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)
Jun 19, 2012
The poet was hailed as on the '50 notable people connected with Croydon' in the borough's bid to win city status earlier this year.According to council literature, called 'Croydon: The Facts', it stated that Lord Byron, born George Byron in 1788, was one of 'many talents nurtured by Croydon', which it said was a 'centre for innovation'.But this week the council admitted it had made a bungle after it was pointed out that Lord Byron - who wrote She Walks in Beauty and When We Two Parted - was born in Marylebone in north London and had probably never even visited Croydon....
Source: Belfast Telegraph
Jun 18, 2012
Simon Cowell and Adolf Hitler might not seem to have much in common but the unlikely duo have topped a poll to find the most recognisable faces in history....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 17, 2012
Scientists drew up a map of the British Isles revealing the genetic ancestry of people from different rural areas across the UK.After extensive DNA surveying, they found that Welsh and Cornish people were among the most genetically distinct groups in the country.One theory for the difference in their DNA is that they are a "relic" population, tracing their ancestry back to the tribes that colonised Britain after the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago.Welsh genes proved to be similar to those of the French and Irish, suggesting they were connected to the pre-Roman population....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 17, 2012
She is a vessel unique in the history of the Royal Navy – the only one in which two captains won the Victoria Cross for their exploits aboard.Now the submarine HMS E14 has been photographed in her final resting place, 94 years after she went down under heavy shellfire during the First World War.The first pictures of the vessel on the ocean bed show her looking largely intact, suggesting the remains of the crew and their personal effects are still inside. The precise location of the wreck in the eastern Mediterranean was a mystery until it was discovered by Turkish divers this month....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 17, 2012
They were held up as paragons of virtue, but one congregation of Essex nuns appear to have needed some pointers on how to conduct themselves.In a book of advice for the cloistered women written more than 1,300 years ago, they were reminded of the benefits of virginity, warned of the sin of pride, and cautioned against wearing garments which “set off” the body.The guidance came from the Anglo-Saxon cleric Aldhelm in a text dedicated to the abbess nuns of Barking Abbey, the oldest surviving version of which is now up for sale....
Source: LA Times
Jun 17, 2012
Rodney King, whose beating by Los Angeles police helped spark the 1992 L.A. riots, died Sunday at his home in Rialto. He was 47.King became a symbol for police brutality and the troubled relations between the LAPD and minority residents. He was eventually awarded a $3.8-million settlement, but the money and fame brought him little solace. He had repeated run-ins with the law and as of April said he was broke."I sometimes feel like I'm caught in a vise. Some people feel like I'm some kind of hero," he told The Times earlier this year. "Others hate me. They say I deserved it. Other people, I can hear them mocking me for when I called for an end to the destruction, like I'm a fool for believing in peace."...
Source: USA Today
Jun 16, 2012
When the first big battle of the War of 1812 is re-enacted this fall, the U.S. 1st Artillery regiment will mount an ear-splitting barrage. The Yanks will point their cannons at British redcoats across the Niagara River in Canada. They will wear blue. They will curse King George.....
Source: Annenberg Public Policy Center
Jun 15, 2012
FlackCheck asks: “Could Abraham Lincoln win re-election in 1864 if today’s technology and methods were available to his opponent?”
Source: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Jun 15, 2012
The FBI posted the entire 1,892 page file on Mark Felt, the anonymous source for the Washington Post's investigation into the Watergate break in during the Nixon administration.
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2012
SYDNEY, Australia — Newly released documents detail numerous cases of physical and sexual abuse of minors in Australia’s armed forces dating back to the 1950s, prompting Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Friday to raise the possibility of a high-level public inquiry.The cases are described in a confidential report commissioned by the Australian military last year and made public late Thursday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Highly redacted extracts from the report had been released three months ago by Defense Minister Stephen Smith. What the ABC obtained, through a Freedom of Information request, was the full executive summary of the report.
Source: NBC Nightly News (with video)
Jun 15, 2012
Forty years after the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, one of the five men arrested for breaking into the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex told NBC News he regrets what he did. NBC's Chuck Todd reports. Related Links
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2012
More than 50 years after his plane was downed in the Soviet Union, Francis Gary Powers was posthumously awarded the military’s third-highest decoration on Friday.
Mr. Powers, the U-2 spy plane pilot whose story captured national attention during the cold war, was awarded a Silver Star from the Air Force in a ceremony at the Pentagon.
After his plane was downed in 1960, Mr. Powers was subjected to 107 days of interrogation, followed by a public trial in Moscow. He was imprisoned for more than two years thereafter.
