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: NYT
Sep 5, 2012
A painting created collaboratively by all four Beatles in 1966 is being offered as part of a music memorabilia sale by Philip Weiss Auctions, in Oceanside, N.Y., on Sept. 14. The auction house estimates that the painting, now called “Images of a Woman,” will sell for between $80,000 and $120,000.The group produced the work during a visit to Tokyo in 1966, as a way to relieve the tedium of being all but locked into their hotel rooms by their security-conscious Japanese hosts. They were concerned about death threats the group had received from devotees of sumo wrestling, who regarded their engagement at the Budokan arena to be a matter of sacrilege....
Source: WHPTV.com
Sep 5, 2012
Organizers with Gettysburg’s Seminary Ridge Museum say the facility is on track to open July 1, 2013, as part of the Civil War town’s 150th Anniversary Commemoration.Known by many as the home to the famous cupola where Union Gen. John Buford scouted the countryside as the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg unfolded, the Seminary Ridge Museum is undergoing a $15 million renovation on the campus of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.Additionally, the building – known at the time as “Old Dorm” – was used as both a Union and Confederate hospital after the fighting on July 1, 1863. It’s been called the most important Civil War structure not owned by a public entity....
Source: The Atlantic
Sep 5, 2012
A Scottish fisherman has found the world's oldest message in a bottle, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed last week. It is 98 years old, and was cast into the ocean by Captain C. Hunter Brown*, a scientist at the Glasgow School of Navigation, who was studying the currents in the North Sea.The bottle was one of 1,890 bottles released on June 10, 1914, and the 315th to be entered into Captain Brown's log, which is still kept and updated by Marine Scotland Science in Aberdeen....
Source: Alabama.com
Sep 5, 2012
FORT MORGAN, Alabama -- When Isaac lashed the Gulf Coast last week the storm gave people a glimpse into a slice of nautical history when the hurricane unveiled more of a 150-foot wooden shipwreck here than has been revealed by past storms.The ghostly remains known to locals as the "mystery shipwreck" was uncovered at a private beach off Beach Boulevard near mile marker six just south of Fort Morgan. It has been uncovered by past storms, including Hurricane Ike four years ago and Tropical Storm Ida in 2009.Historians in the past have been at odds as to the identity of the ship, with speculation that it was either a Civil War blockade ship or a Prohibition Era rum runner....
Source: University of Leicester
Sep 5, 2012
The search for Richard III’s final resting place has advanced considerably with confirmation that the dig has uncovered the long-lost Church of the Grey Friars where Richard was buried.The first two trenches dug by Leicester’s archaeologists revealed tiled passageway floors at right angles to each other which are probably the remains of a cloister. A cloister is a rectangular open space, surrounded by covered walkways, often built alongside a church that has a monastic community. Friars would walk around the cloister, deep in thought or prayer, whilst remaining dry.If the floors revealed by the first two trenches represented two sides of the cloister, then our theory, revealed at a press conference on Friday, was that the large wall on the third side of the potential cloister could be the church itself. Over the weekend our archaeologists dug a third trench to the east of the first two trenches to see if the wall extended....
Source: BBC
Sep 5, 2012
A gathering is to take place at a church in rural Perthshire to mark the restoration of the gravestone of a child who would have inherited the Sikh empire.In 1865, Maharajah Duleep Singh buried his son at Kenmore Parish Church. The Maharajah was the Sikh empire's last ruler and was exiled to the UK when his kingdom was annexed by the East India Company in 1849. The event has been organised by the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail (ASHT).At its height the Sikh Empire was over twice the size of the United Kingdom and was based around the Punjab region of India.However, a bloody war with the East India Company saw it eventually annexed and Maharajah Singh was exiled to Britain at the age of 10. His friendship with Queen Victoria however, led to the former Indian royal moving to Scotland in 1855 under the guidance of his guardian Sir John Login....
Source: AP
Sep 5, 2012
Neil Armstrong's space suit gloves and visor worn during his historic first walk on the moon are going on temporary display at the Smithsonian Institution following the pioneering astronaut's death.Both are usually kept in storage. They were designed to address the hazards of working on the lunar surface. Armstrong's helmet had two visors for moon walks, one with a gold reflective coating for UV protection and one with thermal protection.The Apollo 11 artifacts were placed on public view Tuesday at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. They will be exhibited for two weeks in a special display case....
Source: NYT
Sep 5, 2012
The Vietnamese government is treating some people exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed by American troops during the Vietnam War, using a detoxification method developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology, according to doctors involved in the program.Nguyen Ba Vuong, a doctor at the Vietnam Military Medical University in Hanoi, said his facility had received “training and methods” from the Association for Better Living and Education, an organization that is financed by Scientologists and the Church of Scientology, according to the association’s Web site.
Source: Talking Points Memo
Sep 5, 2012
CHARLOTTE — Republicans are fuming after the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian, made a joke about Gov. Nikki Haley (R) here Wednesday that compared her with Eva Braun.On the floor of the Democratic National Convention, members of the South Carolina delegation gathered just before the start of Wednesday night’s session kept their distance from the quip, but stood by their party chair who is known in the Palmetto State for a sharp tongue....
