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: AP
Oct 4, 2012
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Doris Spates was a baby when her father died inexplicably in 1955. She has watched four siblings die of cancer, and she survived cervical cancer.After learning that the Army conducted secret chemical testing in her impoverished St. Louis neighborhood at the height of the Cold War, she wonders if her own government is to blame.In the mid-1950s, and again a decade later, the Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, at schools and from the backs of station wagons to send a potentially dangerous compound into the already-hazy air in predominantly black areas of St. Louis....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 4, 2012
Ironbridge Gorge, regarded by historians as the cradle of the industrial revolution, has been saved for the nation with a multi-million pound government grant.The gorge – which was described by writer Charles Hulbert in 1837 as “the most extraordinary district in the world” – has been under threat from landslides.However, Communities secretary Eric Pickles will announce today [thurs] that the Government has committed £12million to “save” the gorge.The cash will go to restoring and protecting the gorge and its bridge so that generations can enjoy the landscape that sparked a new age of modernity in Britain.
Source: WaPo
Oct 3, 2012
GREENSBORO, Ga. — The last surviving Navy doctor who landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy during the D-Day invasion of World War II has died, according to a funeral director and a researcher.Dr. Joseph Lee Parker Jr., of Greensboro, Ga., died Sept. 27 at St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Hospital in Greensboro. He was 95.Kenneth Davey, who has done extensive research of military records associated with the Allied invasion, said the Waycross, Ga., native was the last surviving Navy physician who served on Omaha Beach....
Source: WaPo
Oct 3, 2012
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The $5 bill displayed for decades on Charles Fairbanks IV’s wall was long a treasured family heirloom from Alaska. Now, to the surprise of the grandson of a turn-of-a-century vice president, it’s also become a likely treasure trove.The rare find is expected to fetch as much as $300,000 at auction this month when a Texas auctioneer plans to put it up for bids in Dallas and online as part of the American Numismatic Association National Money Show....
Source: AP
Oct 3, 2012
An Austrian museum says skeletal remains found in an ancient grave are that of a woman metal worker - the first indication that women did such work thousands of years ago.The Museum of Ancient History says the grave originates from the Bronze Age, which began more than 5,000 years ago and ended 3,200 years ago....
Source: AP
Oct 3, 2012
Bosnia's war crimes court has acquitted two former Bosnian Serb policemen accused of participating in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.The court said Wednesday that prosecutors failed to prove Dragan Neskovic and Zoran Ilic committed crimes against humanity by rounding up Muslim Bosniak men for execution and then firing into the piles of bodies to make sure there were no survivors...
Source: AP
Oct 3, 2012
The $5 bill displayed for decades on Charles Fairbanks IV's wall was long a treasured family heirloom from Alaska. Now, to the surprise of the grandson of a turn-of-a-century vice president, it's also become a likely treasure trove.The rare find is expected to fetch as much as $300,000 at auction this month when a Texas auctioneer plans to put it up for bids in Dallas and online as part of the American Numismatic Association National Money Show.The bill was presented in 1905 to Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks - Theodore Roosevelt's No. 2 - and was from the First National Bank of Fairbanks, Alaska. The family has had it in their possession ever since and recently decided to auction it off through Dallas-based Heritage Auctions...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 3, 2012
Known as the "God Letter," the correspondence offers insights into the private thoughts about religion, God and tribalism of one of the world's most brilliant minds."This letter, in my opinion, is really of historical and cultural significance as these are the personal and private thoughts of arguably the smartest man of the 20th century," said Eric Gazin, the president of Auction Cause, a Los Angeles-based premier auction agency, which will handle the sale on eBay...."The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this," wrote the German-born scientist, who in 1921 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics....
Source: Discovery News
Oct 2, 2012
Spanish archaeologists have discovered an impressive structure with 4,200-year-old outer walls and six pyramid-shaped towers, representing the most architecturally advanced Bronze Age fortress.Called La Bastida, the Spanish fortification system stood in the sierras of Totana, in the southeastern Murcia region. It was built with large stones and lime mortar and consisted of 10-foot-thick walls that were once 22 feet high and imposing pyramid-based towers. So far the archaeologists led by Vicente Lull, professor of prehistory of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, have unearthed six towers along a length of 230 feet, although the full perimeter of the fortification measured about 1,000 feet.The entrance to the enclosure consisted of a passageway built with strong walls and large doors at the end, held shut with thick wooden beams....
Source: Archaeo News
Oct 2, 2012
A contract to build three life-sized Neolithic homes at Stonehenge in Wiltshire (England) has been put out to tender. English Heritage is inviting contractors to bid for the £60,000 project, which is part of a £27m scheme to improve the setting of the monument. Using authentic materials, the prehistoric homes will be based on those excavated at Durrington Walls. English Heritage said the buildings will provide a "real and tangible link for visitors to the distant past".The £27m scheme to build a new visitor centre and close the road alongside the ancient monument, was begun in July. But a 'key aim' for the new centre is to create "a sense of prehistoric people using, working and living in the landscape", an English Heritage spokesperson said.The recreated Neolithic buildings will form part of an interactive and experiential external exhibition at the 3,500-year-old World Heritage site which receives more than one million visitors a year. The prehistoric homes will be based on the foundations of dwellings discovered at Durrington Walls in 2007. The large settlement, dating back to 2600-2500 BC, was discovered under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the stone circle....
Source: WaPo
Oct 2, 2012
DALLAS — Growing up the son of sharecroppers in Mississippi, Charley Pride developed a love of country music that propelled him into a legendary career as one of its biggest stars.Now, items donated by Pride from throughout his life will become part of the Smithsonian’s upcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open in 2015. A gala reception will be held Wednesday in Pride’s hometown of Dallas to celebrate the museum gift, which includes a pair of Pride’s boots, one of his guitars and his Country Music Association male vocalist of the year award from 1971....
