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: Andrew Sullivan blog
4-16
Journalist Jo Becker's new history of gay marriage is woefully incomplete, says Sullivan.
Source: New York Times
3-11-4
The scale of Russia's propaganda efforts over the Ukrainian crisis dwarfs even Soviet campaigns.
Source: The Independent
10-1813
The skulls probably belong to homo erectus, but that means that the earlier hominid homo habilis may be the same as homo erectus.
Source: The Economist
6-13
IN SOVIET times, it was the ideological caprice of the moment, rather than any open-ended research into the past, that determined how people were taught to view the different phases of their country's history. In the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, official history lessons denounced the Tsars for their cruel treatment of smaller nations. Then the Russian empire was rehabilitated as a "lesser evil" than its weaker neighbours; and as Stalin's repression reached its height, his regime and its ideological masters began to find merit in the savageries of Ivan the Terrible. There was a sardonic saying that summed up these dizzying fluctuations: "The future is known—it's always bright—but the past keeps changing."
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
6-13
Half a millennium ago, in 1513, the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León departed Puerto Rico for the verdant island of “Bimini”—an uncharted land in what is now the Bahamas. He eventually landed instead in Florida, where he staked a claim for the Spanish Crown and ensured himself a spot in the annals of history.As legend has it , and as scholars have maintained for centuries, Ponce was in search of the Fountain of Youth, a fabled wellspring thought to give everlasting life to whoever bathed in or drank from it. But new scholarship contradicts the old fable and suggests that Ponce was interested not in longevity but political gain.The real story goes something like this: In 1511, messy political squabbling forced Ponce to surrender the governorship of Puerto Rico, an appointment he had held since 1509. As a consolation prize, King Ferdinand offered him Bimini, assuming the stalwart conquistador could finance an expedition and actually find it....
Source: Wilson Quarterly
Winter 2013
With its inspiring images of citizens around the Middle East taking to the streets to demand an end to dictatorship, the Arab Spring rekindled our faith in democracy. As the dramatic events unfolded on television, it was impossible not to believe that however tightly autocrats may try to hold on to power, and however messy transitions may be, in the end, despotism must yield to the will of the people....
Source: CivilWarNEws
04-13
The exciting discovery of a damaged copper sleeve at one end of the spar on the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley has overturned conventional wisdom about how the vessel became the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel in combat.
The new information was revealed at a Jan. 28 press conference at the Warren Lasch Conservation Lab where the recovered submarine is being conserved....
Source: BBCNews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershi
A Roman sculpture of a Cotswold god has been found in a castle cupboard after being missing for over 100 years.
The artefact, dated 150-350AD, was first found during an archaeological dig on the estate of Sudeley Castle in 1875.
But when historians found records of the discovery in the 1960s, there was no trace of the sculpture.
The Roman altar God has now been found in a basement cupboard during a clear out at the Gloucestershire castle....
Source: NBC
February 31, 2013
Three of this year’s best picture contenders were based on real events – but just how accurate were their portrayals and what responsibility does a filmmaker have to tell the truth? NBC’s Mike Taibbi reports. [Discusses Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty.]
Source: CityJ
Winter 2013, Vol. 23. No. 1.
The Washington, D.C., region has long been considered recession-proof, thanks to the remorseless expansion of the federal government in good times and bad. Yet it’s only now—as D.C. positively booms while most of the country remains in economic doldrums—that the scale of Washington’s prosperity is becoming clear. Over the past decade, the D.C. area has made stunning economic and demographic progress. Meanwhile, America’s current and former Second Cities, population-wise—Los Angeles and Chicago—are battered and fading in significance. Though Washington still isn’t their match in terms of population, it’s gaining on them in terms of economic power and national importance....
Source: CityJ
Winter 2013, Vol. 23. No. 1.
After spending years dogged by unpaid debts, California labor leader Charles Valdes filed for bankruptcy in the 1990s—twice. At the same time, he held one of the most influential positions in the American financial system: chair of the investment committee for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, the nation’s largest pension fund for government workers. Valdes left the board in 2010 and now faces scrutiny for accepting gifts from another former board member, Alfred Villalobos—who, the state alleges, spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to influence how the fund invested its assets. Questioned by investigators about his dealings with Villalobos, Valdes invoked the Fifth Amendment 126 times....
Source: CWN
February/March 2013
A new 3D state-of-the-art sonar map released by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, ExploreOcean, Teledyne BlueView and Northwest Hydro shows never-before seen details of the USS Hatteras, the only Union warship sunk in combat in the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War.
The map was released on the 150th anniversary of the ship sinking on Jan. 11, 1863, after fighting the raider CSS Alabama approximately 20 miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas.
The Hatteras was a 210-foot-long iron-hulled steamship the U.S. Navy converted into a gunboat. Its wreck is largely intact 57 feet under water in sand and silt....
