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: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 27, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI has visited a memorial to victims of a 1944 massacre by Nazis, one of the worst atrocities by German occupiers during the Second World War.
The German-born pontiff prayed on Sunday at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome to mark the anniversary of the killings of 335 civilians in revenge for an attack by resistance fighters who killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.
Jewish leader Elan Steinberg expressed renewed outrage that one of the massacre's per
Source: Irish Times
Mar 26, 2011
A JUDGE is to look at laws and charters predating the Magna Carta in a bid to settle a dispute over Dublin City Council’s legal right to lease out the fishing interests of the river Liffey.
Dublin and District Salmon Anglers’ Association claims entrepreneur David Wright, of West Pier, Howth, Co Dublin, is trespassing and disturbing the peace and calm of the river....
The association claims, through charters going back to the times of King Henry II, who died in 1189, tha
Source: Press-Citizen (Iowa)
Mar 26, 2011
Some 30 feet below the surface of Linn and Market Streets, beneath the Brewery Square Building, is a place in Iowa City’s history dating back more than 150 years.
And, if you ask local archeologist Marlin Ingalls nicely, he just might take you there.
He’ll meet you in the lobby of Brewery Square and take you on an elevator to the basement. Stepping off the elevator, you’ll walk into La’ James Beauty School’s massage parlor. Turn right at the desk, walk down a hallway li
Source: New York Post
Mar 26, 2011
Gowanus Canal may hold more than toxic chemicals and dead mobsters — it keeps numerous artifacts from its industrial past, according to Environmental Protection Agency archeologist John Vetter, who is leading a study to determine what’s stuck in the muck.
Sonar readings taken along Brooklyn’s filthy 1.8-mile waterway have already uncovered several sunken boats, including the 60-foot-long hull of a wooden working vessel, a small fiberglass boat, the hulls of 126-foot-long and 110-fo
Source: LA Times
Mar 26, 2011
Betty Jean Vera came clutching a sheaf of yellowing papers, rolled tight and wrapped with string, which she had found in a musty trunk in her attic. The author was a young Confederate soldier.
Next came Lindsay Grant Hope, a Realtor, with another Civil War diary. The cover was moldy with age, the pages dog-eared and frail, the writing flowery and precise. It belonged to her great-great-grandmother.
Those haunting voices and other poignant portraits of America's bloodied
Source: CNN
Mar 26, 2011
After almost 30 years in a mental hospital, John W. Hinckley Jr., the college dropout who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan, is moving closer to the day his doctors may recommend he go free.
According to court records, a forensic psychologist at the hospital has testified that "Hinckley has recovered to the point that he poses no imminent risk of danger to himself or others."
Hinckley is now 55. Over government objections in 2009, a judge extended his furl
Source: CNN
Mar 26, 2011
Geraldine Ferraro, a former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate, has died, according to a family statement. She was 75.
In 1984, Ferraro was the first female vice presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party when she ran with Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale.
A resident of New York City, Ferraro died in Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by loved ones. Her cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cance
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Mar 26, 2011
HARRISBURG - For the first time, Civil War buffs can now walk the land on Chambersburg Pike west of Gettysburg where Confederate and Union troops locked in a ferocious struggle at the start of the epic battle.
The 95-acre tract, scene of major fighting on July 1, 1863, has been made part of Gettysburg National Military Park at last.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Friday - weeks before the start of a series of events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the C
Source: The Atlantic
Mar 25, 2011
JeffBible1.jpgHow do museum professionals define the condition of an artifact, and determine whether it can be used or exhibited without harm? The answer is by very, very careful investigation, especially when the artifact is the Jefferson Bible, otherwise known as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Using excerpts from the Four Gospels of the New Testament, Thomas Jefferson arranged the text to tell a chronological and edited story of Jesus' life and moral philosophy.
A natio
Source: Discovery News
Mar 25, 2011
Servilia and Lucius Caltilius Pamphilus, the married couple from Pompeii that was virtually reunited on a photomontage following the work of two British researchers, are now forever side by side in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
Following Discovery News story early this month, the 2000-year-old marble puzzle made of several inscribed fragments has been physically pieced together at the museum by Giuseppe Camodeca, professor of Roman history and Latin epigraphy at the
Source: Discovery News
Mar 25, 2011
Creationists have claimed this petroglyph was proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.
Dinosaur or mud stain? An ancient cave drawing high on a rock formation in southeastern Utah has stirred a skirmish of sorts between creationists who believe it's proof that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and scientists who say no way.
A new research paper out on the subject probably won't change too many minds, but it is giving food for thought to those who wonder what the f
Source: CBS
Mar 25, 2011
A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs.
Except for the brain, all of the skull's soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East c
Source: David A. Walsh at HNN
Mar 25, 2011
[David A. Walsh is the associate editor of HNN.]MARCH 28 UPDATEMARCH 29 UPDATEMARCH 30 UPDATEThe Wisconsin Republican Party is filing legal documents to gain access to the personal emails of William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and president-elect of th
Source: BBC
Mar 25, 2011
The world's oldest twins have been shown a 100-year-old census with their names on it.
Farmer's daughters Ena Pugh and Lily Millward were just one when their parents completed the questionnaire in 1911.
The sisters, from Powys, were named the oldest twins in the world by Guinness World Records in November.
Not many people are able to see their own names on the census record as they are kept confidential for 100 years.
The sisters were shown the
Source: BBC
Mar 25, 2011
Edinburgh's Napier University has sold its Craighouse campus to a group of developers who plan to turn the site over to residential use.
The redevelopment plans include the restoration of the Morningside campus's seven listed buildings, as well as new homes designed to complement the existing buildings and landscape.
The 51-acre site dates back to the 12th Century and used to be an asylum....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 25, 2011
Two Polish children have been killed by an explosion of munitions left over from the bitter battles of the Second World War.
The two, brother and sister, were caught in the blast as they played in a ditch in eastern Poland. The 10-year-old boy was killed on the scene while his nine-year-old sister died later in hospital.
Poland is littered with unexploded munitions left over far from the huge battles played out across the country during the Second World War, but fatal
Source: Prague Daily Monitor
Mar 25, 2011
A son of wartime SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, deputy Reichs-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, wants to restore the dilapidated chateau in Panenske Brezany near Prague where his family lived, the public Czech Radio reported yesterday.
The chateau may house a museum or a national resistance memorial, Panenske Brezany Mayor Libor Holik, told the radio.
After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, the son, Heider, kept living in the Panenske Brezany cha
Source: BBC News
Mar 25, 2011
Education Secretary Michael Gove has called for children to read more books, again noting that John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men dominates in many schools. Why should one American book be chosen by so many British teachers?
Michael Gove says children are reading too few books.
He says that some students only read two books in an academic year, and that a departmental survey suggests that "over 90% of schools teach Of Mice and Men to their GCSE students"
Source: BBC News
Mar 25, 2011
The long-held theory of how humans first populated the Americas may have been well and truly broken.
Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of stone tools that predate the technology widely assumed to have been carried by the first settlers.
The discoveries in Texas are seen as compelling evidence that the so-called Clovis culture does not represent America's original immigrants.
Details of the 15,500-year-old finds are reported in Science magazine.
Source: BBC News
Mar 25, 2011
Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, best known for such plays as Talley's Folly and Burn This, has died aged 73.
The writer passed away at a New Jersey hospital on Wednesday after a long illness, his agent said.
Wilson wrote 17 full-length plays and more than 30 one-acts.
He was awarded the Pulitzer in 1980 for Talley's Folly, part of a trilogy of plays about several generations of a Missouri family.
He died on the eve of a new st
