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: Discovery News
Dec 14, 2011
The most complete and best-preserved ancient example of the Ten Commandments, a 2,00- year-old leather parchment scroll discovered in a cave at the Dead Sea in 1952, will go on display on Friday in New York's Discovery Times Square Exposition. The scroll is an important, although brief, addition to the show "Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times."The largest collection of biblical artifacts ever displayed outside Israel, the exhibit, which opened October 28 and will run through April 15, is already featuring 20 Dead Sea Scrolls, with sections from the biblical books of Genesis, Psalms, Exodus, Isaiah, and others.The Ten Commandments scroll will be added to the show from Dec. 16 through Jan. 2....
Source: Discovery News
Dec 14, 2011
On the evening of Dec. 13, 1911, Robert Falcon Scott's journal entry revealed the despair he felt at what was becoming an increasingly fraught and seemingly interminable attempt to reach the South Pole. "A most damnably dismal day," it began, before cataloging the trials and ordeals he and his companions had endured over the previous 24 hours in their attempt to push south. "We were soaked with perspiration and thoroughly breathless with our efforts ... I suppose we have advanced a bare 4 miles today ... We can but toil on, but it is woefully disheartening."
Source: UA News
Dec 14, 2011
Arizona State Museum archaeologists are looking through historic table scraps in an effort to find out more about the kitchen of America's fourth president and author of the U.S. Constitution.For about a decade, Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman and her students from the University of Arizona have been part of ongoing excavations at Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison. The archaeology of Montpelier's grounds offer some light on what day-to-day life was like from the pre-Revolutionary War era to well into the 18th century.
Source: Gannett Times-Herald (MI)
Dec 12, 2011
FORT GRATIOT -- A community that lived through the deadly water tunnel explosion 40 years ago watched as their memories officially became a piece of history Sunday afternoon at Fort Gratiot County Park.During the ceremony held at the memorial, Tom Truscott of the Michigan Historic Commission dedicated a new historical marker -- a sign that details how 22 men working on a water intake tunnel deep underneath Lake Huron died in a powerful methane gas explosion Dec. 11, 1971.The Lake Huron Water Supply Project was started by the Detroit Metro Water Department in 1968 to build a new water intake for the then-growing cities of Detroit and Flint....
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2011
One hundred years ago, on Dec. 14, 1911, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and four companions trudged through fog, bitter cold and lacerating wind to stand at the absolute bottom of the world, the South Pole. Nowhere was there a trace of their British rival, Robert Falcon Scott. No Union Jack mocked them, no ice cairn bespoke precedence. The Norwegians had won the race.Amundsen and Scott were commanding forces driving early exploration of Antarctica, the ice-covered continent almost half again the size of the United States and unlike any other place on Earth. Both were driven by ambition to win fame by grabbing one of the few remaining unclaimed geographic prizes. Each was different, though, in temperament and approach to exploration, which may have been decisive in the success of one and the undoing of the other.
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2011
On Monday, the Henry Hudson Bridge – that triumphalist crossing over the Harlem River, a steel archway slicing through a verdant vista of water, trees and cliffs – celebrates its diamond anniversary, the 75th. And like many older citizens of New York City, the bridge has had its share of wear-and-tear.It is one of the least-used bridges in the region’s arsenal, but its operations have piled up over the years, closing lanes and upsetting commuters bound for the many gilded Westchester County suburbs it serves.One Manhattan-bound lane was shut down for a 43-month period that ended in June 2010, during which the entire Depression-era lower deck was replaced. Eleven months later, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority began a new rehabilitation, this time to replace the steel support ropes, which will require a round-the-clock shutdown of a Bronx-bound lane for the next three years.In fact, the bridge has been, more or less, continually under construction since 2000, at a cost of around $160 million, twice the inflation-adjusted price tag of the original bridge....
