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: NYT
Jan 17, 2011
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — One year after Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, the country grappled on Monday to absorb yet another potentially destabilizing blow: the surprising return of the former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, whose emergence from nearly a quarter-century in exile prompted condemnations from around the world and ignited new fears of conflict.
Mr. Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, returned to Haiti 24 years and 11 months after h
Source: BBC News
Jan 17, 2011
In the spring of 1941, a top secret plot was being hatched that, if successful, would have changed the face of Europe.
It was a plan to kidnap Adolf Hitler at the aerodrome in Lympne in Kent.
Hitler was to be taken alive from the plane after a rapid descent over The Channel before being bundled into the back of a car and driven to London.
Evidence of the plan can be found in official RAF documents kept at the National Archives in Kew.
The story
Source: CBS News (video)
Jan 17, 2011
When you think of Martin Luther King Jr.'s formative years, you think may think of Atlanta, where he grew up and attended Morehouse College. You may think of Montgomery, Ala., where he got his first pastor job and led the bus boycott. But who would ever think of Simsbury, Conn.?
"It seemed like it wasn't possible that he would come to, of all places, this town," said Richard Curtiss.
Curtiss is a history teacher at Simsbury High School. Last summer h
Source: BBC
Jan 17, 2011
An 18th Century Chinese vase is bought by a Chinese buyer at a small suburban auction house in London for £43m ($66m), more than £53m after fees and commission.
The sale price is 40 times the pre-sale estimate.
In Hong Kong a local buyer pays nearly $17m dollars for a pair of 5ft-high enamel cranes - believed to be a gift from an 18th Century Chinese emperor to his son.
Another Hong Kong-based collector pays $32m for an 18th Century Chinese floral vase.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 17, 2011
A long-running probe into the murders of the last Russian Tsar and his family has closed after failing to find evidence that Lenin ordered the killings, the chief investigator has said
Historians and archivists have found no evidence that the Bolshevik leader or regional chief Yakov Sverdlov gave permission for the family to be shot in 1918, Vladimir Solovyov, Russia's chief investigator, told the Izvestia newspaper.
Russia has now closed a criminal probe aimed at nam
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 17, 2011
The French Catholic nun who credits the late Pope John Paul with curing her of Parkinson's disease said on Monday her sudden recovery came just as she was about to quit working because of her ailment.
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 49, said she woke up in June 2005, two months after the Polish-born pope had died, suddenly cured of the disease she had suffered from for four years.
John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict, approved a decree last Friday declaring her healing a m
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 17, 2011
Tony Blair misled Parliament by claiming that Britain could legally attack Iraq in the face of United Nations opposition despite being given clear advice to the contrary, new evidence suggests.
In evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Lord Goldsmith, who at the time was the government’s top legal adviser, disclosed that he was “uncomfortable” about statements made by the then-prime minister in the run up to the 2003 invasion.
Two months before the war began, in a meeting at N
Source: AP
Jan 17, 2011
The prosecutor of the U.N. tribunal set up to bring to justice the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri filed the first indictment in the case Monday, the court announced.
Details of suspects named in the indictment and the charges against them were not released.
Hariri was killed along with 22 other people by a huge truck bomb blast on Feb. 14, 2005, on Beirut's Mediterranean sea front....
Source: Fox News
Jan 17, 2011
Authorities say a thief stole eight bronze plaques -- totaling $65,000 -- from a foreign war memorial, making off with the only official list of all the deceased veterans who belonged to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6919 in Morningside, Md.
Three of the plaques bore the faces and names of the soldiers for whom the Post was named, the station reports. Five other plaques, weighing about 120 pounds each, listed the names of the deceased veterans who belonged to the Post. The list
Source: SF Chronicle
Jan 17, 2011
Silicon Valley now has a museum dedicated to the human penchant for making objects to augment our already remarkable brains, in a continuum from the dawn of the abacus to the continuing evolution of the Internet.
"If you love baseball, you have Cooperstown; if you love art, you have the Louvre," said John Hollar, president of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
"Now if you love computing, you have a place to go," said Hollar, who presided o
Source: The Australian
Jan 17, 2011
THE toll of World War II on Winston Churchill's health has been revealed in notes compiled by the former British prime minister's physician.
