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: NYT
Jan 11, 2012
CAMBRIDGE, England — For scale, they were no match for the Great Pyramids of Giza or the Panama Canal. The labor took months rather than years and a work force of barely 100 men. As for materials, there were none, beyond what the captured Royal Air Force fliers who built them could scavenge, scrounge or improvise.But by the measures of ingenuity, courage and persistence, the tunnels built almost 70 years ago in sandy scrubland near the small town of Zagan, 130 miles southeast of Berlin in what was then Hitler’s Germany and is today western Poland, were a legendary feat of engineering, although on a miniature scale.
Source: BBC News
Jan 11, 2012
Five thousand Irish soldiers who swapped uniforms to fight for the British against Hitler went on to suffer years of persecution.One of them, 92-year-old Phil Farrington, took part in the D-Day landings and helped liberate the German death camp at Bergen-Belsen - but he wears his medals in secret....He was one of about 5,000 Irish soldiers who deserted their own neutral army to join the war against fascism and who were brutally punished on their return home as a result.They were formally dismissed from the Irish army, stripped of all pay and pension rights, and prevented from finding work by being banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds...."They didn't understand why we did what we did. A lot of Irish people wanted Germany to win the war - they were dead up against the British."It was only 20 years since Ireland had won its independence after many years of rule from London, and the Irish list of grievances against Britain was long - as Gerald Morgan, long-time professor of history at Trinity College, Dublin, explains....
Source: BBC News
Jan 11, 2012
The Charles Dickens Museum in central London has defended its decision to close for a revamp during the 200th anniversary year of the author's birth.The author's former home will shut on 10 April, also ahead of the Olympic Games when many tourist attractions are expecting boosted visitor numbers.The museum has been awarded a Heritage Lottery grant of £2m.Museum manager Shannon Hermes said the money was only available for a limited time and they had to seize the chance....
Source: BBC News
Jan 11, 2012
A grenade which sparked an emergency when it was handed to a police officer dated from World War II, the Army has said.Residents in Dura Street, Dundee, were told to stay indoors and the road closed after the device was passed to an officer on Tuesday afternoon.Army bomb disposal experts were called in and took the badly-corroded grenade away to destroy it elsewhere.It had been dug up several years ago by a man in the local area, police said....
Source: Reuters
Jan 11, 2012
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's parliament gave initial approval on Wednesday to laws to curb public use of Nazi symbols after ultra-Orthodox protesters caused outrage by calling police Nazis and wearing concentration camp garb.Four bills swiftly passed one of five rounds of voting needed to become law, even though a spectrum of critics denounced them as a violation of free speech.The laws call for up to a year in jail and stiff fines for anyone convicted of visually or verbally misusing symbols such as swastikas, the term Nazi or epithets related to the killing of six million Jews before and during World War Two.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved the bills before they went to parliament, seizing on public outrage at devout Jews who dressed last month as Holocaust victims to show they felt persecuted by objections to their efforts to achieve gender segregation in public....
Source: RFI English
Jan 11, 2012
A Paris court has rejected a bid by heirs of the founder of French carmaker Renault to be compensated for the nationalisation of the company at the end of World War II when their grandfather was dubbed a Nazi collaborator.The court rejected a challenge to the 1945 nationalisation under a new judicial procedure that allows plaintiffs to challenge the constitutionality of legislation.They claimed that the state takeover was a "violation of fundamental legal and property rights".The seven grandchildren of founder Louis Renault said they would appeal against the decision.Louis Renault founded Renault with his brothers in 1898. During the Nazi occupation the company was placed under German control and made equipment for German forces, leading to allied planes bombing its factories....
Source: BBC News
Jan 11, 2012
A manuscript possibly written by Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper is to be published worldwide.The document was unearthed at the Montacute TV and Radio museum, Somerset, in October 2009 among the possessions of children's author SG Hulme Beaman.It is thought to have been written in the 1920s and is entitled The Autobiography of James Carnac.Ripper historian Paul Begg has read the whole manuscript and said it could not be dismissed as a piece of fiction as "you find all sorts of questions and lots of niggles" about its content and provenance....
