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: BBC
Jul 28, 2011
Maritime archaeologists have investigated ways for World War II tanks at the bottom of the sea near the Isle of Wight to be protected.
The tanks and other equipment were being carried on a landing craft which capsized and lost its cargo as it was heading for the D-Day landings in 1944.
They sit on the seabed between the east of the island and Selsey, West Sussex.
Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology is looking at how land legislation can be applied to the sea.
The project has been funded by English Heritage.... .....
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 27, 2011
WASHINGTON - The Army long ago presented the nation’s most hallowed award, the Medal of Honor, to a Civil War soldier from New York for capturing Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s eldest son. But sometimes history calls for a bit of revision.Now, 146 years after the capture, the Army has agreed to take another look at whether it made a mistake and whether a young private from the Berkshires deserved the honor instead. Regiment accounts provide reason to think Private David D. White, of Cheshire, nabbed Lee during a barbaric battle in the wilds of Virginia in the war’s waning days.The Army’s unusual reconsideration is a victory for White’s descendants, particularly his great-great-grandson, Frank E. White Jr., who has worked for decades to set the record straight. He recently enlisted the aid of Massachusetts lawmakers in the effort.In reviewing the case, the Army also casts a light on a key battle that is largely unknown, except among historians and Civil War buffs who note its frenzied viciousness, even in the context of a war known for its brutality....
Source: Steven Aftergood
Jul 27, 2011
Last month the National Security Agency announced the declassification of various historic records as evidence of its “commitment to meeting the requirements” of President Obama’s policy on openness and transparency. Among the newly declassified records was a 200 year old publication on cryptology. (“NSA Declassifies 200 Year Old Report,” Secrecy News, June 9, 2011.)NSA listed the 1809 study as a “highlight” of the new releases in a press statement, and the National Archives featured it in a promotional blog posting. But upon inspection, it turns out that the newly released document was already in the public domain and freely available online.Instead of providing cause for celebration or congratulation, the NSA “release” is a disturbing sign of futility and irrelevance in the nation’s declassification program.
Source: WaPo
Jul 26, 2011
Investigators are probing whether a prominent historian and an associate accused of stealing valuable documents from the Maryland Historical Society also took papers from the National Archives and a handful of other libraries, a prosecutor said in court Tuesday.The revelation came as a Baltimore City Circuit Judge set bail for Barry H. Landau, 63, at $500,000 and Jason Savedoff, 24, at $750,000. The pair were charged earlier this month with taking 60 historic documents. The papers included some signed by Abraham Lincoln, inaugural ball invitations and a commemoration of the Washington Monument, according to court documents.On July 9, Landau and Savedoff were arrested after an employee at the Baltimore archive saw Savedoff slip a document in a portfolio and walk out of the library, according to court documents. Police later found 60 documents stashed in Savedoff’s laptop bag in a locker, according to court documents. Landau had signed the documents out, authorities said....
Source: ArmeniaDiaspora.com
Jul 25, 2011
A Turkish ultranationalist was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of assassinating prominent ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul in 2007. A juvenile court in Turkey initially handed a life sentence to Ogun Samast, 21, but then reduced it because he was a minor at the time of the crime committed in broad daylight.Ever since his arrest in January 2007, Samast has admitted shooting and killing Dink outside the Istanbul offices of the latter’s bilingual newspaper “Agos.
Source: BBC
Jul 25, 2011
An archaeologist believes a wall carving in a south Wales cave could be Britain's oldest example of rock art.
The faint scratchings of a speared reindeer are believed to have been carved by a hunter-gatherer in the Ice Age more than 14,000 years ago.
The archaeologist who found the carving on the Gower peninsula, Dr George Nash, called it "very, very exciting."
Experts are working to verify the discovery, although its exact location is being kept secret for now.
Dr Nash, a part-time academic for Bristol University, made the discovery while at the caves in September 2010...
Source: Discovery News
Jul 25, 2011
A mysterious stone statue, possibly the portrait of the great Inca emperor Pachacuti, once stood in Machu Picchu, according to archival research.