The previously confidential records show a leader whose work deteriorated and whose character suffered because of years of stress that left him with "an intolerance of criticism and bad temper".
Churchill's decline was exacerbated because he "never nursed his physique" and failed to "listen to advice",
Source: BBC News
Jan 17, 2011
Prince William was asked to walk behind the coffin of Princess Diana because of fears the Prince of Wales might be attacked, Alastair Campbell says.
Mr Campbell, former Downing Street director of communications, makes the claim in extracts from his diaries published in the Guardian.
He said Prince Charles's press secretary was sent to ask William to walk with his father.
Clarence House said it would not be commenting on Mr Campbell's claims.
Mr
Source: BBC News
Jan 17, 2011
The impact of the King James Bible, which was published 400 years ago, is still being felt in the way we speak and write, says Stephen Tomkins.
No other book, or indeed any piece of culture, seems to have influenced the English language as much as the King James Bible. Its turns of phrase have permeated the everyday language of English speakers, whether or not they've ever opened a copy.
The Sun says Aston Villa "refused to give up the ghost". Wendy Richard ca
Source: Lee P Ruddin
Jan 17, 2011
The results of the UK American Presidency Survey have been released.
Rating presidential performance across five categories, 47 UK-based, US specialists ranked Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) first and James Buchanan (1857-1861) 40th. George W. Bush (2001-2009) is in 31st place, putting him in the bottom 10.
The UK Survey of US Presidents was conducted by the United States Presidency Centre of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, and
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2011
It was rolled up among other yellowed maps and prints that came off a delivery truck at the Brooklyn Historical Society’s stately office near the East River. Carolyn Hansen, the society’s map cataloguer, began to gently unfurl the canvas.
“You could hear it rip,” said Ms. Hansen, 29, still cringing at the memory. She stopped pulling. But enough of the map, browned with age and dry and crisp as a stale chip, was open to reveal a name: Ratzer.
“We have a Ratzer map,” sai
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2011
MEXICO CITY — Haiti’s political crisis took a stunning turn on Sunday when Jean-Claude Duvalier, the dictator known as Baby Doc who was overthrown in 1986, arrived unexpectedly in the capital from exile in France.
Haitian television and radio stations reported that Mr. Duvalier, dressed in a blue suit, landed shortly after 6 p.m. in Port-au-Prince on an Air France flight and told reporters that he had simply come to help Haiti, moved by images of the first anniversary of the earthq
Source: Fox2Now (St. Louis)
Jan 16, 2011
DOWNTOWN ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI-FOX2now.com) —
It was a Civil War era reenactment like St. Louis had never seen: a slave sale on the steps of the Old Courthouse. It was part of a Lindenwood University history professor's mission to remember the overlooked figures in St. Louis history. The ugly chapter of that history came alive Saturday.
Hundreds showed up, snapping photos, rolling video of an event that seemed very real. About 50 reenactors wore the dress of the day: slaves, sl
Source: USA Today
Jan 16, 2011
One hundred years ago, the great African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois famously wrote, "The problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line."
History proved DuBois correct. His century saw the struggles against, and ultimately the victory over, systems that separated and subjugated people based on race — from colonialism in India, to Jim Crow in the U.S., to apartheid in South Africa.
No American did more than Martin Luther King Jr. — whom A
Source: National Parks Traveler
Jan 16, 2011
Bibliographies and maps focused on the activities of black soldiers in the American West were produced in the initial phases of the Warriors Project, a university/government partnership designed to involve African American and Native American students in the exploration and documenting of their "shared history" in the frontier West. The National Park Service has supported this worthy endeavor with funding, training, and other support. A prime example of the agency's involvement is the
Source: CHE
Jan 16, 2011
If you ever catch Timothy J. Johnson in a deerstalker hat, it's more likely to be blaze orange than the subdued houndstooth associated with Sherlock Holmes. The game Mr. Johnson stalks really is deer, not London's criminal element. As the recently appointed E.W. McDiarmid curator of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries, though, the native Minnesotan has developed a close bond with the fictional London detective and his world.
Mr. Johnson has charg