Source: MSNBC
Dec 12, 2011
It's never too late to solve a mystery, or to set the record straight. In the 70 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, a dramatic photo of female firefighters has been published many times in magazines, history books and online as a depiction of action on Dec. 7, 1941. We published it this past week on msnbc.com. Now, with the help of our readers, we've located one of the women, who says the photo was definitely not taken on that day.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 12, 2011
A team of historians believe they have unearthed evidence of a 4,000-year-old Stone Age camp - thanks to a dog walker.Roger Hall was walking his pet at Cannock Wood in Staffordshire, when he discovered a handful of strange-shaped rocks.Experts later identified the rocks as flint 'flakes', which are the off-cuts from tools crafted by Stone Age Man 4,000 years ago.If the discovery is confirmed, it could mark the spot of the only Neolithic camp known in the Midlands.Roger Knowles, a member of the Council for British Archaeology, is convinced the camp could identify a link from the time when mankind changed from nomadic hunter-gatherer to village dweller....
Source: Siam Daily News
Dec 12, 2011
KATHMANDU, Dec 12 (Bernama) -- What could well be compared to Shangri-La as envisioned by British author James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, recent findings of human history dating back to over 3,000 years in the caves of Upper Mustang in western Nepal have unraveled a significant portion, if not the whole of that virgin unknown, reports China's Xinhua news agency.According to Monday's The Kathmandu Post, a team of national and international climbers, scientists, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists has found evidence of thousands of years of civilisation in this mystical land.After beginning the first phase of its research in 2008, the team discovered human remains dating back to 3,000 years, bringing out untold stories of an " independent" civilisation....
Source: The Metro West Daily News
Dec 12, 2011
Forget the da Vinci Code. There’s no Knight Templars or murderous albinos, but the life and death of Julien Hudson and the whereabouts of his paintings is a fascinating “art historical mystery’’ waiting to be solved.The second-earliest documented painter of African descent in the U.S., Hudson was making his mark as a portraitist in New Orleans in the early 1800s before dying of unknown causes, leaving behind just six canvases.Who was the man with searching eyes in one of his remaining paintings? Did he kill himself, as some suspect? With his sixth painting discovered by a New England collector, can more of Hudson’s valuable works be found in area shops, flea markets or your attic?An intriguing exhibit, “In Search of Julien Hudson,’’ at the Worcester Art Museum, offers the first retrospective about the man and the artist whose enigmatic career casts light on the lives of free blacks and mixed race people in Louisiana before the Civil War?...
Source: West Virginia Gazette
Dec 12, 2011
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. -- George Washington's "lost apron'' was hiding in plain sight at a Masonic lodge in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle.The Marquis de Lafayette gave the apron to Washington in 1784. Historians and curators at Mount Vernon in Virginia thought for decades that the apron was lost....
Source: BBC News
Dec 12, 2011
Actor Christian Bale has defended his role in a Chinese-language film portraying the 1937 massacre of Chinese by Japan's imperial army in Nanjing.Critics say the film is nationalistic and anti-Japanese, but Bale says the film is not Chinese propaganda."It's far more a movie about human beings and the nature of human beings' responses to crisis," he said.The film, The Flowers of War, will be released across China on Friday and in the US in late December....
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2011
Few cities of recent vintage have a history as complicated and contested as New Delhi, which turned 100 on Monday. Now the seat of the world’s largest democracy, New Delhi began in 1911 as a grand imperial showpiece meant to stand for eternal British rule over the Indian subcontinent. But during its two decades of construction New Delhi became the stage upon which Indians gained increasing political advantage over a crumbling Raj.New Delhi literally began as an imperial edict. In December 1911, King George V traveled to Delhi in order to be crowned emperor of India at an elaborate durbar, or gathering: he was the first reigning British monarch to step foot on Indian soil. After several days of ceremonies at a temporary city consisting of some 40,000 tents and featuring its own railway system, King George V offered two boons to his subjects: First, he revoked the partition of Bengal, an act that had unleashed violent anti-British agitation. Second, he announced the creation of a new city in the vicinity of Delhi to replace Calcutta as the imperial capital. The city, George hoped, would be a fusion of Indian and European architecture, according to a letter from his viceroy to one of his colleagues.
