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: Newsweek
Jan 30, 2011
This article is being written on a brand-new MacBook Air. It is a gorgeous thing, all crisp edges, sleek surfaces, and continuous flow. In recent days, as pundits have speculated about the future of Apple under an ailing Steve Jobs, one constant has been praise for his eye for design—and concern for what the company might become without it. Since Jobs’s return to Apple in 1997, his designers have won all sorts of awards.
But anyone committed to cutting-edge contemporary art and desi
Source: WaPo
Jan 30, 2011
The first map of the United States, created in 1784, has been purchased for the record price of $1.8 million by Washington philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who is lending it to the Library of Congress.
The Abel Buell map, named after the Connecticut cartographer who created it, has been a missing link in the library's vast collection of maps.
Rubenstein, the co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, bought the map at an auction at Christie's in December.
Source: Time.com
Jan 30, 2011
He had just changed his name and undergone plastic surgery to alter his eyes. All he wanted was to be left alone.
On May 30, 1942, Fred Korematsu was waiting for his girlfriend on a street corner in San Leandro, Calif., a small city near San Francisco. That day was just like any other day, except that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier, and anti-Japanese sentiment had reached a frenzy in the U.S. Korematsu, an American-born citizen of Japanese descent, was living in
Source: Ria Novosti
Jan 30, 2011
Ukrainian communists are collecting funds to restore a statue to Josef Stalin, which was blown up in the Ukrainian city of Zaporzhe on New Year's Eve, UNIAN news agency said.
"[The communists] bring voluntary contributions to join the common cause initiated by the communists and veterans of Zaporzhe," the Communist party's regional committee in Bilopillia, in northeastern Ukraine, said....
Source: Oakland Free Press
Jan 30, 2011
No one has called for a holiday, but this weekend officially marks the birth of the automobile industry.
For the record, it was 125 years ago that an inventive German named Carl Benz applied for a patent from German officials on Jan. 29, 1886, for a vehicle driven by a small engine. “This marked the birth of the automobile. Mercedes-Benz has since had around 80,000 pioneering inventions patented,” the automaker notes on its website.
Moreover, while some historians might
Source: Washington Post
Jan 30, 2011
Archaeologists expressed deep concern on Sunday that many of Egypt's historical treasures were threatened by looters in the wake of the nation's uprising, while Egypt's top antiquities official said that all 24 national museums were now under protection of the Army and that damage to the main Cairo museum that shelters thousands of priceless artifacts appeared limited.
Officials in Egypt and American Egyptologists said they were worried, however, about reports of ongoing looting at
Source: AOL News
Jan 30, 2011
On a dusty patch of road just north of Los Angeles, one man's dream of honoring an era of cinema is about to become a reality.
Charlie Chaplin's bumbling, lovable "Little Tramp" character is arguably the most famous icon of the silent film era. Today, the Tramp remains popular all over the world. Chaplin first brought the character to life in 1914, helping launch the silent era. Interestingly, when Chaplin retired the character in 1936, the silent film era ended.
Bu
Source: Rianovosti (Russia)
Jan 30, 2011
Authorities in Vinnytsia, central Ukraine, have unveiled a plan to turn the remains of Hitler' Eastern Front military headquarters into a tourist attraction.
The museum is planned to be established by May 9, the anniversary of the Victory Day over Fascism.
"It is time to make the Wehrwolf headquarters a tourist destination, a memorial to the victims of fascism," the head of the local administration, Mykola Djiga was quoted by UNIAN news agency.
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Source: AP
Jan 30, 2011
Southern Sudan's referendum commission said Sunday that more than 99 percent of voters in the south opted to secede from the country's north in a vote held earlier this month.
The announcement drew cheers from a crowd of thousands that gathered in Juba, the dusty capital of what may become the world's newest country.
The weeklong vote, held in early January and widely praised for being peaceful and for meeting international standards, was a condition of a 2005 peace ag
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 30, 2011
One of only seven surviving vessels which took part in the Normandy landings sank last night with one of its crew missing.
The Yarmouth Navigator, a former Navy minesweeper and patrol boat, was being moved to a new mooring after a campaign to save it which lasted several years.
Rescuers were searching for one missing person after three people were saved from the waters of Plymouth Sound shortly after 6.30pm.
