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
Apr 24, 2011
Amid mounting calls by scientists for the Smithsonian Institution to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a shipwreck, the institution will hold a meeting on Monday afternoon to hear from critics.
Source: The Times of India
Apr 24, 2011
An unknown kingdom dating back to 1046 B.C.
Source: NYT
Apr 24, 2011
Amid mounting calls by scientists for the Smithsonian Institution to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a shipwreck, the institution will hold a meeting on Monday afternoon to hear from critics.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 24, 2011
Italians have reacted with fury to an attempt by Croatia to claim the legendary explorer Marco Polo was one of their own.
Source: BBC News
Apr 23, 2011
The Austrian capital
Vienna has announced plans to erect a memorial in honour of soldiers who
deserted from Adolf Hitler's army, the Wehrmacht.
The city council has yet to decide the exact location, but
campaigners want it to be put in Heldenplatz (Heroes Square) alongside
war memorials.
The square is also where Hitler, born in Austria, addressed crowds in 1938 when Austria was annexed to Germany.
The BBC's Bethany Bell says Austria is gradually confronting its Nazi past.
Source: CNN
Apr 22, 2011
It was two years in the making for a television crew to get access inside one of the holiest sites of the Greek Orthodox world, the monasteries on Mount Athos in Greece. The cluster of 20 monasteries has remained perched on the cliffs high above the Aegean Sea for centuries.
In the monasteries, also known collectively as the Holy Mountain or The Garden of the Mother of God, the monks spend most of their time in prayer and are purposefully isolated from the outside world.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 22, 2011
Taiwan’s national museum is to put the two halves of a 660-year-old Chinese landscape painting on display bringing together the work for the first time in centuries.
The Yuan Dynasty painting was torn into two pieces more than 300 years ago by a private collector who tried to burn it as he was dying, but a relative quickly saved it from the flames.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 22, 2011
The adolescent musings of the girl who became Jackie Kennedy are disclosed in a series of love letters that are to be auctioned in the US next month.
The 20 notes were sent to R. Beverley Corbin, jr.
Source: AP
Apr 22, 2011
Workers began pulling down the largest statue of Vladimir Lenin in ex-Soviet Central Asia from its place of honor on Friday, earning outrage from die-hard communists celebrating the Russian revolutionary's 141st birthday.
A significant but waning number of people in former Soviet countries remain faithful to the iconic founder of the Soviet state even twenty years after the collapse of Communism.
Source: AP
Apr 22, 2011
A commemoration committee is asking thousands of Amsterdam homeowners to mark their houses if a former Jewish resident was arrested or deported to Nazi death camps during World War II.
The May 4-5 Committee, named for the date of the Netherlands' liberation from German occupation in 1945, made posters available Friday for display in windows of the former Jewish homes.
Residents can look on the committee's website to see
Source: BBC News
Apr 21, 2011
Archaeologists working
on a ruined Tameside castle have concluded it was built to prevent
parts of England coming under Scottish rule.
Buckton Castle in Stalybridge by the Earl of Chester was built in the 1100s.
It was occupied for less than 100 years during a time when the King of Scotland lay claim to Lancashire and Cumberland.
The University of Salford's Brian Grimsditch said, due to the unrest, "local rulers like the Earl had to protect their lands"....
Source: BBC
Apr 21, 2011
Archaeologists working on a ruined Tameside castle have concluded it was built to prevent parts of England coming under Scottish rule.
Buckton Castle in Stalybridge by the Earl of Chester was built in the 1100s.
It was occupied for less than 100 years during a time when the King of Scotland lay claim to Lancashire and Cumberland.
The University of Salford's Brian Grimsditch said, due to the unrest, "local rulers like the Earl had to protect their lands".
The university's Centre for Applied Archaeology conducted a three-
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 21, 2011
Iraq's High Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced to death three Saddam Hussein-era spies convicted of assassinating the father of a sitting Iraqi lawmaker in Beirut in April 1994.
Source: NBC
Apr 21, 2011
Letters written by Jacqueline Bouvier to a high school sweetheart reveal that the future first lady always had a biting sense of humor. (video)
Source: 4-20-11
Apr 20, 2011
A possible Neanderthal burial ground suggests that they practiced funeral rituals and possessed symbolic thought before modern humans.
Evidence for a likely 50,000-year-old Neanderthal burial ground that includes the remains of at least three individuals has been unearthed in Spain, according to a Quaternary International paper.
The deceased appear to have been intentionally buried, with each Neanderthal's arms folded such that the hands were close to the head.
Source: CNN
Apr 20, 2011
Peter Hohenstatt was skeptical at first, especially when he learned the drawing dated to about 1500.
The sketch was "absolutely Leonardesque," the University of Parma art historian thought, but it was probably the product of one of the master's students, imitators or admirers. When a technical exam showed the drawing originated closer to 1473, his skepticism waned.
The reason? Leonardo da Vinci was an apprentice until the late 1470s.
Source: Military Times (UK)
Apr 19, 2011
When it was announced in the March issue of Military Times that the decommissioned light-cruiser HMS Caroline was going to be scrapped and turned into razorblades, there was an understandable call to arms. Read Dominic Tweedle’s original article here
Source: WaPo
Apr 19, 2011
So you want to open sealed envelopes without getting caught?Here’s the secret, according to one of the six oldest classified documents in possession of the Central Intelligence Agency:“Mix 5 drams copper acetol arsenate. 3 ounces acetone and add 1 pint amyl alcohol (fusil-oil). Heat in water bath — steam rising will dissolve the sealing material of its mucilage, wax or oil.”But there’s a warning for the intrepid spy: “Do not inhale fumes.”
Source: NYT
Apr 19, 2011
Seven years after opening its National Museum of the American Indian, and four years before the scheduled unveiling of its museum of African-American history, the Smithsonian Institution is being urged to create another ethnic museum on the National Mall, this one to recognize the history and contributions of Latino Americans.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 19, 2011
The German government tried to influence the Adolf Eichmann trial, fearful that his testimony would implicate former Nazis who held high office in post war Germany, new research has disclosed.Konrad Adenauer, Germany's chancellor at the time of the 1961 trial, personally dispatched one secret agent to Israel as part of a sensitive and classified operation to influence Eichmann's Jerusalem trial and suppress any embarrassment for the West German state.
