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: ScienceNow
Feb 6, 2012
The scattered islands of the vast Pacific Ocean were settled by seafarers who set out from the eastern coasts and islands of Asia and traveled thousands of kilometers by boat. Meanwhile pre-Columbian South America was populated by people who crossed a now-vanished land bridge far to the north. Did these two groups ever meet in the New World? There's a good chance of that, according to a new study, which finds evidence that Easter Islanders may have reached South America and mixed with the Native Americans already there.University of Oslo immunologist Erik Thorsby first began analyzing the people of Easter Island in 1971 to see if he and colleagues could detect traces of an early contribution of Native Americans to Polynesians. He believes that his recent finds may show that Native Americans may have accompanied Polynesians from the coast of South America to Easter Island before the arrival of Europeans.The island, also called Rapa Nui, is a remote and rocky place 3700 kilometers west of the coast of South America. The people were forcibly deported to Peru in the 1860s and enslaved; therefore, evidence of mixed Polynesian and Native American genes may stem from this time. But Thorsby was able to use blood samples from the islanders, collected since the 1970s, to examine their DNA for particular genetic markers....
Source: AFP
Feb 6, 2012
They trek for days through crocodile-infested swamps and up rain-lashed mountain jungles, but the members of the Malaya Historical Group are not seeking treasure or ancient artefacts. Instead, they're after rusty wreckage.Over the past decade, the six amateur Malaysian military historians have helped locate the confirmed or suspected crash sites of 30 World War II aircraft -- helping bring closure for the families of more than 40 missing British and American air crews.Nearly 70 years after the end of the war, at least 100 British and American aircraft wrecks are believed scattered across the jungles of India, Thailand and Malaysia, along with the remains of their crews.As well as the battles for the Pacific Islands, allied forces waged war against Japanese forces whose regional conquests included previously British-held Singapore and Malaysia -- known then as Malaya....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 6, 2012
One of the founders of an anti-Hitler movement in wartime Germany has been declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church 69 years after he was beheaded by the Nazis.The church canonised Alexander Schmorell for his involvement in the White Rose group, which vented its disgust of Hitler and the Nazi regime by writing pamphlets opposing the regime and condemning the treatment of Soviet citizens under German occupation.The group also took to daubing walls in Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi party, with slogans such as "Down with Hitler" and "Freedom".Schmorell, who had a Russian mother, had been baptised into the Orthodox Church and remained a committed Christian till he was sent to the guillotine in 1943 aged 25....
Source: AP
Feb 6, 2012
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP) — For decades, tourists visiting this popular Adirondack village could gape at the skeletons of soldiers from nearby French and Indian War sites. Then in 1993, a somber reburial ceremony was held to finally put the remains to rest.Only that never happened.Almost all of the 18th-century skeletons were never buried. Instead, the collection of remains eventually was taken to Arizona and Canada for study and has yet to be returned for reburial. In this small upstate New York town that was the real-life setting for the historical events depicted in "The Last of the Mohicans," people had no idea....
Source: LiveScience
Feb 6, 2012
Remains of thick stone walls uncovered recently atop a hill in Israel — where tradition says the prophet Jonah was buried — indicate the site was occupied during the time of the prophet, almost 3,000 years ago.The Israeli Antiquities Authority announced the discovery, on Giv'at Yonah (the Hill of Jonah) above the modern city Ashdod, today (Feb. 6).Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures tell of the prophet Jonah, who at first fled God's instructions to preach against wickedness in Nineveh, an ancient city in Iraq. After spending three days and three nights inside the belly of a fish or whale Jonah was forgiven by God and released. According to the story, he then went to Nineveh and persuaded the inhabitants to repent....
Source: LiveScience
Feb 6, 2012
Like their cavemen ancestors who fought outsiders for land and potential mates, the modern guy still holds such prejudices against "outgroups," new research shows.Whereas men's prejudicial views towards outgroup males are often motivated by aggression, women's biases stem from fear, and these different psychologies evolved from our history of group conflict, the researchers said.That's the basic premise of the so-called "male warrior hypothesis," formulated by Carlos Navarrete, a psychologist at Michigan State University, and his colleagues. To come to their conclusions, the researchers analyzed the breadth of social science literature on intergroup biases, group conflict and sexual selection....