Likely placed against a round stone wall on one of Machu Picchu's terraces, the statue had already disappeared by the time American explorer Hiram Bingham climbed the steep jungle slope to be faced with an archaeological wonder exactly a century ago on July 24, 1911.
Bingham, who has been credited as one possible inspiration for the "Indiana Jones" character, saw "a remarkably large and well-preserved abandoned city " perched some 8,000 feet in the clouds "in a wonderfully picturesque position," he wrote in the March 26, 1914, issue of Nature.
Source: Live Science
Jul 25, 2011
A war and inferno that apparently destroyed one ancient society while dramatically elevating another in Peru is now shedding light on how states emerge in the world.
Scientists investigated ruins in the Titicaca basin in southern Peru, home to a number of thriving ancient societies more than 2 millennia ago. They focused on two prominent states in the region — Taraco, based along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas.
Source: BBC
Jul 25, 2011
Parts of a German bomber shot down in the Battle of Britain have been found in a bungalow's garden in Somerset.
Engine parts of the Heinkel were left 5ft (1.5m) underground in Puriton for over 70 years archaeologists have said.
The site is being excavated after original photographs were used to discover the plane's exact whereabouts.
At the time, the main body of the bomber was recovered by the RAF but the impact of the crash meant some of the parts broke off as it was pulled out of the ground.
It is these parts which are now being excavated by the enthusiasts who hope theY will eventually be displayed in a museum to give a fresh insight into the Battle of Britain...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
The orchestra will make musical history playing a piece by Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer at Wagner's Bavarian home town of Bayreuth tomorrow.
Hitler's theories of racial purity and exterminating Jews were said to be partly drawn from Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has observed an informal ban on the composer's music.
The news that Israel Chamber Orchestra and members of the Israel Symphony Orchestra will play a piece by Wagner at Bayreuth Festival, has aroused the hostility of Israeli politicians.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
Glenn Beck, the leading Right-wing American broadcaster, has prompted outrage after comparing the teenage victims of the Utoya Island massacre to the Hitler Youth. Beck said that the Labour party youth camp on the island, where 68 people were murdered, bore "disturbing" similarities to the Nazi party's notorious juvenile wing.Beck, a multimillionaire darling of the Tea Party movement, said on his nationally-syndicated radio show: "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
Hitler's theories of racial purity and exterminating Jews were said to be partly drawn from Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has observed an informal ban on the composer's music.The news that Israel Chamber Orchestra and members of the Israel Symphony Orchestra will play a piece by Wagner at Bayreuth Festival, has aroused the hostility of Israeli politicians. The ensemble have also been threatened with funding cuts.The heads of the orchestra decided not to rehearse the piece in Israel, out of consideration for the public dispute.The orchestra, conducted by Roberto Paternostro, will play Siegfried Idyll, a twenty minute long symphonic poem which Wagner composed as a birthday present to his second wife....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
• Hitler wrote in his first volume of his book Mein Kampf: "At the age of twelve, I saw ... the first opera of my life, Lohengrin. In one instant I was addicted. My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth Master knew no bounds."• Aged 16, Hitler quit school and spent the next three years being idle. He is said to have spent a tidy proportion of his pocket money on going to the opera. He became passionate about Wagner.• Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings are thought to have had a quasi-religious effect on Hitler. His theories of racial purity were partly drawn from Wagner. According to Wagner: "The Volk has always been the essence of all the individuals who constituted a commonality. In the beginning, it was the family and the races; then the races united through linguistic equality as a nation."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
Two gold medals earned by Captain William Bligh during his exploits at sea during the late 1700s are to be auctioned in Australia and are expected to fetch more than AU$250,000 (£165,000).Captain Bligh, who is best known for being ousted from his post aboard the HMS Bounty by a mutinous crew, won the medals during his long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy....Capt Bligh was on a mission to bring back breadfruit, which the British empire hoped it could cultivate to feed to slaves in the West Indies, in 1789 when the famous mutiny took place and he and a group of his men were set adrift in a 22ft launch without navigation equipment in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.In a remarkable feat of endurance, the celebrated British seaman and his crew spent 47 days at sea, catching fish and seabirds and drinking rainwater to survive while navigating thousands of nautical miles by memory....
