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: AP
Jan 3, 2012
NEW YORK (AP) — After its successful series on the history of America in 2010, television's History channel is setting its sights even higher.The network said Tuesday that a 12-hour miniseries, "Mankind the Story of All of Us," will debut late this year. History, seen in more than 300 million homes worldwide, will offer different versions of the series in different parts of the world, the first time it has ever done that."America the Story of Us" hadn't even concluded when History executives, impressed by its ratings, began talking about what to do next, said Nancy Dubuc, the network's president and general manager."Rather than take a slice of the America story and do something more in depth on that, we decided to go bigger and broader," she said....
Source: Huffington Post
Jan 3, 2012
In the wake of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve took drastic measures to shore up the U.S. financial system. Now as Europe enters its worst economic debacle since World War II, economists and politicians are calling on the European Central Bank to pull off a similar rescue.So far, it has not.The reasons for the Frankfurt-based central bank's reluctance can be traced back to Germany's troubled past, which includes both world wars and the enduring legacy of Adolf Hitler.History is proving an inescapable weight on the continent's ability to save itself from economic peril. "German memory of the hyperinflation in the early 1920s and then the absolute destruction of the economy and money by 1945 -- those are things that people haven't forgotten," said University of Pennsylvania political science professor Ellen Kennedy, author of "The Bundesbank: Germany's Central Bank in the International Monetary System." "Those are well within living memory."...
Jan 3, 2012
A blackened, curled, oversized finger, long claimed to belong to a yeti, has been identified as human after all.Featuring a long nail, the mummified relic -- 3.5 inches long and almost an inch thick at its widest part -- has languished for decades in the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum in London.The specimen caught the interest of scientists in 2008, when curators cataloged a collection bequeathed to the museum by primatologist William Charles Osman Hill. Among Hill's assemblage of items relating to his interest in cryptozoology (the study of animals not proved to exist), there was a box labeled simply the "Yeti's finger."...
Source: National Journal
Jan 3, 2012
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa –- The Republican candidates for president frequently tell voters that this is the most important election of their lifetimes. For some of them, the contest is so important that it’s worth comparing to one of America’s most decisive moments: World War II.Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday became the second candidate to compare his presidential bid to the great battles of the 1940s. He invoked the 1944 Allied invasion of German-occupied Normandy.“It is a powerful moment in America’s history,” he told a group of about 200 volunteers assembled at the campaign’s informal headquarters in the West Des Moines Sheraton for a last-minute training session. “And you are on the front lines. This is Concord, this is Omaha Beach. This is going up the hill, realizing the battle is worth winning. This is about sacrifice.”...
Source: Windsor Star
Jan 3, 2012
PUCE The discovery of a tombstone that supports a local family's lore about its relation to an American historical figure has stirred up a lot more than just dirt.A marker bearing the name Ludwell Lee found at the Puce Memorial Cemetery in October seems to support a local family's story that revolutionary war hero Light Horse Harry Lee fathered its ancestor Ludwell Lee's mother, a slave named Kizzie, making Ludwell the half-brother of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.Officials at Stratford Hall, the Lee ancestral home in Virginia, say there's still no proof of Ludwell's relation to the Lee family, but Elise Harding-Davis, a retired curator of the North American Black Historical Museum in Amherstburg and a member of that local family, sees things differently....
Source: Newsweek
Jan 2, 2012
In the winter of 1937, the Japanese army stormed Nanjing, then China’s capital, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in what is now known as the Nanjing Massacre. The incident remains the most emotionally wrenching chapter in the history of Sino-Japanese relations. But unlike the Holocaust and other acts of mass violence during World War II, creative attempts to represent the massacre have been few and far between.
