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: NaParksTrav
Feb 17, 2013
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin near present-day Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809; and the curious case of his well-traveled birthplace cabin is a historical labyrinth of veneration, profit seeking, confused identity, and cross-pollination with historic relics from the Confederate States of America. Could it be that those Lincoln Logs you played with as a child were really Jeff Davis logs?...
Source: CNN
Feb 17, 2013
One hundred years ago, the United States completed what was then the most expensive, complex but ultimately successful government program in human history. It was a project where everything went wrong.
The French had tried to build the Panama canal a few years earlier, but despite putting the builder of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps, on the job, they left in total failure. The American project’s first chief engineer quit after the first year. His replacement left as well. Only with the third did the project start moving. Yellow fever killed thousands of workers and caused others to flee in fright. The engineering challenges were immense and they often seemed insurmountable. Media reports about the project were largely negative....
Source: Reuters
Feb 17, 2013
President John F. Kennedy's Air Force One bomber jacket sold for $570,000 at an auction on Sunday of items that belonged to a longtime aide, nearly 50 years after the president's assassination.The jacket was among thousands of items, including letters, photographs and books, that had been tucked away in drawers and file cabinets at the home of David Powers, who died in 1998, said Dan Meader, auction appraiser at John McInnis Auctioneers.They were discovered in recent years by relatives as they prepared Powers' Arlington, Massachusetts, residence for sale, Meader said....
Source: Denver Post
Feb 15, 2013
They're not homemakers, they're "Makers." While they may raise children, cook, clean and honor their spouses, the women celebrated in the PBS-AOL collaboration "Makers" are the daring ones who ventured out of the house to lead the women's liberation movement, who broke barriers and became emblems in the fight for equality. "Makers: Women Who Make America" is a broadcast and digital effort, already online and premiering as a three-hour documentary narrated by Meryl Streep on PBS on Feb. 26. Bra burning? Yes, that's part of the story, along with Supreme Court appointments, the first female astronaut, anchorwomen, congresswomen, corporate executives, coal miners, Boston marathoners and more.
Source: Illinois Times
Feb 15, 2013
Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball. A guitar once owned by Eric Clapton. A model of the Starship Enterprise.These are among the items that an appraiser used in 2007 to establish the value of a collection of Lincoln documents and artifacts held by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.Appraiser Seth Kaller accepted the asking price of $23 million as the fair-market value of the collection sold by Louise Taper, a California collector, to the museum's private fundraising foundation, which is now raising money to retire the debt.Kaller, who owns a business that acquires historic artifacts in New York state, wrote in his appraisal that he accepted the museum's claim that the items are authentic and that his assignment did not include authentication....
Source: SciNor
Feb 15, 2013
This is the crux of a doctoral dissertation that researcher Ingrid Ystgaard will defend this spring at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
She has studied weapons found in graves and the battle techniques they suggest during the transition from the early to the late Iron Age. The division between these periods was around 500 AD....
Source: NYT
Feb 15, 2013
Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg’s frequent collaborator, snags himself a seat on Mr. Spielberg’s bandwagon on Sunday when he turns up as the narrator of “Killing Lincoln,” a docudrama on the National Geographic Channel. If Mr. Spielberg’s “Lincoln” achieves greatness largely through the detailed performances of Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and others, “Killing Lincoln” also has details to recommend it — historical details, the kind of tidbits that (along with Mr. Hanks’s assured narration) can hold your attention, even though the tale is familiar. “Killing Lincoln,” based on the book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, puts its focus just where the title suggests: on the final days of Lincoln’s life and the pursuit of those behind the assassination. And yes, for anyone who can’t get enough of the 16th president, on Sunday it will be possible to arrange a Lincoln trifecta, seeing “Lincoln,” Salvador Litvak’s new film; “Saving Lincoln” (about the president’s bodyguard); and “Killing Lincoln” in a single day. Happy belated birthday, Abe.
Source: CNN
Feb 15, 2013
In the next few weeks, Fatima Shaik, an African-American, Christian woman, will travel “home” from New York to Kolkata, India.
It will be a journey steeped in a history that has remained unknown until the publication last month of a revelatory book by Vivek Bald. And it will be a journey of contemplation as Shaik, 60, meets for the first time ancestors with whom she has little in common.
“I want to go back because I want to find some sort of closure for my family, said Shaik, an author and scholar of the Afro-Creole experience.
Source: Reuters
Feb 15, 2013
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A strike from a big asteroid more than 300 million years ago left a huge impact zone buried in Australia and changed the face of the earth, researchers said on Friday."The dust and greenhouse gases released from the crater, the seismic shock and the initial fireball would have incinerated large parts of the earth," said Andrew Glikson, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.The asteroid was bigger than 10 km (6 miles) in diameter, while the impact zone itself was larger than 200 km (120 miles) - the third largest impact zone in the world....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 15, 2013
Tomorrow marks the 90th anniversary of the moment that the Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter, working in primitive conditions in the desert, found and opened the tomb.They became the first people to lay eyes upon the boy king's sarcophagus in 3,000 years, and also made an “extraordinary contribution” to our historical understanding, the fifth earl’s ancestor and namesake George Herbert has said.Ahead of the anniversary the current Lord Carnarvon praised the "determined and stoic behaviour" of the archaeological team....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 15, 2013
The route will wend its way through several sites in north-east Scotland, in a move that organisers hope will boost tourism to the region, as well as separating the facts from Shakespearean myths. Details will be unveiled today at Glamis in Angus, where Macbeth died in the play.The Scottish MSP Alex Johnstone was the driving force behind the new trail."Many people don't realise that Macbeth existed," he told the Herald Scotland....
