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: AFP
Dec 9, 2011
THE HAGUE — An Amsterdam apartment where Jewish teenager Anne Frank and her family lived for nine years before going into hiding due to the Nazi occupation will be opened Saturday, a spokesman for its owner said."Around 400 people will be allowed to enter the home," Andre Bakker, a spokesman for the Ymere social housing company which owns the apartment where Frank and her family lived from 1933 to 1942, said on Thursday.Tickets priced at 7.50 euros ($10) were mainly sold to people living the same neighbourhood of Amsterdam-South, Bakker said....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 9, 2011
Dutch troops swooped into a village in the town of Rawagede during Indonesia's fight for independence and executed men and boys as their families and neighbours looked on.Dutch officials say 150 people were killed, but a support group and the local community say the death toll was 431."In this context and on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for the tragedy that took place in Rawagede on the 9th of December, 1947," the Netherlands ambassador to Indonesia Tjeerd de Zwaan said.He then repeated the apology in the Indonesian language, to the applause of hundreds of people attending the ceremony, some of whom broke down in tears as they listened in front of a marble monument commemorating the dead....
Source: Postmedia News
Dec 9, 2011
On the eve of a War of 1812 bicentennial being heavily promoted by the federal government - and just days before a Dec. 13 deadline for bidders - the City of Niagara Falls, Ont., is scrambling to come up with a plan to purchase and preserve the site of the deadliest of all clashes between American invaders and British-led troops defending colonial Canada: the 1814 Battle of Lundy's Lane.As it happens, Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself stood on the spot last year to declare the battle a key turning point in Canadian history.Today, the patch of earth where more blood was spilled than at any other place in Canada during the war is the site of Battlefield Public School and its surrounding playground. But due to declining enrolment, the school was closed in June by the District School Board of Niagara and the property is set to be sold - potentially, heritage advocates fear, to a private developer....
Source: Medievalists.net
Dec 9, 2011
The cathedral in Stavanger was built in the year 1125, and is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for permanent settlement in the Norwegian town. However, new analyses of medieval skeletons found beneath the cathedral suggest that Christians lived in Stavanger for several generations prior to this.Over 15,000 human bone fragments lay helter-skelter in a wooden crate. This mess did not discourage the researchers at the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, who are now resurrecting the dead.“We are reassembling and analyzing individual skeletons in order to form a picture of Stavanger’s population before and around 1000,” associate professor Paula Utigard Sandvik and osteoarchaeologist Sean Denham said....
Source: Globe and Mail
Dec 8, 2011
The Japanese government is offering an apology to Canadian prisoners of war, a significant move for a country that historians say has long struggled to come to terms with its wartime past.On Christmas Day in 1941, about 1,600 Canadians were captured by the Japanese in Hong Kong, after more than two weeks of battle. They were imprisoned for 3½ years, when they were beaten and forced to labour in mines, shipyards and on construction sites. By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, more than 250 of the Canadian prisoners had died of starvation, sickness or abuse, and many survivors remained ill or permanently disabled.George MacDonell, who wrote a book about his capture in Hong Kong and his experiences as a prisoner of war, said he sees Thursday’s apology as a sign that Japan is willing to come to terms with its past.“It will be a small comfort for us,” the 89-year-old Toronto resident said. “But it’s a tremendous step forward for the Japanese.… they will be the beneficiaries.”...
Source: Huffington Post
Dec 8, 2011
WASHINGTON -- Though Wednesday marked the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, speeches by a series of U.S. presidential candidates at the Republican Jewish Coalition rang strongly with rhetoric that applied more to the European theater in the years before the outbreak of World War II.In speech after speech, five of the six invited GOP candidates invoked the specter of "appeasement," the pre-WWII policy that many historians say emboldened Adolf Hitler to conquer Europe and carry out a full-scale genocide of its Jewish population. U.S. President Barack Obama, the Republicans said, was making a comparable mistake by "appeasing" Iran, "appeasing" Islamist extremists, even "appeasing" other countries who want to take America's place in the world.Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum accused the Obama administration of the kind of "appeasement" of Iran that allowed Hitler to invade neighboring countries with impunity.Michele Bachmann said, in reference to Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that "again a madman is speaking, and it seems the world is again not listening."...
