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: Reason
Jun 14, 2012
CORRECTION: I need my eyes checked. The Obama infoboxes are still there, but they appear to have been redesigned to look less like part of the other presidents' biographies. My apologies for the temporary blindness.***It appears as though the White House has decided that maybe the official biographies of other presidents are not the best place to campaign for President Barack Obama’s reelection....
Source: Salon
Jun 14, 2012
Acquiescing to CIA demands for secrecy, the National Archives announced Wednesday that it will not release 1,171 top-secret Agency documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy in time for the 5oth anniversary of JFK’s death in November 2013.“Is the government holding back crucial JFK documents,” asked Russ Baker in a WhoWhatWhy piece that Salon published last month. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. In a letter released this week, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives and Record Administration, said the Archives would not release the records as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing declassification campaign. Stern cited CIA claims that “substantial logistical requirements” prevented their disclosure next year....
Source: Yahoo News
Jun 13, 2012
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky museum where dinosaurs roam the biblical Garden of Eden is unveiling a national billboard campaign featuring the popular prehistoric reptiles.The cartoon billboards for the Creation Museum are appearing in several cities including Chicago, San Francisco and Houston and feature colorful dinosaurs drawn in a vintage comic book style.The popular attraction in northern Kentucky that opened in 2007 has drawn controversy and thousands of visitors with exhibits that challenge evolution and present the Old Testament's creation story....
Source: BBC News
Jun 13, 2012
Six Lewis Chessmen are to be displayed long-term at a new museum on the Western Isles, where more than 90 of the historic pieces were found.An agreement has been reached between Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) and the British Museum.The British Museum will loan the six pieces to the new museum at Lews Castle, in Stornoway, from 2014.Figures from the Lewis Chessmen have only previously been displayed on the islands on a short-term basis.A five-month exhibition last year, called Lewis Chessmen: Unmasked, attracted more than 23,000 visitors....
Source: NYT
Jun 13, 2012
The owner of a home in Queens has not given much thought about the origin of the concrete and steel room buried beneath his basement. “When I bought this house, nobody came to see this,” said Francisco Lago, who purchased his two-story home about 30 years ago. “It was in ruins.”...Yet this unimpressive cramped space hidden away on a quiet block is a surprising link to a momentous period in American history: It is the only stand-alone private space remaining in the city to qualify as a bomb shelter, according to city records, a vestige of the cold war era when underground sanctuaries were promoted as offering refuge from a mushroom cloud....Besides being a historical curiosity, this forgotten room carries a tangible benefit — a tax break that has saved the Lagos thousands of dollars over the years. They are one of the few remaining beneficiaries of a bill passed by the state’s Legislature in 1961 that provides exemptions for shelters designed “in accordance with plans, regulations and orders of the State Civil Defense Commission.”...
Source: Associated Press
Jun 13, 2012
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican newspaper reported Tuesday that 29 previously unpublished homilies said to be the work of one of the most important and prolific early church fathers have been discovered in a German library.The 3rd Century theologian Origen of Alexandria is considered to have played a critical role in the development of Christian thought. Pope Benedict XVI, himself a theologian, dedicated two of his 2007 weekly church teaching sessions to the importance of Origen's life and work....
Source: NY Daily News
Jun 13, 2012
It’s the days before Camelot, as you’ve never seen them before.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 12, 2012
Among the thousands of men slain on the battlefield at Waterloo, he died, unrecognised and uncelebrated.But almost 200 years later, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of the soldier – with the musket ball that felled him still between his ribs.Historians believe he is from one of the Duke of Wellington’s British regiments, and described the discovery of the skeleton as one of the best ever war finds....
Source: CNN.com
Jun 12, 2012
(CNN) -- A priceless piece of American presidential history will go on sale next week in New York.President George Washington's personal copy of the Acts of Congress, including the United States Constitution and a draft of the Bill of Rights with his own handwritten notations will be sold at auction.It is estimated to fetch between $2 million and $3 million, according to Christie's Auction House."It gives us a very clear picture of the first president and his determination to be president according to the rules bound by the Constitution and later by the Bill of Rights," said Chris Coover, senior specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie's....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jun 12, 2012
Four and a half thousand Irishmen who were branded deserters for joining Britain's struggle against Nazi Germany are to be pardoned, the Irish government announced on Tuesday.Irish justice minister Alan Shatter told the Irish parliament that the government apologises for the way they were treated by Ireland after the second world war. The men deserted from the Irish defence forces at a time when the neutral Irish Free State was playing no direct part in the battle against the Third Reich.In August 1945, the government summarily dismissed soldiers who had absented themselves during the war and disqualified them for seven years from holding employment or office remunerated from the state's central fund.It is estimated that about 100 of them may still be alive....
Source: AP
Jun 12, 2012
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The dingo really did take the baby.Thirty-two years after a 9-week-old infant vanished from an Outback campsite in a case that bitterly divided Australians and inspired a Meryl Streep film, the nation overwhelmingly welcomed a ruling that finally closed the mystery.A coroner in the northern city of Darwin concluded Tuesday that a dingo, or wild dog, had taken Azaria Chamberlain from her parents' tent near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru.That is what her parents, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and Michael Chamberlain, had maintained from the beginning....
