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: Discovery
May 29, 2013
A grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the Electra, the two-engine aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.Released by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart's last, fateful flight, the images show an "anomaly" resting at the depth of about 600 feet in the waters off Nikumaroro island, some 350 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island....
Source: BBC News
May 29, 2013
More than 30 years after it was raised from the seabed - and almost 500 years since it sank - the secrets of Henry VIII's flagship, the Mary Rose, are being revealed to the public - along with the faces of its crew.Just yards from where it was first constructed from 600 oak trees near Portsmouth's naval docks in 1510, the wreck of the Tudor warship now stands on view in its new £35m home.Where once stood a proud, cutting-edge ship built for war, now lies a reconstructed array of wooden decks and pillars, withered by their hundreds of years at the bottom of the Solent....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 29, 2013
It was virtually ignored for centuries, but what may be the world's oldest Torah, the holy book of the Jewish faith, has now been discovered at the world's oldest university.The priceless scroll was found in the archives of Bologna University, which was founded in 1088 and predates both Oxford and Cambridge.The scroll, written in Hebrew, is 118ft long and 25 inches wide and consists of the first five books of the Jewish Bible, from Bereshit (the equivalent of Genesis) to Devarim (Deuteronomy).It had been wrongly dated to the 17th century by a librarian who studied it in 1889, but it now transpires that it is more than 800 years old....
Source: History.com
May 28, 2013
On May 28, 1888, Jim Thorpe was born in a one-room cabin in Prague, Oklahoma. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe—an Olympic champion and football and baseball star—was perhaps the greatest all-around athlete America has ever produced. Nearly a year following his death in 1953, his widow transported his body to a small Pennsylvania hamlet that agreed to rename itself in his honor. Now amid a family feud, Thorpe’s two surviving sons are seeking to re-inter his remains on tribal lands in his native Oklahoma, and a federal judge has ruled in their favor....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2013
A letter written by Rudyard Kipling where he admits to plagiarising some of his best known works, including parts of the Jungle Book, is set to be sold.The signed letter, written in 1895, admits that the writer may have helped himself ‘promiscuously’ to the works of others in his account of the Law of the Jungle, which features in the Jungle Book.The letter, addressed to an unknown woman, reads: “I have been absent from home for some days. Hence the delay in answering yours of no date, in regard to my account of the Law of the Jungle."I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet 'the necessities of the case': though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils....
Source: CNN.com
May 28, 2013
(CNN) -- For the second time in five months, Timbuktu's treasured collection of ancient manuscripts is under threat.Earlier this year, it was thought that most of the 300,000 precious documents were destroyed by Islamic fundamentalists when the northern Mali conflict entered the fabled city.But as it turns out, only 4,000 documents were burned by the rebels. The rest were smuggled out of Timbuktu six months before the incursion by a team of local families who have long safeguarded their city's famous library, often in their own homes....
Source: LiveScience
May 28, 2013
Nowadays, people bounce effortlessly from reading news to blogs to email. And it turns out the reading habits of people in medieval times weren't so different, a new book suggests.People in 14th-century London consumed a variety of texts, often linked together in bound volumes. Arthur Bahr, a literature professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explores these habits in his new book "Fragments and Assemblages" (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Source: Discovery News
May 28, 2013
A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say.The Dakhleh Oasis is one of seven oases in Egypt's Western Desert. The site has seen continuous human occupation since the Neolithic period, making it the focus of several archaeological investigations, said lead researcher Sandra Wheeler, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Florida. Moreover, the cemeteries in the oasis allow scientists to take a unique look at the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt....
Source: AP
May 28, 2013
BERLIN (AP) -- A fund for Jewish victims of Nazi crimes says it has reached an agreement with the German government for Berlin to provide some $1 billion in homecare for victims.A spokeswoman for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany said Tuesday that about 56,000 survivors in about 46 different countries will receive financial support under the agreement for a four-year-period from 2014-2017.Hillary Kessler-Godin, speaking by phone from the fund's New York office, said the amount of financial aid for each person will depend on individual needs and circumstances....
Source: NYT
May 28, 2013
TOKYO — Seeking to quell an uproar over his recent comments suggesting that sexual slavery was a necessary evil in Japan’s imperial past, a populist party leader said Monday that he had not meant to justify wartime brothels or deny the women’s suffering at the hands of Japanese soldiers.But the politician, Toru Hashimoto, who is a co-leader of the opposition Japan Restoration Association and the mayor of Osaka, Japan’s third-largest city, also argued that Japan was being unfairly singled out for its use of so-called comfort women, and that other nations needed to examine the mistreatment of women by their own militaries before pointing the finger at Tokyo.“We must express our deep remorse at the violation of the human rights of these women by Japanese soldiers in the past, and make our apology to the women,” Mr. Hashimoto said, speaking to journalists at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. But, he added, “it is not a fair attitude to blame only Japan, as if the violation of human rights of women by soldiers were a problem unique to Japanese soldiers.”...
Source: AP
May 28, 2013
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Attorneys for L. Douglas Wilder are due in court to respond to the city of Fredericksburg’s plan to sell 38 acres where the former governor wants to build the National Slavery Museum.A hearing is set for Tuesday morning in Fredericksburg Circuit Court. It’s the latest development in Wilder’s quest to build a museum telling the nation’s history of slavery. Before he can do that, he must settle a large tax bill and get fundraising back on track....
