK)
Oct 19, 2006
Eddie Thomas was just a few months old when the white people came and took him away. They took his brother and sister, too. The children's grandmother had been looking after them, following the death of their mother after Eddie's birth.
The three young Aborigines were taken from Cape Barren Island, off the north-east coast of Tasmania, and placed in state care in Launceston, on the Tasmanian mainland. Mr Thomas, now 70, was separated from his siblings and brought up in foster famil
Source: Times Online (UK)
Oct 19, 2006
PAINTING kept in a church attic and thought to be a copy of a masterpiece by Caravaggio is an unfinished work by the artist, according to Italian experts.
The Crowning with Thorns, now on display at the church of San Bartolomeo della Certosa in Genoa, has been restored by art experts who say they detect Caravaggio’s “unmistakable style” in the figure of Christ.
Source: BBC
Oct 19, 2006
The South African government is trying to solve one of the great mysteries of the apartheid era - the 1986 plane crash that killed President Samora Machel of Mozambique.
He died when his aircraft hit a mountainside in South Africa, close to the Mozambique border.
There has long been speculation that the crash was caused by sabotage, masterminded by the white apartheid state.
The South African authorities are currently conducting a new investigation into
Source: BBC
Oct 19, 2006
The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications - all of it searchable.
Surfers with MP3 players can even access downloadable audio files.
The resource is aimed at serious scholars, but can be used by anyone with an interest in Darwin and his theory on the evolution of life.
"The idea is to make these important works as accessible as possible; some people can only get at Da
Source: NYT
Oct 19, 2006
Extensively documenting Brown University’s 18th-century ties to slavery, a university committee called Wednesday for the institution to make amends by building a memorial, creating a center for the study of slavery and injustice and increasing efforts to recruit minority students, particularly from Africa and the West Indies.
The Committee on Slavery and Justice, appointed three years ago by Brown’s president, Ruth J. Simmons, a great-granddaughter of slaves who is the first black p
Source: Armenian News Network
Oct 19, 2006
The cabinet does not think the Swiss anti-racism law should be changed - despite comments by the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, to the contrary. Blocher, a leading light of the rightwing Swiss People's Party, had remarked during his Turkish trip that part of the anti-racism law - which was adopted in 1994 and includes sections aimed at preventing revisionist views about the Holocaust - gave him a "headache".
The law has led to investigations in Switzerland against tw
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Oct 19, 2006
The Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act (P.L. 109-285) was signed into law on 27 September 2006. This law directs the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins to commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. These coins should be representative of Lincoln’s life and legacy. The Treasury can only mint up to 500,000 of the one-dollar coins and they are to be distributed for only one year, beginning 1 January 2009. Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois introduced P.L. 109-285 in the Ho
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Oct 19, 2006
The National Coalition for History has learned that the Library of Congress plans to close the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room (AMED) effective December 2006. It will be closed until at least 2008, after which, according to a LC spokesperson, its “status is unknown.” A permanent exhibition gallery of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of early Americana is slotted to replace the AMED Reading Room.
The AMED Reading Room is the contact point for research being conducted on Africa, t
Source: Indyweek.com
Oct 18, 2006
n life, Eli Merritt would have never shared a table with William Richardson Davie and Cornelia Phillips Spencer.
Yet on the opening page of the University of North Carolina's new virtual museum, a photograph of Merritt, a college servant in the 1880s and likely a slave before that, sits beside portraits of UNC founder Davie (1756-1820) and Spencer (1826-1908), an ardent university supporter who vehemently opposed giving blacks the vote after the Civil War.
Merritt's inc
Source: German Press Agency
Oct 18, 2006
Controversy erupted Wednesday after Poland's Roman Catholic Church silenced a priest investigating clergy who allegedly spied for the communist-era secret service. Catholic priest Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski was ordered by decree to keep quiet about information he has gathered regarding Roman Catholic clergy who are alleged to have acted as agents for communist-era intelligence services prior to 1989.
"This is very painful," Isakowicz-Zaleski told Poland's commercial Tok Ra
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2006
Americans must take a lesson from history and not believe the terrorist threat has been exaggerated or will go away, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday.
He described a new, more ruthless and lethal terrorist enemy, "with no territory to defend, no treaties to honor, that measures progress in terms of decades, not days."
"With this sort of enemy, we cannot afford — and indeed could not survive — another holiday from history,"
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2006
Despite encroaching development and dwindling attendance, the White House of the Confederacy will stay at its site in downtown Richmond, and the collections of the adjoining museum will be moved, officials said. The executive mansion of President Jefferson Davis and his family in the Civil War has fallen on tough times, as annual visits have fallen, to 50,000 from 90,000 in the early 1990’s. The White House and museum operate with an estimated $500,000 annual deficit.
Source: BBC
Oct 18, 2006
A party of Scottish war veterans has flown back to Malaysia, where they fought 50 years ago. The men from the King's Own Scottish Borderers were fighting in what became known as the Malaya Emergency.
The veterans' journey back to the other side of the world was much more than a return to what many call a forgotten war.
These young men came from every corner of Scotland. For many, the journey to south east Asia in the 1950s was their first time on a plane, their first t
Source: Reuters
Oct 18, 2006
A bullet found inside a skull buried on a remote Indian
Ocean island has added further intrigue to Australia's greatest naval
tragedy, the mysterious World War Two sinking of a warship with the loss
of all 645 hands.
The light cruiser HMAS Sydney II sank somewhere off Western Australia's
northwest in November 1941 after it came under fire from a German raider,
thought to be the Kormoran disguised as a Dutch merchant ship.
The Sydney has never been found after it sailed ablaze o
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 18, 2006
Can scholars build a better version of Wikipedia? Larry Sanger, a co-founder who has since become a critic of the open-source encyclopedia, intends to find out.
This week Mr. Sanger announced the creation of the Citizendium, an online, interactive encyclopedia that will be open to public contributors but guided by academic editors. The site aims to give academics more authorial control -- and a less combative environment -- than they find on Wikipedia, which affords all users the sa
Source: WaPo
Oct 18, 2006
On desks around the West Wing sit digital clocks counting down the days and hours left in the Bush presidency, reminders to the White House staff to use the time left as effectively as possible. As of 8 a.m. today, those clocks will read 825 days, four hours. But if the elections go the way pollsters and pundits predict, they might as well read 20 days.
At least that would be the end of George W. Bush's presidency as he has known it. If Democrats win one or both houses of Congress o
Source: Steven E. Moore in the WSJ
Oct 18, 2006
[Mr. Moore, a political consultant with Gorton Moore International, trained Iraqi researchers for the International Republican Institute from 2003 to 2004 and conducted survey research for the Coalition Forces from 2005 to 2006.]
After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins University claims that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Don't get me wrong, there have been far too many deaths in I
