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: WaPo
Jan 21, 2013
President Obama on Monday became the first president to use the word “gay” as a reference to sexual orientation in an inaugural address, declaring the movement for equality to be part of the pantheon of America’s great civil rights struggles.“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” the president said. “For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.”Obama also made another reference in the speech to gay equality. He placed the 1969 riot protesting a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, as a signature event in the civil rights movement — and ranked it with historical turning points in the battles for women’s and racial equality....
Source: AP
Jan 21, 2013
NEW YORK — Baseball players urged that Marvin Miller be put in the Hall of Fame as they spoke Monday night during a memorial for the union leader.In an auditorium filled with Hall of Famers, dozens of retired and current players, baseball officials, agents and labor lawyers, 13 speakers praised the former baseball union head, who helped players gain free agency in the 1970s and created the path to multimillion-dollar salaries. Miller died in November at 95.“It is a travesty he is not in the Hall of Fame,” former major league player and manager Buck Martinez said during the two-hour program....
Source: AP
Jan 21, 2013
ATLANTA — The youngest daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hailed the inauguration of the nation’s first black president to a new term as one of the achievements made possible by the civil rights struggle her father helped lead decades ago.Bernice King spoke at an Atlanta service Monday on the federal King holiday, urging Americans to draw inspiration from her slain father’s nonviolent campaign after a difficult year of military conflicts abroad and natural disasters at home.“We pray that this day will be the beginning of a new day in America,” she said. “It will be a day when people draw inspiration from the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. It will be a day when people realize and recognize that if it were not for Dr. King and those who fought the fight fought in that movement, we would not be celebrating this presidency.”...
Source: NYT
Jan 20, 2013
One hundred years ago, on Feb. 2, 1913, the doors to Grand Central Terminal officially opened to the public, after 10 years of construction and at a cost of more than $2 billion in today’s dollars. The terminal was a product of local politics, bold architecture, brutal flexing of corporate muscle and visionary engineering. No other building embodies New York’s ascent as vividly as Grand Central. Here, the tale of its birth, excerpted from “Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America,” by Sam Roberts, the urban affairs correspondent for The New York Times, to be published later this month by Grand Central Publishing. The idea for the new Grand Central Terminal came to William J. Wilgus “in a flash of light,” he recalled decades later. “It was the most daring idea that ever occurred to me,” he said.
Source: WaPo
Jan 20, 2013
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”This sentence spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been quoted countless times as expressing one of America’s bedrock values, its language almost sounding like a constitutional amendment on equality.Yet today, 50 years after King shared this vision during his most famous speech, there is considerable disagreement over what it means.The quote is used to support opposing views on politics, affirmative action and programs intended to help the disadvantaged. Just as the words of the nation’s founders are parsed for modern meanings on guns and abortion, so are King’s words used in debates over the proper place of race in America....
Source: NYT
Jan 20, 2013
IN 1966, the French president, Charles de Gaulle, war hero and general nuisance in Allied eyes, wrote President Lyndon B. Johnson to announce that France was pulling out of full membership in NATO and would expel NATO headquarters from France.“France is determined to regain on her whole territory the full exercise of her sovereignty, at present diminished by the permanent presence of allied military elements or by the use which is made of her airspace; to cease her participation in the integrated commands; and no longer to place her forces at the disposal of NATO,” de Gaulle wrote.After the humiliating capitulation to the Nazis, a tremendous shock to a prideful and martial France, it was not especially surprising that de Gaulle should seek to restore France to a place at the top table of nations, capable of defending its own interests with its own means at its own pace and pleasure.
Source: LiveScience
Jan 19, 2013
The ancient bone turned up in storage boxes at the Winchester City Museum.
Source: NYT
Jan 19, 2013
BERLIN — A report about child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, based on victim accounts and released by the church this week, showed that priests carefully planned their assaults and frequently abused the same children repeatedly for years.The report, compiled from information collected from victims and other witnesses who called a hot line run by the church from 2010 until the end of last year, includes the ages of the victims, the locations of the assaults and the repercussions they have suffered since. The accounts were provided in 8,500 calls to the hot line; they are not representative of abuse cases over all and cannot be individually verified. The church said the report contained information from 1,824 people, of whom 1,165 described themselves as victims.
Source: The Northern Echo (UK)
Jan 18, 2013
ARCHAEOLOGISTS working at an historic North-East church have discovered evidence that the site may have been used for worship since the Stone Age.St Michael and All Angels, Church, in Houghton-le-Spring, has been a site of Christian worship for nearly 1,000 years, but a stone circle found on the site suggests that it may have been used by pagans in Neolithic times.The discovery has helped the Anglican parish church win a coveted Red Rose award from Visit England, due to be awarded next week....
Source: WSJ
Jan 18, 2013
AS WE SIT IN YANGON peak-hour traffic, Thant Myint-U is conjuring a golden age. The eminent Burmese historian, academic and former United Nations official has devoted much of the last two years to saving the city's spectacular architecture. Despite the gridlock as we slowly nudge through its colonial heart, we couldn't be better placed to recall the glories of old Rangoon (as Yangon was once known). It's difficult to remember today, thanks to nearly five decades of Myanmar's political isolation under brutal military rule, but there was a time when it was one of the jewels of the British Empire.
