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: CNN
Dec 31, 2010
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico will not pardon legendary Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid in the death of a law enforcement officer more than a century ago, he said Friday.
Richardson made the announcement on ABC's "Good Morning America" the same day he leaves office.
The issue facing Richardson was whether one of his predecessors, Gov. Lew Wallace, promised about 130 years ago to pardon Billy the Kid -- known more formally as William H. Bonney -- for killin
Source: AP
Dec 31, 2010
– Archeologists at Jamestown have unearthed a trove of tobacco pipes personalized for a who's who of early 17th century colonial and British elites, underscoring the importance of tobacco to North America's first permanent English settlement.
The white clay pipes — actually, castoffs likely rejected during manufacturing — were crafted between 1608 and 1610 and bear the names of English politicians, social leaders, explorers, officers of the Virginia Company that financed the settlem
Dec 30, 2010
Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's president-elect, has invited to her inauguration 11 women with whom she shared a prison cell in the 1970s.
A spokesman for Ms Rousseff said that the women were militants fighting the dictatorship, as Ms Rousseff herself was.
She said on Thursday that all 11 have accepted the invitation for the Jan. 1 inauguration.
Ms Rousseff joined the anti-dictatorship Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard at the age of 19. For three years she he
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 30, 2010
A man who donated a kidney to his dying twin brother 56 years ago in the world's first successful organ transplant has died in the United States.
Ronald Lee Herrick died, aged 79, on Monday in the Augusta Rehabilitation Centre, a hospital in Maine, New England, following complications from heart surgery in October, his widow, Cynthia, said.
Herrick donated a kidney to his identical twin, Richard, in a pioneering operation on 23 December 1954....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 30, 2010
Margaret Thatcher urged the Pope to condemn the first hunger strike carried out by IRA prisoners in 1980 after John Paul II asked her resolve the "tragic" stand-off, secret papers show.
The pontiff had told the Prime Minister he was “disturbed” by the decision of seven terrorists held in the Maze to refuse food and wanted a peaceful solution.
But she twice wrote back explaining that making concessions to the Republican cause would be “utterly wrong”, and aske
Source: Civil War Librarian
Dec 30, 2010
Civil War Medical Museum To Manage Missing Soldiers Office, National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Press Release.
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) will open the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum this year at 437 7th St. NW, Washington. The General Services Administration (GSA), which owns the building, chose the Frederick, Md., non-profit museum whose mission is preserving and researching the legacy of Civil War medicine, to operate the museum.
Source: CNN
Dec 30, 2010
Some say he was a cold-blooded killer and a callous thief. Others dismiss his penchant for gun battling and horse stealing as merely "the way it was" in the Wild West. Some celebrate his legendary disdain for authority.
One thing that is hard to disagree on is that William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, is an enduring figure in American lore.
Whether America's most infamous Wild Westerner gets his posthumous walking papers or not, Tim Sweet will sh
Source: BBC News
Dec 30, 2010
Margaret Thatcher was advised by Harold Macmillan to drop her controversial economic policies a year after she became prime minister.
Her predecessor's warning was revealed in files released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule.
The former Conservative prime minister warned that the austerity measures could lead to high unemployment, social conflict and industrial collapse.
Cuts were leading the nation towards dangerous unemployment levels, he sa
Source: B92.net
Dec 29, 2010
ZAGREB -- A memorial service was held at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Zagreb on Tuesday evening for Ante Pavelić.
The service also mentioned Jure Francetić, commander of the Ustasha Crna Legija (Black Legion).
The service was held by priests Vjekoslav Lasić and Stanislav Kos, who in referred to Pavelić as a respectable man who made sacrifices for all of Croatia....
Source: The Saratogian (NY)
Dec 29, 2010
SARATOGA SPRINGS — As the nation prepares to observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the New York State Military History Museum and Veterans Research Center is making capsule histories of 360,000 New York Civil War soldiers available online.
The entire roster of New Yorkers who served during the Civil War years, 1861-65, is now available online, as well as the five annual reports issued by the Bureau of Military Statistics from 1864 to 1868 that chronicle the accomplishments
Source: Science Daily
Dec 29, 2010
Rodents get a bad rap as vermin and pests because they seem to thrive everywhere. They have been one of the most common mammals in Africa for the past 50 million years.
