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 15, 2012
A French explorer's ship that sank in the Gulf of Mexico in the 17th century is to be rebuilt after undergoing a complex freeze drying operation, the first such undertaking of its size.By placing the ship – La Belle – in a constant environment of up to 60 degrees below zero, more than 300 years of moisture will be safely removed from hundreds of European oak and pine timbers and planks.The freeze-dryer, located at the old Bryan Air Force base several miles northwest of College Station, is 40 feet long and 8 feet wide – the biggest such machine on the continent devoted to archaeology.Researchers will then rebuild the 54 ½-foot vessel, which will become the centrepiece of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin....
Source: LiveScience
Aug 14, 2012
A self-described "satellite archaeology researcher" has garnered widespread media attention with claims that she has found two possible pyramid complexes in Egypt using Google Earth. But experts say her pyramids are nothing more than eroded hills infused with a heavy dose of wishful thinking.Angela Micol, a North Carolina-based woman who blogs at Google Earth Anomalies, says she discovered the two clusters of mysterious, angular mounds in the Egyptian desert while surveying satellite images of the terrain using Google Earth, the virtual map program. In its coverage, Gizmodo asserts that the desert structures look as if they have been "very deliberately arranged," and that they "bear all the hallmarks of ancient pyramid sites."...
Source: USA Today
Aug 14, 2012
Congress is on pace to make history with the least productive legislative year in the post World War II era.Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914 bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2% of all proposed laws, according to a USA TODAY analysis of records since 1947 kept by the U.S. House Clerk's office.In 2011, after Republicans took control of the U.S. House, Congress passed just 90 bills into law. The only other year in which Congress failed to pass at least 125 laws was 1995.These statistics make the 112th Congress, covering 2011-12, the least productive two-year gathering on Capitol Hill since the end of World War II. Not even the 80th Congress, which President Truman called the "do-nothing Congress" in 1948, passed as few laws as the current one, records show....
Source: AP
Aug 13, 2012
EBENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A 110-year-old Pennsylvania widow is getting a benefits boost because of her husband's World War I service.Family members say Alda Collins is now getting about $1,000 a month to assist with her stay at a nursing home near Ebensburg. She had been getting $36 a month.Her son tells the Daily American of Somerset (http://bit.ly/OURXLU) that Collins lived by herself in a trailer until she was 106. She can use a walker, feeds herself and knows the Pirates are in second place....
Source: AP
Aug 13, 2012
Like the people who hike it, the Appalachian Trail is always moving.Technically, Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary of its completion. But the 2,180-mile path stretching across 14 states from Springer Mountain, Ga., to Katahdin, Maine, is never really finished.It took 15 years for hundreds of volunteers, state and federal partners, trail maintenance clubs and young workers with the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps to build the original path. In the decades since, nearly 99 percent has been relocated or rebuilt, and transferred from private to public ownership.That means the trail and some 250,000 contiguous acres are better-protected than ever from development and suburban sprawl....
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2012
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For months now, the alarm has been resounding throughout the insular and competitive world of antiquarian books: beware of volumes bearing the stamp of the storied Girolamini Library in Naples. They could be hot.The library's former director, Marino Massimo De Caro, was arrested in May, accused of systematically despoiling the library he had been charged with keeping safe, stealing books and selling them on the open market or directly to collectors. And sharp sleuthing on the part of a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta has raised questions about Mr. De Caro and the sale of other, possibly forged, books....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 10, 2012
A glimpse into the brutal way warriors proved their prowess 3,600 has been unearthed in Egypt.Archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris have dug up four pits containing 16 large right hands believed to have been sliced from the arms of vanquished enemies.Experts believe the discovery is the earliest and only physical evidence that soldiers used to present the cut-off right hands of enemies in exchange for gold....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 10, 2012
Perhaps no Prince of Wales in history has been less trusted — or more spied upon — than the boy everyone knew as Bertie. When he attended a military summer camp, at age 19, the future King Edward VII was surrounded by minders: two stern Grenadier officers, a colonel and a general. He even had to share a general’s quarters.Happily, however, they had not thought to lock Bertie’s bedroom window. So, one night, the heir to the throne wriggled out, made a beeline for the camp prostitute — one Nellie Clifden — and triumphantly lost his virginity.Moreover, as I discovered from his engagement diary for September 1861, there was a ‘2nd time’ and a ‘3rd time’ with the luscious ‘NC’, proving he lacked in neither courage or enthusiasm....
Source: AP
Aug 10, 2012
The wife of former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, says he's "amazingly resilient" and making progress toward recovering from heart surgery.Carol Armstrong told The Associated Press in an email Friday that in the days since the surgery, her 82-year-old husband has been able to get out of bed and sit in a chair, and then walk up and down the corridor....
Source: NPR
Aug 9, 2012
HNN Editor: Last month the readers of HNN voted David Barton's book “the least credible history book in print.” See our poll.
Citing a loss of confidence in the book's details, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson is ending the publication and distribution of the bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson.
The controversial book was written by Texas evangelical David Barton, who NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty profiled on All Things Considered Wednesday. The publishing company says it's ceasing publication because it found that "basic truths just were not there."
Since its initial publication, historians have debunked and raised concerns about numerous claims in Barton's book. In it, Barton calls Jefferson a "conventional Christian," claims the founding father started church services at the Capitol, and even though he owned more than 200 slaves, says Jefferson was a civil rights visionary....