Source: Hartford Courant
Jan 2, 2012
The Republic of Suriname, a former Dutch sugar colony on the northern coast of South America, is not often a topic of conversation around here. But a team of researchers may make the tiny state of interest to Connecticut residents, thanks to their discovery of the graves of two 18th-century sea captains.One headstone, bearing the date of 1758, is that of Capt. Michael Burnham of Middletown, a swashbuckling adventurer who made a fortune as a privateer and most likely trafficked in slaves. Another, made of Portland brownstone, marks the grave of New London Capt. William Barbut. Nearby are the graves of Rhode Island merchants Capt. Nathaniel Angel and Capt. William Gardner Wanton.The graves of the New England seafarers were uncovered on Oct. 29 in the Dutch colonial cemetery of Nieuw Oranjetuin in Paramaribo, Suriname's capital city, by researchers who used machetes to hack away the vines covering the old headstones. One of those researchers, a former Connecticut resident, Tom Hart, immediately communicated the find to the Middlesex County Historical Society. The expedition was led by Paramaribo historian Bas Spek....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 2, 2012
China's extraordinary historical treasures are under threat from increasingly aggressive and sophisticated tomb raiders, who destroy precious archaeological evidence as they swipe irreplaceable relics.The thieves use dynamite and even bulldozers to break into the deepest chambers – and night vision goggles and oxygen canisters to search them. The artefacts they take are often sold on within days to international dealers.Police have already stepped up their campaign against the criminals and the government is devoting extra resources to protecting sites and tracing offenders. This year it set up a national information centre to tackle such crimes.Tomb theft is a global problem that has gone on for centuries. But the sheer scope of China's heritage – with thousands of sites, many of them in remote locations – poses a particular challenge....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 2, 2012
The ancient city of Angkor — the most famous monument of which is the breathtaking ruined temple of Angkor Wat — might have collapsed due to valiant but ultimately failed efforts to battle drought, scientists find.The great city of Angkor in Cambodia, first established in the ninth century, was the capital of the Khmer Empire, the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries. It stretched over more than 385 square miles (1,000 square kilometers), making it the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. In comparison, Philadelphia covers 135 square miles (350 sq. km), while Phoenix sprawls across more than 500 square miles (1,300 sq. km), not including the huge suburbs.Suggested causes for the fall of the Khmer Empire in the late 14th to early 15th centuries have included war and land overexploitation. However, recent evidence suggests that prolonged droughts might have been linked to the decline of Angkor — for instance, tree rings from Vietnam suggest the region experienced long spans of drought interspersed with unusually heavy rainfall....
Source: BBC News
Jan 2, 2012
Another new year and another host of celebrity dieters, but it's not a modern phenomenon. Lord Byron was one of first diet icons and helped kick off the public's obsession with how celebrities lose weight, says historian Louise Foxcroft.There has never been any shortage of celebrities who have followed diets, endorsed them or tried to sell us one of their own devising, even back as far as the 1800s.The "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Lord Byron was thought of as the embodiment of the ethereal poet, but he actually had a "morbid propensity to fatten". Like today's celebrities, he worked hard to maintain his figure.At Cambridge University, his horror of being fat led to a shockingly strict diet, partly to get thin and partly to keep his mind sharp. Existing on biscuits and soda water or potatoes drenched in vinegar, he wore woolly layers to sweat off the pounds and measured himself obsessively. Then he binged on huge meals, finishing off with a necessarily large dose of magnesia....
Source: Fox News
Jan 2, 2012
HANOI, Vietnam – A Vietnam War-era artillery shell has exploded in central Vietnam, killing two people and wounding two others.Police officer Nguyen Thanh Hoai says a man who was collecting the shell for scrap metal on the side of a highway in Binh Thuan province died at the scene following Monday's explosion....
Source: AP
Jan 2, 2012
FONDA, N.Y. (AP) — No one making a religious pilgrimage to Catholic shrines in this scenic yet hardscrabble stretch of New York's Mohawk Valley is going to mistake it for Italy. Yet starting next year, the region can boast of being the home of two of the Roman Catholic Church's newest saints.The Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian, spent most of her life here during the 17th century. About 200 years later and 40 miles to the west, the Blessed Mother Marianne Cope began a religious life that focused on providing medical care in central New York and the Hawaiian islands.On Dec. 20, Pope Benedict XVI certified miracles attributed to the two women, the final step toward sainthood. The women's canonization is expected to happen this year.When they are elevated to sainthood, they'll be among just 12 of the Catholic Church's thousands of saints who either were born in America or ministered in what is now the United States....
Source: NYT
Jan 2, 2012
In the old photograph, a lonely farmhouse sits on a rocky hill, shaded by tall trees. The scene looks like rural Maine. On the modern street, apartment buildings tower above trucks and cars passing a busy corner where an AMC Loews multiplex faces an overpriced hamburger joint and a Coach store.They are both the same spot. Not so long ago, all things considered, the intersection of Broadway and 84th Street didn’t exist; the area was farmland. “The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011,” now at the Museum of the City of New York, unearths that 1879 picture of the Brennan Farm among other historic gems. The show celebrates the anniversary of what remains not just a landmark in urban history but in many ways the defining feature of the city.After all, before it could rise into the sky, Manhattan had to create the streets, avenues and blocks that support the skyscrapers. The grid was big government in action, a commercially minded boon to private development and, almost despite itself, a creative template. With 21st-century problems — environmental, technological, economic and social — now demanding aggressive and socially responsible leadership, the exhibition is a kind of object lesson.