From deserts to rainforests, rodents flourished in prehistoric Africa, making them a stable and plentiful source of food, says paleontologist Alisa J. Winkler, an expert on rodent and rabbit fossils. Now rodent fossils are proving their usefulness to scientists as they help shed light on human evolution.
Source: Der Spiegel
Dec 29, 2010
Archeologists in Germany have discovered a 2,600-year-old Celtic tomb containing ornate jewellery of gold and amber. They say the grave is unusually well preserved and should provide important insights into early Celtic culture.
German archeologists have unearthed a 2,600-year-old Celtic tomb containing a treasure of jewellery made of gold, amber and bronze.
The subterranean chamber measuring four by five meters was uncovered near the prehistoric Heuneburg hill fort nea
Source: Washington Post
Dec 29, 2010
Geraldine Doyle, 86, who as a 17-year-old factory worker became the inspiration for a popular World War II recruitment poster that evoked female power and independence under the slogan "We Can Do It!," died Dec. 26 at a hospice in Lansing, Mich.
Her daughter, Stephanie Gregg, said the cause of death was complications from severe arthritis.
For millions of Americans throughout the decades since World War II, the stunning brunette in the red and white polka-dot
Source: CNN
Dec 29, 2010
The family of Frank Buckles, the nation's lone living veteran of World War I, hopes he makes it to his 110th birthday about a month from now, despite troubling signs he is on the decline.
Buckles, who was born February 1, 1901, is thought to be the world's oldest living war veteran. Buckles has slowed down considerably in just the past two months, according to his daughter Susannah Buckles Flanagan, who lives with him at the family home near Charles Town, in the eastern panhandle of
Source: BBC News
Dec 29, 2010
The Foreign Office expected countries to ask for the loan of the SAS in a siege or hijack after the London Iranian Embassy rescue, documents show.
Documents from 1980 released by the National Archives reveal a discussion about a legal agreement to cover the use of the SAS by another country.
A memo says those countries would have to accept "prior responsibility for any claims for damage or injury".
The documents also reveal the government's pride
Source: USA Today
Dec 29, 2010
The discovery of a single amphora, or clay jar, found in the ancient fortress of Tel Qudadi in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv could indicate both that the fortress itself is much younger than previously thought, and that trade between the area and Greek city states were much more common.
Writing in the journals Palestine Exploration Quarterly and BABESH: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University say their work shows the fortress was not from t
Source: BBC
Dec 29, 2010
A team of experts hope to shed new light on one of Nottinghamshire's most mysterious ancient monuments.
A 'Thing', or open-air meeting place where Vikings gathered to discuss the law, was discovered in the Birklands, Sherwood Forest, five years ago.
In January 2011 experts plan to survey the hill and see if they can detect signs of buried archaeology and the extent of the site.
The site was found by three local historians after a treasure hunt....
Source: AOL News
Dec 29, 2010
The Virginia history textbook that raised eyebrows when it claimed that large numbers of black soldiers fought for the South during the Civil War is under scrutiny again, after a review of the book found dozens of errors that historians call disturbing.
Among the mistakes: the claim that 12 states joined the Confederacy, not 11, and that 6,000 soldiers died during the Battle of Bull Run during the Civil War, instead of 22,000. Three of the five historians who reviewed "Our Virg
Source: BBC
Dec 29, 2010
Memorials to one of Russia's greatest writers, Anton Chekhov, have been unveiled this year in Sri Lanka, marking the 120th anniversary of his brief visit to the island and the 150th anniversary of his birth.
On the initiative of the Russian ambassador, the Galle Face - one of the two famous colonial-era hotels in the capital, Colombo - inaugurated a plaque commemorating the writer. A sculpture of Chekhov was installed in the other hotel, the Grand Oriental.
Documentat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 29, 2010
A former Cuban exile convicted of killing a man when he returned to the island to try to start a rebellion had his death sentence commuted on Tuesday in the third such decision this month by Cuba's Supreme Court.
The court reduced the sentence of Humberto Eladio Real Suarez to 30 years, said Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights.
Real has been imprisoned since 1994 when he and six other exiles came to Cuba from Florida to organise an arm