Source: MSNBC
Dec 8, 2011
The Dead Sea nearly disappeared about 120,000 years ago, say researchers who drilled more than 1,500 feet below one of the deepest parts of the politically contentious body of water.The discovery looms large at a time when the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly, Middle Eastern nations are battling over water rights, and experts hotly debate whether the salt lake could ever dry up completely in the years to come....
Source: Huffington Post
Dec 8, 2011
NEW YORK -- John Brennan turned 91 in May. Today he lives in relatively good health on Long Island, his mortgage paid off. When he was growing up in Manhattan during the Depression, though, times were tough."I was two weeks old when my father died, leaving my mother with five kids," he told HuffPost, his voice still marked by a craggy 1920s Hell's Kitchen accent. "Them days the women didn't have too much education, so my mother was out working most of the time, and we were free kids.""She worked in all these different factories," he said. "Making candy, then a paint factory."Under such desperate circumstances, Brennan himself had a hard time finding work during the Great Depression. So in 1937 he followed his older brother Peter into the Civilian Conservation Corps. He joined on his 17th birthday, the first day he was eligible.The pay was only a dollar a day, but between 1933 and 1941, the program gave some 3 million young men employment. The CCC planted 3 billion trees, stemming the deforestation that caused the Dust Bowl, and built modest public works like park trails across the country.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 8, 2011
Forlorn traces of England's most notorious pogrom against witches appear to have been unearthed by water engineers engaged in humdrum improvements to a Pennine reservoir.A buried cottage with a sealed room and a mummified cat bricked up in a wall has been discovered in the heart of the "witching country" of Pendle in Lancashire.The gruesome tomb had been hidden for at least a century under a grassy mound at Lower Black Moss, whose catchments provide water for homes and businesses across north-west England.The site is close to the supposed location of Malkin Tower, a ruin whose name echoes the spectral witches' cat Graymalkin in Macbeth. Three wizards and 17 witches were alleged to have plotted there to blow up Lancaster castle in 1612, to free an 85-year-old woman and her daughter accused of selling themselves to the devil....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 8, 2011
It was the setting for one of England’s most infamous witches’ covens.So the discovery of a mummified cat sealed into the walls of a 17th century cottage was yesterday described by historians as ‘spellbinding’.The unfortunate animal – associated with witches for centuries – was apparently buried alive to protect the inhabitants from evil spirits....
Source: Taiwan News
Dec 8, 2011
City authorities say Zimbabwe's famed colonial-era "Hanging Tree" crashed into the street after being struck by a workers' truck during highway repairs.Mbuya Nehanda and other icons of the first uprising against white settlers were said to have been hanged from the tree in 1898....
Source: Medievalists.net
Dec 8, 2011
A hand-carved reconstruction of an Early Christian cross has been unveiled in the Scottish village of Aberlady to mark the medieval pilgrimage route used by the monks of Iona and Lindisfarne.The pilgrimage route of ‘St Aidan’s Way’ – marks the culmination of an extensive and ambitious heritage project begun in 2007. Original research, archaeological surveys of four sites, the carving of the Aberlady Cross reconstruction and the development of interpretive panels, information leaflets and teaching materials has been carried out by the Aberlady Conservation and History Society.Ruth Parsons, Chief Executive of Historic Scotland, said, “The incredible work done by the Aberlady Conservation and History Society has brought previously unknown history to light. It has added to our understanding of a period in history little understood even by those who know most about it....
Source: 3 News (NZ)
Dec 7, 2011
Archaeologists have discovered mysterious stone carvings at an excavation site in Jerusalem. The carvings - which were engraved thousands of years ago - have baffled experts.Israeli archaeologists excavating in the oldest part of the city discovered a complex of rooms with three "V" shapes carved into the floor. Yet there were no other clues as to their purpose and nothing to identity the people who made them.Some experts believe the markings were made at least 2,800 years ago and may have helped hold up some kind of wooden structure. Others say an ancient people may have held ritual functions there.The purpose of the complex is another aspect of the mystery....
