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: Yahoo News
Jun 16, 2011
Columbia University educates top-notch brains, but a century ago, the campus of the Ivy League school was a haven for a different type of mind — the mentally-ill.
Hobbyist historian Michael Susi spoke on the prestigious school's unusual history Thursday at the American Youth Hostel, at 891 Amsterdam Ave.
Source: Huff Po
Jun 16, 2011
David Spriegel was in his second week of a summer internship at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois when he made the discovery of a lifetime.The 21-year-old, who just finished his junior year at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota, was preparing a stack of old papers to be logged in a database and put into storage.
Source: The Atlantic
Jun 16, 2011
Mikhail Gorbachev should never have become the Soviet premier. When he was six years old, his grandfather was taken in the middle of the night, a victim of one of Stalin's purges. And he grew up in Stavropol region of the Soviet East, which was occupied by the Nazis during World War II, when Gorbachev was eleven. Both facts should have stunted his climb through the Soviet ladder, but he clawed his way into the ruling Politburo nonetheless.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jun 16, 2011
Last year, while a Penn team of archaeologists was working in Morocco, members uncovered a treasure beyond anything they'd imagined - a skeleton of a child from 108,000 years ago.
They don't know what killed him at about age 8, but his remains are believed to be one of the most complete ever found of this period.
The skeleton promises to open a window into a pivotal time in human evolution when Neanderthals still ruled Europe, and Africans were inventing art and symbolic thought.
One of the earliest sites where people left evidence of artwork and symbolism is in Moro
Source: BBC
Jun 16, 2011
Forty years ago Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan in a short but brutal civil war in which it was claimed as many as three million people could have died.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 16, 2011
The restoration of St Paul's Cathedral cost £40m, took 15 years, and was the first time that Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece was comprehensively restored inside and out. Three hundred years after it was declared complete by Parliament, St Paul's Cathedral is once more as resplendent as when it was first built.
Source: CNN
Jun 16, 2011
Today marks the 100th birthday of IBM, which was founded on June 16, 1911, in New York City as the awkwardly named Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. (It was renamed International Business Machines in 1924.)
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 15, 2011
A diary kept by Che Guevara has come to light that provides fresh insight into his relationship with Fidel Castro and the guerrilla campaign that led to the Cuban revolution.
Source: Discovery News
Jun 15, 2011
....Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Italian Alps 20 years ago, suffered from cavities, worn teeth and periodontal diseases.
Presented at the 7th world congress on mummy studies in San Diego, Calif., the research dismisses the assumption that dental pathologies did not afflict the Tyrolean Iceman.
Using the latest CT scan technologies, Seiler and colleagues Albert Zink, at the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Paul Gostner and Eduard Egarter-Vigl, at Bolzano hospital, analyz
Source: Washington Post
Jun 15, 2011
Leptis Magna, Libya’s most important archaeological site, has not been engulfed in fighting as the country’s conflict enters its fifth month. But airstrikes have been carried out nearby, and Libyans on both sides of the battle worry that the U.N.
Source: BBC
Jun 15, 2011
Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that the occupants of southeastern France were brewing beer during the Iron Age, some 2,500 years ago.
A paper in Human Ecology outlines the discovery of barley grains that had been sprouted in a process known as malting; an oven found nearby may h
Source: BBC
Jun 15, 2011
They were towering figures in 20th Century Chile: Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda, the president and the poet, two men united in life by their left-wing politics, and divided in death by a matter of days.
For years, Chileans have been taught that Mr Allende committed suicide during the military coup of 11 September, 1973, and that Mr Neruda died 12 days later of heart failure brought on by prostate cancer.
But now, both deaths are under investigation.
In both cases, the Chilean military stands accused of murder and the countr
Source: NYT
Jun 15, 2011
When the Harvard psychologist and psychedelic explorer Timothy Leary first met the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1960, he welcomed Ginsberg’s participation in the drug experiments he was conducting at the university.
Source: US News and World Report
Jun 15, 2011
High school seniors' scores on a national history assessment remained flat between 2006 and 2010, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a government organization.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 15, 2011
A diary kept by Che Guevara has come to light that provides fresh insight into his relationship with Fidel Castro and the guerrilla campaign that led to the Cuban revolution.Extracts from notebooks previously thought lost have been published as Diary of a Combatant in Cuba.Researchers spent years deciphering the handwritten scrawl of the revolutionary icon.
Source: Foxnews
Jun 15, 2011
The author of a study claiming the U.S. housing collapse is now worse than during the Great Depression warned Wednesday that the
Source: CNN
Jun 15, 2011
A Civil War fort, a Chicago hospital and a Chinese neighborhood are among the sites listed as America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.The 24th annual list, released Wednesday, includes significant sites that reflect U.S. history and culture and are at risk of permanent damage or destruction.
Source: Golf.com
Jun 15, 2011
In Arnold Palmer's museum of an office in Latrobe, Pa., there's a great deal of presidential golfing memorabilia, dating to 1958, when Eisenhower briefly met Palmer, didn't recognize him as the reigning Masters champion and later wrote him to apologize for the slight. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
Source: BBC News
Jun 15, 2011
Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that the occupants of southeastern France were brewing beer during the Iron Age, some 2,500 years ago.A paper in Human Ecology outlines the discovery of barley grains that had been sprouted in a process known as malting; an oven found nearby may have been used to regulate the process.
Source: BBC News
Jun 15, 2011
They were towering figures in 20th Century Chile: Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda, the president and the poet, two men united in life by their left-wing politics, and divided in death by a matter of days.For years, Chileans have been taught that Mr Allende committed suicide during the military coup of 11 September, 1973, and that Mr Neruda died 12 days later of heart failure brought on by prostate cancer.But now, both deaths are under investigation.