Source: WaPo
May 28, 2013
OSAKA, Japan — More than 70 years ago, at age 14, Kim Bok-dong was ordered to work by Korea’s Japanese occupiers. She was told she was going to a military uniform factory, but ended up at a Japanese military-run brothel in southern China.She had to take an average of 15 soldiers per day during the week, and dozens over the weekend. At the end of the day she would be bleeding and could not even stand because of the pain. She and other girls were closely watched by guards and could not escape. It was a secret she carried for decades; the man she later married died without ever knowing.Tens of thousands of women had similar stories to tell, or to hide, from Japan’s occupation of much of Asia before and during World War II. Many are no longer living, and those who remain are still waiting for Japan to offer reparations and a more complete apology than it has so far delivered....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2013
Trouble is brewing for an American retailer after customers noted that one of its tea kettles bears a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler.Bemused motorists took photographs of the huge JCPenney billboard advertising the kettle as they drove past it on the 405 Interstate highway near Culver City in California, one of America's busiest stretches of roads."That Hitler looks like a kettle," commented one user of Reddit, one of the several websites where the image was posted over the weekend."He even has his right arm extended," wrote another, while a third added: "I'm a little Nazi, short and stout"....
Source: Fox 9 (MN)
May 27, 2013
Hundreds of Civil War veterans are resting in the St. Paul's historic Oakland Cemetery, but one man says their memory and sacrifice is sometimes overlooked or forgotten -- and he's on a mission to change that.Years ago, Patrick Hill stumbled across a badly weathered grave marker belonging to an Civil War captain. Since then, he's been on a mission to replace other Civil War-era gravestones at the cemetery and remind people about the veterans' sacrifice."There are probably six to 800 Civil War guys in here," Hill estimated.Rows and rows of gravestones in all shapes and sizes bare the names and memories of the past, including the one belonging to Capt. Wilson B. Farrel....
Source: National Post (Canada)
May 27, 2013
A huge cache of Canadian history, stored for 200 years in three wooden chests held at a British estate, is set to be auctioned next month in London — a possible test of whether the controversy-plagued, funding-challenged Library and Archives Canada is still in the business of acquiring newly available treasures of documentary heritage. An extensive and important collection of letters, maps and other original artifacts left to posterity by Sir John Coape Sherbrooke — the Nova Scotia governor who conquered Maine during the War of 1812 and later served as Canada’s governor general — is to be sold on June 19 as the showcase lot in a major Bonhams auction of rare books and manuscripts.A large, coloured and “exceptionally fine” map of the village of York and the Lake Ontario shoreline that was created for Sherbrooke in 1817 — showing the future Toronto in such minute detail that individual homes are depicted — is a highlight of the sale, appearing on the cover of the auction catalogue.
Source: NYT
May 26, 2013
A Connecticut man who was shot and killed by the local police at the start of the Memorial Day weekend was identified Sunday by state authorities as a 75-year-old Army veteran and founder of a military museum in Danbury.The authorities said the man, John Valluzzo, was armed with a handgun when officers from the Ridgefield Police Department confronted him in the front yard of his property on Friday just after 5:15 p.m. The officers had responded to a call of a domestic dispute at that address, 423 Ridgebury Road in Ridgefield, along a verdant stretch of sizable homes.
Source: AP
May 26, 2013
ATLANTA — Atlanta band Granville Automatic is preparing to release a music video filmed at an ice cream shop on the site of the 1864 battle that left the city in flames during the Civil War.The project is part of an effort to raise awareness about Civil War battlefields across the country, focusing particularly on those that lack the fame of places such as Gettysburg.The 150th anniversary of the war has led to renewed interest in preserving the battlefields and protecting them from development, said Mary Koik, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Civil War Trust....Granville Automatic partnered with the trust to produce a collection of songs about Civil War history across the nation. In “Copenhill,” the song about the Atlanta battle, lyrics recall how the city was burned by Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s federal army: “Burn, burn, burn till the flames hit the sky ...”...
Source: AP
May 26, 2013
BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia held a funeral on Sunday for Yugoslavia’s last king, Peter II Karadjordjevic, who had fled the country at the start of World War II and died in the U.S. in 1970.The former king’s remains, and those of his wife, mother and brother, were interred in the family tomb at St. George church in Oplenac, central Serbia, in a ceremony aired live on the state television.The funeral was attended by top state officials, who described it as an act of reconciliation and unity....
Source: AP
May 26, 2013
WASHINGTON — On a May afternoon in 2001, a group of volunteers cleaning up trash in Walter C. Pierce Community Park in Adams Morgan found a bone that appeared to be a human femur. The Washington region was enthralled at the time by the search for missing former government intern Chandra Levy, and the bone’s discovery sent murmurs rippling through the cleanup crew. Finally, a nurse in the group examined the bone. It’s not Chandra, she told the group. This bone is very old.Beneath Walter Pierce Park are two adjacent historic cemeteries: the quarter-acre Burying Ground or Place of Interment for the Society of Friends or Quakers, which dates to 1809, and a 6 3/4-acre African-American cemetery, which operated between 1870 and 1890. At the peak of its use, Mount Pleasant Plains Cemetery was the largest African-American burial ground in the District of Columbia....
Source: AP
May 26, 2013
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — The commemoration of this year’s milestone anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg will include amenities that soldiers would have relished 150 years ago.A groomed path to the top of Little Round Top. Expanded cellphone coverage. Dozens of portable toilets.The National Park Service and a cadre of community organizers are busily putting the finishing touches on preparations for the commemoration of the pivotal battle of the American Civil War that cemented this small Pennsylvania town’s place in U.S history. Tens of thousands of visitors are expected for a 10-day schedule of events that begin June 29.“I think we’re ready,” Bob Kirby, superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park, said in a recent interview . “We’re ready for what the world would like to see.”...
