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: Baltimore Sun
Dec 13, 2010
The ornate baton of a Nazi field marshal convicted of war crimes against Italian citizens during World War II caused a sensation in Towson Saturday when it brought $731,600 at auction, far more than Alex Cooper auctioneers or the baton's owner ever expected.
The 19-inch ceremonial baton, once the property of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, had been listed with an estimated value of between $10,000 and $15,000 by Alex Cooper before the auction. The baton
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 13, 2010
The Leaning Tower of Pisa has been returned to its former glory after an eight-year restoration project in which it was cleaned and partially straightened.
Restorers used chisels and hi-tech laser technology to scrub grime from the more than 24,000 blocks of stone that make up the 183ft tall tower.
The world famous monument has also had its famous list partially corrected after engineers managed to straighten it by 18 inches from the vertical, returning it to its 1838 p
Source: BBC News
Dec 13, 2010
Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.
The liquid and bones were in a sealed bronze cooking vessel dug up near the ancient capital of Xian - home to the country's famed terracotta warriors.
Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found.
The pots were discovered in a tomb being excavated to make way for an extension to the
Source: Culture24
Dec 12, 2010
When archaeologists working through the Victorian spoil heaps at Creswell Crags in 2006 uncovered a stone with a familiar carved geometric pattern, it opened yet another aspect of the ever-developing story of the important prehistoric caves.
What the experts from Sheffield University had unearthed was in fact a medieval incarnation of the strategy board game Nine Men’s Morris, which had been popular since Roman times.
Its discovery provided a glimpse into medieval activ
Source: Salisbury Journal (UK)
Dec 12, 2010
DRUID leader King Arthur Pendragon went to The Royal Courts of Justice in London last week in a bid to see the return of cremated human remains taken from Stonehenge in 2008.
The Senior Druid and Pagan Priest presented a 36-page document asking for a Judicial Review on the decision by the Minister of Justice to grant Sheffield University an extension to retain the remains for five years.
King Arthur said: ‘This is not just a Druid or Pagan issue, and we have the support
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 12, 2010
Art historians are probing a real life Da Vinci Code style mystery after discovering tiny numbers and letters painted into the eyes of the artist's enigmatic Mona Lisa painting.
Leonardo Da Vinci's 500-year-old Renaissance masterpiece has long been steeped in mystery, and even today the true identity of the woman with the alluring smile still far from certain.
Now members of Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage have revealed that by magnifying high resolutio
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 12, 2010
The BBC will devote nearly a whole day of Radio 4 to readings from the King James Bible to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication.
Regular shows will be dropped from the schedule to make way for the readings, which will run from early morning till midnight.
While the move has been welcomed by the Church, it has prompted secularists to complain to the BBC at what they believe is "excessive" coverage....
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2010
It was the accident pilots and passengers in the still-new jet age had feared the most — a distinctly new kind of catastrophe, one that had never happened over a major urban area, one that would have seemed far less terrifying a few years earlier, when planes were smaller and slower.
Two airliners feeling their way through a sloppy mess of fog and sleet collided over New York City, sending down a devastating shower of flaming wreckage.
On a street of brownstones in Park
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2010
WASHINGTON — By the end of last week, it certainly looked as if Barack Obama had outsourced his presidency to Bill Clinton. First, he cut a Clintonian-style deal with Republicans on tax cuts and then he literally turned over the White House lectern to his predecessor.
Equally riveting and astonishing, Mr. Clinton’s blast-from-the-past performance in the White House briefing room on Friday afternoon reinforced the impression of political déjà vu, the sense that once again a Democrat
Source: McClatchy Newspapers
Dec 11, 2010
COLUMBIA, S.C. | Members of South Carolina’s NAACP will protest a “secession ball” in Charleston this month that will commemorate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union.
State NAACP leaders held two news conferences last week, spreading the word they will object to any sesquicentennial events that they deem disrespectful.
“We are not opposed to observances,” said Lonnie Randolph, state president of the National Association for the Advancement
Source: CNN
Dec 11, 2010
Bacteria scooped from the wreckage of the Titanic almost 20 years ago have been confirmed as a new species in the December issue of a microbiology journal.
