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
Mar 10, 2011
Life.com has obtained a set of newly released photos from the personal albums of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's longtime girlfriend and, in their final hours, wife.
The photos "reveal new dimensions" of the woman who married Hitler as the Russian army closed in on his Berlin bunker and then committed suicide with him a day later. He was 56. She was 33.
The 30 photos cover almost all of Braun's life, from images of her as a toddler and schoolgirl to her spending tim
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2011
Nelson Mandela's Aids charity 46664 is to launch an international fashion label, the former South African president's foundation has announced.
It will be called 46664 Apparel after the number Mr Mandela wore in jail.
Profits will go to the charity and the label is also intended to boost South Africa's clothing industry, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said.
The anti-apartheid icon spent 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa's first black president
Source: Delmarva.com
Mar 9, 2011
Almost every Virginia county has a monument to Confederate war dead, and most of them are located in the county seat, at or near the courthouse.
Accomack County has a Confederate monument, but it is not at the county seat. It stands, instead, six miles from the courthouse in a town that did not exist during the Civil War -- a town that was, in fact, founded by Yankees.
This curious circumstance is the result of two movements, one national, the other local....
Source: London SE-1
Mar 9, 2011
Plans to install girders from the ruins of New York's World Trader Center as an artwork in Potters Fields Park to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks have been put on hold amid mounting controversy.
Last month we reported on a highly charged consultation meeting where historian Simon Schama made the case for the artwork and families of Britons who died in the twin towers voiced their opposition to the public display of the wreckage in which their loved ones' remai
Source: News.az
Mar 9, 2011
Archaeologists have unearthed a large 12th-13th century kiln for firing bricks in Azerbaijan's second city, Ganja.
"We have found four tiers to the kiln and there may be even more," Arif Mammadov, head of the Ganja archaeological expedition, told 1news.az.
"Archaeological digs need to continue if we are to find more. I would like to stress that this is the largest kiln found in Azerbaijani territory," Mammadov said....
Source: WSJ
Mar 9, 2011
RICHMOND – When you think of wars fought in Virginia, what comes to mind?
Probably the Civil War: During the war that began 150 years ago, most of the battles were waged and more than 100,000 soldiers were killed in Virginia.
Or maybe the American Revolution: Virginians led the drive for independence in 1776, and Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in the war’s last major battle.
But Virginia state officials want you to think of a different conflict – t
Source: Reuters
Mar 9, 2011
Smoking was as bad for the Victorians as it is for anyone today, but back in those days it seems it did far more damage to their teeth. In the mid-19th century, prior to the invention of the cigarette, when tobacco was copiously consumed through clay pipes, smoking often resulted in nasty dental disfigurement.
A Museum of London study of skeletal remains excavated from a Victorian cemetery in Whitechapel, east London, found most people had "notches" in at least two, and of
Source: Discovery News
Mar 9, 2011
Concerned archaeologists called today on Egypt’s Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to return police to archaeological sites. The move is required to put an end to illegal excavations and wild looting of storehouses and tombs.
Following the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak last month, a new unprecedented wave of looting and vandalism took place at various sites in Egypt.
In the past few weeks, looters have removed inscribed blocks from tombs at Saqqara, Giza and
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2011
People in Tredegar are being urged to attend a "heritage summit" to discuss how to save the town's crumbling listed and historically significant buildings.
The National Coal Board Club and the old general hospital building are among those seen at risk.
Organisers of Wednesday's meeting say the hope it will galvanise the town into drawing up an action plan.
The town was the home of Aneurin Bevan, who created the National Health Service in 1948.
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2011
Two Bronze Age burial pots containing human remains have been found at the base of a standing stone in Angus.
Archaeologists excavated the ground around the Carlinwell Stone at Airlie, near Kirriemuir, after it fell over earlier in the winter.
Both pots - known as collared urns - could be up to 4,000 years old and were typically used in early Bronze age cremation burials.
The 7ft (2.1m) high monolith will be re-erected on Friday....
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2011
London's Natural History Museum (NHM) will return the skeletal remains of 138 indigenous people taken from the Torres Strait Islands in the 19th Century.
Early explorers, missionaries, and others had collected the body parts for all manner of reasons, including as curios.
Repatriation follows a long campaign by indigenous leaders who regarded the removal as an affront to local customs.
The souls of the dead had not been able to rest, the islanders said....
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2011
Google is to donate $1.25m (£770,000) to a project that aims to create an archive of Nelson Mandela's life.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory is digitising photographs, letters and other documents relating to the former South African president.
A similar project, chronicling the life of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, will also receive $1.25m.
The money will be used to help collect documents and to ensure that poor, rural communities can access them.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 9, 2011
A Republican congressman who has convened a public inquiry into radical Islam in the United States has been accused of staging a "show trial" reminiscent of the McCarthy-era hunt for communist sympathisers.
Representative Peter King, who heads the House homeland security committee, has come under withering criticism for the hearings, which begin today against a backdrop of increased terror plots by American Muslims.
Protesters and critics ranging from Islami
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2011
A federal grand jury has indicted a 20-year-old Texas college student from Saudi Arabia on a single count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
The grand jury in Lubbock handed up its indictment Wednesday against Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari.
Prosecutors say Aldawsari was attempting to build a bomb with components bought online and that he was mulling plans to attack various sites, including dams, nuclear plants and the Dallas home of former President George W. B
Source: CNN
Mar 9, 2011
The Dalai Lama announced Thursday his plan to retire as political head of the exiled movement, according to his website.
He said he will formally propose amendments to the Charter for Tibetans in Exile to make the change at the upcoming session of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile that begins Monday. If the changes are made, leadership of the group would be passed to an elected leader.
The Dalai Lama told CNN in October that he would like to retire at some point....
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2011
David Broder, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Washington Post political columnist whose even-handed treatment of Democrats and Republicans set him apart from the ideological warriors on the nation's op-ed pages, died Wednesday. He was 81.
Post officials said Broder died of complications from diabetes.
Broder, an Illinois native, was familiar to television viewers as a frequent panelist on NBC's "Meet the Press" Program. He appeared on the program more than 400 time
Source: NYT
Mar 9, 2011
WASHINGTON — For Representative Peter T. King, as he seizes the national spotlight this week with a hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims, it is the most awkward of résumé entries. Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army.
“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British
Source: LiveScience
Mar 8, 2011
Almost 2,000 years ago, 19 Roman soldiers rushed into a cramped underground tunnel, prepared to defend the Roman-held Syrian city of Dura-Europos from an army of Persians digging to undermine the city's mudbrick walls. But instead of Persian soldiers, the Romans met with a wall of noxious black smoke that turned to acid in their lungs. Their crystal-pommeled swords were no match for this weapon; the Romans choked and died in moments, many with their last pay of coins still slung in purses on th
Source: Culpepper Star-Exponent (VA)
Mar 8, 2011
B.B. Mitchell, first president of the Brandy Station Foundation and the driving force behind extensive Civil War land preservation efforts in eastern Culpeper County, died Friday of congestive heart failure. He was 75.
Mitchell, who went simply by the first name “B,” was a running back on the 1952 undefeated football team at Culpeper County High School who attended Virginia Tech on a track scholarship but injured his knee the spring of his freshman year.
He served two y
Source: Medieval News
Mar 8, 2011
A doctoral student at Durham University in England has discovered the existence of the oldest known copies of books of the Ethiopic Old Testament. The books date back to the early sixth century.
Ted Erho, a postgraduate student in the Department of Theology and Religion, made the find while examining microfilms of classical Ethiopic (Ge’ez) manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John’s University in Minnesota.
Working with previously-unca
