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: CNN
Apr 14, 2011
by Ivan Watson and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy
Aboud el Zomor watched the revolution in Tahrir Square with envy from his jail cell on a smuggled television.Thirty years ago, he and a group of conspirators plotted an Islamic Revolution to overthrow the Egyptian government.On October 6 1981, four of his associates succeeded in assassinating Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in a hail of gunfire during a military parade in Cairo. Zomor, an Egyptian intelligence officer gone rogue, was convicted for his role in the murder.
Source: NYT
Apr 14, 2011
A researcher analyzing the sounds in languages spoken around the world has detected an ancient signal that points to southern Africa as the place where modern human language originated. The finding fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA that modern humans originated in Africa. It also implies, though does not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of considerable controversy among linguists.
Source: BBC
Apr 14, 2011
Fifty years ago, shortly before midnight on 16 April 1961, a group of some 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and financed by the CIA launched an ill-fated invasion of Cuba from the sea in the Bay of Pigs. The plan was to overthrow Fidel Castro and his revolution. Instead, it turned into a humiliating defeat which pushed Cuba firmly into the arms of the Soviet Union and has soured US-Cuban relations to this day. There is a small museum in Playa Giron.
Source: AP
Apr 14, 2011
Workers in Warsaw laying a new tram line have uncovered a German bunker dating back to World War II, officials said Thursday.
The bunker was discovered in recent days at Plac Zbawiciela, or Savior's Square, a major traffic hub in the Polish capital where tram tracks and the street are undergoing thorough renovation.
City archaeologist Barbara Piotrowska said it was a surprise that such a massive concrete and metal structure had remained hidden from view for many decades
Source: NYT
Apr 13, 2011
The year was 1962, and nuclear power was in the ascendant.
A handful of atomic plants had opened across the country, with more in the pipeline. Across the ocean, a depressed coal town in the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima had welcomed overtures from Tokyo Electric to build a nuclear generating station, and the utility was surveying the site.
Thirty miles north of New York City, the Consolidated Edison Company’s Indian Point plant, the nation’s biggest, had just achiev
Source: AP
Apr 13, 2011
A raid 150 years ago by Confederate sympathizers on a Union fort at what is now Pensacola Naval Air Station was likely little more than an ill-planned and drunken misadventure, perhaps ended by one soldier's warning shot — and a blank one, at that. But don't tell Pensacola residents that the Jan. 8, 1861, skirmish meant nothing — the event is the stuff of legend in this military town. Some even claim the clash was the Civil War's first, three months before the battle on April 12, 1861, at South Carolina's Fort Sumter, which is widely recognized as the start of the war.
Source: BBC
Apr 13, 2011
Academics at Dundee University have helped recreate the face of a Viking woman whose skeleton was unearthed in York more than 30 years ago.
The facial reconstruction was achieved by laser-scanning her skull to create a 3D digital model.
Eyes were then digitally created, along with hair and a bonnet, to complete the look.
The project was part of a £150,000 investment at York's Jorvik Viking Centre.
The Dundee academics were brought in by the ce
Source: CNN
Apr 13, 2011
It's not every day you hear an ex-president discuss his memories of a hooker.
But that's what Bill Clinton did Wednesday at a press conference in New York during which he praised the redevelopment that city's famed Times Square has undergone in the last two decades.
Appearing alongside New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to announce that the two leaders are joining forces to combat climate change, the former president beat back suggestions Times Square has lost the un
Source: CNN
Apr 13, 2011
The remains of a Massachusetts airman missing in action from World War II have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial, the Department of Defense said Wednesday.
Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Martin P. Murray, 21, of Lowell, Massachusetts, took off on October 27, 1943, from an airfield near Port Moresby, New Guinea, with 11 other crew members aboard a B-24D Liberator.
At the time, plans were being formulated to mount an attack on the Japanese fortificati
Source: AOL
Apr 13, 2011
A century and a half after the opening shots of the U.S. Civil War, nearly four in 10 Southerners say they still sympathize with the Confederacy. That's according to a new CNN poll released on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, when Union soldiers raised a U.S. flag over Fort Sumter in South Carolina and the opening shots of the war rang out. The poll's results reveal that the war that divided the nation for four years still divides American public opinion today.
