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: NY Post
Mar 8, 2011
Auctioneers clearing out the historic Steinway Mansion have made a grisly discovery -- a voodoo doll and voodoo masks hidden in the fabled Astoria, N.Y., landmark.
Experts made the chilling find in the Queens mansion, which was home to the Steinway piano family until the 1920s, as they cleared the attic following the death of its last owner, Michael Halberian, who lived there for 82 years and died in December.
Halberian's children brought in auctioneer Michael Capo to s
Source: Medievalists.net
Mar 8, 2011
Researchers in Wales have digitally reconstructed the face of Owain Glyndŵr, the Welsh ruler who waged a revolt against English rule in the fifteenth-century. First revealed on the Welsh TV documentary The Face of Glyndŵr, it depicts a powerful-looking man with penetrating brown eyes, dark brown hair, a dark beard with hints of grey in it, a sharply-defined nose and battle scars along with a wart under one eye.
Produced by Wild Dream Films and the Welsh channel S4C
Source: BBC
Mar 8, 2011
Modern humans may have originated from southern Africa, an extensive genetic study has suggested.
Data showed that hunter-gatherer populations in the region had the greatest degree of genetic diversity, which is an indicator of longevity.
It says that the region was probably the best location for the origin of modern humans, challenging the view that we came from eastern Africa.
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
Source: LA Times
Mar 8, 2011
The house that some say inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write "The Great Gatsby" is doomed. It's slated to be razed and its property parceled up into new developments.
The once-grand home called Lands End has fallen into disrepair. But back in the day, the 25-room, 20,000-square-foot Colonial Revival mansion was home to parties attended by Winston Churchill, the Marx brothers, Dorothy Parker and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. According to local lore, Fitzgerald drank the
Source: LA Times
Mar 8, 2011
Reporting from Berkeley -- Harriet Elinor Smith was accustomed to anonymity. As lead editor for the "Autobiography of Mark Twain" and other Twain books, she has spent decades holed up with rare documents in a UC Berkeley office, fretting over commas and obscure references to 19th century personalities.
So Smith was stunned recently to be recognized by a fellow BART train passenger who had seen her on television, speaking about the astonishingly successful first volume of T
Source: WaPo
Mar 8, 2011
PHILADELPHIA -- A comic collector has been caught in Spider-Man's web, paying $1.1 million for a near-mint copy of "Amazing Fantasy" No. 15 that features the wall-crawler's debut.
The issue, first published in 1962, was sold Monday by a private seller to a private buyer, ComicConnect.com chief executive Stephen Fishler told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
It's not the highest price ever paid for a comic book, an honor that goes to "Action Comics" No
Source: WaPo
Mar 8, 2011
During the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Basim Elkarra was passing by an Islamic school in Sacramento when he did a double-take: The windows were covered with thousands of origami cranes - peace symbols that had been created and donated by Japanese Americans.
Amid the anger and suspicions being aimed at Muslims at that time, the show of support "was a powerful symbol that no one will ever forget," said Elkarra, a Muslim American community leader
Source: NYT
Mar 8, 2011
Condition: 27 years old, 150 million miles traveled, somewhat dinged but well maintained.
Price: $0.
Dealer preparation and destination charges: $28.8 million.
So, does anyone want to buy a used space shuttle?
Yes, it turns out. This old vehicle — the space shuttle Discovery — is an object of fervent desire for museums around of the country, which would love to add it or one of its mates, the Endeavour and the Atlantis, to their collections. (
Source: NYT
Mar 8, 2011
In 1932, as the Nazis rose to power in Germany, a Jewish librarian in Frankfurt published a catalog of 15,000 books he had painstakingly collected for decades.
It listed the key texts of a groundbreaking field called the Science of Judaism, in which scholars analyzed the religion’s philosophy and culture as they would study those of ancient Greece or Rome. The school of thought became the foundation for modern Jewish studies around the world.
In the tumult of war, great
Source: Discovery News
Mar 7, 2011
A married couple from Pompeii have been reunited with the recovery of a missing piece of a 2000-year-old marble puzzle made of several inscribed fragments.
