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
Mar 7, 2011
A landmark documentary about the Holocaust is to be shown on a satellite TV channel which broadcasts into Iran.
Claude Lanzmann's 1985 film Shoah is to be dubbed into Farsi and shown from Monday on the private Pars channel, which broadcasts from Los Angeles.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as a myth and has called for an end to the Israeli state.
Satellite TV dishes are illegal in Iran but enforcement is patchy.
Source: BBC
Mar 7, 2011
A farmer who became a millionaire when a Roman helmet found on his land sold for £2m, says the windfall has not changed his way of life.
Eric Robinson took half of the cash while two metal detector enthusiasts who found the helmet at Crosby Garret, Cumbria, took the rest.
Mr Robinson said his only major expenditure had been the purchase of homes for his two daughters.
A mystery bidder bought the helmet at Christie's in London in October.
The p
Source: NYT
Mar 7, 2011
SINGAPORE — For more than a decade, archaeologists and historians have been studying the contents of a ninth-century Arab dhow that was discovered in 1998 off Indonesia’s Belitung Island. The sea-cucumber divers who found the wreck had no idea it eventually would be considered one of the most important maritime discoveries of the late 20th century.
The dhow was carrying a rich cargo — 60,000 ceramic pieces and an array of gold and silver works — and its discovery has confirmed how s
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Mar 7, 2011
In grainy black and white photographs, it's the way the Wild West really was.
From hunting, mining and wagon trains to white settlers mixing with native American Indians, life on the frontier is captured movingly by cameraman John C.H. Grabill.
Between 1887 and 1892 he sent 188 photographs to the Library of Congress for copyright protection. Most of his work centred on the then rowdy town of Deadwood in South Dakota.
The famous and the infamous passed throu
Source: NPR
Mar 6, 2011
South Carolina claims Andrew Jackson as its only president. But wait — on the grounds of the North Carolina capitol, a bronze statue of Jackson sits with two others as "Presidents North Carolina Gave the Nation."
For a century, the two Carolinas have quarreled over which can claim to be the birthplace of the seventh American president.
Dueling monuments sit within miles of each other south of Charlotte, N.C. For decades, one high school in Lancaster County, S.
Source: NYT
Mar 6, 2011
...Colonel Qaddafi has... built a persona, in particular as a revolutionary still tilting at distant colonial powers, that in some ways resonates with Libyans who remember their bitter experiences under Italian rule. His personal mythology has helped him stay on top of a fractious, tribal and deeply divided society for longer than any other living leader in North Africa or the Middle East.
“He may have been mad,” said Prof. Diederick Vandewalle, of Dartmouth, a Libya specialist. “Bu
Source: WaPo
Mar 6, 2011
When the remains of a Vietnam War soldier buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified in 1998 using DNA, Pentagon officials proudly said that the days of interring service members as "Unknown" could well be over.
But now, for the first time in decades, the cemetery has multiple "unknowns" to bury - and it has itself to blame.
Criminal investigators looking into how eight sets of cremated remains ended up crowdin
Source: BBC News
Mar 6, 2011
Winchester Cathedral has opened its first addition in 500 years.
A purpose-built extension has been attached to the eastern corner of the existing building, which is the longest medieval cathedral in Europe.
It took the cathedral's stonemasons a year to construct the limestone attachment, which will provide storage, a new boiler and its first toilets.
The £820,000 needed for the work was raised by the Friends of Winchester Cathedral.
The buildi
Source: Past Horizons
Mar 6, 2011
Excavations have taken place at the National Trust for Scotland’s site at Bannockburn to see if there are any medieval finds from the famous 1314 battle in which the Scots led by Robert Bruce won a decisive victory over the English.
Archaeologists have investigated areas which are due to be planted with new trees. The planting is part of the advance landscaping works for a £5m joint project between the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland which aims to revamp the visito
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2011
One of India's most historic landmarks is to be digitally recorded by a group of Scottish experts in an effort to preserve its every detail.
The team, from Glasgow School of Art and Historic Scotland, will scan the Rani Ki Vav Stepwell in Gujarat.
