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: Loudon-Times Mirror
May 9, 2006
The National Register of Historic Places offers a "Journey Through Hallowed Ground" using U.S. 15 (with a few miles of Virginia Route 20) to connect Gettysburg, Pa., with Charlottesville, thus linking the historic Civil War battlefield with Monticello, the plantation of Thomas Jefferson. On the way, travelers may investigate other historic battlefields, such as Monocacy, Md.; Antietam, Md.; Harpers Ferry, W.Va.; Boonsboro, Md.; Bull Run at Manassas; Cedar Mou
Source: Bloomberg News
May 9, 2006
Three years into major combat in Vietnam, 28,500 U.S. service members had perished, millions of families were anxious about the military draft and antiwar protests had spread to dozens of college campuses.
Today, at the same juncture in the Iraq war, about 2,400 American soldiers have died, the U.S. military consists entirely of volunteers and public dissent is sporadic.
There's one other difference: The war in Iraq is more unpopular than was the Vietnam conflict at t
Source: NYT
May 9, 2006
The board overseeing the Smithsonian Institution is expected in the next few days to release its response to a Congressional inquiry into its agreement with Showtime Networks to create an on-demand cable station whose programming would feature Smithsonian programs and collections, said Lawrence M. Small, the institution's top executive. Mr. Small declined to characterize the response the institution's 17-member board agreed on, but he repeated assertions that the agreement "doesn't limit th
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 9, 2006
From the moment in February that David Horowitz’s new book appeared, scholars have been poking at it, identifying errors and what they consider to be distortions (even as Horowitz was praised by many conservative talk show hosts, who have helped him boost sales).
Today, a coalition of academic and civil liberties groups is releasing a more detailed analysis of the Horowitz book,The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. In “Facts Count,” the debunking document bein
Source: Yahoo
May 9, 2006
ATHENS, Greece - A Greek fisherman has handed over to authorities a large section of an ancient bronze statue brought up in his nets in the Aegean Sea, officials said on Monday.
The male torso was located last week near the eastern Aegean island of Kalymnos, the Culture Ministry said in an announcement.
The one-meter (3-foot) high find belonged to a statue of a horseback soldier, and would have been part of the cargo of an ancient ship that sank in the area. It was tak
Source: breitbart.com
May 9, 2006
According to Skull and Bones legend, members _ including President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush _ dug up Geronimo's grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I. Geronimo died in 1909.
"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the (Tomb) together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn," according to the letter, written by Winter Mead.
Source: BBC
May 8, 2006
One of Britain's most historic ships could be dismantled because too much money is needed to restore it. The 140-year-old clipper, The Carrick, has been rotting away on the quayside at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine, Ayrshire, for 15 years.
Along with the Cutty Sark, it is one of the last clippers in the world but at least £10m is needed to repair it.
Source: Yahoo
May 8, 2006
A carved monolith unearthed in Mexico may show that the Olmec civilization, one of the oldest in the Americas, was more widespread than thought or that another culture thrived alongside it 3,000 years ago.
Findings at the newly excavated Tamtoc archeological site in the north-central state of San Luis Potosi may prompt scholars to rethink a view of Mesoamerican history which holds that its earliest peoples were based in the south of Mexico.
Source: AP
May 8, 2006
BEIJING, China - Work on a shooting range for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been suspended after the discovery of imperial-era tombs on the site, newspapers and an antiquities official said Monday.
The tombs, found in mid-April, are believed to date back five to six centuries to the Ming dynasty, and may be those of eunuchs serving at the imperial court, the Beijing Morning Post said.
Beijing has been the site of imperial and other capitals for more than 1,000 years, an
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
Two authors who unsuccessfully sued the British publisher of "The Da Vinci Code" have been ordered to pay 85 percent of the publisher's legal bill, estimated at just over $2.4 million, the BBC reported. Although the first installment, $651,000, was due on Friday, the authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, applied for more time, and Justice Peter Smith, who heard the case in High Court in London, adjourned the matter to this week. They also face a bill from their own lawyers.
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
Denouncing "The Da Vinci Code," a Roman Catholic cardinal who was considered a contender for pope last year made an apparent reference to violent Muslim protests to cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, Reuters reported. Suggesting legal action against the best-selling Dan Brown novel and the forthcoming movie, Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian, demanded "that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected." Without elabor
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
President Bush had dinner last month on the Stanford University campus at the home of George P. Shultz, who was President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, and the topic of conversation was not, as might be expected, the war in Iraq. Instead, guests said, Mr. Bush spent the evening focused on how he could create a public policy center with his presidential library after he leaves office in 2009.
The dozen or so guests at the dinner included directors and fellows of the Hoover Inst
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
Drexel A. Sprecher, a lawyer who researched, plotted strategy and argued cases at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, including presenting the case that convicted the head of the Hitler Youth movement, died on March 18 in Washington. He was 92 and a resident of Chevy Chase, Md.
Belle Zeck, another Nuremberg prosecutor, died the same day as Mr. Sprecher. Benjamin B. Ferencz, who was also a Nuremberg prosecutor and roomed with Mr. Sprecher, said only about a half dozen of thei
Source: Xinhua (China)
May 8, 2006
Turkey has recalled its ambassadors in France and Canada for consultations regarding the Armenian genocide discussions in the two countries, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said on Monday.Tan told reporters that Turkey's Ambassador to France Osman Koruturk and Ambassador to Canada Aydemir Erman have been called back to Ankara for a short time to have consultations on recent "baseless" Armenian genocide allegations in these two countries.
Source: NYT
May 7, 2006
In his NYT Book Review of A G-Man's Life, John Dean says the book is "weak biography or autobiography" (it was written by Mark Felt and John W. O'Connor) and "is even worse history."
Source: NYT
May 7, 2006
SINCE well before the last century began, Bolivia has fought repeatedly with its neighbors over the riches on and under its soil.
So far, it has lost every time.
Once more than three times the size of Texas, half of the land Bolivia once held is now gone, along with a long Pacific coastline and, some have said, the country's dignity.Even lowly Paraguay, also landlocked and impoverished, took its share — in a three-year war that ended in 1935,
Source: BBC
May 7, 2006
Mystery surrounds a map which experts believe may provide new information about plans to defend England from invasion in World War II.
Auctioneers want help to verify claims made for the document, thought to have been used by Winston Churchill.
The one inch to one mile Ordnance Survey map centres on Westerham, Kent near Churchill's home at Chartwell.
A label on the back says it was "reputedly used in 1940 in connection with the defence of SE England"
Source: AP
May 7, 2006
JAMESTOWN, Va. -- Plymouth tends to hog the attention, with its buckle-shoed Pilgrims and the story of the first Thanksgiving.
But in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, three ships deposited a group of explorers on a swampy peninsula on Virginia's James River that became America's first permanent English settlement and the birthplace of the United States.
A new replica of one of those ships will embark May 22 on a tour of six East Coast ports to d
Source: Wa Po
May 7, 2006
The Greatest Generation is tired. In their day, with hearts clanging in their skinny, young chests, they flew bomb runs, manned the machine guns on 7,000 cargo ships or survived 124 days in a foxhole on an Italian beach surrounded on three sides by German troops.
Now, it takes all that a citizen soldier such as Eugene Lafferty has to climb the stairs at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. One by one, the 81-year-old widower labors up the steps with his c
Source: AP
May 7, 2006
Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died, a funeral home said Sunday. She was 99.
Asplund, who was just 5 years old, lost her father and three brothers _ including a fraternal twin _ when the "practically unsinkable" ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.
