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: LA Times
December 31, 2069
The honorary degree UC Berkeley posthumously bestowed on William Fujioka is a precious validation for his family. He left college behind and enlisted to fight in WWII after his family was interned.
For a time, the Fujiokas of Los Angeles lived a life of almost unimaginable abundance for a Japanese immigrant family in the early 20th century. There were white mink stoles and a Steinway grand piano, beachfront property and vacations to Catalina, even enough money to sponsor an Indianap
Source: Inside Higher Ed
December 31, 2069
At the College of Holy Cross this year, language instructors had to scramble to set up a second section of introductory Russian -- for the first time since the Cold War.
Not only are more students enrolling, but different kinds of students. "Our core has always been those with a love of the literature and we are still getting them, but now we are getting students with all sorts of other interaction with Russian culture," said Amy Adams, associate professor of Russian.
Source: Washington Post
December 31, 2069
A huge, rare deep-blue diamond known as the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond will join the other gems at the National Museum of Natural History for seven months next year.
The diamond, which weighs 31.06 carats, has not been on public display since an exhibition in Brussels in 1958. The museum announced Monday that the current owner, Laurence Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds International, is lending the brilliant gem not only for exhibition but also research. Graff bought the diamond las
Source: AP
December 31, 2069
The History Channel is planning its first scripted series and will base it on the Kennedys.
The cable network says the eight-hour series is called "The Kennedys" and will be told in a multigenerational manner akin to "The Godfather." The network says the series will depict a manipulative, egocentric father living out his ambitions through his sons.
The personal drama of the clan will be included in the saga as well as the era's major events. Some of
Source: New York Times
December 31, 2069
With brand management a focus of the new millennium and celebrity its obsession, could there be a better moment to study the pioneering image-maker of the Western world: Louis XIV?
From the heroic Bernini bust of the young French king in 1665, a noble face framed in tumbling curls; to the florid poseur in his coronation robes, painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud in 1701, Louis XIV was the role model for creating an image and a myth.
It is hard to believe that the palace at Vers
Source: Telegraph, UK
December 31, 2069
The remains of St Nicholas, the man who inspired Father Christmas, are buried at Jerpoint Abbey in County Kilkenny, Ireland, historians believe.
Experts claim that the philanthropist St Nicholas of Myra is entombed at the 12th century abbey after his body was moved there 800 years ago.
The saint, revered for his extraordinary generosity, lived during the 4th century and was Bishop of Lycia in what is now Turkey.
Due to his habit for leaving anonymous gifts
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
Charles Darwin, who suffered poor health throughout his life, was the victim of a genetic vomiting illness, an academic has claimed.
Darwin often became a virtual recluse during the worst episodes.
Previous theories regarding the cause of his illness have included hypochondria or panic disorders, while others claimed the problems lay with ‘repressed anger towards his father’, nervousness about his relationship with his wife or guilt over conflict with his earlier religi
Source: New York Times
December 31, 2069
Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94.
His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Mr. Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centers of graduate education in economics.
In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Mr. Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from one that ruminate
Source: New York Times
December 31, 2069
David R. Obey has served in Congress since Barack Obama was in grade school. He does not waste time with pleasantries, and he does not mince words. So when President Obama called Representative Obey recently to talk about Afghanistan, the congressman raised a topic sure to make the young commander in chief uncomfortable: Vietnam.
“I came here in ’69, and I determined that I would give Nixon a year to see what he could do, because he had inherited the war, so I bit my tongue for a ye
Source: 12-6-09
December 31, 2069
A leading Republican strategist and one-time aide to former Vice President Cheney said Sunday that President Obama’s recently announced decision to send an additional 30, 000 troops to Afghanistan is “a reassertion of the Bush doctrine.”
“The [Bush] doctrine is no safe havens [for terrorists intent on harming the United States] and we go after those that provide a harbor [for such terrorists]. That’s the doctrine,” Republican strategist Mary Matalin explained Sunday on CNN’s State o
Source: AP
December 31, 2069
HELSINKI, Finland -- Finns on Monday marked the 70th anniversary of the Winter War, a conflict that saw this tiny country hold off Stalin's Red Army for 105 days and suffer one-third as many casualties in weather that was so cold some soldiers hallucinated.