Source: BBC News
Jan 11, 2012
A letter written by composer Ludwig van Beethoven has emerged in Germany after being left in a will.In the six-page document of Beethoven's scrawled corrections, he complains about his illness and a lack of money.Experts were already aware of the 1823 letter's existence, but say it is of historic value.Broadcaster John Suchet, who has written books on Beethoven, said finding the letter was "hugely significant"....
Source: NY Daily News
Jan 10, 2012
LABADIE, Mo. — It was bravery at the highest level: William Shemin defied German machine gun fire to sprint across a World War I battlefield and pull wounded comrades to safety. And he did so no fewer than three times.Then, with the platoon’s senior soldiers wounded or killed, the 19-year-old American took over command of his unit and led it to safety, even after a bullet pierced his helmet and lodged behind an ear.Yet Shemin never earned the nation’s highest military citation, the Medal of Honor — a result, many suspected, of the fact that he was Jewish at a time when discrimination ran rampant throughout the U.S. military....
Source: CzechPosition.com
Jan 10, 2012
A new opinion poll indicates more Czechs are now in favor of abolishing decrees issued by post-war Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš, which provided the legal basis after WWII for the expulsion and confiscation of property of Sudeten Germans who could not prove they did not support the Nazis. More respondents have no clear opinion on the issue.According to the poll conducted by Czech Academy of Science’s public research center (CVVM) at the end of 2011, 49% of Czechs are in favor of preserving the Beneš Decrees. The previous poll conducted in 2009 showed 65% were in favor of preserving the decrees, which are fiercely opposed by movements in Germany and Austria representing Sudeten Germans and their descendents.The latest CVVM poll thus suggests Czech public opinion is swaying back towards abolishing the decrees: in 2006 and 2007 polls, just over 50% of respondents were in favor. Now 17% of respondents said the decrees should be abolished, whereas in 2009, the figure was 8%....
Source: BBC News
Jan 10, 2012
In 1900, an American civil engineer called John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. How did he do?As is customary at the start of a new year, the media have been full of predictions about what may happen in the months ahead.But a much longer forecast made in 1900 by a relatively unknown engineer has been recirculating in the past few days.In December of that year, at the start of the 20th Century, John Elfreth Watkins wrote a piece published on page eight of an American women's magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, entitled What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years....
Source: BBC News
Jan 10, 2012
What has been hailed as one of the most significant recent UK Iron Age finds is going on display after a nine-year conservation project.The decorated Roman cavalry helmet was discovered at a site in Leicestershire.Experts said its date, close to the Roman invasion of 43 AD, meant it could be evidence of Celtic tribes serving with the Roman army.The artefact, which was found in fragments, has been restored by a team at the British Museum.Dr Jeremy Hill, from the museum, said: "You can't underestimate the shock and surprise this had when it was first found - Hallaton really transforms our understanding of the Roman conquest of Britain."...
Source: LiveScience
Jan 10, 2012
A tiny stamp bearing an image of the Temple Menorah and likely placed on baked goods some 1,500 years ago has turned up during excavations near the Israeli city of Akko, researchers announced.The Israel Antiquities Authority discovered the ceramic stamp while excavating at Horbat Uza, a small rural settlement east of the city Akko, before construction of a railroad track connecting Akko and Karmiel in northern Israel.From the Byzantine period, the stamp is called a "bread stamp," as it was used to identify baked goods; this one, in particular, probably belonged to a bakery supplying kosher bread to the Jews of Akko, the researchers say....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 10, 2012
Traces of nicotine discovered in a Mayan flask dating back more than 1,000 years represent the first physical evidence of tobacco use by the Mayans, researchers say.The flask was decorated with text that seemed to read "Yo-'OTOT-ti 'u-MAY," which translates to "the home of his tobacco" (or "her tobacco" or "its tobacco"), the archaeologists said, but that by itself wasn't enough to convince them. "Textual evidence written on pottery is often an indicator of contents or of an intended purpose – however, actual usage of a container could be altered or falsely represented," said study researcher Jennifer Loughmiller-Newman of the University at Albany....
