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 News
Apr 5, 2011
The wife of Europe's most wanted war crimes fugitive, Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, has gone on trial accused of illegal possession of weapons.
Bosiljka Mladic told the court in Belgrade she believed her husband was no longer alive.
"If he is alive, he would have found ways to call us," she said.
Gen Mladic has been on the run from the UN's War Crimes Tribunal since 1995 and faces genocide charges in connection with the 1992-95 Bosnia war.
Source: BBC
Apr 5, 2011
Details of the 1911 census have been released after 100 years under lock and key.
The results, released by the Registrar General for Scotland, reveal a snapshot of life during an era of mass migration and urban overcrowding.
The census was the last before World War I and features details of Scotland's 4.75 million citizens, including John Logie Baird.
The results are being made available to the public on a pay-per-view basis....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 5, 2011
The son of Osama bin Laden has claimed he was invited to the White House in the final days of George W Bush's presidency in a last-ditch attempt to discover the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist.
Omar bin Laden, the fourth son of the al-Qaeda leader, claims he received a visit from White House staff in January 2009 at his home in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
But the son who was once groomed to take over from bin Laden later admitted that he had had no co
Source: CNN
Apr 5, 2011
Top Libyan defector Moussa Koussa looks set to be quizzed over the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Representatives from Scotland's Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Police confirmed they met with Foreign Office officials in London Monday to lodge a formal request to meet Libya's former foreign minister, who arrived in Britain from war-torn Libya last week.
A statement from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary --
Source: BBC News
Apr 5, 2011
A statue is to be erected in London to mark the achievements of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
The zinc-alloy figure will sit just off The Mall, next to Admiralty Arch.
Gagarin made history on 12 April 1961 when he circled the Earth in 108 minutes in his Vostok capsule.
He subsequently went on a world tour, which included the UK.
Admiralty Arch was where he met the then Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.
It is also very near t
Source: BBC Magazine
Apr 5, 2011
Today we are urged to report fly-tipping and other nuisances - just as our forebears did 700 years ago. Their complaints survive in a rare medieval document, the Assize of Nuisance, which sheds new light on an age-old problem.
Alice Wade, who lived in 14th Century London, could not countenance the smell of her own poo.
In an era when many of her fellow citizens relieved themselves in chamber pots and surreptitiously tipped the stinking contents out the window, she had a
Source: DNA India
Apr 4, 2011
The sketches of one of Adolf Hitler's official artists, who erased his name from the records in shame after the World War II, are now being bought to light after 65 years.
The family of Austrian artist Roman Zenzinger, whose works portray German soldiers, are now planning to sell three of them at a British auction house in a bid to restore their relative's reputation, reports the Daily Mail.
“In the hope that his [Zenzinger's] achievements as a war artist will finally b
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Apr 4, 2011
A Jewish extremist who murdered a British government minister during the Second World War also proposed assassinating Winston Churchill, MI5 records show.
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri suggested sending agents of the Stern Gang, a Zionist paramilitary group devoted to forcing the British out of Palestine, to London to kill the then-prime minister.
Bet-Zuri was hanged in 1945 for murdering Lord Moyne, the UK's minister resident in the Middle East and a close friend of Churchill, in C
Source: The Arizona Republic
Apr 4, 2011
Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger recognizes there are some inconsistencies in his life story that might make people curious.
Wollschlaeger is the son of a German tank commander who was personally decorated by Adolph Hitler during World War II. After beginning to question Germany's role in the Holocaust as a teen, Wollschlaeger later converted to Judaism and immigrated to Israel.
Now a physician living in south Florida, Wollschlaeger wrote a book about his life and speaks about w
Source: BBC
Apr 4, 2011
Dental X-rays of the Queen's family have been withdrawn from auction at the request of the Royal Household.
The 18 images of Elizabeth II's teeth, together with those of her mother and father, King George VI, were taken between 1942 and 1946.
The X-rays were found in a house in Leatherhead, Surrey and were due to go under the hammer on Wednesday.
But Dominic Winter's auction house in South Cerney, Gloucestershire, has been asked to remove the lot from sale.
Source: BBC
Apr 4, 2011
A memorial is being planned to Welsh soldiers who died in one of the most infamous and bloody of World War I battles.