Source: Yahoo News
Jun 12, 2012
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The names of the two little girls are an enduring mystery, their images found among crumpled bodies on Civil War battlefields. Each is posed primly on chairs, ringlets cascading past the rouged cheeks of one, the other dressed in a frilly hoop dress.But no one knows the identities of the girls in the photographs, or the stories they might tell.The photograph of one girl was found between the bodies of two soldiers — one Union, one Confederate, at Port Republic, Va., 150 years ago this June. The other was retrieved from a slain Union soldier's haversack in 1865 on a Virginia farm field days before a half-decade of blood-letting would end with a surrender signed not far away at Appomattox....
Source: PR Newswire
Jun 12, 2012
Only steps from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, in the most historic part of the country’s most historically significant city, The American Revolution Center today unveiled the architectural design for The Museum of the American Revolution.The museum, to be built at 3rd and Chestnut Streets, will house the original artifacts, manuscripts, rare books and works of art owned by The American Revolution Center, the non-profit educational organization that is building the museum. The museum will tell the full story of the American Revolution and explore its ongoing legacy, providing context to the many regional and national museums that present key aspects of our nation’s founding era.During the ceremony attended by cultural leaders, tourism officials, and friends of The American Revolution Center, philanthropist H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest announced a $40 million challenge grant to encourage donations to the project. Lenfest said, “The American Revolution secured our independence and led to the creation of this great Nation. Yet two centuries have passed and there is still no national museum that tells the entire story of this remarkable period. I am offering this challenge grant because now is the time to establish The Museum of the American Revolution and ensure that the spirit of the American Revolution is carried forward for generations to come.”
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 11, 2012
An increasing number of Holocaust survivors are only now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder decades after the horrors of the Nazi death camps.Most patients with PTSD, such soldiers returning from conflict, develop symptoms within six months of a traumatic event.But in the cases of those incarcerated or fleeing Hitler during World War Two, the incubation period is proving to be many years longer.Holocaust researchers say the problem is coming to the fore partly because few survivors sought psychiatric help soon after the event....
Source: NYT
Jun 11, 2012
KYTHIRA, Greece — A jarring public-awareness ad that has appeared recently on Greek television news shows a little girl strolling with her mother through the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, one of the country’s cultural crown jewels. The girl skips off by herself, and as she stands alone before a 2,500-year-old marble statue, a hand suddenly sweeps in from behind, covering her mouth and yanking her away.An instant later, she reappears, apparently unharmed but staring forlornly at an empty plinth: The kidnappers weren’t after the girl — they were after the statue.
Source: AP
Jun 11, 2012
DAYTON, Ohio - The buffed silver fuselage of the Memphis Belle now belies the famed B-17 bomber's six punishing months of World War II air combat and the subsequent decades of neglect that left the plane battered by the elements and stripped by souvenir hunters while on public display in its namesake city.The most celebrated American aircraft to emerge from the great war rests these days in a cavernous hangar at a southern Ohio Air Force base undergoing a loving and fastidious restoration — from its clear plastic nose cone down to the twin .50-calibremachine-guns bristling in the tail.About the only section left untouched so far is the signature "nose art" on the pilot's side: the leggy Esquire pinup girl in a blue bathing suit seductively perched above the Memphis Belle nickname, as much a part of the plane's legend as its odds-defying 25 bombing missions over occupied Europe in 1942-43....
Source: Time Magazine
Jun 11, 2012
(BERLIN) — German military divers are working to hoist the wreck of a Stuka dive bomber from the floor of the Baltic Sea, a rare example of the plane that once wreaked havoc over Europe as part of the Nazis’ war machine.The single-engine monoplane carried sirens that produced a distinctive and terrifying screaming sound as it dove vertically to release its bombs or strafe targets with its machine guns. There are only two complete Stukas still around.The Stuka wreck, first discovered in the 1990s when a fisherman’s nets snagged on it, lies about 10 kilometers (6 miles) off the coast of the German Baltic island of Ruegen, in about 18 meters (60 feet) of water....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 11, 2012
Hebrew graffiti thanking Adolf Hitler and denouncing Zionism have been sprayed inside Israel's own Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.One giant slogan at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem read: 'Thank you Hitler for your wonderful Holocaust that you arranged for us, it's only because of you that we got a state at the UN.'It was sprayed across walls in Warsaw Ghetto Square near to a sculpture depicting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in which 13,000 were killed in the first uprising in Nazi occupied Europe....That slogan fuelled suspicion that a small fringe of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are virulently opposed to the state of Israel, were to blame....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 10, 2012
Unfortunately for Cromwell the king was repulsed when he finally saw his bride because she looked nothing like her portrait - and he was beheaded.At the time, Cromwell was Henry's chief minister and is the central figure in Hilary Mantel's latest novel, Bring up the Bodies.The letter, dated November 8, 1539, was sent to the clerical diplomat, Dr Nicholas Wootton.The diplomat was in Cleves in Germany finalising arrangements for what would turn out to be the shortest of Henry's six marriages....
Source: CBS News
Jun 9, 2012
On the 40th anniversary of a Pulitzer Prize-winning iconic photograph of 9-year-old girl, naked and crying from the horror of the Vietnam War, the photographer and the girl from the picture reunited to mark the occasion. Tony Guida reports. (video)
