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: Guardian (UK)
Apr 24, 2012
It's an event best seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old child who looked round the vast bowl of hills around Kinder Scout on Tuesday and couldn't conceive of a time when it was forbidden ground."It's so green and so beautiful, we get up there whenever we can," she said, peeping out from behind one of the hand-coloured masks of grouse and curlews made by Edale primary school for this year's 80th anniversary of the Kinder Mass Trespass.Her comment rolled back the years for Elsie Gaskell, who was 10 in April 1932, when word spread around Manchester, Sheffield and the smaller Pennine industrial towns that the landlords and gamekeepers on the high moors were to be defied in strength....
Source: Style Weekly (Richmond, VA)
Apr 24, 2012
On its face, it was hardly a titillating topic to kick off Architecture Week, sponsored by the Richmond chapter of the American Institute of Architects. A capacity crowd of 180 folks fill the Virginia Historical Society auditorium April 9 to hear about a ruin. Not just any ruin, if the truth be told, but an inglorious old heap of stones on the Northern Neck called Menokin.From 1769 to 1797, it was the suave, neo-Palladian dwelling of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Rebecca Tayloe. But sometime in the 1960s, the long-abandoned manse partially collapsed. Fortunately, every possible scrap of the place — including the interior paneling, was salvaged. The remaining walls have been stabilized by the nonprofit Menokin Foundation, a group charged with figuring out what to do next....
Source: News.am
Apr 24, 2012
The officers of Germany—which was Ottoman Turkey’s ally during the First World War—and who occupied crucial positions in the Ottoman army, surprisingly assumed the most important positions in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, Turkish Taraf daily’s reporter Ozan Cinar writes in his article entitled “The Nazis Acquired Experience in 1915.”...
Source: Shropshire Star (UK)
Apr 24, 2012
When historians uncovered the overgrown and crumbling grave of fallen soldier Private Percy Titley in a Shropshire cemetery, a campaign started to restore the headstone.Around 35 people, including family members, attended a ‘moving’ service at Shrewsbury cemetery after witnessing the unveiling of the new grave for the soldier, who served during World War One.The soldier, from Castlefields, was with the Welsh Guards on the front line in France in 1917 before being sent home to Shrewsbury after contracting trench fever....
Source: GlobalVoices
Apr 24, 2012
April 24 marks the 97th anniversary of the massacre and deportation of around 1.5 million Armenians living in the then Ottoman Empire. Widely considered by many historians as well as the parliaments of several countries to be an act of genocide, the issue remains an emotive one.Yet, while recent attempts to officially normalize relations and resolve historical grievances between Armenia and Turkey have faltered, the situation has been changing slowly in other areas, and not least in terms of civil society activity.Indeed, in recent years there has been more open discussion and debate in Turkish society, as well as in its media, about the events of 1915 than ever before. While Turkey still denies the charge of genocide, that change is nonetheless unprecedented as one Turkish tweep commented....
Source: UPI
Apr 24, 2012
NEA POTIDEA, Greece, April 24 (UPI) -- Geological evidence suggests a tsunami described by the ancient historian Herodotus did indeed protect a Greek village from Persian invaders, scientists say.Researchers from Aachen University in Germany said sediment on the northern Greek peninsula where the ancient village Potidea and the modern town of Nea Potidea are located shows signs of massive marine events such as large waves, evidence of tsunamis of the sort Herodotus said saved the village in 479 B.C., the BBC reported....
Source: knoxnews.com
Apr 24, 2012
MAYNARDVILLE — What was once farmland as far as the eye could see is now nearly 4,000 acres of second-growth forests with scenic lakefront views — due, in large part, to the Tennessee Valley Authority.In celebration of the Tennessee state park system's 75th anniversary, Big Ridge State Park in Maynardville hosted a small celebration Tuesday afternoon, during which a full-scale copy of a 1935 TVA map of the region was unveiled.The 4-by-11-foot map is an exact copy of the original, with added blue coloring for the proposed lakes, and will remain on permanent display in the park's main office....
