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: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 21, 2012
The family of a soldier who died in the Second World War were never told of his death because the telegram and his last will and testament were undiscovered for 67 years after they were left on a bus.The documents relating to Private Gordon Heaton were left on a bus by a delivery boy and was discovered in a lost property box in a bus depot in Birmingham last November.His devastated family never received the official telegram saying he had died – and when he never returned from the war, they were left to assume he had been killed in action.Touched bus drivers from the Acocks Green National Express depot launched a hunt to track down Private Heaton's family and finally let them know what happened to the hero....
Source: The Australian
Aug 20, 2012
ORGANISED gangs are stripping Nazi memorabilia from the graves of soldiers who died on the Eastern Front and selling it in Britain. Armed Forces charities have expressed fury and frustration at the “deplorable” groups digging up the bodies of German soldiers to feed a multimillion-pound international industry in Nazi relics.The artefacts, ranging from small personal effects such as dog tags to parts of tanks, are sold over the internet or through informal networks. The human remains are then buried in mass graves, scattered, or sold.The Times has found hundreds of Nazi objects taken from battlefields in Demyansk, near Novgorod in Russia, and Kurland in Latvia, listed for sale on websites such as eBay. A reporter was also offered the chance to buy SS dog tags dug up from a battleground in east Germany at a militaria fair in Kent....
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2012
SEOUL, South Korea — A former dictator’s daughter who cited Queen Elizabeth I of Britain as her role model became the first serious female contender for South Korea’s presidency on Monday when she was chosen as the governing party’s candidate for the election in December.Park Geun-hye, a daughter of President Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea from 1961 until his assassination in 1979, is the first woman and the first child of a former president to become the presidential candidate of a major political party in South Korea.Ms. Park, 60, won the nomination of the Saenuri Party by a huge margin, gathering 84 percent of the votes during a party convention. The remaining ballots were split among four other rivals....
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2012
DIEPPE, France — The beaches of Normandy, for most, evoke images of D-Day, the Allied invasion that set the path to victory over Germany.Fewer people think of Dieppe, this ancient fishing and resort city about a two-and-a-half-hour drive east of those more famous beaches. This is, in part, because the word Dieppe, if it is known at all, evokes something much darker: one of the early and most crushing defeats for Allied forces at a time before the United States had fully mobilized to join them. This is especially true for Canadians, who suffered the heaviest losses here.But more than 2,000 people — including veterans, their family members, tourists and officials from France, Britain, Canada and the United States — descended on the city for Sunday’s commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Dieppe raid....
Source: Minnesota Historical Society
Aug 20, 2012
This month, the Minnesota Historical Society began a year long project to digitize and make available the manuscripts and audio recordings of Hubert H. Humphrey's public speeches. The speech texts, part of the larger Humphrey Papers (1883-1982) housed at the Society, contains 32,000 pages of drafts, typescripts, and transcripts for nearly every public speech dating from 1941, when Humphrey entered local Minnesota politics, until his death in 1978.The project also includes the digitizing of audio recordings of at least 50 particularly important speeches including his address at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, which helped launch his national career. In the stirring speech he argued in favor of a strong civil rights plank in the party's platform.Humphrey began his political career when he was elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945. In November 1948, shortly after his speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, voters in Minnesota elected him to the United States Senate.
Source: Minnesota Historical Society
Aug 20, 2012
Just launched, a new website provides a public portal to the Walter F. Mondale Papers held in the [Minnesota Historical] Society collections. The website provides a fully articulated finding aid to the 1,500 cubic feet of Mondale Papers; contextualizes Mondale's career in a brief essay; provides easy access to thousands of digitized artifacts, photographs, and documents from the Mondale collection; and hosts an extensive interview with Mondale. Future content will include essays and podcasts featuring prominent Mondale scholars.Pat Gaarder, deputy director of programs said, "We are pleased to be able to share the history of this public figure in an easy-to-use way. Mondale speaks to Minnesota's history as well as the nation's history and we are proud that he has entrusted his papers to our care."The extensive Mondale Papers document his entire career, from his terms as Minnesota's attorney general (1960-1964), through his senatorial career (1964-1976), his years as vice president (1977-1980), his 1984 presidential campaign, his brief ambassadorial career and subsequent public service.The Society was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to process and describe the Walter Mondale Papers and to develop a Mondale web page.