Finland lost the war, but its resistance against the massive Soviet war machine with its white-clad "ghost army" stunned Moscow, which had planned to occupy its western neighbor within a few weeks, into accepting peace.
Source: ANI
December 31, 2069
Budapest (Hungary): A team of Hungarian marine archaeologists has found the wreckage of a Dutch cargo ship that sank near the Brazilian coast over three centuries ago.
Voetboog was a three-mast flyboat, which left the port of Batavia (now Jakarta) for The Netherlands with a 109-member crew on board, the expedition leader Attila K. Szaloky told MTI, a Hungarian news agency.
Owned by the Dutch East India Company, the Fluyt ship carried silk, spices, tea, Japanese and Chin
Source: AP
December 31, 2069
ATLANTA—Just north of I-20 on Moreland Avenue in Atlanta sits an intersection on a low hill. There's a gas station and a liquor store and some other businesses, but not much else.
Though you would never know it from the unremarkable view, thousands of men died here 145 years ago in one of the fiercest fights of the Civil War.
Confederate Private Sam Watkins, wounded in the battle that July day in 1864, recalled bodies, horses, wagons and cannon "piled indiscriminat
Source: Culture 24
December 31, 2069
Tests on the Midlands mansion where William Shakespeare lived out his final years will begin tomorrow after experts revealed plans to dig up the 14th century site next year.
Experts from The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Birmingham Archaeology will carry out a feasibility study on New Place, the picturesque Stratford-upon-Avon house and gardens where Shakespeare died in 1616, ahead of a major archaeological excavation in 2010.
"Our purpose would be to create a m
Source: WGN 9 News
December 31, 2069
A World War II Fighter Plane has been recovered from the bottom of Lake Michigan.
A crane pulled the plane out Monday at Waukegan Harbor, but the process has been going on for months.
It was back in 1945, when the F6F-3 Hellcat sank, during a training flight.
The pilot, Walter B. Elcock, now 89, barely survived the crash. While he couldn't make it to the recovery, his grandson, Hunter Brawley did.
Brawley recalls his grandfather telling him al
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
A suitcase filled with wartime mementoes belonging to a Battle of Britain hero has been opened by his daughter 50 years later.
Jozef Jeka, a Polish airman who fled to Britain after Germany invaded his homeland, was a World War Two pilot who won the Distinguished Flying Medal and many other awards for his exploits.
He was twice shot down by the enemy and was credited with eight kills, four probables and one flying bomb.
He married a British woman after the w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
Pete Doherty, the singer and songwriter, has been removed from the stage during a solo performance in Germany after he sang a Nazi anthem.
The lead singer of rock band Babyshambles began singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles', which was used as the national anthem under the Third Reich.
An outraged crowd at the on3 music festival in Munich began booing and shouting, but Doherty carried on singing five more songs before festival organisers ushered him from the sta
Source: BBC News
December 31, 2069
Peru has apologised for the first time to its citizens of African origin for centuries of "abuse, exclusion and discrimination".
The government said racially-motivated harassment still hindered the social and professional development of many African-Peruvians.
A public ceremony will be held to apologise to African-Peruvians, who make up 5-10% of the population.
Their ancestors were brought as slaves to the region by Spanish colonisers.
Source: BBC News
December 31, 2069
John Demjanjuk, accused of helping to murder nearly 28,000 Jews at a Nazi death camp, has gone on trial in the German city of Munich.
Mr Demjanjuk, who is 89 and was deported from the US in May, entered the courtroom in a wheelchair. His eyes were closed but he seemed conscious.
He denies being a camp guard at Sobibor, in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The trial is expected to last until May and, if found guilty, Mr Demjanjuk could be sentenced to 15 years in jail.
Source: The Daily Beast
December 31, 2069
The victim of a high-profile, racially charged assault case in West Virginia in 2007 is now coming clean and admitting that her story was fabricated. Megan Williams, who has since moved to Columbus, Ohio, told police that she had been stabbed, beaten, and sexually assaulted in a trailer. She claimed her six white assailants had forced her to eat feces while hailing racial slurs at her. At the time, Rev. Al Sharpton called for the case to be investigated as a hate crime. After guilty pleas from a