Source: Newsday
Apr 24, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan -- In a highly controversial move, Afghanistan's education ministry has dealt with the complexities of the last four decades of turmoil and war by simply omitting the entire period from the new history textbooks it is issuing to schools.Officials argue that the decision to pass over contentious events of recent history is an attempt to heal rifts in Afghan society and avoid further strife. But critics accuse the ministry of distorting history and protecting individuals implicated in past bloodshed, some of who now hold senior government posts.Children studying the books could be forgiven for thinking they were reading about another country.Historians see the missing parts -- from the Soviet invasion to the emergence of Islamist militias and all-out civil war -- as the key to understanding modern Afghanistan....
Source: LA Times
Apr 24, 2012
The Feb. 27 letter from the chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes was pleading and tough. It asked President Obama to slow the federal government's "frantic pursuit" of massive solar energy projects in the Mojave Desert because of possible damage to Native American cultural resources.The Obama administration didn't respond. But four days after Chairman Eldred Enas sent the letter, the Indians say they found an answer, delivered by spirits of the desert.Howling winds uncovered a human tooth and a handful of burned bone fragments the size of quarters on a sand dune in the shadow of new solar power transmission towers. Indians say the discovery is evidence of a Native American cremation site not detected in Southern California Edison's archaeological survey before the towers were built....
Source: The Register (UK)
Apr 23, 2012
Blighty's communications eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ has issued two papers written by superboffin Alan Turing on the maths behind code-breaking.The documents, held in secret for 70 years, laid the foundations for the quick and efficient decryption of Nazi Enigma-scrambled messages - a breakthrough that lopped about two years off the duration of the Second World War.The papers were donated on Friday to The National Archive in Kew, Surrey, where they will be available to view on request. An archives spokesperson said demand to see Turing's work is high, but there is no plan to put it online....
Source: The Courier (UK)
Apr 23, 2012
General John Forbes is credited with turning the tide of American history in favour of British forces in the Seven Years War when he defeated the French, capturing a strategically important fort and founding what is now Pittsburgh.Now a memorial, gifted by the people of Pennsylvania, stands alongside the Forbes' ancestral home, Pittencrieff House. It was unveiled on Saturday.The Forbes Marker was presented by Laura Fisher, senior vice-president of the Allegheny Conference in Pittsburgh. She served as an executive director of French and Indian War 250, which celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh in 1758.The Forbes Marker commemorates the achievements of the general, and is one of a set of five installed along the route of the 300-mile trail he created on his way to capture Fort Duquesne....
Source: Discovery News
Apr 23, 2012
A meticulous description of currency and salt production could restore Marco Polo's honor by proving that he really did go to China, a new study into the explorer's accounts of the Far East suggests."Polo was not a swindler," said Hans Ulrich Vogel, professor of Chinese studies at the German University of Tübingen.Vogel reexamines the great Venetian traveler in a new book titled "Marco Polo Was in China.""The strongest evidence is that he provided complex and detailed information about monetary conditions, salt production, public revenues and administrative geography that have been overlooked so far, but are fully corroborated in Chinese sources," Vogel told Discovery News.The historian noted that these Chinese sources were collated or translated long after Marco Polo’s time."So he could not have drawn on them. He could not even read Chinese," he said....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 22, 2012
CROWDS gathered on a rainy morning to witness the unveiling of the world’s only memorial to the Luddites in Liversedge.The unveiling of the statue of a cropper and his daughter was the culmination of six years’ hard graft by Spen Valley Civic Society.The society bought a plot of derelict land at the junction of Knowler Hill and Halifax Road to turn into a park marking the ‘lost town’ of Liversedge.However they also decided that as 2012 marked the 200th anniversary of the Luddites’ attack at Rawfolds Mill in Liversedge, they would commemorate that pivotal moment in social history by commissioning a statue of a cropper and his daughter as the park’s centrepiece....