Broken apart and buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., the pieces belonged to a tomb inscription.
They were unearthed in 1813 along the Via dei Sepolcri in Pompeii near a burial tomb known as "Tomb of the Marble Door."
Still under construction at the time of the eruption, the
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 7, 2011
It is a last-ditch effort to save a city built as a monument to modernity and hope but now threatened by neglect and the fierce demands of the global art market. Chandigarh, 180 miles north of Delhi, was built by Le Corbusier 60 years ago.
Since then, many of its finest buildings, recognised as modernist masterpieces, have been neglected. Recently, international art dealers have made substantial sums selling hundreds of chairs, tables, carvings and prints designed by Le Corbusier an
Source: AP
Mar 7, 2011
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The last surviving great-grandson of Ulysses S. Grant has died in a southwest Missouri home brimming with artifacts from the nation's 18th president and commander of the Union forces in the Civil War.
Ulysses S. Grant VI says his grandfather Ulysses S. Grant V died Wednesday at age 90 at his home near the town of Battlefield, named for its proximity to a Civil War clash....
Source: NYT
Mar 7, 2011
...There are certain rare syndromes in which the usual asymmetry of organs is reversed — I remember how disconcerting it was the first time I examined a child with dextrocardia, a heart on the right side, and heard the heart sounds in unexpected places. But when it comes to handedness, another basic human asymmetry, which reflects the structure and function of the brain, the reversed pattern is relatively common, and for all that, not easily understood.
Over the centuries, left-hand
Source: Discovery News
Mar 7, 2011
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius broke apart a tomb inscription for a husband and wife. Now the names have been joined again.
A married couple from Pompeii have been reunited with the recovery of a missing piece of a 2000-year-old marble puzzle made of several inscribed fragments.
Broken apart and buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., the pieces belonged to a tomb inscription.
They were unearthed in 1813 along the Via dei Sepolcri in Pompei
Source: Science Line
Mar 7, 2011
Archaeologists look into whether Neanderthals copied human tools or innovated their own designs.
Could a Neanderthal use a hammer? Maybe. But could he build one himself without imitating humans? The question of whether our close hominid cousins had the ability to innovate new kinds of tools, and not just imitate, is coming up in scientific circles as archaeologists re-evaluate old archaeological sites.
Two recent studies examined the possibility that Neanderthals create
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 7, 2011
The crime writer used face cream to restore the ivories discovered in the city of Nimrud by her archaeologist husband
Despite the best efforts of Agatha Christie and her pot of face cream, many of the ivory treasures just acquired by the British Museum from the Assyrian city of Nimrud are still scorched by the fire that brought one of the great palaces of the ancient world crashing down on top of them 2,600 years ago.
A fundraising appeal that brought in £750,000 in six
Source: NBC Bay Area
Mar 7, 2011
We're learning more about the people who lived here thousands of years ago. For one thing, they were slobs, leaving their stuff lying all over the place.
But a more important discovery indicates that settlers 13,000 years ago arrived from up north, not from back east. That's counter to prevailing theories about California's original first settlers.
A collection of relics was found near the Channel Islands by an archaeology team, and recently documented in the journal Sc
Source: Live Science
Mar 7, 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 the
Source: The Times of India
Mar 7, 2011
Archaeologists and historians, who have taken up excavation and study of skulls discovered in Annigeri near here have said that the manner in which the human skulls are neatly arranged indicates that it could be a case of mass beheading.
Director of the department of archaeology and museums R Gopal and historian M S Krisnamurthy, who paid a visit to the site along with Dharwad deputy commissioner Darpan Jain on Monday also termed it to be a rare find in the history of India's archa
Source: BBC
Mar 7, 2011
A new military headquarters in northern Sri Lanka has been built on the site of a Tamil Tiger graveyard earlier flattened by the army, it has emerged.
The construction has come in for sharp criticism.
The army says it was allocated the plot as government land and that it was unaware of "unhappiness" over the site.
The Tamil Tigers departed from Hindu traditions of cremation and built large graveyards which experts say was part of a cult of mart