Source: Fox News
Apr 13, 2011
...The Greens, of Oklahoma City, are owners of the Hobby Lobby Empire, one of the nation’s leading privately owned arts and crafts retailers. Forbes Magazine puts the family fortune at around $2.5 billion. Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby and the leading family member behind the project, was eager to share his family’s new discoveries and pushed to have them featured in a traveling exhibit called, “Passages.”
Source: National Parks Traveler
Apr 13, 2011
We've grown accustomed to media coverage of property threatened by raging wildfires in California, but… West Texas? Large fires that raced across the high desert last weekend caused major damage in the small town of Fort Davis. Thus far, the key historic structures at Fort Davis National Historic Site have escaped, but it's been a close call, and fires continue to burn in the vicinity.
Fort Davis National Historic Site preserves perhaps the best example of an Indian Wars' frontier m
Source: MSNBC
Apr 13, 2011
John Demjanjuk's defense attorney says his client's trial on Nazi war crimes charges should be suspended in the wake of an Associated Press report showing the FBI believed the Soviet Union fabricated evidence in the case. Ulrich Busch gave Tuesday's AP story to the judges as the trial resumed Wednesday, saying he needed the trial to be postponed so he could go to the U.S. himself to look for more possibly exculpatory evidence. The judges made no immediate ruling.
Source: NYT
Apr 13, 2011
MARIETTA, Ga. — It doesn’t take much to talk Selina Faye Sorrow into slipping on her replica of the dress Vivien Leigh wore in the barbecue scene from the film “Gone With the Wind.”
You don’t know the dress? Then you are clearly not a “Windy,” a fan so ardent that recreating the burning of Atlanta in an airport hotel banquet room is not out of the question....
“Gone With the Wind” means a lot in Atlanta. After all, Ms. Mitchell, who published her novel in 1936, lived, d
Source: Daily Record (Scotland)
Apr 13, 2011
NAZI commander Rudolf Hess parachuted into a Scottish field 70 years ago.
Hitler's deputy was arrested by pitchfork wielding ploughman David McLean on Floor's Farm near Eaglesham, south of Glasgow, in what was to become one of the strangest episodes of World War II.
Ever since, mystery has surrounded the top Nazi's dramatic arrival.
Conspiracy theories have raged about exactly what Hess was doing in Scotland at the height of the war and why the authorities
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 13, 2011
The birth of Richard Trevithick, the inventor of the high pressure steam engine, has been celebrated by the search engine Google.
Marking 240 years since his birth, Google has transformed their usual logo into a steam train, complete with steam puffing out of the letter “L”.
The internet search engine is known for its celebration of special days and occasions, but this marks a more unusual subject than most.
Mr Trevithick not only invented the first high p
Source: CNN.com
Apr 12, 2011
Washington (CNN) - It has been 150 years since the Civil War began with the first shots at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and in some respects views of the Confederacy and the role that slavery played in the events of 1861 still divide the public, according to a new national poll.In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Tuesday, roughly one in four Americans said they sympathize more with the Confederacy than the Union, a figure that rises to nearly four in ten among white Southerners. When asked the reason behind the Civil War, whether it was fought over slavery or states' rights, 52 percent of all Americans said the leaders of the Confederacy seceded to keep slavery legal in their state, but a sizeable 42 percent minority said slavery was not the main reason why those states seceded....
Source: Vietnam Net
Apr 12, 2011
According to the Institute for Archaeology, a section of the wall to protect the northern area of the relic collapsed while the structure of soil layers of the relic was broken.
Mud water has overflowed from the National Assembly House project to the relic.
The Institute for Archaeology said that the landmark of the relic has been broken. The National Assembly House project also caused the relic to sink, affecting the preservation of this important relic.
Source: NYT
Apr 12, 2011
NASA’s space shuttles, which have been carrying astronauts aloft for 30 years, were assigned to their final destinations on Tuesday: one will head to the nation’s capital, another to Los Angeles, and the third from its current home at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the center’s visitor complex next door.
In a ceremony commemorating the shuttle program, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, made the long-awaited announcement of where the soon-to-be museum
Source: BBC News
Apr 12, 2011
Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant to the highest level, seven. The decision reflects the ongoing release of radiation, rather than a sudden deterioration. Level seven previously only applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, where 10 times as much radiation was emitted. But most experts agree the two nuclear incidents are very different. Explore the table below to find out how they compare....
