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: Reuters
Apr 19, 2012
Four of the last five survivors of a U.S. World War Two bombing mission over Japan reunited on Wednesday, 70 years after the "Doolittle Tokyo raiders" shocked Japan and lifted flagging American war morale with their daring attempt. Only five of the 80 U.S. military members who participated in the raid are still alive and one could not attend the annual reunion at a Dayton, Ohio, military base because of ill health. Air Force Staff Sergeant David Thatcher, 90, remembered April 18, 1942, like it was yesterday. His plane, a B-25 bomber, had just crossed Japan's coastline on its way to Tokyo as part of a surprise attack that helped change the outcome of World War Two in the Pacific. The earlier foul weather had cleared and Thatcher, a gunner, had a clear view of a crowded beach.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 18, 2012
Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.Those papers that survived the purge were flown discreetly to Britain where they were hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.The archive came to light last year when a group of Kenyans detained and allegedly tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion won the right to sue the British government. The Foreign Office promised to release the 8,800 files from 37 former colonies held at the highly-secure government communications centre at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 18, 2012
Whisper it quietly on this side of Hadrian’s Wall, but a ground breaking research project has revealed that Scottish DNA is much the same as English DNA.
Not only are we not all Celts and Vikings north of the border, it appears that Bonnie Prince Charlie himself had English ancestors.
Around 1,000 people have been tested in the past four months as part of the Scotland’s DNA project, and the preliminary results reveal the “astonishing” diversity of our genetic origins.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Apr 18, 2012
A trove of Chinese antiquities described by a spokesman as “a highly important part of our collection” was stolen last week from the University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, The Telegraph and BBC News reported....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 18, 2012
Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.Those papers that survived the purge were flown discreetly to Britain where they were hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.The archive came to light last year when a group of Kenyans detained and allegedly tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion won the right to sue the British government. The Foreign Office promised to release the 8,800 files from 37 former colonies held at the highly-secure government communications centre at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire.
Source: BBC News
Apr 18, 2012
US officials complained Kenyan students were becoming "anti-white" in the year Barack Obama's father enrolled at university, previously secret files released at the National Archives in Kew reveal.US President Barack Obama wrote with pride of his Kenyan father's studies in the US in his memoir Dream From My Father.
Source: Fox News
Apr 18, 2012
A small bronze statue dating back nearly 2,000 years may be that of a female gladiator, a victorious one at that, suggests a new study.If confirmed the statue would represent only the second depiction of a woman gladiator known to exist.The gladiator statue shows a topless woman, wearing only a loincloth and a bandage around her left knee. Her hair is long, although neat, and in the air she raises what the researcher, Alfonso Manas of the University of Granada, believes is a sica, a short curved sword used by gladiators. The gesture she gives is a "salute to the people, to the crowd," Manas said, an action done by victorious gladiators at the end of a fight.The female fighter is looking down at the ground, presumably at her fallen opponent.The "precise real-life" details of the statue suggest the depiction was inspired by an actual person, a real woman who fought, Manas told LiveScience in an interview. [Photos: Gladiators of the Roman Empire]...
Source: NYT
Apr 17, 2012
Luxembourg is about as cuddly as countries come: prosperous, picturesque and delightfully tiny. At 999 square miles, it is the smallest but one of the European Union states [1]. You could drive its length (55 miles) or its width (35 miles) in less time than it takes to watch a feature-length movie — provided you don’t stop at one of the many touristy villages or vineyards along the way. The capital, also called Luxembourg [2], is a cozy city of barely 100,000 souls; its major problem is not drugs or urban decay, but the apparently unfixable fact that it’s rather boring [3].
Source: WaPo
Apr 17, 2012
DALLAS -- It seems almost quaint to mention today, in the era of the “birther’’ movement, but we used to debate where presidential candidates were during the Vietnam War, not where they were born.Just eight years ago, this line of inquiry produced two spectacular efforts: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and "Rathergate.''It’s hard to argue the significance of the Swift Boat movement. But former CBS newsman Dan Rather is still fighting history’s judgment on his botched investigation of former President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. A scathing independent report chronicled a long list of journalistic and ethical missteps.But now Rather is pressing his case in a lengthy interview in the May issue of Texas Monthly magazine.
Source: Medieval News
Apr 17, 2012
A bronze, Viking-era "piggy-bank" containing thousands silver coins dating from the 11th century has been unearthed on the Baltic island of Gotland in what Swedish archaeologists have described as a "fantastic" treasure find....
Source: Science Daily
Apr 16, 2012
Cincinnati research is revealing early farming in a former wetlands region that was largely cut off from Western researchers until recently. The UC collaboration with the Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project (SANAP) will be presented April 20 at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA).Susan Allen, a professor in the UC Department of Anthropology who co-directs SANAP, says she and co-director Ilirjan Gjipali of the Albanian Institute of Archaeology created the project in order to address a gap not only in Albanian archaeology, but in the archaeology in Eastern Europe as a whole, by focusing attention on the initial transition to farming in the region."For Albania, there has been a significant gap in documenting the Early Neolithic (EN), the earliest phase of farming in the region," explains Allen. "While several EN sites were excavated in Albania in the '70s and '80s, plant and animal remains - the keys to exploring early farming - were not recovered from the sites, and sites were not dated with the use of radiocarbon techniques," Allen says....
