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)
Feb 11, 2011
Oberleutnant Gunther Pluschow was the sole enemy servicemen to make it off the British mainland after breaking out of a PoW camp in Derbyshire, it can be revealed.
The airman displayed incredible effort and determination and enjoyed amazing good fortune during his daring escape in the summer of 1915.
After hoodwinking the authorities, changing his appearance and swimming across the Thames Estuary, Pluschow stowed away on a Dutch steamer ship at Tilbury doc
Source: The China Beat (Blog)
Feb 11, 2011
Have you ever wondered how you might have fared as an opium trader in the early decades of the nineteenth century? Maybe not . . . but now you can try your hand at the trade nevertheless. UC Irvine grad student Christopher Heselton alerted us to this opportunity by sending along a link to High Tea, available free online from Armor Games. Players are given a tea order that they have to meet by a certain deadline, but
Source: Fox News
Feb 11, 2011
...Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript is among literature's great mysteries. The book of aging parchment is written in alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, and arranged into what appear to be words and sentences -- except they don't resemble anything written or read by human beings....
"Is it a code, a cipher of some kind?" asked Greg Hodgins, a physicist
Source: Progress-Index.com
Feb 11, 2011
PETERSBURG - National Park Rangers asked for assistance from local and State Police Thursday after serving a search warrant on a home in the city and finding a potentially live, Civil War-era, unexploded artillery shell.
The shell was discovered Thursday at around 1 p.m. after Park Rangers executed a search warrant on the home in the 1800 block of Oakland Street as part of a criminal investigation.
"Due to the dangers involved, when the shell was discovered we call
Source: WBRi Washington Bangla Radio
Feb 11, 2011
New York, Feb 11 (IBNS): The United Nations held a special ceremony on Thursday to pay homage to the six million Jews and countless others slaughtered in the Nazi death camps of the Second World War, stressing that the drive to prevent a repetition of such horror was one of the reasons the Organization was founded.
The ceremony, originally scheduled for Jan 27, the annual Holocaust memorial day, was delayed by a heavy snow storm in New York.
“Let us remember: the United
Source: AP
Feb 11, 2011
A fierce sperm whale sank the first whaling ship under George Pollard's command and inspired the classic American novel "Moby-Dick". A mere two years later, a second whaler captained by Pollard struck a coral reef during a night storm and sank in shallow water.
Marine archaeologists scouring remote atolls 600 miles northwest of Honolulu have found the wreck site of Pollard's second vessel — the Two Brothers — which went down in 1823.
Most of the wooden Nantuck
Source: BBC News
Feb 11, 2011
An El Salvadorean immigrant has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 2001 murder of US intern Chandra Levy.
Ingmar Guandique was convicted of first-degree murder last November in the killing of Ms Levy, 24.
Her remains were found in 2002 in Rock Creek Park in Washington DC more than a year after she disappeared.
The case claimed the career of politician Gary Condit, once a suspect in the murder case, to whom Ms Levy was romantically linked.
Source: Fox News
Feb 11, 2011
A fallen World War II airman from Green Bay is getting a major honor from the military this winter. Some of his remains and those of his crew-mates who crashed on Papua New Guinea in 1943 will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
A sister of one of those airmen, Joyce Clark, says she still fights back tears when she talks about her late brother. She was only 15 when Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Robert Streckenbach Jr.'s plane went missing. But it wasn't until 2009, when she was 81, t
Source: Yale News
Feb 11, 2011
Yale and the leader of the Peruvian National University of San Antonio Abad in Cusco will sign an agreement today outlining the future of Inca artifacts whose 100-year stay at Yale is quickly coming to a close.
Rector Victor Aguilar will join University President Richard Levin at 11:30 a.m. in Woodbridge Hall to sign an agreement about housing the artifacts at a new collaborative center at the Peruvian university. Vice President and General Counsel Dorothy Robinson said in an e-mail
Source: BBC
Feb 11, 2011
The war crimes trial of Liberia's former President Charles Taylor has been extended after judges said they would decide on a defence appeal.
Friday was due to be the last day of the trial, which began in 2007.