Source: Courier Mail (AU)
Dec 7, 2011
Poisoning Japanese crops with chemical weapons during World War II was a "worthwhile" and justifiable tactic, according to newly declassified Australian military documents.The documents also indicate authorities contemplated testing crop-destroying chemical weapons in central Queensland's Proserpine.The thinking contrasts with Australian policy today - in 1993 Canberra signed a global ban on the use and development of chemical weapons.The World War II details emerged on the eve of the 70th anniversary of Japan's attack of Pearl Harbour, which triggered the US to enter the conflict....
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2011
JERUSALEM -- Mysterious stone carvings made thousands of years ago and recently uncovered in an excavation underneath Jerusalem have archaeologists stumped.Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V" shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 20 inches (50 centimeters) long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served.The archaeologists in charge of the dig know so little that they have been unable even to posit a theory about their nature, said Eli Shukron, one of the two directors of the dig."The markings are very strange, and very intriguing. I've never seen anything like them," Shukron said....
Source: Yahoo News
Dec 7, 2011
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Judging by their "before" and "after" photographs, U.S. presidents appear to age before our eyes, adding wrinkles and gray hair with each year in office.But contrary to conventional wisdom, a few years in the White House do not appear to cut short the lives of U.S. presidents, and most live longer than their peers, according to a new study released on Tuesday."Just because they experience what would appear to be accelerated aging outwardly, doesn't mean they will die any sooner," said S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Olshansky became interested in the subject earlier this summer when President Barack Obama celebrated his 50th birthday in Chicago, their shared hometown....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Dec 7, 2011
Today is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In honor of the day, here’s a roundup of some blog posts and other media that highlight archival resources devoted to December 7, 1941.—”Pearl Harbor: In Their Own Words”: Among the many World War II records the National Archives holds is a collection of the deck logs kept by U.S. Navy ships stationed in Pearl Harbor. In this short video, Archives technicians talk about and read from some of the logs. The entries begin very early in the morning, with ships encountering nothing more alarming than the delivery of “large amounts of ice cream,” one technician says. By 07:58, the log of the U.S.S. Dale, a Navy destroyer, records “waves of torpedo planes, level bombers, and dive bombers marked with Japanese insignia attacked Pearl Harbor. Sounded general alarm. … 0810: Opened fire on planes with machine guns, followed by main battery.”—At the Text Message, a National Archives blog that follows “the work and discoveries of processing and reference archivists on the job,” Robert Finch, a student technician, writes about finding a family connection to Pearl Harbor as he worked on the Navy Deck Logs collection....
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2011
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities should annul the results of the parliamentary vote and hold a new one, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged Wednesday as popular indignation grew over widespread allegations of election fraud.The call for an entirely new vote by the last president of the Soviet Union was a remarkable development for an election that had not generated much interest during the campaign. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had wanted to see his United Russia party do well to pave the way for his return to the presidency, but few Russians seemed to care about the vote, with many saying they assumed the results would be manipulated anyway.United Russia won less than 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a steep fall from the 64 percent it won four years ago. But opposition parties and independent observers say even that result was inflated by vote-rigging, including alleged ballot-box stuffing and false voter rolls....
Source: WaPo
Dec 7, 2011
HELENA, Mont. — A case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday over who owns the riverbeds beneath 10 Montana dams has drawn intense interest because of the potential effects on property rights, public access and wildlife management — but it has also spurred debate among historians as both sides reach more than 200 years into the past to bolster their arguments.PPL Montana is appealing a Montana Supreme Court ruling that the state owns the submerged land beneath 10 dams sitting on three Montana rivers, and that the company owes Montana tens of millions of dollars in rent....
Source: DNA Info
Dec 6, 2011
LOWER MANHATTAN — Workers installing a new steam pipe on Fulton Street this fall stumbled across an archaeological treasure trove of more than 5,000 objects dating back to the turn of the 19th century.Among the discoveries made in an old basement foundation at 40 Fulton St. were a bone toothbrush, a copper half-penny and hundreds of shards of pottery.The range of bottles, goblets, gravy boats and dinner plates — including some imported Chinese porcelain — suggests that the home there belonged to a wealthy family with access to a wide variety of goods and foods, said Alyssa Loorya, the archaeologist who excavated the artifacts....
