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: Peoples Daily Online
Aug 15, 2006
A neolithic stone carving of the Big Dipper star formation has been found on Baimiaozi Mountain near Chifeng City in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to experts.
The stone carving was discovered by Wu Jiacai, a 50-year-old researcher in literature and history with Wongniute Banner of Inner Mongolia.
Wu found a large yam-shaped stone, 310 centimeters long, onto which 19 stars had been carved. The representation of the Big Dipper is on the nor
Source: AP
Aug 15, 2006
PORT ANGELES - Washington state will pay more than $17 million to tribal and local officials to settle lingering disputes over the state's accidental disturbance of an ancient American Indian village and burial ground.
The settlement, announced Monday by Gov. Chris Gregoire, ends litigation surrounding the state Department of Transportation's abandoned bridge project and gives the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe control over most of the site.
Work on concrete pontoons for a H
Source: Wales.co.uk
Aug 15, 2006
WELSH historians believe they have uncovered the site of a 2,000-year-old city which they say is the most important location in ancient British history.
The Ancient British Historical Association (ABHA) claims that a field at Mynydd y Gaer near Pencoed is the fabled fortress city of King Caradoc I, or Caractacus, who fought the Romans between 42-51 AD.
The Roman leader at that time was the Emperor Claudius, immortalised by Derek Jacobi in the TV series and film I, Claud
Source: NYT
Aug 15, 2006
New archaeological evidence is raising more questions about the conventional interpretation linking the desolate ruins of an ancient settlement known as Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in nearby caves in one of the sensational discoveries of the last century.After early excavations at the site, on a promontory above the western shore of the Dead Sea, scholars concluded that members of a strict Jewish sect, the Essenes, had lived there in a mona
Source: Reuters
Aug 15, 2006
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid his respects at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine for war dead on Tuesday, the anniversary of his country's World War Two surrender, defying warnings from China and South Korea not to go.
The parting shot by the outgoing Japanese leader prompted angry protests from Beijing and Seoul.
Koizumi is set to step down in September, and China in particular appears to be counting on his heir apparent, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, to he
Source: NYT
Aug 15, 2006
A Chinese-American co-production of a film about the 1937 Japanese massacre of Chinese civilians known as the Rape of Nanking is on the drawing board, the Chinese state news media said yesterday. The report came on the 61st anniversary of Japan’s announcement of its surrender in World War II. The Xinhua news agency said the film would be the Chinese equivalent of “Schindler’s List,” Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Holocaust film, which won seven Oscars, including those for best film and best director.
Source: NYT
Aug 15, 2006
The Nobel Prize-winning German author Günter Grass, stung by condemnation after his confession that he served with the elite Nazi Waffen SS in World War II, responded yesterday by saying: “It is surely also an attempt by some people to make me persona non grata. That is why I am grateful that there are also discriminating opposing views.” Agence France-Presse reported that Mr. Grass had told the German news agency DPA that his service in the Waffen SS shamed him, and that he had tried ever since
Source: AP
Aug 15, 2006
NASA officials are searching for the original videotapes from the first moon landing in 1969 in the hopes that they can use modern technology to produce sharper images of the event.
The video, including footage of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, was transmitted from the moon to tracking stations in California and Australia. The images that were then sent to Houston -- and seen by the rest of the world -- were substantially degraded.
Source: NYT Editorial
Aug 15, 2006
The sunny headquarters of the American Friends of the Salzburg Festival are conveniently right across the street from the festival’s performance halls. The association between the festival and the Friends has been long and close. Until this summer.
Festival officials are miffed with the Friends over that group’s decision to present “The Salzburg Festival: A Short History,” a new documentary by the British filmmaker Tony Palmer. The festival has disavowed the film, partly because of
Source: US News & World Report
Aug 14, 2006
US News & World Report's cover story features stories about firsts in history.
Who was first to the top of the world?
The mystery of 4,000 miles
Digging for old treasures
Washington? Get in line
Did Darwin get scooped?