Source: NEH
Feb 14, 2013
Pittsburgh’s Hill District, or “The Hill” as it is locally known, was the heart of the city’s African-American community during the twentieth century. As a freelancer, newspaper man, and portrait studio owner Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908–1998) lovingly captured his community’s vibrant cultural, economic, and political life through nearly 80,000 photographs. These pictures tell much more than just a local story....
Source: NYT
Feb 14, 2013
JERUSALEM — In one room sits a sarcophagus of reddish-pink limestone believed to have held the body of King Herod, painstakingly reconstructed after having been smashed to bits centuries ago. In another, there are frescoes from Herod’s elaborate underground palace, pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. Throughout, elaborate animated videos show the king’s audacious construction — atop the desert fortress Masada; at his burial place, Herodium; and his most famous work, the Second Temple of Jerusalem.The Israel Museum on Tuesday opened its most ambitious archaeological exhibition and the world’s first devoted to Herod, the lionized and demonized Rome-appointed king of Judea, who reigned from 37 to 4 B.C.E. and is among the most seminal and contentious figures in Jewish history. But the exhibition, which the museum director described as a “massive enterprise” that involved sifting through 30 tons of material from Herodium and reconstructing 250 artifacts, has also brought its own bit of controversy.
Source: PastHorizons
Feb 14, 2013
A new archaeology project has begun to bring to light hundreds of secretive inscriptions that have lain hidden on the walls of Norwich Cathedral for many centuries.
Although the survey volunteers have already identified many dozens of medieval inscriptions within the cathedral they have discovered that just as many inscriptions relate to later centuries. During the English Civil War the cathedral was reputedly used as a stable by Roundhead troops, who were notorious for defacing religious buildings, and the walls appear to bear testament to this turbulent time. In many areas of the building it is still possible to clearly make out long lists of names and initials, all with dates that link them to this period....
Source: LATimes
Feb 14, 2013
Did the rulers of the ancient city of Teotihuacan dedicate their largest pyramid to the god of fire, the so-called old god with a signature beard and fire atop his head?
Mexican archaeologists announced this week that a figure of the god, called Huehueteotl, was found in a covered pit at the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, a popular archaeological site north of Mexico City.
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 14, 2013
"Arbeit macht frei" means "labor makes one free" in German. These words became a symbol of Jewish oppression under the Third Reich, as the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz bore this legend. In February, this slogan appeared in graffiti across the walkway of Detroit's derelict Packard plant on East Grand. It ignited a firestorm of debate. Jewish groups and Holocaust survivor collectives pushed for its removal, saying it was an offensive, ugly reminder of past suffering, reports the Detroit Free Press. Packard has a long history of notoriety in Detroit.The walkway where the sign appeared connects two sides of what was Packard's 35-acre industrial complex. The plant opened in 1903 and became the luxury auto leader in the '20s, outselling Cadillac and all competitors combined, says a Detroit Free Press special report....
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 14, 2013
PARIS (AP) — France is returning seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners during World War II, part of an ongoing effort to give back hundreds of looted artworks that still hang in the Louvre and other museums.The works were stolen or sold under duress up to seven decades ago as their Jewish owners fled Nazi-occupied Europe. All seven were destined for display in the art gallery Adolf Hitler wanted to build in his birthplace of Linz, Austria, according to a catalog for the planned museum....
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 14, 2013
Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered what they believe is a temple, estimated to be up to 5,000 years old, at the site of El Paraíso, north of Lima.Inside the ruins of the ancient room, which measures about 23 feet by 26 feet (7 meters by 8 meters), there's evidence of a ceremonial hearth, where offerings may have been burned, archaeologists say. The temple also had a narrow entrance and stone walls covered with yellow clay, on which traces of red paint were found, according to a statement from Peru's Ministry of Culture....
Source: Fox News
Feb 13, 2013
Stone Age farmers lived through routine violence, and women weren't spared from its toll, a new study finds.The analysis discovered that up to 1 in 6 skulls exhumed in Scandinavia from the late Stone Age — between about 6,000 and 3,700 years ago — had nasty head injuries. And contrary to findings from mass gravesites of the period, women were equally likely to be victims of deadly blows, according to the study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology....
Source: NYT
Feb 13, 2013
Thousands of anti-fascist protesters blocked a neo-Nazi march in Dresden, Germany, on Wednesday night, on the 68th anniversary of the British and American air campaign that killed an estimated 25,000 people in 37 hours of bombing.In recent years, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports, anti-fascist activists “have outnumbered neo-Nazis who previously had used Dresden’s bombing anniversary to stage large ‘funeral’ marches to recall the demise of Hitler’s Third Reich.” On Wednesday, about 800 neo-Nazis were prevented from marching by thousands of police officers and counter-demonstrators, as more than 10,000 anti-fascist protesters formed a human chain in the city....