Source: AFP
Aug 19, 2012
New evidence has emerged suggesting that Hungarian Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary was sentenced to 20 years in jail after World War II in 1945 but then escaped, a historian said Sunday.Historian Zoltan Balassa told the online version of the HVG weekly he has discovered documents showing that Csatary was captured in the Hungarian town of Veszprem and then sentenced in Pecs, but that he then fled the country.The documents were found in Kosice, the town in present-day Slovakia where Csatary is accused of having committed war crimes as a senior police officer in Hungary's pro-Nazi regime with responsibility for the Jewish ghetto.
Source: CNN.com
Aug 19, 2012
(CNN) -- The USS Constitution, or "Old Ironsides," sailed under her own power Sunday for just the second time in some 130 years.The Constitution set out on Boston Harbor in Massachusetts to commemorate the 200th anniversary of her victory over a British frigate during the War of 1812. The battle earned Constitution her "Old Ironsides" nickname."I cannot think of a better way to honor those who fought in the war as well as celebrate Constitution's successes during the War of 1812 than for the ship to be under sail," said Cmdr. Matt Bonner, Constitution's 72nd commanding officer.Some 285 people were on board the ship, which sailed under her own power for 17 minutes, traveling a distance of 1,100 yards....
Source: NYT
Aug 18, 2012
At age 90, William Blair Jr., a former Negro League pitcher, Dallas-area civil rights leader and longtime newspaperman, came to the realization that much of the history he had lived through had already been forgotten by younger generations.“They don’t know. They don’t read nothing,” he said by telephone this week from his office at The Elite News, the publication he founded in 1960 to bring light to Dallas’s often-overlooked black community.He recently turned over the photographs, newspapers and memorabilia he had collected to the University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections Library. It took seven trucks to haul Mr. Blair’s collection to the university, which intends to develop a public exhibition around it.Mr. Blair hopes visitors to the exhibition, particularly young ones, will develop a deeper appreciation for the area’s history. “There’s stuff in there they don’t know,” he said. “That’s stuff I’ve had for years.”...
Source: Fox News
Aug 18, 2012
Man-made debris seen in underwater video filmed off the coast of a Pacific Island may reportedly be from Amelia Earhart’s plane, which researchers believe disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in 1937.Reuters reported that The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) conducted a $2.2 million expedition to Nikumaroro, a remote island. When the group returned to Honolulu and inspected the video, they noticed a trail of man-made debris they say may be wreckage of Earhart’s plane."It's still very early days, but we have man-made objects in a debris field in the place where we'd expect to find it if our theory on the airplane is correct," Ric Gillespie, the director for TIGHAR, told Reuters. The group reportedly examined 30 percent of the video collected....
Source: News Track India
Aug 17, 2012
London, August 17 (ANI): A Greyhound, owned by Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolph Hess, took part in dog races almost every weekend in Wales during the war, a historian has revealed.Dewi Bowen, a Welsh historian, has said that Nimrod, the dog - a regular at Penydarren Park - was given to Hess after he took his crazy flight to the UK in 1941 in a bid to sue for peace with Winston Churchill.Hess spent most of his time as a Prisoner of war confined to Maindiff Court Military Hospital in Abergavenny.Bowen, 85, said that Nimrod was given to him in a bid to keep his mind off of committing suicide."Almost every Saturday afternoon during the Second World War a private soldier with a greyhound traveled down from Abergavenny to Merthyr Tydfil by train and dropped off at Cefn Coed to quench his thirst at the Railway Inn," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying....
Source: WDAY (Fargo)
Aug 17, 2012
Fargo, ND (WDAY TV) -- One Historian calls it the most important six-weeks in Minnesota History. The U.S.-Dakota war defined Minnesota and even the Red River Valley for decades to come. Its 150th Anniversary is tomorrow.Markus Krueger/Historical and Cultural Society of Clay Co.: "The Red River Valley in 1862 was the edge of the United States, the northwestern edge of the United States."After selling their land to the U.S. Government in the 1850s, the Dakota tribe in Minnesota was mistreated and cheated out of much of its money by Indian Agents and traders.Krueger: "Known by outsiders as the Sioux, they were quite literally starving to death."...
Source: AP
Aug 17, 2012
JACKSON, Miss. — Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War can be an angst-filled task in Mississippi, with its long history of racial strife and a state flag that still bears the Confederate battle emblem.Well-intentioned Mississippians who work for racial reconciliation say slavery was morally indefensible. Still, some speak in hushed tones as they confess a certain admiration for the valor of Confederate troops who fought for what was, to them, the hallowed ground of home and country.“Mississippi has such a troubled past that a lot of people are very sensitive about commemorating or recognizing or remembering the Civil War because it has such an unpleasant reference for African-Americans,” said David Sansing, who is white and a professor emeritus of history at the University of Mississippi....
