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: The History of the Ancient World
Nov 8, 2011
Satellite imagery has uncovered new evidence of a lost civilisation of the Sahara in Libya’s south-western desert wastes that will help re-write the history of the country.The fall of Gaddafi has opened the way for archaeologists to explore the country’s pre-Islamic heritage, so long ignored under his regime.Using satellites and air-photographs to identify the remains in one of the most inhospitable parts of the desert, a British team has discovered more than 100 fortified farms and villages with castle-like structures and several towns, most dating between AD 1-500.These “lost cities” were built by a little-known ancient civilisation called the Garamantes, whose lifestyle and culture was far more advanced and historically significant than the ancient sources suggested....
Source: NYT
Nov 8, 2011
Another fragment of Louis Armstrong’s legacy is back where it belongs.The Armstrong museum and archive in Queens has received a treasure-trove of rare 78-r.p.m. records, bootleg tapes, five personal letters, candid photographs, European posters, news clippings, discographies, even weight-loss tips — 192 cubic feet in all — from the estate of a Swedish man known as the world’s second-largest private collector of Satchmoiana.There is also a sweat-stained handkerchief that belonged to Armstrong, who was famous for theatrically wiping his brow between the trumpet solos he blew better than almost anyone else.“We’re excited about it because there might be some valuable DNA in it, what with cloning and all,” joked Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona....
Source: NYT
Nov 8, 2011
BAGHDAD — As the United States ends its second war in Iraq, the legacy of the first one still haunts. The memory of the first President Bush’s urging Iraqi Shiites to rebel against the government in 1991, and standing by as thousands were slaughtered, is a tragic counternarrative to the revolutions that have swept the Middle East and a torment that even now complicates relations between the countries.In an effort to salve the long-festering wounds and to counter Iran’s influence ahead of the military drawdown, the United States ambassador, James F. Jeffrey, has offered Iraq’s Shiite leaders something they have heard very little of from Americans over the years since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003: remorse and humility.
Source: WECT 6
Nov 8, 2011
RALEIGH, NC (WECT) - This weekend, the North Carolina Museum of History will open the final part of its largest exhibit ever, "The Story of North Carolina." Thousands of people have already seen part one of the exhibit, which opened in the spring, but it only skimmed the surface of the state's early history, from North Carolina's earliest inhabitants thru the early 1800's. Part two will continue the journey thru the antebellum era, the Civil War, the rise of industry, the Great Depression, the two World Wars and the Civil Rights movement. "It is a good survey of the state's history," said Donna Bell-Kite, the North Carolina Museum of History's assistant curator." "It is not going to go into a great amount of detail in any one particular subject, but going thru this exhibit, you should get a good overview of North Carolina's history, from its earliest inhabitants until today."Hundreds of artifacts help tell the story. Early in the tour, you'll find out about the issue of slavery in North Carolina before the Civil War brought changes, divisions and hardships....
Source: AP
Nov 8, 2011
BENTONVILLE, Ark. — As an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, Alice Walton had the means to buy almost any piece of art on the market. So she scooped up one masterpiece after another: an iconic portrait of George Washington, romantic landscapes from the 19th century, a Norman Rockwell classic.She amassed an enviable collection of treasures spanning most of American history, and now it’s about to go on display in an unlikely place, a wooded ravine in a small city in northwest Arkansas.The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is regarded as the nation’s most important new art museum in a generation, offering the type of exhibits more commonly found in New York or Los Angeles. But this hall of paintings is taking shape in Bentonville, a community of 35,000 people best known as home of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. headquarters.Walton’s collection provided a “sort of instant museum,” said Henry Adams, an art history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Rather than starting with a small collection and slowly expanding, Crystal Bridges will be fully formed from day one....
Source: WSJ
Nov 8, 2011
Early on in the 1940 novel “Twilight in Delhi,” men in a Shahjahanabad market discuss how much money they’re making thanks to the 1911 Durbar, and how much more they’ll make when Delhi becomes the new capital.Anyone who has read about the Durbar will recognize how anachronistic that conversation is. It might not seem possible to keep something as major as plans to change your capital and build a brand new city secret, but right up until the afternoon of Dec. 12, 1911, only a handful of people consisting of the king and queen, Viceroy Charles Hardinge and his executive council, the Secretary of State for India and a few others knew anything about it.Those who did know about it referred to the plan by the codename “Sesame.” The queen wasn’t told about it till the party arrived in India, according to architectural historian Robert Grant Irving. The viceroys of the provinces concerned weren’t told a thing till the night of Dec. 11....