But defence lawyer Courtenay Griffiths stormed out of court this week after judges refused to accept the late submission of a document.
Mr Taylor denies 11 counts - including murder, rape, and using child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 11, 2011
Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, could have as much as $400 million hidden away out of reach of prosecutors, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.
US officials were told that if Mr Taylor is found guilty of war crimes, the international court in The Hague might only be able to recover a fraction of his wealth.
On Friday judges in The Hague adjourned indefinitely the three-year-old trial of Mr Taylor on charges of arming rebels who killed and maimed S
Source: Lee P. Ruddin
Feb 11, 2011
As Americans mark the Civil War Sesquicentennial, historians are fighting a battle over the reputation of the nation’s sixteenth president.
Featuring leading historians such as Eric Foner, Jay Sexton, and Lerone Bennett, JR., Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner? unearths another Lincoln: a politician rather than a statesman; a pragmatist as opposed to a visionary; and a war criminal instead of a war leader.
The Lincoln presidency was previously considered beyond scholarly
Source: NYT
Feb 11, 2011
HONOLULU — In the annals of the sea, there were few sailors whose luck was worse than George Pollard Jr.’s.
Pollard, you see, was the captain of the Essex, the doomed Nantucket whaler whose demise, in 1820, came in a most unbelievable fashion: it was attacked and sunk by an angry sperm whale, an event that inspired Herman Melville to write “Moby-Dick.”
Unlike the tale of Ahab and Ishmael, however, Pollard’s story didn’t end there: After the Essex sank, Pollard and his c
Source: BBC
Feb 10, 2011
New fossil evidence seems to confirm that a key ancestor of ours could walk upright consistently - one of the major advances in human evolution.
The evidence comes in the form of a 3.2 million-year-old bone that was found at Hadar, Ethiopia.
Its shape indicates the diminutive, human-like species Australopithecus afarensis had arches in its feet.
Arched feet, the discovery team tells the journal Science, are critical for walking the way modern humans do....
Source: CNN
Feb 10, 2011
Albert Einstein made many contributions to modern science, but it's the videos, bobblehead dolls and Halloween masks using his image that continue to generate millions of dollars long after his death.
But his granddaughter, Evelyn, said she hasn't received a dime from the marketing and sales of Einstein merchandise, while others have profited.
Her grandfather, the German-born physicist who formulated the general theory of relativity, bequeathed the literary rights for
Source: CNN
Feb 10, 2011
The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday identified remains discovered in the South Pacific seven years ago as those of 11 airmen who had been missing since World War II.
The remains of Army Air Force Tech. Sgt. Charles A. Bode of Baltimore are to be buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery. Bode was 23 when he was declared missing. A second burial service for the remaining 10 servicemen is scheduled to take place at the same site March 24.
The 11 servicemen had b
Source: WaPo
Feb 10, 2011
The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday unveiled a new stamp commemorating Ronald Reagan, just days after what would have been the 40th president's 100th birthday.
The stamp is affixed with the mail agency's new "Forever" price denomination. Reagan was previously honored with stamps in 2005 and 2006....
Source: NYT
Feb 10, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday recognized 28 men who died when their cold war radar station collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean 50 years ago.
A storm snapped the legs of the platform holding the radar station, known as Texas Tower No. 4, which had already been pummeled by bad weather including a hurricane. Fourteen airmen and 14 civilian contractors died when the tower crashed into frigid waters 85 miles southeast of New York City; only two of the bodies were found.
Source: Huffington Post
Feb 10, 2011
AUSTIN — Declaring that there are "no sacred cows" in state government, Gov. Rick Perry outlined proposals to suspend two state agencies and consolidate others while renewing his call for lawmakers to balance the state budget without new or increased taxes as they confront a multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall....
Perry called for lawmakers to suspend "non-critical" entities like the State Historical Commission or the Commission on the Arts until the economy im
Source: AP
Feb 10, 2011
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- A fight is brewing in Mississippi over a proposal to issue specialty license plates honoring Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which it calls the "War Between the States." The group proposes a different design each year between now and 2015