Hundreds of soldiers from Wales are believed to have been among 70,000 British casualties in the Battle of Passchendaele in Ypres in 1917.
Now the Passchendaele Society in Belgium wants to raise around 50,000 euros (£44,000) for a Welsh memorial.
It is hoped some money will be raised in Wales.
Society chairman Freddy Declerck sa
Source: BBC
Apr 4, 2011
A whisky buried beneath a hut used by explorer Ernest Shackleton during his unsuccessful expedition to reach the South Pole has been recreated.
Distillers Whyte & Mackay, which owns the MacKinlay whisky found in 2007, hopes to sell 50,000 bottles at £100.
A percentage of the price will go to the Antarctic Heritage Trust, which recovered five cases of whisky.
Samples of the Shackleton whisky were analysed at Whyte & Mackay's Invergordon distillery.
Source: Sify News
Apr 4, 2011
Ruins of 2,000-year-old buildings have been discovered in eastern Nepal, Xinhua reported.
They were found during an excavation in Kichakbadhsthal in Jhapa district. Remains of walls made of bricks measuring 36 cm long, 26 cm wide and five centimeters thick have been unearthed. An earthen lamp and an urn were also found.
Uddav Acharya, chief officer at the archeology department, said the remains bear a resemblance of the buildings constructed 2,000 years ago. The conditi
Source: National Parks Traveler
Apr 4, 2011
Blogging about the Civil War will soon commence at Gettysburg National Military Park, where officials hope to use some of the latest media trends to educate people on the war between the states.
From the Fields of Gettysburg
This will be a weekly blog by park rangers and historians that will explore a wide variety of history topics and park news.
"From the Fields of Gettysburg will be a wonderful resource for people anywhere in the world who want to kn
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 4, 2011
The Nazis planned to kill Allied troops with poisoned coffee, chocolate and cigarettes, as part of a terrorist campaign in liberated Europe, newly disclosed MI5 documents show.
Female agents were also to be sent to kill senior Allied commanders using microbes hidden in handbag mirrors, according to interrogation reports.
One assassination device, captured by advancing Allied troops, involved a gun hidden inside a belt bulk with a Swastika emblem on it.
Doc
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 4, 2011
Here are 10 facts you might not know about Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
1) The speech is known as “I Have a Dream” but those words were never in the original draft, they were ad libbed on the day.
2) It lasts 17 minutes and is widely considered to have been drafted in New York and then in Washington in the hours before the rally.
3) As a result of the speech, Dr King was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine in 1963, and won the N
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 4, 2011
Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucratic mastermind of the Holocaust, regretted that he failed to exterminate all of Europe's Jews, saying "there was more we could have done", recordings have revealed.
Eichmann showed only disappointment that some survived, according to newly declassified files. Looking back on his role in organising the systematic slaughter of Jews, gipsies and other groups, he says: "We didn't do our work correctly."
Recordings of Eichmann
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 4, 2011
Liverpool is famed for many things – including The Beatles and its football team. But few would associate the city with one of the most famous political speeches in history.
Yet tourism officials in the city have published the extraordinary claim that Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech was written at a city centre hotel.
The allegation has been made in a guide to a major art event entitled "Liverpool Discovers", commissioned by amongst others, the ci
Source: BBC News
Apr 4, 2011
A three-panel oil painting by artist Zhang Xiaogang has sold for 79m Hong Kong dollars (£6.3m) - a record auction price for Chinese contemporary art.
The 1988 work, Forever Lasting Love, shows half-naked figures in an arid landscape surrounded by symbols, among them an emaciated ram.
It was one of 105 artworks sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong by Belgian collector Baron Guy Ullens.
They fetched HK$427m (£34m), more than three times than had been expected.
Source: AP
Apr 4, 2011
The four men wading ashore on a Florida beach wearing nothing but bathing trunks and German army hats looked like an unlikely invading force.
Declassified British intelligence files describe how the men were part of Nazi sabotage teams sent to the U.S. in June 1942 to undermine the American war effort.
A detailed new account of the mission — code-named Pastorius after an early German settler in the U.S. — is provided in a report written in 1943 by MI5 intelligence offic