Source: WaPo
Jan 18, 2013
ATLANTA — President Barack Obama plans to use a Bible that belonged to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as he takes his oath of office, a powerful symbol of this year’s rare intersection of the civil rights movement and the nation’s first black president.Monday is both Inauguration Day and the federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader. It is only the second time the two have fallen on the same day. Some say it’s only fitting the celebrations are intertwined.“It’s almost like fate and history coming together,” said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who worked alongside King in the fight for civil rights during the 1950s and ‘60s and plans to attend the inauguration. “If it hadn’t been for Martin Luther King Jr., there would be no Barack Obama as president.”...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 18, 2013
After digging for almost two weeks and speaking to the British architect of the extraordinary hunt, David Cundall, the experts have concluded that there is no evidence that as many as 124 Spitfires were buried at the end of World War II, it has been reported.A defiant Mr Cundall insists that the dig is still alive and says that the archaeologists are looking in the wrong place. He also stands by the eye witnesses who testified that the planes had been buried, according to the BBC.A source told Radio 4’s Today programme that the archaeologists at the dig site at Rangoon International Airport do no believe there are any Spitfires buried there or at the other two sites.The company providing financial backing for the dig, wargaming.net, today cancelled a press conference but confirmed that there are no planes, it is reported....
Source: PoliticalWire
Jan 17, 2013
Dick Gephardt is to blame, evidently.
Source: WSJ
Jan 17, 2013
Researching one’s family tree has become a popular pastime, partly because parents want to pass on family stories to their kids, to give them a deeper sense of identity and history.Many old family legends, however, are at least partly false.Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist and author of “Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing,” says the stories passed down by families are often rooted in one of several common misperceptions. She summarizes them this way:“Three brothers came to America; one went north, one went south and one went west.” Many people assume they have family ties to large numbers of widely dispersed people with the same surname, but DNA testing and other genealogical tools often disprove it....
Source: WaPo
Jan 17, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Robert Wagner has declined to be interviewed by detectives in a renewed inquiry into the drowning death of his wife Natalie Wood three decades ago, an investigator said Thursday.Wagner was interviewed by authorities soon after Wood’s drowning in 1981, but the actor is the only person who was on the yacht the night Wood died who has not spoken to detectives as part of the latest inquiry, despite repeated requests and attempts, sheriff’s Lt. John Corina said.Blair Berk, an attorney for Wagner and his family, said the actor had cooperated with authorities since his wife died....
Source: WaPo
Jan 17, 2013
President Obama’s Wednesday pitch for sweeping new gun control laws included a nod to a conservative icon: Ronald Reagan.
Source: WaPo
Jan 17, 2013
BEIJING — In a corner of old Beijing, the government may soon be both destroying history and remaking it.District officials want to re-create a piece of China’s glorious dynastic past by rebuilding a square near the Drum and Bell towers in 18th-century Qing Dynasty fashion. To do it, they will demolish dozens of scuffed courtyard homes that preservationists say have themselves become a part of a cultural history that is fast disappearing as construction transforms the capital.Because of relatively recent renovation, few of the homes can claim to be more than a few decades old. But they are in crooked alleyways known as “hutongs,” which formed around courtyard houses and date back centuries....
Source: National WWI Museum press release
Jan 17, 2013
The World War I Centennial Commission Act establishing a Centennial Commission based at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial was signed into law by President Obama on January 14, 2013. The 12-member Commission will meet initially and regularly at the National World War I Museum and will develop programs, projects and activities to commemorate the Great War’s Centennial from 2014 to 2018. The Commission will also be in charge of fundraising for commemorative events as no tax dollars were appropriated in the law. The Museum will play a pivotal role as plans continue to develop for America’s efforts to remember the First World War. Not only will the Commission be based out of Kansas City, but the Museum is appointed to one of the twelve seats on the Commission. “We are proud that the Centennial Commission Act has become law,” said Dr. Mary Cohen, Museum Board of Trustees Chair. “The upcoming Centennial affords a unique opportunity for Americans to explore an important time in our nation’s history. The Museum looks forward to working with the Commission to honor those who served in World War I.”
Source: Discovery News
Jan 16, 2013
The legendary Renaissance warrior Giovanni de’ Medici did not die from an improperly amputated leg, as widely believed, but an infection.Also known as “Giovanni dalle Bande Nere” for the black bands of mourning he wore after the death of Pope Leo X, the 16th century army commander was exhumed last November from his tomb in the Medici Chapels in Florence. Researchers also exhumed the bones of his wife, Maria Salviati.The couple married in 1516, when she was 17 and he was 18. The marriage produced only one child: Cosimo I, who reigned as the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, creating the Uffizi and the magnificent Boboli Gardens as well as finishing the Pitti Palace....
Source: CrooksandLiars.com
Jan 16, 2013
Conservative host Glenn Beck and "historian" David Barton on Tuesday debuted a new show called "Foundations of Freedom" and suggested that history proved that school shootings could be prevented if all elementary school children were armed.After pointing out that some areas of the United States required every household to own a gun in the late 1800s, Beck told Barton that "everybody grew up with a gun" and it was "part of school."Barton noted that guns were only fired in schools at the time to stop criminal activity."The great example, in the 1850s you have a school teacher who's teaching," the historian explained. "A guy, he's out in the West, this guy from New England wants to kill him and find him. So, he comes into the school with his gun to shoot the teacher, he decides not to shoot the teacher because all the kids pull their guns out and point it at him and say, 'You kill the teacher, you die.' He says, 'Okay.' The teacher lives. Real simple stuff."...