While new scientific discoveries are usually heralded as joyous news, this discovery is bittersweet.
The bacteria, found on the ship's "rusticles" (rust formations that look like icicles), are eating the Titanic.
The strain, dubbed Halomonas titanicae, was initially designated BH1T in honor of
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Dec 11, 2010
Nazi hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre say they will continue to press for the extradition of an 89-year-old Perth man to Hungary for questioning over alleged war crimes, after another Federal Court decision in his favour on Friday.
Charles Zentai is accused of being one of three Nazi-backed Hungarian soldiers who assaulted and murdered Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in Budapest in November 1944.
In 2005, a Hungarian military judge issued an arrest warrant for Mr Z
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 11, 2010
The only U.S. flag not captured or lost during George Armstrong Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana sold at auction on Friday for £1.4 million.
The 7th U.S. Cavalry flag – known as a "guidon" for it's swallow-tailed shape – was sold by Sotheby's in New York on behalf of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which bought the flag for just $54 ($34) in 1895.
The buyer was identified only as an American private collector.
Source: AP
Dec 11, 2010
The daughters of a slain American Indian Movement activist said Saturday they are pleased with the latest conviction in the 35-year-old murder case but remain convinced there are others who haven't been charged.
Former AIM member John Graham was convicted Friday in the murder of Annie Mae Aquash in 1975 on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation. Her death remains synonymous with AIM and its often-violent clashes with federal agents in the 1970s.
Marty Jackley, the state
Source: WaPo
Dec 11, 2010
NEW YORK — Declassified CIA files reveal that US intelligence officials went to great lengths to protect a Ukrainian fascist leader and suspected Nazi collaborator from prosecution after World War II and set him up in a New York office to wage covert war against the Soviet Union, according to a new report to Congress.
Mykola Lebed led an underground movement to undermine the Kremlin and conduct guerrilla operations for the CIA during the Cold War, said the report, prepared by two sc
Source: BBC News
Dec 11, 2010
The historic document spelling out the original rules for basketball has fetched $4.3m at auction - a record for any item of sports memorabilia.
The two, signed typescript pages that set out the 13 rules were drawn up by the sport's Canadian founder, James Naismith, in 1891.
The rules were sold by the Naismith International Basketball Foundation at Sotheby's in New York.
They were bought by Kansas basketball fans David and Suzanne Booth.
The sa
Source: NYT
Dec 11, 2010
The phrase that would emerge as the most enduring legacy of what became, arguably, the most famous farewell address since George Washington’s evolved over 20 months and was agreed to only a few days before it was delivered.
The words, in a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were transformed from a warning against a “war-based industrial complex” into a “vast military-industrial complex” and finally into a more vanilla “military-industrial complex,” which seemed controversial
Source: WaPo
Dec 11, 2010
Richard M. Nixon made negative comments about Jews, blacks and other ethnic groups during informal discussions with top aides and his personal secretary that were recorded before he resigned as president, according to a newly released batch of tapes.
"I've just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits," Nixon said during a Feb. 13, 1973, conversation with Charles W. Colson that was included among 265 hours of tapes released on Thursday by the Nixon Preside
Source: NYT
Dec 11, 2010
After World War II, American counterintelligence recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans and Nazi collaborators to an even greater extent than had been previously disclosed and helped many of them avoid prosecution or looked the other way when they escaped, according to thousands of newly declassified documents.
With the Soviet Union muscling in on Eastern Europe, “settling scores with Germans or German collaborators seemed less pressing; in some cases, it even appeared count
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 11, 2010
The rooms where Gen Francisco Franco lived for much of his 36 year dictatorship have been closed to the public having been declared of "no historical or cultural interest".
The Palace of El Pardo, an old royal residence set in hunting grounds on the northeastern outskirts of Madrid, served as el Caudillo's home following his victory in the Spanish Civil War until his death in 1975.
But guided tours around the palace will no longer include a look into his priva
