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: San Francisco Chronicle
Oct 2, 2006
When San Francisco was being rebuilt after the disastrous 1906 earthquake and fire, more than 5,600 temporary shacks thrown up for refugees were hailed as symbols of the city's plucky resolve to rise from the ashes.
Thousands of people lived in them from the spring of 1906 to the summer of 1907, when the refugee camps were closed and the shacks were either scrapped or given away.
Just over two dozen still exist, and what to do with them is a dilemma of historic propor
Source: Hollywood.com
Oct 2, 2006
Actress Kirsten Dunst has come under fire from historians for her "frightful" interpretation of tragic French queen Marie Antoinette.
Dunst plays the 18th Century monarch in Sofia Coppola's racy new biopic, which was booed by critics at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Now her overtly sexual performance has been attacked by France's Marie Antoinette Association as well, who insist the queen's bedroom antics are not factually based.
The associat
Source: Independent (UK)
Oct 2, 2006
New Zealand police are to "re-examine" the Rainbow Warrior affair after an allegation that the bomb which destroyed the Greenpeace ship in 1985 was planted by the brother of the French presidential front-runner, Ségolène Royal.
The New Zealand government said, however, that it was "unlikely" that the investigation of the attack on the ship by French government agents would be formally reopened.
The fact that Lieutenant Gérard Royal, of the French in
Source: Independent (UK)
Oct 2, 2006
First the music was rehabilitated, then the fashions and recently even the food.
Now 1970s perfumes and aftershaves are making a comeback, as a new generation discovers the somewhat questionable joys of Charlie, Brut and Old Spice.
Sales of so-called "heritage scents" are increasing, particularly among younger customers, according to market research by the high-street chain Superdrug.
Source: Independent (UK)
Oct 2, 2006
They were the iPods, ornaments and Ikea sofas of their day: the everyday gadgets and household items that lived alongside - and in some cases inspired - Renaissance Italy's finest artists.
This week, the Victoria and Albert Museum unveils an exhibition dedicated to the little-known domestic world in which Donatello, Carpaccio, Botticelli and Titian first picked up their paintbrushes. Some of their most important paintings will be displayed in a gallery adapted to recreate the afflu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 2, 2006
Hundreds of Victorian school buildings are at risk under a Government policy that favours demolition over refurbishment, heritage campaigners say.
The buildings, many constructed in the early days of free education, are often structurally sound but need some work to fit them for modern needs.
Campaigners say they were built to higher standards than post-war schools but fear that they will be lost under the Building Schools for the Future programme, which aims to rebuild or r
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2006
The “Sex Scandal” club is only one subcaucus in the big tent of Washington infamy and shame. There is also the “Blatant Financial Improprieties” subcaucus (with the guest star Duke Cunningham), the “Ill-Advised Nazi Comparison” subcaucus (Howdy, Senator Dick Durbin) and the “Racially Insensitive Remark Directly Into a Video Camera” (“You’re an animal, George Allen”).
But the sex subcaucus is easily the biggest.
“You always seem to have politicians doing bizarrely self-d
Source: Fredericksburg.com
Oct 1, 2006
Ongoing work at Montpelier, which is being restored to look as it did during Madison's time, is helping to increase visitation at the 2,650-acre estate, said spokeswoman Peggy Seiter Vaughn.
"It's up 10 percent this year, and it was up 3 percent last year," she said. "It's because there's a lot that's new to see here."
The stucco that once covered the main house already has been stripped away, as have the 20th-century additions made by the duPonts, t
Source: National Security Archive
Oct 1, 2006
The National Security Archive at George Washington University, in collaboration with Proceso magazine, publishes today a list of names of the men and women killed in the October 2, 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico, based exclusively on declassified Mexican intelligence files. In order to continue gathering evidence about the victims of Tlatelolco, the Archive also launches today a new Web link, where families, friends and colleagues of those who died during the massacre can register additional
Source: BBC
Oct 1, 2006
Scientists are to begin work on the second phase of a project aimed at piecing together the history of human colonisation in Britain.
Phase one of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) discovered people were here 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Phase two has now secured funds to the tune of £1m and will run until 2010.