Nov 8, 2011
A new book has been released in Germany that details how Soviet secret agents kidnapped Nazi diplomats after the war so that they could imprison, torture and secretly try them in Moscow.'The Diplomatic Secrets of the Third Reich' draws on hitherto sealed Russian archives concerning the dreaded Lubianka jail in Moscow where the former top servants of Hitler were brought.Alexei Matweyewitsch Sidnyew was the general in Soviet intelligence tasked in the early summer of 1945 to exact vengeance on Stalin's behalf against the diplomats he believed plotted the war against Russia.Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had a pact that kept the peace until Hitler decided to invade the country in June 1941....
Source: San Antonio Express-News
Nov 8, 2011
All across Texas, the bones of history lie in watery graves. From the ribs of sunken ships to the grave sites of prehistoric Texans, uncounted treasures abound beneath the surface of rivers and lakes. For state archaeologists, these sites are untapped treasures — hard to reach but relatively protected.But now, with the state in the grip of devastating drought, such sites are emerging from receding waters and — for the first time in years, experts worry — becoming vulnerable to looters and vandals.Since midsummer, the Texas Historical Commission, which oversees such locations, has on average learned of a newly exposed site each month, said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the agency's archaeology director.Among the sites are four cemeteries, including an apparent slave burial ground in Navarro County, southeast of Dallas. In Central Texas, fishermen recovered a human skull thought to be thousands of years old.
Source: NewsChannel5.com (TN)
Nov 7, 2011
FRANKLIN, Tenn. – The effort to reclaim Civil War battlefields in Franklin celebrated another victory this week. Thanks to a group of neighbors, the Civil War Trust was able to purchase a 5 acre tract of land near the Carnton Plantation.Ten years ago, a group of neighbors living near Adams Street got together, pooled their money, and purchased a piece of land to keep developers away.Little did they know at the time that their decision to preserve green space would end up protecting history too.Wallace Jolsin was a part of the group that paid $240,000 to purchase the land known as Loring's Advance tract....
Source: LiveScience
Nov 7, 2011
LAS VEGAS — A famous trail of footprints once thought to have been left beh
Source: Gulf Times (Qatar)
Nov 7, 2011
Carbon dating of ancient organic remains from Wadi Debay’an, a site a few kilometres south of Al Zubara on Qatar’s north-west coastline, has yielded the earliest yet known date for human occupation in Qatar – 7,500 years before present.This was revealed by Environmental archaeologist Dr Emma Tetlow of the Qatar National Environment Record (QNER) in a presentation last week to members of the Qatar Natural History Group on recent investigations at Wadi Debay’an....
Source: Silicon Republic
Nov 7, 2011
When you think of Ireland’s cultural heritage, what comes to your mind? Perhaps William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Irish music, The Book of Kells. What about its science heritage?Robert Boyle, Ernest Walton, William Rowan Hamilton, Ellen Hutchins, Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Cynthia Evelyn Longfield are some of the many scientists that shaped Irish history and marked the path that leads to the future. As once said by the 1911 Literature Nobel Prize winner, Maurice Maeterlinck: "At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past."According to the book by David Attis and R Charles Mollan, Science and Irish Culture - Why the History of Science Matters in Ireland, “From the settlement of Ireland in the 17th century by English and Scottish adventurers intent on promoting the latest scientific and technological advances, to the flourishing of scientific institutions in Ireland at the height of its Georgian splendour, to a temporary decline of scientific activity at the time of Irish independence, and a spectacular increase of State interest in science and economic development in the 1990s, science has played a critical role in the development of Ireland.”...
Source: Huffington Post
Nov 7, 2011
The devil's in the details, literally.Art restorers working on one the most famous frescoes painted by Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone in the Basillica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy have uncovered an astounding hidden secret painted by the artist himself. According to Reuters, Giotto hid the face of the devil himself in a fresco.The concept of hiding a figure in the clouds, according to the BBC, was previously thought to have first been implemented by Andrea Mantegna in the 15th century. Giotto's fresco dates to the 13th century....