Source: AP
Jun 14, 2012
LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — Children shimmy up the barrels of massive cannons on the upper decks of the 100-year-old Battleship Texas, focused on firing at an imaginary enemy and oblivious to the tension in the historic vessel's belly where a crew works on pumping out dozens of gallons of oil-laced water.The battleship where the young tourists roam became flooded over the weekend. Staff arrived Saturday and immediately noticed something was wrong with the ship that fought in World Wars I and II and has served since 1948 as a memorial and museum to those who sacrificed their lives.The vessel was sitting awkwardly in its slip. She was lower in the water and listing to the left."We got down to the lower portions of the ship and discovered that we had taken on more water than usual in areas that we normally don't," ship manager Andy Smith said. "They started pumping throughout the day Saturday, and it got progressively worse."...
Source: Yahoo News
Jun 14, 2012
A small handful of bones found in an ancient church in Bulgaria may belong to John the Baptist, the biblical figure said to have baptized Jesus.There's no way to be sure, of course, as there are no confirmed pieces of John the Baptist to compare to the fragments of bone. But the sarcophagus holding the bones was found near a second box bearing the name of St. John and his feast date (also called a holy day) of June 24. Now, new radiocarbon dating of the collagen in one of the bones pegs its age to the early first century, consistent with the New Testament and Jewish histories of John the Baptist's life....
Source: NYT
Jun 14, 2012
TOKYO — The man thought to be the final suspect from the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve-gas poisoning in a crowded subway station here that killed 13 people and sickened thousands of others was arrested on Friday, the police said.Investigators arrested the suspect, Katsuya Takahashi, 54, near an Internet cafe in central Tokyo after receiving a tip that a man resembling the fugitive had been spotted there, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Mr. Takahashi was arrested on suspicion of murder....
Source: NYT
Jun 14, 2012
PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Forty years after the siege at Wounded Knee by members of the American Indian Movement, the Oglala Sioux tribe has demanded that the federal government reopen dozens of cases it says the F.B.I. may have mishandled decades ago.Tribal leaders say that as many as 75 people were killed on Pine Ridge during a three-year period of internecine violence that followed the 71-day Wounded Knee standoff with federal troops in 1973, a time that came to be known on the reservation as the “reign of terror.”The federal government has declined so far to re-examine the cases....
Source: Star Tribune
Jun 14, 2012
The University of North Dakota dropped its contentious Fighting Sioux nickname for the third time Thursday, and officials expressed hope that the latest retirement -- fueled by this week's overwhelming statewide vote -- would finally stick.The move became official when the state Board of Higher Education voted to get rid of the university's moniker and Indian head logo, which had sparked lawsuits and threats of NCAA sanctions.Residents cast ballots Tuesday in numbers not seen in a primary election for more than five decades, and more than two-thirds favored putting the decades-old dispute to rest by dumping the name....
Source: NYT
Jun 14, 2012
In the 1969 summer of Woodstock, something mildly hallucinogenic was going on hundreds of miles away in Washington. The Senators, a famously bad team that had finished over .500 only four times in the previous 35 seasons, had become pretty decent.Ted Williams was the famous manager, Frank Howard would end up hitting 48 home runs, first baseman Mike Epstein would have his best year with 30 home runs of his own, and the Senators — yes, the Senators — would finish with an 86-76 record that was five and a half games better than the Yankees’ 80-81 mark.It was the first time that this second edition of the Senators (the first had bolted to Minnesota after the 1960 season) would finish over .500, and it would be the last. After two more seasons, they were off to Texas to become the Rangers, and Washington was left without baseball until the Nationals arrived in 2005....
Source: CBS News
Jun 14, 2012
Forty years ago next Monday, The Washington Post printed its first story on what would become the biggest political scandal in U.S. history: Watergate. Now the two reporters who led the paper's investigation -- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- say there was a lot more to it than we knew then.
Source: NYT
Jun 14, 2012
Stone Age artists were painting red disks, handprints, clublike symbols and geometric patterns on European cave walls long before previously thought, in some cases more than 40,000 years ago, scientists reported on Thursday, after completing more reliable dating tests that raised a possibility that Neanderthals were the artists.A more likely situation, the researchers said, is that the art — 50 samples from 11 caves in northwestern Spain — was created by anatomically modern humans fairly soon after their arrival in Europe.The findings seem to put an exclamation point to a run of recent discoveries: direct evidence from fossils that Homo sapiens populations were living in England 41,500 to 44,200 years ago and in Italy 43,000 to 45,000 years ago, and that they were making flutes in German caves about 42,000 years ago. Then there is the new genetic evidence of modern human-Neanderthal interbreeding, suggesting a closer relationship than had been generally thought....