Source: AP
Aug 9, 2012
The United States began a landmark project Thursday to clean up a dangerous chemical left from the defoliant Agent Orange - 50 years after American planes first sprayed it on Vietnam's jungles to destroy enemy cover.Dioxin, which has been linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities, will be removed from the site of a former U.S. air base in Danang in central Vietnam. The effort is seen as a long-overdue step toward removing a thorn in relations between the former foes nearly four decades after the Vietnam War ended."We are both moving earth and taking the first steps to bury the legacies of our past," U.S. Ambassador David Shear said during the groundbreaking ceremony near where a rusty barbed wire fence marks the site's boundary. "I look forward to even more success to follow."The $43 million joint project with Vietnam is expected to be completed in four years on the 19-hectare (47-acre) contaminated site, now an active Vietnamese military base near Danang's commercial airport.
Source: LA Times
Aug 9, 2012
In its 25 missions spanning nearly two decades, the space shuttle Endeavour circled the Earth more than 4,600 times, spending a total of 299 days in space.It carried the crews that assembled the first U.S. component of the International Space Station, and would go on to dock at the station a dozen times. By the time Endeavour completed its last mission a year ago, the shuttle had logged nearly 123 million miles beyond Earth.But the shuttle's final journey — a measly 12 miles — might just be its most memorable.
Source: Inside Higher Ed Academic Minute
Aug 9, 2012
[CLICK ON ABOVE LINK FOR AUDIO]In today’s Academic Minute, the University of Texas at Austin's Earle McBride examines the discovery of microscopic artifacts on one of history’s most famous beaches. McBride is Professor Emeritus and the J. Nalle Gregory Chair Emeritus in Sedimentary Geology in the Jackson School of Geosciences at UT-Austin. Find out more about him here. A transcript of this podcast can be found here.
Source: Yahoo News
Aug 9, 2012
DANANG, Vietnam (AP) — The United States began a landmark project Thursday to clean up a dangerous chemical left from the defoliant Agent Orange — 50 years after American planes first sprayed it on Vietnam's jungles to destroy enemy cover.Dioxin, which has been linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities, will be removed from the site of a former U.S. air base in Danang in central Vietnam. The effort is seen as a long-overdue step toward removing a thorn in relations between the former foes nearly four decades after the Vietnam War ended."We are both moving earth and taking the first steps to bury the legacies of our past," U.S. Ambassador David Shear said during the groundbreaking ceremony near where a rusty barbed wire fence marks the site's boundary. "I look forward to even more success to follow."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 8, 2012
Running from 1948 to 1951, top secret "Operation Stone" created a number of false border posts near the Czech-German with an elaboration and attention to detail worthy of a film set in order to trick people into thinking they had made it to safety.Once comfortable in what they thought was Germany a Czech secret policeman posing as an American intelligence officer would then ask them to write down all their contacts back home."It was human tragedy. These people were brought into areas which they thought were in the West," said Pavel Bret, from the Czech Republic's Centre for the Documentation and Investigation of Communist Crimes. "There were American flags, American uniforms, and they were also asked to give the names of people co-operating with Western intelligence. They still feel ashamed that they were tricked."But you cannot deny just how clever the operation was."...
Source: NYT
Aug 8, 2012
Fossil by fossil, scientists over the last 40 years have suspected that their models for the more immediate human family tree — the single trunk, straight as a Ponderosa pine, up from Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens — were oversimplified. The day for that serious revision may be at hand.The discovery of three new fossil specimens, announced Wednesday, is the most compelling evidence yet for multiple lines of evolution in our own genus, Homo, scientists said. The fossils showed that there were at least two contemporary Homo species, in addition to Homo erectus, living in East Africa as early as two million years ago.Uncovered from sandstone at Koobi Fora, badlands near Lake Turkana in Kenya, the specimens included a well-preserved skull of a late juvenile with a relatively large braincase and a long, flat face, which has been designated KNM-ER 62000 (62000 for short). It bears a striking resemblance to the enigmatic cranium known as 1470, the center of debate over multiple lineages since its discovery in the same area in 1972....
Source: AP
Aug 8, 2012
One wears a prim white bonnet. Another sticks out its tongue, hands resting over abdomen. A third clutches at its chest, mouth seemingly frozen in a scream. They are faces from the past, trapped in the appearance they bore when laid to rest nearly 300 years ago.And disturbed from their eternal sleep, these mummies may help unlock the secrets of the immune system.Resting in cardboard boxes in long rows of cabinets on the top floor of the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest, the 265 mummies are helping scientists find new ways to treat tuberculosis....
Source: AP
Aug 8, 2012
Our family tree may have sprouted some long-lost branches going back nearly 2 million years. A famous paleontology family has found fossils that they think confirm their theory that there are two additional pre-human species besides the one that eventually led to modern humans.A team led by Meave Leakey, daughter-in-law of famed scientist Louis Leakey, found facial bones from one creature and jawbones from two others in Kenya. That led the researchers to conclude that man's early ancestor had plenty of human-like company from other species.These wouldn't be Homo erectus, believed to be our direct ancestor. They would be more like very distant cousins, who when you go back even longer in time, shared an ancient common ancestor, one scientist said....
Source: AP
Aug 8, 2012
This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.And even less a surprise: The U.S. this year keeps setting records for weather extremes, based on the precise calculations that include drought, heavy rainfall, unusual temperatures, and storms.The average temperature last month was 77.6 degrees. That breaks the old record from July 1936 by 0.2 degree, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Records go back to 1895....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 7, 2012
Following a pilot study on his short novel, The Chimes, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, researchers have decided that significant lost passages might be unlocked from the original manuscripts of his great novels, including Bleak House.The tantalising new technology did not produce any significant finds during the first crawl, besides a few interesting word changes. One sentence, “Years … are like Christians in that respect” originally read: “Years … are like men in one respect.”However, Rowan Watson, a senior curator at the V&A, described the technology in The Independent today as “ingenious and inspiring”. The manuscripts show Dickens “almost thinking aloud on to paper,” he said....