Source: Fox News
Apr 16, 2012
Spc. Leslie H. Sabo Jr., who died in 1970 while saving the lives of his fellow troops during the Vietnam War, has been cleared to receive a posthumous Medal of Honor after a decades-long wait by his family.The White House announced Monday that President Obama would honor Sabo's heroic service with the military's highest honor at an upcoming ceremony.Sabo died on May 10, 1970, while serving as a rifleman in Cambodia. That day, his platoon was ambushed by enemy forces and Sabo charged the enemy position, killing several enemy soldiers.His actions drew fire away from his fellow soldiers and forced a retreat of enemy forces. A grenade later landed near where he was resupplying and he threw it away and shielded a wounded comrade with his body, saving his life....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Apr 16, 2012
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time his regime stole babies, kidnapped thousands of opponents and murdered them.Videla, 86, who was jailed for life in 2010 for murder, torture and kidnapping, has repeatedly justified the brutality of the military junta in the so-called Dirty War crackdown on left-wing opponents.The country's brutal seven-year dictatorship has long been accused of 'disappearing' leftist opponents....
Source: WSJ
Apr 16, 2012
WASHINGTON—In a Pentagon hallway hung an austere portrait of a Navy man lost at sea in 1908, with his brass buttons, blue-knit uniform and what looks like meticulously blow-dried hair.Wait. Blow-dried hair?The portrait of "Ensign Chuck Hord," framed in the heavy gilt typical of government offices, may be the greatest—or perhaps only—prank in Pentagon art history. "Chuck Hord" can't be found in Navy records of the day. It isn't even a real painting. The textured, 30-year-old photo is actually of Capt. Eldridge Hord III, 53 years old, known to friends as "Tuck," a military retiree with a beer belly and graying hair who lives in Burke, Va.Most military officers who climb the ranks or command daring battles only dream of having a portrait hang in a corridor of power at the Pentagon alongside the likes of Patton, Nimitz and Eisenhower. Capt. Hord's made its way to the Pentagon's C-ring hallway via several parties, an alliance of British and Canadian military officers and a clandestine, predawn operation later dubbed "THE PROJECT."...
Source: WaPo
Apr 14, 2012
Faced with little public understanding of its modern mission, the U.S. Navy is reaching back 200 years to the War of 1812 in the hopes of bolstering its standing with the American people.This week it launches an ambitious, three-year commemoration to mark the bicentennial of the often overlooked war. Beginning Tuesday in New Orleans, and continuing through the summer in New York, Norfolk, Baltimore and Boston, tall ships and warships from around the world will parade through American ports.But unlike previous commemorations, the Navy wants to reap lasting benefits from the War of 1812 and plans to immerse the public in a flood of information and events, including educational outreach, Web sites, social media, online games, books and museum displays.Polling for the Navy by Gallup has shown that less than 9 percent of Americans understand its mission. Equally worrisome, the public ranks the Navy ahead of only the Coast Guard in its importance to national defense, and well behind the Army, Marines and Air Force....
Source: NYT
Apr 14, 2012
The ancient Greeks depicted Aphrodite in elevator shoes. Centuries later, Venetian courtesans clopped around in towering chopines, while during the reign of Louis XIV, red heels were a mark of nobility. But it was after World War II that the stiletto took hold. Soldiers who spent years abroad dreaming of high-heeled pinups, one historian wrote, came home to wives whose wartime work required more sensible shoes. As women returned to domestic life, higher heels could, and did, become all the rage. From the 1950s’ froth of experimentation, the stiletto was born.
Source: NYT
Apr 14, 2012
...In 1939, when John L. Goldwater, Louis H. Silberkleit and Maurice Coyne, Mr. Silberkleit’s accountant and partner in his pulp publishing business, Columbia Productions, decided to expand into comic books, their investment was $8,000 apiece. The company, called MLJ, was based in Lower Manhattan.Mr. Goldwater was the visionary who dreamed up superheroes like The Shield and The Wizard and decided, after a few years, that their Pep Comics series could use a few characters who were not superpowered or monsters. In 1941, he sketched the face of a childhood friend: it was Archie, a girl-crazy, pratfall-prone, boy-next-door type.
Source: NYT
Apr 14, 2012
Federal officials, who have long struggled to assert protective authority over the resting place of the Titanic, say the site may harbor many undiscovered corpses and thus should be accorded the respect of a graveyard and shielded from looters and artifact hunters.“There are people inside,” said James P. Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors the wreck....The bold federal assertions are dividing Titanic experts. The most experienced divers say they doubt that bodies lie intact in unexplored compartments of the deteriorating ship.“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, the moviemaker and explorer, who has visited the wreck 33 times and extensively probed its interior, said in an interview....
Source: Tennessean
Apr 12, 2012
FRANKLIN Battlefield preservation group Franklin’s Charge is within striking distance of acquiring a strip mall anchored by a Domino’s Pizza to restore an area that was the epicenter of the 1864 Battle of Franklin.The group has less than 60 days to raise more than $300,000 so they can begin work on the Carter Cotton Gin Interpretive Park.An announcement today from the group explained what is at stake: “You can make great pizzas anywhere, but there’s only one epicenter of the Battle of Franklin, where nearly 10,000 casualties fell in five bloody hours and 11 medals of honor were won.”...
Source: Science Blog
Apr 12, 2012
New research marking the bicentenary of Luddism – a workers’ uprising which swept through parts of England in 1812 – has thrown into question whether it really was the moment at which working class Britain found its political voice.April 11 will mark the 200th anniversary of what was arguably the high-point of the Luddite rebellion; an assault by some 150 armed labourers on a Huddersfield mill, in which soldiers opened fire on the mob to stop them breaking into the premises, fatally wounding two attackers.It was, perhaps, the most dramatic in a series of protests which had begun the year before in Nottinghamshire, then spread to Yorkshire, Lancashire and other regions. The Luddites were angered by new technologies, like automated looms, which were being used in the textile industry in place of the skilled work of artisans, threatening their livelihoods as a result....