Source: Discovery News
Jan 10, 2012
Humanity will soon be getting an update on how close we are to catastrophic destruction, as scientists and security experts decide whether to nudge the hands of the famous "Doomsday Clock" forward toward midnight -- and doom -- or back toward security and safety.The clock, in use as a symbol of imminent apocalypse since 1947, now stands at six minutes to midnight.On Tuesday (Jan. 10), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) will announce whether they will nudge the minute hand forward or backward to reflect current trends in world security. The last time the clock hand moved was in 2010, when the group moved the hand from five minutes to midnight back to six....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jan 10, 2012
Historians have pieced together a 2,000-year-old Roman cavalry helmet 10 years after its discovery in an Iron Age shrine and say it sheds new light on the conquering of Britain.The helmet and its cheek pieces have been painstakingly restored from 1,000 small fragments over three years by experts at the British Museum.Constructed of sheet iron, the helmet, once decorated with gold leaf, is the only one to have been found in Britain with its silver gilt plating intact and is also one of the earliest ever found in Britain.Metals conservation expert Marilyn Hockey began unearthing the fragments out of a 'big lump of soil' at the British Museum three years ago....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 10, 2012
Gerry Adams may be implicated in an IRA unit responsible for the killing of suspected informant Jean McConville on tapes that could be released by a US judge, it was reported.The leader of Sinn Fein has been accused of setting up the unit that abducted Mrs McConville before she was shot in the back of the head in 1972.Allegations against Mr Adams, who has repeatedly denied involvement with the IRA, were made by two people interviewed by researchers for an oral history project on the condition the tapes were not released before their deaths. The claims were not independently verified.Collected by Dr Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA prisoner, the interviews were intended to be held securely in America after the project, which was sponsored by Boston College....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jan 9, 2012
President Abraham Lincoln is widely portrayed in film and TV delivering speeches in an authoritative, booming voice.The performance of Gregory Peck with his rich bass tones in mini-series The Blue and the Gray, in particular, no doubt helped to cement that perception.But according to one historian, this could not be further from the truth.Leading Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer believes the 16th U.S. President, the man who successfully led his country through the American Civil War with his famous speech, The Gettysburg Address, did so in a 'shrill and high' voice.This would have been in stark contrast to the bass vocals which tended to dominate oratory in the 1850s and also against the artistic licence employed more recently by those who cast Peck and, among others, Sam Waterston as the great man himself....
Source: NYT
Jan 9, 2012
California’s catalog of historic artifacts includes two pairs of boots, an American flag, empty food bags, a pair of tongs and more than a hundred other items left behind at a place called Tranquillity Base.The history registry for New Mexico lists the same items.That might be surprising, since Tranquillity Base is not in New Mexico or California but a quarter of a million miles away, in the spot where Neil A. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon in 1969.But for archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, these designations were important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artifacts.“I think it’s humanity’s heritage,” said Beth L. O’Leary, a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. “It’s just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven’t begun to look at until now.”Dr. O’Leary herself had not given much thought to historic preservation on the Moon until a student asked her in 1999 whether federal preservation laws applied to the Apollo landing sites.
Source: Discovery News
Jan 9, 2012
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was an artist, inventor, scientist, architect, engineer, writer and even a musician. Now we know that he was also a fashion designer.After several months of meticulous research, scholars have reconstructed some fragmented drawings of a unique bag designed by the Renaissance genius around 1497.The sketch was first published in 1978 by Carlo Pedretti, a leading Da Vinci scholar, who identified it among the Atlantic Code's tens of thousands of drawings.Overlooked for more than three decades, it has been reconstructed and reassembled by Agnese Sabato and Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where da Vinci was born in 1452....
