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: Newsweek
Oct 17, 2005
Prophet and polygamist, mesmerizer and rabble-rouser, saint and sinner: Joseph Smith is arguably the most influential native-born figure in American religious history, and is almost certainly the most fascinating. This year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the bicentennial is prompting fresh and searching looks at Smith, the faith he built and the legacy he left behind. The church is opening Smith's life and contributions to research--a new stance for an institution whose early expe
Source: NYT
Oct 16, 2005
A late 17th-century Virgin has been revealed by Aleksei Khetagurov, chief of icon restoration for the State Historical Museum in Moscow.
She had arrived in his studio as a small, blackened board, slightly warped as many Russian Orthodox icons are, hidden behind her forbidding veil of spoiled dark patina.
"At first I had no idea what was there," said Mr. Khetagurov. He showed a photograph of the icon as it had come to him, dark and murky as though the Virgin
Source: Boston Globe
Oct 16, 2005
The Rhode Island Historical Society has come across a rare, and lucky, find: a document written by the state's founder, Roger Williams. The first edition of the 1644 writings, "The Bloudy Tenent," were found by a librarian in August, but only recently verified as authentic. The work was found tucked inside some other historical writings on a shelf with rare books.There are only five other known first editions of the tract, including two of them at Brown
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Oct 16, 2005
A stroll through the Maryland State House might give a visitor the impression that the state's government skipped the 19th century. The building's rich 18th-century history, when it was the capitol of the fledgling American nation, is on display in the Old Senate Chamber. Exhibits in three adjoining rooms give a glimpse of what life was like when the Continental Congress was in town in the late 1700s. And modern government is on display in the "new" Senate and House of Delegates chambe
Source: The Houston Chronicle
Oct 16, 2005
White Settlement may be on the way out.
Voters in this city just west of Fort Worth will decide Nov. 8 on a proposal to change its name to West Settlement.The "White" part is just not right for today's business world, Mayor James Ouzts said.
"When people see the name, the question of race comes to mind. They ask, 'What is that all about? Why is that name there?' " Ouzts said. "If you start out in a negative spot, it's hard t
Source: Stars and Stripes
Oct 16, 2005
A Japanese historian contends that Air Force Staff Sgt. Charles O. Baumgartner Jr., an American POW, knew “a powerful bomb” would be dropped on Hiroshima when the Japanese took him prisoner 10 days before the city was destroyed, killing an estimated 140,000 people almost instantly. The death toll included 12 American prisoners of war, including Baumgartner, a ball-turret gunner of the B-24 bomber Taloa, said Hiroshima historian Shigeaki Mori.
Mori has successfully tracked down relat
Source: WP
Oct 16, 2005
The saga of John Champe, the Loudoun County man who became a double agent to capture the Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold, is a tale worthy of grand opera.In late October 1780, near Bergen, N.J., the Loudoun Dragoons were encamped a few miles from the Hudson River. Champe, 28, was the cavalry unit's sergeant major; Maj. Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee was its commander.
"The Escape of Sergeant Champe," a Currier & Ives lithog
Source: Washington Times
Oct 15, 2005
It is the collection of a lifetime -- thousands of artifacts, including diaries, uniforms, weapons, flags and soldiers' accouterments, that tell the story of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Amassed by retired radiologist Tom Sweeney of Springfield, Mo., many items in the collection have been used for illustrations in the Time-Life book series on the Civil War. Now it all belongs to the National Park Service in a $4.5 million deal that includes not only the artifacts, but the muse
Source: Advertiser (Australia)
Oct 15, 2005
THAT resounding phrase, "England expects every man will do his duty," is 200 years old on Friday.
It was to become the by-word of patriotism in the British Empire and even earned the attention of the Goons and Monty Python.
Journalists know such great words need an originator and an editor and, in this case, the phrase was Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson's. His editor was HMS Victory's signalman.Nelson may have uttered two unforgettable
Source: BBC
Oct 15, 2005
Nurses and service people have paid tribute to World War I heroine Edith Cavell at Norwich Cathedral.
The nurse helped more than 200 allied soldiers to escape captivity but was shot by the Germans within hours of her trial in Belgium on 12 October 1915.