Team members hope to find out more about Britain's earliest settlers and perhaps unearth their fossil rem
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2006
The past caught up with Sandor Kepiro, 92, on Thursday, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center identified him as a junior police officer who was twice found guilty of participating in one of the worst atrocities committed by Hungarian forces during World War II.
At a news conference at a synagogue opposite Mr. Kepiro’s apartment here, members of the Wiesenthal Center ended what for him had been 60 years of relative anonymity as they issued copies of a recently rediscovered wartime court v
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2006
Colin L. Powell, in his last face-to-face meeting with President Bush before stepping down as secretary of state in January 2005, tried to impress upon him one last time the dangers he saw the United States facing in Iraq, according to a new Powell biography.
The insurgency was growing and the country was spiraling into sectarian bloodshed, Mr. Powell warned. Elections in Iraq would not solve the problems, and the president’s ability to act decisively was being crippled by divisions
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2006
It has been a quarter-century since a group of self-styled freedom fighters, including Judith A. Clark, carried out an armored-car robbery in Rockland County, N.Y.
The holdup was a final eruption of Vietnam-era extremism and a shattering event for Rockland County, which lost two local police officers and a Brink’s guard.
The deep wounds left by that crime were reopened three years ago when Kathy Boudin, who served as a decoy in a getaway car, won parole.
No
Source: Stone Pages
Sep 30, 2006
A team of Syrian and French archaeologists has discovered a Neolithic temple in northern Syria that could be the oldest in the Middle East. The discovery of the temple, dating to the Neolithic Age, was made by a joint Syrian-French archaeological team at Jaadet al-Maghara on the Euphrates river some 450 kilometers (270 miles) north of Damascus.
Objects made of stone and bone instruments were found in the large temple, whose walls bore geometric designs and a drawing of a bull'
Source: Hartford Courant
Sep 30, 2006
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd today takes his crusade against the new system of trying terrorist suspects from his father's Senate desk to a conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials - trials where, Dodd will say, "America's moral authority in the second half of the 20th century was born."
But nowadays, Dodd plans to tell the conference, "For 60 years, a single word has best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice: Nuremberg
Source: Chicago Tribune
Sep 30, 2006
There is nothing like a little glamor to draw a crowd.
In fact, the newly remodeled Chicago History Museum is banking on it.
The Chicago Historical Society reopens Saturday after a 10-month renovation with a new name and, for the first time in a long time, a permanent venue to show off one of the largest costume collections in the nation.
Costume exhibits are popular attractions and almost always spark an increase in attendance, a fact that isn't lost on th
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Sep 30, 2006
It was a brisk day on Alcatraz a few years ago when William Isaac Radkay began warming up the crowd the old-fashioned way during a reunion of former guards and prisoners -- by spinning yarns.
The rakish former pal of George "Machine Gun" Kelly told how he once took six slugs in his backside for not stopping when police yelled "Halt." He decided to keep them, he quipped, "for posterity."
"I was on the top 10 list and didn't even know
Source: Stone Pages
Sep 29, 2006
Archaeologists have discovered 30 burial jars belonging to the 2,500-year-old Sa Huynh civilization in central Vietnam. The graves together with many artifacts were unearthed at the Con Dai archaeological site in Thua Thua-Hue province’s Huong Tra district.
Of the jars, 25 contained ritual offerings like small trays, agate balls, and earrings, all of them still intact. They will be displayed at the Museum of Vietnamese History and the province’s museum. The archaeologists said
Source: Yahoo
Sep 29, 2006
A Texas teenager has found what one archaeologist at the Gila Cliff Dwellings in southwestern New Mexico describes as a "pretty big deal."
Andrew Connell, 15, was on a hike with his classmates in the Gila Wilderness this spring when the group was distracted by what sounded like an owl. While looking for the bird, he spotted something among the rocks and oak leaves.
It ended up being an almost intact prehistoric bowl that dates back to the time when the Mogollo
Source: Deutsche Welle
Sep 29, 2006
The skeletons of 20 children and five adults believed to be victims of the Nazi euthanasia program have been found in a mass grave in western Germany, officials said Thursday.
The bones of 20 children were discovered this week during excavation work at a cemetery in the German town of Menden, close to where a World War II hospital run by Hitler's personal physician Karl Brandt was located.