Source: AP
8-1-122
Gaza's ruling Hamas has criticized a Palestinian official for visiting a memorial at the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz and paying respects to its 1.5 million victims there, most of them Jews.Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum, expressing the Islamic militant group's position, claimed Wednesday that the Holocaust "is a big lie." He said last week's visit to the Auschwitz by Ziad al-Bandak, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, went against Palestinian public opinion. Abbas and Hamas are political rivals....
Source: Religion News Service
7-11-2
(RNS) A large-scale Bible museum will open in Washington, D.C., within four years, say planners who have been touring the world with portions of their collection.Cary Summers, chief operating officer of The Museum of the Bible, a nonprofit umbrella group for the collection of the billionaire Green family of Oklahoma, said they considered Washington, Dallas and New York but decided the nation's capital was the best location. The final name of the museum and its exact location have not been disclosed but planners hope to confirm a location later this summer.Research they commissioned found that the general population was more willing to travel to the nation's capital for a Bible-focused museum than the other two cities, Summers said....
Source: Reuters
July-4-2012
The Codex Calixtinus, a 12th century collection of sermons and liturgical passages, vanished from a safe deposit box in the cathedral, the endpoint of the ancient pilgrimage route the Camino de Santiago.The elaborately illustrated manuscript, considered an important part of Spain's cultural and religious heritage, has yet to be found, though the police say they are close.The key suspect is a man who was sacked after working for the cathedral as a caretaker, electrician and odd job man for more than 25 years, police said in a statement.Police said they had also recovered at least 1.2 million euros ($1.5 million), eight copies of the Codex and other ancient books that had also disappeared from the cathedral, during searches of garages, houses and storage rooms.
Source: 3-27-12
NYT
The opening scenes of the Season 5 premiere of “Mad Men,” set in 1966, depicted a sort of knucklehead-racism at work, when young men from the advertising agency Young & Rubicam dropped bags filled with water on protesters picketing on the Madison Avenue sidewalk below. Wet and angry, several protesters came upstairs to demand to know who at the firm had dropped the water bombs.One protester said in disgust, “And they call us savages.”Some critics found the scene, broadcast on Sunday, a bit too on-the-nose. “It’s a terrible line that should have been red-penciled,” wrote Matt Zoller Seitz for New York magazine. Mike Hale of The New York Times called it “unfortunately ham-handed.”But no writer is to blame.Everything in the scene really happened, written almost verbatim from an article on Page 1 of The Times on May 28, 1966....
Source: 11-14-11
NYT
JAMESTOWN — For more than a decade, the marshy island in Virginia where British colonists landed in 1607 has yielded uncounted surprises. And yet William M. Kelso’s voice still brims with excitement as he plants his feet atop a long-buried discovery at the settlement’s heart: what he believes are the nation’s oldest remains of a Protestant church.The discovery has excited scholars and preservationists, and unearthed a long-hidden dimension of religious life in the first permanent colony.It may prove to be an attraction for another reason: the church would have been the site of America’s first celebrity wedding, so to speak, where the Indian princess Pocahontas was baptized and married to the settler John Rolfe in 1614. The union temporarily halted warfare with the region’s tribal federation.Last week Mr. Kelso, the chief archaeologist at the site, hopped into the excavated pit topped with sandbags and pointed to where Pocahontas would have stood at the altar rail. Orange flags marked the church’s perimeter. The pulpit would have been to the left and a baptismal font behind, with a door opening toward the river....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
9-5-111
A Dutch historian has used a unique 1,700 year old map of Roman roads to create an online journey planner giving the destinations, distances and timings of routes used by ancient travellers in the days of empire.
Routes are based on the Tabula Peutingeriana, a one of a kind chart, which shows an imperial Roman road network, or curses public's, that stretches from Britain to the river Ganges that flows through India and Bangladesh.
The huge map, last updated in the third or fourth century, shows 2,760 towns with lists of distances and destinations on the Roman roads connecting them, all set out on a scroll of parchment almost 23 feet long.
The original version of the Roman route tables was prepared two thousand years ago under the direction of Marcus Agrippa, the statesman, general and son-in-law of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.
Placed on the Unesco
Source: 6-11-11
The Canadian Press
Four people executed for murder during the Yukon's Klondike Gold Rush more than a century ago will be buried this weekend.
The remains were discovered during excavation work last November at a new waste water treatment plant in Dawson City.
Two sets of remains have since been identified as Dawson and Jim Nantuck, members of what is now the Carcross Tagish First Nation in southern Yukon.
A third set of remains was identified as Edward Henderson, who was hanged for murdering a companion, while the fourth set of remains has yet to be identified.
The Nantucks wer
Source: BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-ea
A 6ft cannon, weighing a ton, and a ship's anchor have been unearthed in an overgrown flower bed at a Fife aquarium.
The cannon and anchor were found by a gardener in the grounds of Deep Sea World in North Queensferry, near the attraction's entrance.
North Queensferry Heritage Trust has been drafted in to identify the items' ages and where they came from.
They are covered in rust and will be displayed at the aquarium....