Source: WaPo
Sep 5, 2012
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian compared his state’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, to Eva Braun, the longtime mistress of Adolf Hitler. The Coumbia State:…Harpootlian, never a loss for a quick quip, tossed a few stinging one-liners at the Wednesday delegation breakfast.On Gov. Nikki Haley participating in daily news briefings in a basement studio at the NASCAR Hall of Fame: “She was down in the bunker a la Eva Braun.”
Source: AP
Sep 4, 2012
A Philadelphia archaeology museum will indefinitely loan ancient jewelry known as "Troy gold" to Turkey in an arrangement that will allow the museum to host a future exhibit of artifacts related to King Midas, officials announced Tuesday.The deal is part of what Penn Museum officials called a landmark agreement with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to work more collaboratively on field work and exhibitions over the next several years."It will lead to great opportunities - for Penn, for Philadelphia and for the wider archaeological community - to experience more of Turkey's rich cultural history and heritage in the future," museum director Julian Siggers said....
Source: WaPo
Sep 4, 2012
AHMADABAD, India — The owner of the “Hitler” clothing shop in western India says he will remove the sign and rename his store after hearing people’s complaints.Rajesh Shah said Tuesday he had chosen the name in memory of his grandfather, a strict disciplinarian whom the family referred to as “Hitler.”...
Source: WaPo
Sep 4, 2012
Some years, they speak of “the final eradication in America of the age-old evil of poverty,” and then other years, the Democratic Party shifts its focus to “those who work hard, pay their bills, play by the rules . . .”In 1972, the party promises “a guaranteed job for all,” offering to “make the government the employer of last resort.” But 20 years later, the Democrats pivot and nearly apologize for themselves, appealing to “Americans who may have thought the Democratic Party had forgotten its way” by saying that it now “rejects the big government theory that says we can . . . tax and spend our way to prosperity.”
Source: AP
Sep 4, 2012
PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia archaeology museum will indefinitely loan ancient jewelry known as “Troy gold” to Turkey in an arrangement that will allow the museum to host a future exhibit of artifacts related to King Midas, officials announced Tuesday.The deal is part of what Penn Museum officials called a landmark agreement with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to work more collaboratively on field work and exhibitions over the next several years.“It will lead to great opportunities — for Penn, for Philadelphia and for the wider archaeological community — to experience more of Turkey’s rich cultural history and heritage in the future,” museum director Julian Siggers said....
Source: WaPo
Sep 4, 2012
There’s Hillary Clinton, gracing the cover of this month’s Conde Nast Traveler, looking ever the glamorous jet-setter in a tweed pantsuit, arms crossed, standing in front of the exotic-looking Humayan’s Tomb in New Delhi.The glossy cover bears the headline “19,000 MILES WITH THE MOST TRAVELED SECRETARY OF STATE IN HISTORY.”But wait just a New York minute. ... [T]he title “most traveled” could very well go to former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice. As our truth-squadding colleague Glenn Kessler at the Fact Checker blog noted after a recent Loop mention of Clinton’s milestones, the State Department’s claims of Clinton’s travel supremacy might be a little premature (Kessler even gave the Loop a dreaded Pinocchio for buying the agency’s lines)....
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Ronald Reagan asked voters a week before the 1980 election whether they were better off than four years earlier, he turned a race that had been nip-and-tuck for months into a landslide victory — and showed how a pointed question can be a lethal political weapon.Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, speaks often of that election in meetings with donors and other supporters, citing it to reassure those who are alarmed that he has not been able to build a lead against a president burdened with a listless economy, ballooning federal debt and a jobless rate deep in the red zone for an incumbent.
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2012
KIBBUTZ LOHAMEI HAGETAOT, Israel — It isn’t only the history of the Holocaust that you see on display in Israel’s Holocaust museums. It’s also the history of the history of the Holocaust. There is an archaeology of trauma to be found if you look closely, and in its layers and transmutations you see how a nation has wrestled with the burden of one of history’s immense horrors.Through examining how Israeli museums treat the Holocaust — including the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum here, in a kibbutz in the far north of the country, whose founders included survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — we can see how visions of that past are changing, sometimes in unsettling ways.
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2012
Vandals burned the door of a Trappist monastery at Latrun, near Jerusalem, early Tuesday and scrawled anti-Christian slogans on the walls. The Israeli authorities said they suspected it was the work of Jewish extremists....
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2012
PHILADELPHIA — The three-story brick building stands like a ghost of what it once was, the letters “Joe Frazier’s Gym” stenciled across the facade in washed-out letters. A former destination for aspiring fighters and children seeking refuge from the gang violence of North Philadelphia, the gym is now a discount furniture store.A sign on the window reads “Knockout Prices.”Now, nearly a year after Mr. Frazier’s death, momentum is building to designate his former gym a historic site. The city is also working with his estate to erect a statue honoring him.The efforts are a rethinking of Mr. Frazier’s legacy in his adopted city, which never so much as named a street after him during his lifetime. The question for many who knew and admired Mr. Frazier: What took so long?...
Source: WaPo
Sep 4, 2012
Again?Pat Lehman of the Kansas Delegation said to the Wichita Eagle about Republicans’ voter fraud claims: “It’s like Hitler said, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and if you tell it often enough and say it in a loud enough voice, some people are going to believe you.”Her comment echoes that of California Democratic Chairman John Burton, who told a group of delegates Monday, “They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie… Joseph Goebbels – it’s the big lie, you keep repeating it.” He left Charlotte Monday for a “previously scheduled” root canal....
