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: Daily Post (Wales)
Aug 8, 2006
THE summer drought has unearthed a treasure trove of finds for historians taking a birds eye view of Wales.
Heatwave conditions, which have parched the Welsh countryside, proved ideal for aerial archaeologists.
Last night they were described as the best for at least adecade with a host of buried sites revealed from the air.
The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales made major discoveries using light aircraft to survey the Welsh l
Source: cronaca
Aug 8, 2006
A 6-inch-long gold and platinum dagger believed to be 5,000 years-old has been unearthed in central Bulgaria, the archaeologist leading the excavations said Monday.
Archaeologist Martin Hristov said his team discovered more than 500 tiny golden rings that appeared to be pieces of ancient jewelry.
Source: frontpagemag.com
Aug 8, 2006
In an article published on the homepage of David Horowitz's frontpagemag.com, Mark D. Tooley, who directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, blasts Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold for managing to find the time during a busy month to apologize for Hiroshima. This is what he says:The outgoing chief bishop of The Episcopal Church, having presided over that 2 million member denomination’s spiraling schism over homosexu
Source: NYT
Aug 8, 2006
Established history bowed to current correctness at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival yesterday when Mel Smith, an actor portraying Winston Churchill, drew back from his threat to light a Havana cigar onstage in defiance of a new Scottish antismoking law, the BBC reported. The Edinburgh City Council had warned it would shut the theater if the law was broken. William Burdett-Coutts, the artistic director of the theater, said he had been told he would lose his Fringe license permanently and be fined a
Source: NYT
Aug 8, 2006
An investigation into the theft of 221 objects from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has led to the husband and son of a curator who had been responsible for the collection, confirming an initial police theory that the $5 million art theft was an inside job. The curator had been responsible for the Russian enamel and precious metal pieces dating from the middle ages to the 19th century, including delicate masterpieces of Russian Orthodox icon craftsmanship. The items slowly
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 8, 2006
Question: What's the difference between Joan of Arc and a canoe?
Answer: One is Maid of Orleans and the other is made of wood.
It may not have you splitting your sides, but we are assured that it went down extremely well with audiences at Victorian circuses.The joke is one of many stuffed into the pages of a recently discovered joke book that belonged to a Victorian clown.
Packed with 200 gags used to amuse audiences at the
Source: neworleanscitybusiness.com
Aug 8, 2006
NEW ORLEANS - The National World War II Museum will present a historic International Conference on World War II, Nov. 16-19.
The conference will be one of the largest gatherings of historians, journalists, Medal of Honor recipients and World War II veterans ever assembled since the end of the war more than 60 years ago. It was originally scheduled for October 2005. "The force of Hurricane Katrina may have postponed the museum's first International Conferen
Source: LAT
Aug 8, 2006
Reclaiming a neglected part of California's past, historians Monday unveiled an immense data bank that for the first time chronicles the lives and deaths of more than 100,000 Indians in the Spanish missions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In an eight-year effort, researchers at the Huntington Library in San Marino used handwritten records of baptisms, marriages and deaths at 21 Catholic missions and two other sites from between 1769 and 1850 and created a cross-referenced computeriz
Source: USA Today
Aug 8, 2006
In 1986, at least 24 U.S. senators and representatives were closely related to governors or other members of Congress, USA TODAY research shows.
Twenty years later, there are more than 50 -- among them four sets of siblings, four widows, dozens of offspring, the wife of a former Senate majority leader and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of a former president and governor.
No official records are kept, but Senate historian Richard Baker says the concentration of relati
Source: The Australian
Aug 8, 2006
James Cameron, the director of Titanic, is the executive producer of a new documentary that claims to have uncovered evidence confirming one of the most dramatic episodes in the Old Testament: the parting of the Red Sea and the Jewish exodus from Egypt.
In The Exodus Decoded, a 90-minute documentary to be shown in the US this month, Cameron and Canadian producer Simcha Jacobovici claim a volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini triggered a chain of catastrophes recorded in
Source: Guardian
Aug 7, 2006
Christopher Columbus, the man credited with discovering the Americas, was a greedy and vindictive tyrant who saved some of his most violent punishments for his own followers, according to a document uncovered by Spanish historians.