Shining light on the "dark lady of DNA"
The sound and fury of HIV
After lots of small steps, it adds up
No, it was not Al Gore
Contrary to myth, baseball may have had no single inventor
Source: Courier (Scotland)
Aug 14, 2006
REMARKABLE find recovered from the River Tay is undergoing the first stages of a painstaking preservation process.
In the culmination of a meticulous rescue plan, the 3000-year-old log boat was dug from its watery resting place over recent weeks before being floated and towed into Newburgh harbour on Friday evening.
With great care the boat, which was carved from a single oak, was lifted from the water by crane, an operation greeted with cheers and applause by a 100-st
Source: The Age (Australia)
Aug 14, 2006
SOME historians have been guilty of "political correctness" in romanticising nomadic Aboriginal life before the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, according to former NSW premier, Bob Carr.
Speaking last night on ABC radio's Sunday Profile program, Mr Carr said that some historians had "eliminated unattractive features of nomadic life of our accounts of pre-1788 Australia" out of a desire to avoid offending Aborigines.
Mr Carr's
Source: Wa Po
Aug 14, 2006
Long before Adolf Hitler dreamed of doing it, Germans colonized Britain and probably instituted a South Africa style apartheid regime there, scientists have concluded.
Archaeologists and historians have long believed that no more than 200,000 Anglo-Saxons from Germany invaded Britain during a 300-year period starting in the 5th century. But given that there were 2 million native Britons at the time, biologists have puzzled over how -- in less than 15 generations -- 50 percent of the
Source: USA Today
Aug 14, 2006
The share of the U.S. population that is white but not Hispanic is declining as minority groups grow more rapidly.
[Click on the Source link above for a table showing the percentage of whites in each state, according to new census figures.]
Source: Daily Telegraph
Aug 14, 2006
THE destroyed Tuileries Palace, once home to French kings and emperors, could be rebuilt after the French government formed a commission of eminent historians and politicians to draw plans for its restoration.
If approved, the 300 million euro ( pounds 200 million) construction project - between the Louvre museum and the Place de la Concorde - would create a replica of the palace before it was torched by a group of extremists in 1871.
The Palais des Tuileries was built
Source: AP
Aug 14, 2006
Forty years ago, Chinese communist chairman Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It's an unpleasant anniversary that official Beijing will not celebrate and most Chinese would rather forget.
Mao's objective: to purge the party of its moderate, pragmatic faction, which he said was leading China away from Marxism and toward capitalism and to make himself unassailable leader.
The bloody, chaotic decade between 1966 and 1976 which ensued was among
Source: World Association for Tangible Cultural Heritage
Aug 14, 2006
The loss of innocent civilian lives cannot be tolerated and must be stopped with an immediate cease fire preventing the continuation of the hostilities in the region and enabling sensible negotiations to resolve the issues.
Source: NYT Editorial
Aug 14, 2006
In the history of the Democratic Party, the election of 1980 looms large: the year the party lost the White House, the Senate, a generation of Midwestern liberals and, in some ways, its confidence that it was the natural, even inevitable, majority party.Now, that election has a sequel.
Call it the return of the sons: Chet Culver, the Iowa secretary of state and the son of former Senator John C. Culver, is running for governor of Iowa. Senator Evan Bayh, son of former Senator Birch B
Source: NYT Editorial
Aug 14, 2006
In 1982, the American public and the veterans of the Vietnam War were given what is perhaps the finest single memorial ever built in this country: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by Maya Lin. Its eloquence and its terseness — both a product of its simplicity — have moved nearly everyone who has ever been lucky enough to visit. But why stop with perfect? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, established to raise money for the memorial, has proposed a new visitor center to help “interpret” t
Source: Scotsman.com
Aug 14, 2006
Woad, once used as war paint by ancient Britons to strike fear into the
hearts of their enemies, could now be used in the battle against cancer.
Scientists have discovered that the plant Isatis tinctoria, is a rich
source of an anti-tumour compound glucobrassicin (GBS), which is also
found in broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and is believed to be especially
active against breast cancer.
A recent paper from Dr Stefania Galletti's research team at the
University of Bologna, Italy, f
