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: NYT
May 26, 2011
PARIS — President Boris Tadic of Serbia announced at a news conference in Belgrade on Thursday that Ratko Mladic, the fugitive accused of masterminding the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, had been captured but refused to give details.
Source: Washington post
May 25, 2011
A mysterious man who wandered New York and Connecticut in a 60-pound leather suit during the 19th century became a little more mysterious Wednesday.Historians announced that all they found when they dug up the 1889 grave of the man known as the Leatherman was dozens of coffin nails.“The Leatherman was a mystery in life and he’s going to be a mystery in death,” said Ossining Historical Society President Norman MacDonald.
Source: Star Tribune
May 25, 2011
Paul Bengston never got to meet Hubert Humphrey -- not in person, anyway. But the acquaintance he's forged with the Happy Warrior through campaign buttons, political posters, tickets to DFL bean feeds and the odd key chain has, in a way, been as personal.
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2011
Fifty years after the so-called Freedom Riders risked their lives trying to break the practice of segregating people on the US public transport system, the veteran activists have reunited to inspire a new generation."We changed American history," says Bob Filner, now a California congressman. "And we should do the same thing today."Just across the road from Filner is the old Greyhound station where he and hundreds of other Freedom Riders were arrested in the summer of 1961.
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
Weeks after the United States operation that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Columbia Pictures division of Sony Pictures Entertainment said it had acquired a new film project by Kathryn Bigelow, the Academy Award-winning director of
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
A mystery since the 19th century, the Leather Man will apparently remain that way forever.From Sunday to Tuesday afternoon, a team of about 20 historians, geneticists, archaeologists, anthropologists and other researchers descended on the Sparta Cemetery in Ossining, N.Y., hoping to exhume the remains of the Leather Man, a homeless wanderer who fashioned his clothing from discarded boots and roamed around Westchester County and western Connecticut for decades in the 19th century....
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
ROME — The backdrop may be the Termini train station, but the chatter these days evokes a Damien Hirst opening. The object of the attention is a 17-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Pope John Paul II unveiled on May 18, his birthday.The verdict, at least as registered by the Italian news media and several online polls, is a merciless thumbs down.
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
WASHINGTON — Several lawmakers from both parties on Wednesday accused President Obama of violating the War Powers Resolution by continuing American participation in
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
Looking beyond poor eating habits and a couch-potato lifestyle, a group of researchers has found a new culprit in the obesity epidemic: the American workplace.
Source: The Atlantic
May 25, 2011
The space program is one of President John F. Kennedy's great legacies but he privately fretted that putting a man on the moon was not much more than a "stunt," according to a secretly-recorded Oval Office conversation finally going public Wednesday.
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2011
It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an honor to have your face portrayed in the bottom of a chamber pot. But that was the fate of British Naval Capt. Basil Hall, and you can find the proof at Fort Stanwix National Monument in New York.The chamber pot is one of several 19th century artifacts that are on display at the monument from now through October 17th. The history of archeology at the park and the process of archeology are described in panels with pictures from the actual excavations.
Source: CNN
May 25, 2011
In 1985, Edmund White had five or six published books behind him, a Swiss lover with him and the outcome of an HIV test ahead of him. When the results came in, White told his partner:"I'm a good enough novelist to know how this is going to work out. I'm going to be positive, you're going to be negative, you're going to be very nice about it, but you're going to break up with me within a year."By many accounts, White is a good novelist -- a great one, actually, having written numerous acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction.
Source: BBC
May 24, 2011
The severed head of a man said to be the patron saint of genital disease will go on auction in County Meath on Sunday.
The skull is allegedly that of St Vitalis of Assisi, an Italian Benedictine monk from the 14th century.
It belonged to an Anglo-Irish family from County Louth, and is housed in a Queen Anne case dating from the 17th century.
There has been no official verification of the claim. ...
Source: CNN.com
May 24, 2011
(CNN) -- Plans to rename a street after Mexican-American labor organizer Cesar Chavez have sparked controversy in San Antonio, where a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the name change this week.City council members approved "Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard" in a 7-4 vote, but the San Antonio Conservation Society filed a lawsuit against the measure."We consider the name of a street historic," said Rollette Schreckenghost-Smith, the organization's president.
Source: BBC News
May 24, 2011
Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids.The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak.She says she was amazed at how much she and her team has found.
Source: Daily Express (UK)
May 24, 2011
AT ABOUT 7pm on April 24, 1941, a familiar cut-glass English accent began its nightly broadcast from Nazi Germany. Six million Britons had tuned in to his sneering tones, some entertained, many frightened, others simply intrigued by the latest instalment of “Germany Calling” from Nazi propagandist “Lord Haw-Haw”.
Source: Independent (UK)
May 24, 2011
It's one of the great questions of history, and indeed philosophy: what does it take to create a Hitler or a Stalin? What circumstances does it require to produce such evil? Newly released diaries from one of Joseph Stalin's personal doctors suggest that, in Stalin's case, illness could have helped to contribute to the paranoia and ruthlessness of his rule over the Soviet Union.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 24, 2011
A 15th-century manuscript is written in a language that has baffled every expert. Is it just a brilliant hoax, or will someone eventually decipher its meaning, asks Michael Day.Somewhere deep inside the bowels of Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library – the Ivy League institution's own cemetery of lost books – lies a tome that experts have studied for centuries, but which has yet to be understood by a single soul.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 24, 2011
The Nazis tried to train dogs to talk, read and spell to help them win World War II, it has been revealed.The Germans viewed canines as being almost as intelligent as humans and attempted to build an army of fearsome 'speaking' dogs, extraordinary new research shows.Hitler hoped the clever creatures would learn to communicate with their SS masters - and he even had a special dog school set up to teach them to talk.
Source: CNN
May 24, 2011
The tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, Sunday killed 118 people, authorities said Tuesday, making it the deadliest single U.S. tornado since modern record-keeping began more than 60 years ago.Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said Tuesday morning the death toll has risen to 118 and the number of deaths is expected to rise as rescuers find more bodies in the rubble.A twister in Flint, Michigan, in 1953 killed 116 people, according to the National Weather Service.