Source: BBC
Oct 15, 2005
Many Scots are "woefully" ignorant of the Battle of Trafalgar, a survey to mark its 200th anniversary suggests.
Four out of five Scots (83%) cannot name the location of Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory.
One in five Scots did not know who fought in the battle and 3% thought it was between Scotland and England, according to the Woodland Trust.The British under Nelson won a decisive naval battle off southern Spain against the Fren
Source: BBC
Oct 15, 2005
The Beatles have beaten jazz star Louis Armstrong and TV actress Lucille Ball to be named icons of the century by readers of US magazine Variety. It named the Liverpool band "the sole group who has most shaped the face of modern-day showbusiness". The magazine ranked 100 iconic entertainment figures from the last 100 years, with industry figures drawing up a shortlist that readers voted on.
What a Wonderful World singer Armstrong came seco
Source: BBC
Oct 15, 2005
Two previously unseen paintings by Leonardo da Vinci have gone on public display for the first time in Italy. One is an alternative version of Da Vinci's famous painting known as Virgin of the Rocks, with the infant Jesus and the infant John the Baptist. The other shows Mary Magdalene, thought to have been completed by Leonardo with the help of one of his pupils about 1515, shortly before his death.Both are being displayed at Ancona's Mole Vanvitelliana museum.
Source: The Independent (London)
Oct 15, 2005
At least 1,400 people " many of them foreign tourists " were stranded at the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu yesterday after a mudslide blocked the famous railway to the site.The high-altitude line from Cuzcu was covered by more than three metres (9.8 feet) deep on Wednesday. Some 400,000 people visit Peru's most famous tourist attraction every year.
Many of the evacuees, who were being moved out by road last night, are Europeans and Americans, a city off
Source: The Independent (London)
Oct 15, 2005
At least 1,400 people " many of them foreign tourists " were stranded at the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu yesterday after a mudslide blocked the famous railway to the site.The high-altitude line from Cuzcu was covered by more than three metres (9.8 feet) deep on Wednesday. Some 400,000 people visit Peru's most famous tourist attraction every year.
Many of the evacuees, who were being moved out by road last night, are Europeans and Americans, a city off
Source: New York Times
Oct 15, 2005
It was a major coup for the museum, and the crowning glory of a curator's career. After years of courting a wealthy New York couple, the J. Paul Getty Museum had outmaneuvered the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other top institutions to capture one of the world's finest private collections of ancient art.
That 1996 acquisition, encompassing more than 300 masterworks of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art collected by Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, was envisioned as the anchor of a lavish ne
Source: WP
Oct 14, 2005
The Republican candidate for governor is drawing fire for campaign ads that suggest his Democratic opponent is so averse to the death penalty he would have spared Adolph Hitler from execution. The radio and TV ads feature victims' relatives who tearfully recount the crimes that killed their loved ones and say they don't trust Democrat Tim Kaine to administer the state's death penalty.Kaine, who says his moral objections to capital punishment are rooted in his Roman Catholic
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 14, 2005
Richard Pells, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, says that based on his experience last summer as a Fulbright senior specialist in Indonesia, the United States has not been successful in making its policies and values better understood among Muslims in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. QUOTE: My dialogue with Indonesians often became surreal. "Is there grass in Texas?" I was regularly asked of my home state. Obviously Indonesians — ha
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Oct 14, 2005
Cuts the Senate has proposed for the U.S. Census Bureau's budget next year may make it harder for the government to prepare for natural disasters, fund public schools appropriately or understand this country's complex and mobile population, according to those who rely on census data. The fiscal 2006 spending plan approved in the Senate includes a 17 percent cut from the $879 million the Bush administration wanted to allocate for the census. That cut would push census spending for fiscal 2006, wh
Source: CNN
Oct 14, 2005
Vivian Malone Jones, one of two black students whose effort to enroll at the University of Alabama led to George Wallace's infamous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in 1963, died Thursday. She was 63.
Jones, who went on to become the first black to graduate from the school, died at Atlanta Medical Center, where she had been admitted Tuesday after suffering a stroke, said her sister, Sharon Malone.