Source: BBC
Nov 7, 2011
Scientists have found evidence that leopard-spotted horses roamed Europe 25,000 years ago alongside humans.Until now, studies had only recovered the DNA of black and brown coloured coats from fossil specimens.New genetic evidence suggests "dappled" horses depicted in European cave art were inspired by real life, and are less symbolic than previously thought.The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
Source: BBC
Nov 7, 2011
France has laid claim to a 17th Century painting currently being displayed by a London gallery at an art fair in Paris.The Carrying of the Cross by the French master Nicolas Tournier was bought last year for 400,000 euros ($550,000) by the Weiss Gallery of London.But the French government says it is stolen property and that its whereabouts had been a mystery for nearly 200 years.France has put an export ban on the work to prevent it leaving the country.Tournier's life-sized study of Christ carrying the cross once hung in the chapel of the Company of the Black Penitents in the southern French city of Toulouse....
Source: Austrian Times
Nov 7, 2011
Oetzi the prehistoric iceman may not have been murdered, say scientists, who now believe he could be the world's first known mountaineering victim.The ancient natural mummy was believed to have died 5,300 years ago when he was hit by an arrow during a hunting trip.Scientists - who examined his frozen remains when they were discovered frozen in the Alps between the Austrian and Italian border 20 years ago - thought he had then been finished off with a vicious club blow to the head....
Source: LA Times
Nov 7, 2011
War films have always been a staple of cinema — providing the inspiration for some of the greatest and most honored films ever....On Veterans Day on Friday, the U.S. pays homage to the military men and women who have served our country in past and current conflicts. For this occasion we asked writer and film producer Steven Jay Rubin, author of the book "Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010," to select Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam combat films he most admires. Civil War "Gettysburg," 1993. Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell; stars Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger.
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 7, 2011
"You'd think after 40 years things would have changed, wouldn't you?" said Jo Robinson, waving placards as her friends shouted: "Shame on you" at the dinner-jacketed crowds on the way into the Miss World beauty pageant.The competition, won at London's Earls Court yesterday by Ivian Sarcos (Miss Venezuela), is 60 years old this year, and Ms Robinson is a few months shy of her 70th birthday. It is 41 years since she spent a night in the cells and a morning in the magistrates' court after storming the 1970 contest at the Royal Albert Hall. Stink bombs, smoke bombs and flour bombs were thrown. And now she is back to register her opposition again."Look what happens," she said. "What society expects from young women. There is terrible pressure put on them to look a certain way. I wear make-up, I want to look nice, but to go to such an extent as to have operations performed on yourself?"...
Source: NYT
Nov 7, 2011
PARIS — He has lost much of his hair and, after a 10-day prison hunger strike last month, a bit of his signature paunch. But as he prepares to stand trial on Monday for a series of bombings he is accused of orchestrating in the early 1980s, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, seems to have lost little of his bravado.Although forbidden from communicating with anyone other than his family and his lawyers, Mr. Ramírez managed to organize interviews last month with a French newspaper and a radio station that were conducted using a smuggled mobile phone. In those conversations, the 62-year-old Venezuelan came across as combative and rambling, attacking unspecified “falsifications” in the case against him, though refusing to either admit to or deny the allegations.“I am not in the habit of making egocentric declarations,” Mr. Ramírez told the newspaper, Libération, when asked whether he was responsible for the bombings. “Nor will I play the prosecution’s pitiful games.”...
Source: Yorkshire Post (UK)
Nov 6, 2011
A new film version of Wuthering Heights featuring a black Heathcliff is based, in part, on a little-known legend from a remote part of Yorkshire. Roger Ratcliffe tells the story that is thought to have inspired the greatest romance in English literatureUntil the M6 was built to within half an hour’s drive of Dentdale in the early 1970s it was one of the most isolated and least visited parts of northern England. Even today the dale is still largely ignored in comparison to other beautiful areas of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and because all roads into it from the outside world are steep and tortuous, Dentdale almost has the feel of being a lost world.It is easy to understand, then, how the bringing of enslaved Africans to Dentdale in the second half of the 18th century and early years of the 19th century took decades to reach the outside world. Less easy to comprehend is that to this day local people are still reluctant to talk about it....