The site, which dates back to 1050, is made up of decorated stepped terraces descending into the ground.
The project is part of a global programme by the design team to record sites of historical significance.
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2011
A rare original King James Bible has been discovered on a shelf in a Wiltshire church.
The discovery was made by residents researching the history of St Laurence Church in Hilmarton, near Calne.
Geoff Procter, a member of the parochial church council, said they read about a "fine chained Bible in a glass case" at the church.
They then made the link with a Bible that had been sitting on a shelf at the church for a number of years....
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2011
"Phineas Gage had a hole in his head, and ev'ryone knew that he oughta be dead. Was it fate or blind luck, though it never came clear, kept keepin' on year after year…"
That song by banjo man Dan Lindner probably sounds like an outlandish myth, an old wives' tale passed around a small town.
But incredibly, his jaunty tune about Phineas Gage is true.
He did have a hole in his head, and against all the conceivable odds, he should have been dead. Bu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2011
Alberto Granado, the travel companion of leftist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara on their famed 1950s motorcycle trip through South America, died Saturday in Cuba, official media reported.
Mr Granado was a doctor and Guevara a medical student when they set out on their eight-month odyssey.
They left Buenos Aires in December 1951 and traveled through much of South America, where they witnessed poverty of local communities, lack of access to medical care,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2011
As Ukraine prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next month, its legacy remains as divisive as ever, writes Andrew Osborn.
Now 60 and the head of an organisation representing 450,000 people affected by the tragedy, Mr Andreyev's pessimism is understandable.
Proponents of nuclear energy, however, claim the fallout from Chernobyl was actually not as bad as first thought and pin the blame on shoddy Soviet management practices.
Safet
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2011
Argentines are being offered the chance to secure a final resting place next to the tomb of Eva Peron – if they have nearly £200,000 to spare.
Potential buyers can look forward to the prospect of up to 20 family members being interred in the mausoleum next to the black marbled monument which houses her remains.
Despite broken marble interiors and swarms of insects nearby, Damian Sabelli is asking Argentine patriots to pay ten times the amount that a tomb of similar si
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2011
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction, Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, is going on display show in the UK for the first time.
The 1932 painting, which sold at Christie's in New York last May for a world record price of $106.5 million (£65.5 million), will be displayed from Monday morning at the Tate Modern on London's South Bank.
The painting, which has been lent to the gallery by a private collector, will be on display in a new Pablo Picasso room in
Source: CNN
Mar 6, 2011
The last American veteran of World War I to die should lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol, his daughter said after lawmakers appeared to block the suggestion.
Buckles died on February 27, his family said, less than a month after his 110th birthday.
Late in his life, he became a public advocate for a national World War I memorial in Washington comparable to those for veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
He will receive an honors burial at Arlington Nat
Source: NYT
Mar 6, 2011
DHAKA, Bangladesh — In the last days of the bloody war that created this nation out of the eastern half of Pakistan in 1971, a gang of men abducted Dr. Alim Chowdhury, an eye surgeon and independence activist, from his home. Three days later, his battered body was found in a mass grave, his eyes gouged from his head.
His killers, members of a pro-Pakistan militia, were never punished. Moulana Abdul Mannan, the man who confessed to orchestrating the killing, according to a governmen
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2011
A precious 700-year-old manuscript will be on view at Bangor Cathedral for one day when a service is held to celebrate its return to the city.
The Bangor Pontifical is a 14th Century bishop's manuscript, containing blessings and text of plainchant.
It has recently been conserved and rebound, but will now be kept for safety in Bangor University's archive.
A service on Sunday will include several plainchant melodies newly transcribed from the document.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2011
Six thousand people were evacuated from their homes in the outskirts of Paris on Sunday because of an unexploded RAF bomb dropped during a Second World War raid.
The 1000lbs device – half of which was made of high explosive – was found on land in France owned by carmaker Renault in Boulogne-Billancourt.
It was originally dropped 69 years ago in a hugely successful mission involving a then record 223 aircraft who did everything possible to avoid killing civilians.