Source: NYT
Apr 21, 2012
Charles W. Colson, who as a political saboteur for President Richard M. Nixon masterminded some of the dirty tricks that led to the president’s downfall, then emerged from prison to become an important evangelical leader, saying he had been “born again,” died on Saturday. He was 80. The cause was complications of a brain hemorrhage, according to Prison Fellowship Ministries, which Mr. Colson founded in Lansdowne, Va. He died at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., and lived in Naples, Fla., and Leesburg, Va. Mr. Colson had brain surgery to remove a clot after becoming ill on March 30 while speaking at a conference, according to Jim Liske, the group’s chief executive. Related link Washington Post obituary
Source: Marin History Museum Press Release
Apr 20, 2012
The Marin History Museum (MHM), based in San Rafael, joined a select group of prominent institutions on Thursday, with the launch of the Marin History Museum smartphone Application. The Museum is one of less than a dozen museums nationally that have developed applications as part of their public offerings. Other institutions that have developed museum apps include the New York MOMA, the Smithsonian Institutions, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Natural History. The Museum is currently evolving its organizational focus to emphasize a more user-friendly community experience.
Source: Haaretz.com
Apr 20, 2012
On today's date, April 20, in 1889, Adolf Hitler was born. It wasn't by chance that the German aktzia (roundup ) to wipe out the Warsaw Ghetto was scheduled for this date, leading to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943 - the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nisan. This year, Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day, Nisan 27, was marked yesterday.Hitler's life and horrors have been analyzed extensively and deeply from every angle, but the files of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation illuminate them from two different, bizarre perspectives.The first, when Hitler rose to power in 1933, is the official response to threats by American Jews to assassinate him. The second, after his death in the bunker in Berlin in 1945, is the investigation of the theory that Hitler had escaped and was living somewhere in the Americas, openly or clandestinely, and was plotting to revive the Third Reich.
Source: NYT
Apr 20, 2012
It has been nearly a quarter-century since Roy Fox had a regular salary. He is not a lottery winner or the recipient of some grand family fortune. He is, in short, the type of person who long ago would have been priced out by New York’s ever-climbing housing market.
But for more than two decades, Mr. Fox, a retired radio host who earns a modest pension, has been enviably situated in an airy abode with park views, burnished wood floors and historic detailing. In fact, he is the sole resident of a 29-room mansion in Jamaica, Queens, constructed before the Declaration of Independence was written — a pre-prewar, so to speak.
If paying scandalously low rent for one of the city’s 39,000 remaining rent-controlled apartments is viewed as the holy grail of New York real estate, that is only because so few are aware of the existence of an even more elusive and lustrous prize.
Mr. Fox, 72, is one of only 19 people lucky enough to seize the role of resident caretaker of a city-owned historic home, a job that comes with no salary but a perk so seemingly lavish that many are loath to admit it to their friends: they not only live in some of the city’s most splendid manors, but they also do so completely rent-free.
Source: AP
Apr 19, 2012
BIG RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The objects displayed in Michigan's newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque — a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.That's the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation's largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University "is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism," said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager....
Source: LiveScience
Apr 19, 2012
Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones — each weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) — in the outline of a 220-foot-long (67-meter) ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar ("Ale's Stones"), was assembled about 1,000 years ago, near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument. But a team of researchers now argues it's really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as England's Stonehenge.
Source: Guardian
Apr 19, 2012
Salford's clever academics, who once took me shopping in a virtual supermarket – you sat in an armchair wearing a helmet and a glove – have now recreated the sound of Stonehenge.
We are nowhere nearer cracking the mystery of the monument as a result; but who would want to be? Apart from all the mountains of remaindered books of theories, a puzzle solved is never as gripping as a conundrum still under way.
But the four-year project by Dr Bruno Fazenda and colleagues at Huddersfield and Bristol universities, has established how the shouts, speeches, songs or sacrificial screams would have sounded, whatever material they may have contained. The method has been a painstaking piece of 'archaeoacoustics', a relatively new discipline which reveals the sound quality of buildings from the past.