Source: Reuters
Dec 11, 2011
VALENCINA DE LA CONCEPCION, Spain (Reuters) - Spain's pre-historic burial chambers have survived invasion, war, a long dictatorship and a property bubble which paved over vast tracts of the country.But the economic crisis which ended the building boom that buried some of the country's greatest archaeological treasures under shopping malls and new housing may also be bad news for those hoping to provide lasting safeguards for Spain's remaining tholos dolmens or passage tombs.The Aljarafe region outside the city of Seville in southern Spain, with a rich Arabic and Christian history, is believed to house Europe's most extensive grouping of tholos dolmens, dating back some 5,000 years.Many of these archaeological treasures were buried under new construction during a decade-long building craze that swept across Spain and left 1.5 million vacant homes when it ended....
Source: Scotsman (UK)
Dec 11, 2011
A TV archaeologist has revealed controversial plans to excavate the battlefields of the Falklands War even though the conflict only took place 30 years ago.Veteran groups have warned that such an exploration would be inappropriate after such a short time, with many combatants and friends and relatives of the dead still alive.Glasgow University academic Dr Tony Pollard is preparing the major project to unearth secrets of the 1982 campaign by British forces to seize back the South Atlantic island chain from Argentinian invaders.The presenter of the BBC series, Two Men In A Trench, believes the war is in danger of being forgotten and insists his expedition would be a fitting way to mark the 30th anniversary of the islands’ liberation....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 10, 2011
Palestinian officials have reacted with dismay after the Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said Palestinians were an "invented" people.The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said Gingrich was denying "historical truths".Gingrich said in an interview with The Jewish Channel that Palestinians were not a race of people because they had never had a state and because they were part of the Ottoman empire before the British mandate and Israel's creation."Remember, there was no Palestine as a state, [it was] part of the Ottoman empire," he said in a video excerpt posted online. "I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places."...
Source: The Newnan Times-Herald
Dec 10, 2011
Although Japan was facing an oil and steel embargo from the United States in 1941 and "had to do something," ultimately the Japanese "made the wrong decision and paid for it royally" when they decided to attack Pearl Harbor that morning of Dec. 7, Dr. Walter Todd of the University of West Georgia told the Newnan Rotary Club on Friday.Todd said there are many "misconceptions" about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. A new book by Dr. Alan Zimm, "The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions," is helping to set the record straight, Todd said."There's been a huge amount of investigation about what actually happened during the raid," said Todd. "This is going to disprove a lot of misconceptions that Americans have about it....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 10, 2011
When King Edward VIII choose love over the monarchy it was the scandal of the century.But this forgotten painting of King Edward VIII in coronation robes he never wore, released to mark today's 75th anniversary of his abdication, shows how the royal family could have been very different.The painting of the king, who gave up his crown to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson, was commissioned for a special coronation issue of Illustrated London News which never made it to the news stands....
Source: Spiegel Online
Dec 9, 2011
Using a hand hoe and working in dim light, geologist Otto Völzing burrowed into the earth deep inside the Stadel cave in the Schwäbische Alb mountains of southwestern Germany. His finds were interesting to be sure, but nothing world-shaking: flints and the remnants of food eaten by prehistoric human beings.Suddenly he struck a hard object -- and splintered a small statuette.It was 1939 and Völzing didn't have much time. He had just been called up to serve in the military and World War II was about to begin. He quickly packed the pieces into a box and the excavation, which was being financed by the SS, was terminated on the same day....
Source: Discovery News
Dec 9, 2011
Will the mystery over the Great Pyramid's secret doors be solved in 2012?I dare say yes. After almost two decades of failed attempts, chances are now strong that researchers will reveal next year what lies behind the secret doors at the heart of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.New revelations on the enduring mystery were already expected this year, following a robot exploration of the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum....