Source: Korea Times
Aug 16, 2012
A Korean scholar has discovered a confidential Japanese Army document showing that it sent “comfort women” to provide sex to frontline soldiers in Southeast Asia during World War II. Kim Moon-gil, head of the Korea-Japan Culture Research Institute based in Busan, said Thursday he obtained the document in May from the historic records archive of Japan’s Ministry of Defense. The record showed the military was in charge of “managing” sex slaves _ which runs counter to the Japanese government’s claim that it was not involved in recruitment or management....
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 15, 2012
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s highest court ruled Wednesday that a 90-year-old citizen cannot be extradited to Hungary to face accusations he tortured and killed a Jewish teenager during World War II.The High Court upheld a lower court’s decision that reasoned war crimes charges former Hungarian soldier Charles Zentai may face did not exist at the time of the slaying, a conclusion criticized by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center.Hungary says Zentai is suspected of beating the teen to death in Budapest in 1944 for failing to wear a star identifying him as a Jew. Zentai, who migrated to Australia in 1950 and later became a citizen, has denied the allegation and has been fighting extradition since 2005....
Source: Washington Times
Aug 15, 2012
Vice President Joseph R. Biden's incendiary comment to a largely black audience Tuesday about Republican Mitt Romney wanting to put voters "back in chains" isn't the first time he has used slavery imagery in a political appeal.In 2006, when then-Delaware senator was campaigning in South Carolina for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, he reminded people that he represented a former slave state.Asked on Fox News how a "Northeast liberal" such as himself could win in South Carolina, Mr. Biden replied, "You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 15, 2012
The ship that took Captain Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated mission to the Antarctic 100 years ago has been discovered off the coast of Greenland.The SS Terra Nova, built in Dundee in 1884, was found by a research company, Schmidt Ocean Institute, when they were testing new equipment on one of their vessels.The discovery has amazed experts as the ship had lain on the sea bed under icy waters for 70 years.Captain Scott and his team sailed it from Cardiff to the Antarctic in their quest to be the first people to reach the South Pole a century ago....
Source: The Atlantic
Aug 15, 2012
Loris Taylor, the CEO and president of Native Public Media, still has the scars on her hands from when she was caught speaking Hopi in school and got the sharp end of the ruler as a result. "They hit so hard, the flesh was taken off," she remembers. "Deep down inside, it builds some resistance in you."Now, she's at the forefront of a movement to revive dead and dying languages using an old medium: radio. As CEO and president of Native Public Media, she's lobbied the FCC and overseen projects to get increasingly rare tongues like Hopi onto airwaves so that Native Americans can keep their ancestors' ways of speaking alive—and pass those ways of speaking to new generations.Similar efforts are taking place worldwide. In Ireland, Dublin's youthful Top-40 Raidio Ri-Ra and Belfast's eclectic indie Raidio Failte have been broadcasting entirely in Irish for several years. In Washington, D.C. earlier this month, indigenous radio producers from Peru, Mexico, Canada, El Salvador, and a handful of other countries gathered for the "Our Voices on the Air" conference, organized by the 40-year-old nonprofit Cultural Survival and the Smithsonian's Recovering Voices program....
Source: CNN.com
Aug 15, 2012
(CNN) -- One of the world's largest private superyachts is the latest to set sail on an expedition to uncover the secrets of a British battle cruiser lost during World War II.Octopus -- a 414 foot megayacht -- was donated to the British Navy by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Allen will fund the recovery and research expedition, sparing the British government any cost.A previous expedition by Blue Water Recoveries, a deep sea shipwreck recovery company, located the wreck 11 years ago.This week the recovery team will return to the wreck site with a two-fold mission: Retrieve the ship's bell and document the remains of the battle cruiser in the hopes of later determining what happened in the Hood's final moments....
Source: India Today
Aug 15, 2012
Security has been stepped up in state capitals and key installations on Independence Day eve to thwart any terror strike, with an elaborate ground-to-air vigil being maintained in Delhi where the Prime Minister will unfurl the tricolour at the Red Fort on Wednesday.With insurgents outfits and Maoists calling for a boycott of celebrations, tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces have been deployed and patrolling intensified in the North-eastern states and those hit by Left wing violence, including Chhattisgarh.In Jammu and Kashmir, security measures have been intensified across the Valley following stepped up militant attacks over the past week, with police and other security forces resuming random frisking of pedestrians and searching of vehicles....