Source: AP
Oct 2, 2012
When the metal claw of a Bobcat tractor crashed into a human skull during a home improvement project in Georgetown last month, all work stopped. D.C. police were called, then the medical examiner.But shortly after officials analyzed the remains, found in an octagonal wooden coffin with rusted nails that was four to five feet below ground, it became clear that this was no crime scene. The dead simply had started to rise in Georgetown — again.For the second time in seven years, human remains have been unearthed in the 3300 block of Q Street NW. In 2005, masonry workers removing part of a Q Street rowhouse’s brick foundation found a jaw, some ribs and several joints. Experts later determined that they had been there at least 100 years, most likely placed in a grave lost to history....
Source: LiveScience
Oct 2, 2012
Ambivalence over the name of the third season of the year reflects its status as a relatively new concept. As natural as it seems today, people haven't always thought of the year in terms of four seasons.Fifteen hundred years ago, the Anglo-Saxons marked the passage of time with just one season: winter, a concept considered equivalent to hardship or adversity that metaphorically represented the year in its entirety. For example, in the Old English epic poem "Beowulf," the title character rescues a kingdom that had been terrorized by a monster for "12 winters."
Source: NYT
Oct 2, 2012
FORT WORTH — Millions of Texans have read the “Victory or Death” letter written at the Alamo more than 170 years ago. But only a small number of them have ever laid eyes on the original — a brief plea for reinforcements written by Lt. Col. William Barret Travis on Feb. 24, 1836, as he and his outnumbered men faced the Mexican Army.Whether it ever returns to the Alamo is now a hotly debated issue.The letter has become one of the most revered documents in Texas history, and one of its phrases — “Victory or Death,” which Colonel Travis underlined three times — has endured as an unofficial Texas slogan, turning up on flags and, occasionally, in the speeches of politicians, including one that Gov. Rick Perry gave last year as he campaigned for president....
Source: Fox News
Oct 2, 2012
BOSTON – The premiere of the Smithsonian Channel's documentary on a papyrus fragment that purports to show Jesus referring to his wife has been delayed until further tests can be done amid doubts about the fragment's authenticity.Research about the fourth-century papyrus fragment was released last month by Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King. She said it didn't prove Jesus was married, only that some early Christians believed he was.The text, written in Coptic, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary. He also says she can be his disciple....
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Oct 2, 2012
The note is on a small, yellow piece of paper, written out in thin letters, all capitals. It is pinned to the door of the modest rowhouse in Northeast Philadelphia, where enough visitors have come in recent days to warrant a pointed warning:"WE DO NOT HAVE ANY COMMENT," it reads. "PLEASE LEAVE."The resident, a retired toolmaker named Johann "Hans" Breyer, has lived on this well-kept block for 3 1/2 decades, according to property records. His past, as a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, again came back to haunt him last month when authorities in Germany announced that he is under investigation....
Source: AP
Oct 1, 2012
BERLIN (AP) — Prosecutors in Germany said Monday they have shelved their investigation of 17 former German SS soldiers who were part of a unit involved in a Nazi wartime massacre of more than 500 civilians in Italy, because of a lack of evidence.The decision brings to a close a decade-long investigation of the former members of the 16th SS-Panzergrenadier Division "Reichsfuehrer SS," eight of whom are still alive, on allegations they were involved in the Aug. 12, 1944, killings in the Tuscan village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.The SS unit descended upon the village that morning ostensibly to hunt for partisans, but instead rounded up and shot villagers, according to survivors. Others were herded into basements and other enclosed spaces and killed with hand grenades....
Source: Huffington Post
Oct 1, 2012
HARTFORD, Conn. (RNS) At age 82, Bernice Mable Graham Telian doubts she'll live long enough to see the name of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and 10 others hanged in colonial Connecticut for witchcraft cleared.Telian was researching her family tree when she discovered that her seventh grandmother, Mary Barnes of Farmington, Conn., was sent to the gallows at the site of the old State House in Hartford in 1663."You won't find Mary's grave. She and all these people who were hanged were dumped in a hole. Their graves aren't marked. They wanted them to be forgotten," said Telian, a retired university administrator who now lives in Delhi, N.Y....
Source: Civil War News
Oct 1, 2012
RICHMOND, Va. – A federal judge dismissed the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case involving the U.S. National Slavery Museum of Fredericksburg, Va., after ruling against a motion to convert the case to a Chapter 7 liquidation.The action came after it was revealed that pledges and an anonymous donor would pay delinquent real estate taxes owed to the city, one of the museum’s two secured creditors. The bankruptcy protection filing last year was intended to keep the city from selling the land.The second secured creditor, architect Pei Partnership, is owed over $5.8 million. Pei attorney Milton Johns said negotiations have not been completed. He added he has not been told who the museum attorney will be. Sandra R. Robinson left the case after the Aug. 17 bankruptcy hearing....
Source: USA Today
Oct 1, 2012
7:08AM EST October 2. 2012 - NEW YORK — Bill O'Reilly describes himself as a journalistic "watchdog" and a "champion bloviator."He's not a historian — "not really. That's not my discipline," he says in his corner office at Fox News, home of The O'Reilly Factor, the top-rated show on cable news.But few history books can approach the popularity of O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, which has sold more than 2 million copies since it was released a year ago. His new book, Killing Kennedy (Henry Holt), about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, could be as popular. It goes on sale Tuesday....