Source: NYT
Feb 6, 2012
Yes, it’s true that Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to himself as “a barefoot boy” in 1945 when he returned home victorious to Abilene, Kan., after World War II. And it was in that image that the architect Frank Gehry found inspiration for the design of the official memorial to Eisenhower for which groundbreaking is expected this year on the Washington Mall.The design shows Eisenhower as a youth gazing out at images of his adult accomplishments against a backdrop of the Kansas plains. But the Eisenhower family objects to the design and is attempting to delay approval of the project in a dispute that has pitted a leading American family against one of the country’s most recognized architects. The family says Mr. Gehry should portray Eisenhower as a man in the fullness of his achievements, not as a callow rustic who made good.
Source: NYT
Feb 6, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Constitution has seen better days.Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.
Source: WaPo Factchecker Blog
Feb 6, 2012
“We are the only people on the earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem. It was FDR who asked us to do that, in honor of the blood that was being shed by our sons and daughters in far-off places.”— Mitt Romney, Feb. 2, 2012This is a strange one.Kudos to Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed for first spotting this claim, though it turns out that the former Massachusetts governor also said this at least once before, during a stump speech in Iowa in December.The first part of this statement is simply wrong. As Kaczynski noted, Romney ran the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics and surely should have noticed the many athletes with their hands on their hearts during the playing of their national anthems....
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 5, 2012
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The recording was forgotten, and so, too, was the odd twist of history that brought together Malcolm X and a bespectacled Ivy Leaguer fated to become one of America's top diplomats.The audiotape of Malcolm X's 1961 address in Providence might never have surfaced at all if 22-year-old Brown University student Malcolm Burnley hadn't stumbled across a reference to it in an old student newspaper. He found the recording of the little-remembered visit gathering dust in the university archives."No one had listened to this in 50 years," Burnley told The Associated Press. "There aren't many recordings of him before 1962. And this is a unique speech — it's not like others he had given before."...
Source: Jewish Telegraph Agency
Feb 5, 2012
(JTA) -- SNCF, the French national railroad, has handed over digital copies of hits World War II–era archives.The documents were transferred to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Shoah Memorial in Paris, SNCF said Feb. 3 in a statement.The handover comes a year after SNCF President Guillaume Pepy admitted that the company participated in transferring Jews to Nazi concentration camps.SNCF said in the statement that it is working to adhere to its policy of being transparent about its past....
Source: Richmond Times Dispatch
Feb 5, 2012
CULPEPER With the steady hands of a surgeon, architectural conservator Chris Mills slowly unveils history one painstaking step at a time. His goals are to reveal and protect the Civil War-era signatures, drawings and scribbling found throughout the Brandy Station Graffiti House.The circa-1858 structure is believed to have been used as a hospital by Confederate and Union forces during the war. For unknown reasons, patrons decided to mark up the walls with signatures, drawings and anything else that crossed their minds. Mills' challenge is to remove the post-historic paint and whitewash that subsequent owners attempted to cover the markings with, as well as stabilize the fragile plaster."You don't want to mess with the graffiti itself, everything affects it," Mills said of the tedious process. In addition to removing the cover layer with tools such as a razor and an elongated cotton swab, he stabilizes the plaster by injecting a synthetic resin and pinning it till it dries....
Source: BBC News
Feb 5, 2012
A book by a former mistress of President John F Kennedy has revealed new details of their relationship.Extracts in the US media of Once Upon A Secret by Mimi Alford recount the affair she had with the president whilst an intern at the White House.She also relates Mr Kennedy's thoughts on the Cuban missile crisis and the death of his baby son....Excerpts published in the New York Post also describe how Ms Alford - then 19-year-old Mimi Beardsley - lost her virginity to the president in 1962, after she had been invited to swim at the White House pool....Related LinksNBC video
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2012
“That’s ancestral North America out there,” said Sidney Horenstein, the geologist and environmental educator emeritus of the American Museum of Natural History, gesturing broadly toward the towers of mid-Manhattan. “Here, we’re on this exotic continent that collided with it.”Exotic is the word. The rock outcrop that emerges like the tip of a geological iceberg from the children’s playground in DeWitt Clinton Park, at West 52nd Street and 12th Avenue, is an astonishing work of natural sculpture; utterly sensuous — almost sensual in spots — with smooth curves and bubbly folds and veinous striations that look too organic to have been formed of schist, gneiss and amphibolite.Still, that’s not what Mr. Horenstein means when he uses the word “exotic.” This outcrop near the Hudson River is what geologists call an exotic terrane, a fragment of the crust from one tectonic plate that has been sutured onto another and therefore differs in its composition from the surrounding rock. The only other visible example of this particular terrane in New York City, Mr. Horenstein said, is at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx....