Source: NYT
Jan 2, 2012
A vegetable seller named Babylas was the target of an alarming curse nearly 2,000 years ago. Written on a lead tablet found in Antioch, one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, the curse calls on the gods to tie up the hapless greengrocer, then “drown and chill” his soul.The curse is described in the German journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik by Alexander Hollmann, a classicist at the University of Washington who studies Greek and Roman magic.The curse was written on both sides of the tablet. One side calls upon the god Iao to bind Babylas; the other side addresses multiple gods and calls for the tablet to be thrown down and “killed” in a well — followed, in the same way, by Babylas....
Source: Teachers College Record Volume 114 Number 7, 2012
Jan 1, 2012
Contemporary data indicate that, on average across a wide range of schools, A’s represent 43% of all letter grades, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. D’s and F’s total typically less than 10% of all letter grades. Private colleges and universities give, on average, significantly more A’s and B’s combined than public institutions with equal student selectivity. Southern schools grade more harshly than those in other regions, and science and engineering-focused schools grade more stringently than those emphasizing the liberal arts.
Source: NYT
Jan 1, 2012
He was buried after the Sept. 11 attacks with full honors from the New York Police Department, and proclaimed a hero by the city’s police commissioner. He is cited by name in the Patriot Act as an example of Muslim-American valor.And Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, one of two Muslim members of Congress, was brought to tears during a Congressional hearing in March while describing how the man, a Pakistani-American from Queens, had wrongly been suspected of involvement in the attacks, before he was lionized as a young police cadet who had died trying to save lives.Despite this history, Mohammad Salman Hamdani is nowhere to be found in the long list of fallen first responders at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Source: NYT
Jan 1, 2012
JERUSALEM — With public fury over some ultra-Orthodox groups mounting, Israeli leaders on Sunday denounced ultra-Orthodox protesters who took to the streets of Jerusalem on Saturday night and put young boys on display wearing yellow stars and striped prison camp uniforms reminiscent of the Holocaust.Organizers of the demonstration said they had been protesting what they called growing incitement against their community, with Israeli and foreign news media now focusing on ultra-Orthodox zealots who have been increasingly encroaching on the public sphere, enforcing gender segregation and the exclusion of women and girls in accordance with their strict interpretation of religious modesty rules.One Israeli television program recently reported how an 8-year-old girl, the daughter of American immigrants who are observant modern Orthodox Jews, had become terrified of walking to school in the city of Beit Shemesh after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not conform exactly to their more rigorous dress code....
Source: NYT
Jan 1, 2012
MOSCOW — Three weeks ago, when this city was bracing for the first in a series of large antigovernment protests, some commentators seemed to dip into the well of Russian history, when czars and crowds collided in a blur of sabers, poleaxes, cavalry charges and masses of commoners holding icons over their heads.In the old stories, crowds are a brutal, elemental force, and it is no wonder that Russian rulers sought to suppress them. They are part of the Kremlin’s collective memory, and they hang over the protests today.Peter the Great, at 10, newly declared the czar, cowered with his mother while rioting guardsmen impaled his relatives on spears. Czar Alexis came out to address petitioners and found himself engulfed, seized by the buttons of his caftan.But the most instructive tale is probably that of Czar Nicholas II, whose troops fired on 8,000 workers who came to the Winter Palace in 1905 to ask for better working conditions....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 31, 2011
The wartime diary of Private Ross Taylor, a British prisoner of war whose daily jottings never exceeded 140 characters, is to be broadcast on Twitter.Private Taylor, a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps, kept a meticulous daily diary thoughout 1940 as he was captured at Albert during the Battle for France and held at Stalag VIIIB in Poland.His meticulous entries in the leather AA drivers' journal, a gift from his girlfriend Florence, detail spending New Year's Day in a drill hall in Chesterfield, being trapped in an ambush and the tortuous march 200-mile march into Germany.He recorded watching German fighter planes massacre columns of French refugees, and how starvation rations, forced labour and dysentry pushed him to the brink of death.Chris Ayres, his grandson, realised each entry was no more than the length of an update on the Twitter microblogging site....
Source: Discovery News
Dec 30, 2011
A centuries-old mouthpiece of a pipe, which might have been used to smoke hashish, has been unearthed in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.Bearing the Arabic inscription "love is language for the lovers," (literally translated, it reads "heart is language for the lover") the clay pipe was likely intended as a gift between lovers.According to Shahar Puni, of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the object dates from the 16th to the 19th century, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, a Turkish state that stretched from southeastern Europe, across northern Africa and through most of the Middle East....