As governor and viceroy of the Indies, Columbus imposed iron discipline on the first Spanish colony in the Americas, in what is now the Caribbean country of Dominican Republic. Punishments included cutting off people's ears and noses, parading women naked
Source: The State (SC)
Aug 7, 2006
South Carolina is on the cusp of racking up another Revolutionary War victory, this one 225 years after the fact.
Legislation has passed both the U.S. House and Senate, in slightly different forms, for a study that could lead to more recognition for the dozens of prominent battle sites in South Carolina.
“The Revolution was largely won after the fall of Charleston in the backcountry,” said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., on the floor of the House last month of a bill that cou
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 7, 2006
An institute in Germany has unearthed a Nazi bible ordered by Adolf Hitler to replace the old and new testaments expunged of all references to Jews.
Hitler's race theorists even rewrote the 10 commandments and added two more for good measure in the book called ’German with God’ which was – alongside Hitler’ s autobiography – meant to be required reading in every home in his Third Reich.
Thou shalt not kill, coveting one's neighbour's wife, thou shalt not steal and all o
Source: ABC News
Aug 7, 2006
Just months after archaeologists gleefully clamored over the first tomb to be found in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since 1922, there may be another.
Located just meters from the last tomb — KV-63 excavated earlier this year — Nicholas Reeves of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, working under the Valley of the Kings Foundation, claims the group has detected what he believes will turn out to be another tomb, and possibly a royal one at that.
"This new discovery is impo
Source: NYT
Aug 7, 2006
The success or failure of any cease-fire in Lebanon will largely hinge on the opinion of one figure: Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, who has seen his own aura and that of his party enhanced immeasurably by battling the Israeli Army for nearly four weeks. ... the Arab world has a new icon.
Gone are the empty threats made by President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s official radio station during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to push the Jews into the
Source: AP
Aug 7, 2006
Four of five oil paintings by Gustav Klimt that were the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and the artworks' Jewish heirs will be heading to Christie's for sale this fall, the auction house announced Monday.
Christie's has not determined whether the works -- three landscapes and a portrait worth an estimated $100 million -- will be auctioned or sold privately, said Steven Thomas, the Los Angeles attorney who represents the heirs.
''The family
Source: AP
Aug 7, 2006
EASTON, Md.--The Great House still stands on the plantation where Frederick Douglass spent his childhood. But the quarters where the famed abolitionist once lived along with other slaves are long gone from the 350-year-old estate.
While the history of the Lloyd family, which has owned the property since the 1600s, is well documented, much less is known about the daily lives of their slaves.
University of Maryland archaeologists hoping to flesh out the story of those who
Source: scotsman.com
Aug 7, 2006
ACTOR Mel Gibson was once involved in providing support for a friend who was member of a far-right group in Australia known for its antisemitic views, according to newspaper reports.
The actor, who last week allegedly harangued police with an antisemitic outburst after being arrested on suspicion of drunk driving California, was said to have campaigned for Robin Taylor, a member of the Australian League of Rights, who stood unsuccessfully for a local government seat in northern Vict
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aug 7, 2006
he weathered skull in Chris Stojanowski's luggage passed through Atlanta's airport security without turning a single head.
As cold cases go, the cranium in his custom-made carry-on case was a classic. A long time ago, someone lost his head --- this particular head --- near present-day Darien, on the Georgia coast.
Now Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist at Arizona State University's new School of Human Evolution and Social Change, wants to find out more about the brittle sk
Source: Newsweek
Aug 7, 2006
IBM delivered the first disk drive 50 years ago. It was about the size of two refrigerators and weighed a ton.If there's a bottle of vintage champagne you've been saving, next month is the time to pop it open: it's the 50th anniversary of hard-disk storage. Don't laugh. On Sept. 13, 1956, IBM shipped the first unit of the RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) and set in motion a process that would change the way we live.
The RAMAC, designed in B