Source: National Parks Traveler
Jul 25, 2011
It is an honor to stand with you on one of our most sacred American landscapes. Here, 150 years ago today, the nation got its first real look at civil war. This is where American democracy began its baptism by fire. Where the grueling four-year journey that shaped a nation, began in earnest.The battle of Manassas dispelled the myth that the war would be a quick affair. The Confederate secretary of war, LeRoy Pope Walker, suggested prior to the battle that when all was said and done, he would be able to wipe up the blood that would be spilled with his pocket handkerchief.Historian Shelby Foote liked to point out that it would have made a good doctoral dissertation, calculating how many handkerchiefs it would have taken to clean up the blood that was actually shed.Over 620,000 lives. That was the price exacted by the Civil War. But those were only the military deaths. The war’s impact extended much farther than the battlefield....
Source: ynet News (Israel)
Jul 25, 2011
The German intelligence agency BND admitted Monday to destroying the file of wanted Nazi criminal Alois Brunner in the 1990s and attempting to recruit him, Der Spiegel reported. Brunner was responsible for the deportation of at least 130,000 Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust. Some reports claimed he had fled to Damascus after World War II and has been hiding there ever since. An email sent to a French news agency stated that the BND recently discovered secret files on Brunner which had mysteriously disappeared in the 1990s.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
Since its founding in 1948, Israel has observed an informal ban on Wagner’s music because of its use in Nazi propaganda before and during World War II.• In 1953 on a tour to Israel, revered violinist Jascha Heifetz was attacked by a man with an iron bar after playing a violin sonata by Richard Strauss, who had been head of the State Music Bureau for several years under the Third Reich but who, it was later revealed, detested the Nazis and conformed to help protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grandchildren. Strauss's music is no longer unofficially banned in Israel and is performed and broadcast regularly.• In 1998, Israel's Tel Aviv opera company shelved plans to perform a Wagner aria after dozens protested.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
• Hitler wrote in his first volume of his book Mein Kampf: "At the age of twelve, I saw ... the first opera of my life, Lohengrin. In one instant I was addicted. My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth Master knew no bounds."• Aged 16, Hitler quit school and spent the next three years being idle. He is said to have spent a tidy proportion of his pocket money on going to the opera. He became passionate about Wagner.• Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings are thought to have had a quasi-religious effect on Hitler. His theories of racial purity were partly drawn from Wagner. According to Wagner: "The Volk has always been the essence of all the individuals who constituted a commonality. In the beginning, it was the family and the races; then the races united through linguistic equality as a nation."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2011
The men have sold the film rights to the Hollywood producer responsible for the Oscar winning movie Black Swan and have promised to give a no-holds-barred account of their ordeal."This is the only official and authorized film about what we lived in the San Jose mine," said Juan Andres Illanes, one of "Los 33", as they have become known. "Much of our story has never been told."Rumours of potential film versions of their time spent trapped 2,000ft below the Atacama desert in northern Chile have circulated since even before the men were brought to the surface in a televised rescue that was watched by an estimated worldwide audience of a billion people.
Source: CNN
Jul 25, 2011
As most people know by now, incredibly talented singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London apartment over the weekend. She joins an unfortunate club of singers who led troubled lives, some who struggled with drugs, and died at age 27.The so-called "27s" is part of the title of a book published a few years ago that examines the deaths of many of these young musicians and the tragic number they have in common.Considered the greatest electric guitarist of all time and an icon of his generation, Jimi Hendrix died in London in 1970 at age 27. He was well known for boozing and drugs, though according to the London Telegraph, the autopsy on him found that he died due to choking on his own vomit but there was little alcohol in his system....