A major search and rescue operation was launch
Source: AP
Jan 29, 2011
Ancient artifacts at Cairo's famed Egyptian Museum are safe from looters but could still be damaged by the potential collapse of a neighboring building gutted by fire, the head of the country's antiquities chief said Saturday.
The ruling party headquarters building next door to the museum was still in flames and billowing black smoke into the sky on Saturday, a day after protesters torched it during mass anti-government demonstrations.
"What scares me is that if th
Source: NYT
Jan 29, 2011
WASHINGTON — Hours before President Obama delivered his State of the Union address, a senior adviser to the president confided that his tone would be “self-consciously optimistic.” And so it was....
It was perhaps no accident that Mr. Obama took Lou Cannon’s biography of that other optimist and purveyor of American exceptionalism, Ronald Reagan, with him to Hawaii over Christmas. Or that one of the Washington wise men the president consulted recently was Kenneth M. Duberstein, a chi
Source: Star Telegram
Jan 29, 2011
Texas proudly cloaks itself in history, but one of the most momentous anniversaries in state history will pass this week without a whisper of official acknowledgment.
One hundred and fifty years ago, on Feb. 1, 1861, Texas seceded from the Union, joined the Confederacy and marched headlong into the Civil War.
Tuesday will be just one historic milepost among hundreds of big days over the next four years as the nation continues its struggle to understand -- and quarrels
Source: Salon
Jan 29, 2011
Would-be looters broke into Cairo's famed Egyptian Museum, ripping the heads off two mummies and damaging about 10 small artifacts before being caught and detained by soldiers, Egypt's antiquities chief said Saturday.
Zahi Hawass said the vandals did not manage to steal any of the museum's antiquities, and that the prized collection was now safe and under military guard.
With mass anti-government protests still roiling the country and unleashing chaos on the streets, f
Source: Boston Globe
Jan 29, 2011
PROVIDENCE, R.I.—The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society has announced the release of a booklet chronicling a Rhode Island black church's early years that was originally published in 1906.
The "History of the Olney Street Baptist Church," released this week by the society, is a 12-page historical record compiled by A.A. Wheeler, who served as the church historian and assistant superintendent of its Sunday school....
Source: BBC
Jan 29, 2011
New research suggests that the language Gulliver's Travels author Jonathan Swift used in a series of letters to two women reflects the way babies talk.
Dr Abigail Williams - of St Peter's, Oxford University - has studied the early 18th Century correspondence sent by Swift from London to the women in Dublin.
She said her son had helped solve some of the mysteries of Swift's text.
Dr Williams claims that the only way to understand Swift's letters was to read
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 29, 2011
Margaret Thatcher held secret meetings with a controversial Indian mystic soon after she became leader of the Tory opposition.
The Iron Lady, who was renowned for her no-nonsense direct approach, conversed with self-proclaimed faith healer and preacher Sri Chandraswamy in 1975 in her Commons office.
And the future Prime Minister was so impressed with his apparent powers that she agreed to his request to wear a special red dress and a battered talisman around her wrist
Source: CBC News
Jan 28, 2011
Nunavut archaeological sites threatened by climate change may be saved thanks to new high-tech equipment, says the territory's director of culture and heritage.
Doug Stenton said new 3D technology and a ground-penetrating radar system can be used to quickly map the surface and sub-surface, and could be used to deal with sites affected by coastal erosion and melting permafrost.
The University of Manitoba has received funding to buy the technology and plans to use it in t
Source: CBC
Jan 28, 2011
...Nunavut archaeological sites threatened by climate change may be saved thanks to new high-tech equipment, says the territory's director of culture and heritage.
Doug Stenton said new 3D technology and a ground-penetrating radar system can be used to quickly map the surface and sub-surface, and could be used to deal with sites affected by coastal erosion and melting permafrost.
The University of Manitoba has received funding to buy the technology and plans to use it i
Source: BBC News
Jan 28, 2011
A couple doing DIY have uncovered a 20ft (6m) high medieval mural of King Henry VIII on the wall of their home.
The house in Milverton, Somerset, was once home to Thomas Cranmer, Arch Deacon of Taunton in the 16th Century.
Angie Powell said: "When we saw the eyes appear out of the plaster it was a real moment."
Michael Liversidge, of Bristol University, said the discovery was "enormously significant, stunningly exciting and of national import