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2012
His parents married two days before the crash of 1929. He was reared on nightmarish stories of currency that proved worthless, told by relatives whose patriarch had fled Germany in the dark of night when his debts were about to ruin him.Hard times, and fear of worse, were constants in Ron Paul’s boyhood home. His father and mother worked tirelessly running a small dairy, and young Ron showed the same drive — delivering The Pittsburgh Press, mowing lawns, scooping ice cream as a soda jerk. He also embraced their politics, an instinctive conservatism that viewed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as villains and blamed Democrats for getting America into wars.As a young doctor in training, dissecting cadavers or practicing surgery on dogs, he would tell all who would listen about how the country was headed down the wrong path, about the urgency of a strict gold standard and about the dangers of allowing government too much power over people’s lives....
Source: Irish Times
Feb 4, 2012
THE UN’s highest court has confirmed German immunity from prosecution over cases involving Nazi-era war crimes.The International Court of Justice in The Hague threw out a ruling by Italy’s highest court holding Germany liable for the 1944 Nazi massacre of 250 Italian partisans in Tuscany.Germany went to The Hague, arguing that a 1961 compensation payment of DM40 million to Italy had fulfilled German obligations under international law. It argued that no court had jurisdiction to force a foreign country to pay reparations and that the Italian ruling violated international rules on foreign state immunity....
Source: NPR
Feb 4, 2012
Americans have always sought architectural brushes with greatness.The nation's first president spent the night at so many inns and private houses that signs advertising "George Washington slept here" were regular roadside attractions even during his lifetime.But only a few homes of celebrated figures, such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Elvis Presley's Graceland, have become sites that people go out of their way to visit. Most such places have been torn down, or fall into neglect and disrepair.Last month, jazz great Miles Davis was honored with a postage stamp issued jointly by the U.S. and France. Yet his childhood home in East St. Louis, Ill., is being torn apart by thieves, its aluminum siding and even wood panels stripped from every side of the house.It may be a shame when homes associated with great artists or historical figures are left to rot. But how many such homes are ever going to be preserved — or attract the interest of many visitors?...
Source: Independent (UK)
Feb 4, 2012
Berlin's biggest opera house, the Deutsche Oper, has been forced to backtrack on plans to stage a re-launched version of Adolf Hitler's favourite Wagner opera on the Nazi leader's birthday.Hitler, who as a young man became fanatical about Richard Wagner's works, said the composer's 1842 production, Rienzi, was his all-time favourite and an inspiration for his politics. It tells the story of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval Italian folk hero who leads a people's uprising against the nobility.The Nazi leader is said to have liked the work so much that he asked for a manuscript of the production to be given to him on his 50th birthday. Historians say Hitler had the document with him when he committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in 1945....
Source: LiveScience
Feb 2, 2012
It may seem a prestigious post for a rodent, but the guinea pigs that are fixtures in elementary school classrooms today were once ambassadors from a new land.The third-ever guinea pig skeleton found in a European archaeological dig confirms that these little squeakers voyaged to the Old World very shortly after Spain conquered Peru in 1532. While the guinea pigs, also known as cavies, served as food in South America, they seem to have been treated as pets in Europe. They may have even been a privilege reserved for the relatively well-off, at least at first.That was lucky news for at least one guinea pig whose skeleton was newly unearthed in Mons, Belgium, before the construction of a parking garage in the city. Excavations revealed the current city is built on top of an older village established in medieval times. The spot where the parking garage was to be built was once a sort of medieval suburb — a residential district right outside the town center....
Source: AP
Feb 2, 2012
ALBANY, N.Y. — Think this New York vs. New England thing is a product of the modern sports era? Prithee, fuggedaboudit."It doesn't quite go back to the glaciers, but it's close," said William Fowler, author and history professor at Northeastern University in Boston.The regional rivalry long predates the Super Bowl matchup, Giants vs. Patriots, or baseball's Yankees vs. Red Sox. New York and its neighbors to the east have bad blood stretching all the way back to Colonial America, when New England militiamen viewed "Yorkers" as blasphemous, profane drunks, while their counterparts next door considered the men of the Massachusetts Bay colony to be Puritan-raised prudes who didn't know how to have a good time, even going so far as to ban Christmas in Boston during a 22-year period in in the 1600s."New Englanders, even by middle of the 18th century, are so strictly religious that you find them picking fights for cursing in military camps and ganging up on people and beating them up for not following the Sabbath. That certainly didn't help relations," said Stuart Lilie, director of interpretation at upstate New York's Fort Ticonderoga, near the Vermont state line....
