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: The Hill
Dec 10, 2010
The poll, conducted by Monmouth University, found that 63 percent of Democratic survey respondents believed that Obama was a better president than Washington.
Source: National Geographic News
Dec 10, 2010
American Indian casinos aren't exactly new to the game—people were playing dice in the New World as early as 5,000 years ago, preliminary research suggests.
Mysterious holes arranged in c shapes—punched into clay floors at the Tlacuachero archaeological site in Mexico's Chiapas state (see map)—may have been dice-game scoreboards, according to archaeologist Barbara Voorhies.
If so, Voorhies added, the semicircles are the oldest known evidence of games in Mesoamerica, a r
Source: Journal-Gazette and Times Courier
Dec 10, 2010
CHARLESTON - The Eastern Illinois University Naming Committee voted Tuesday to recommend not changing Douglas Hall's namesake from Stephen Douglas to Frederick Douglass.
The committee also suggested that EIU take steps to emphasize that Douglas Hall, part of a complex with Lincoln Hall, is named as part of a commemoration of the Sept. 18, 1858, Lincoln-Douglas debate in Charleston, not in tribute to Stephen Douglas as an individual, and to promote this debate history.
&
Source: Huffington Post
Dec 10, 2010
WASHINGTON -- When former President Bill Clinton visits the White House on Friday, both he and Obama will have no shortage of political conversation topics. Chief among them will be reversing the course of a presidency stalled out by a mid-term electoral drubbing -- a fork in the road that both have faced. Somewhere lower down the list will be dealing with insurrection within the party ranks.
While talk has been pervasive this past week over the possibility (or lack thereof) of a pr
Source: Press Release
Dec 10, 2010
(Spring Hill, Tenn.) – The Civil War Preservation Trust is please to announce that this week it successfully closed on the purchase of an 84-acre portion of the Spring Hill battlefield from General Motors, LLC, ensuring that the historic landscape will be protected forever. Significant funding for the $2 million acquisition was provided by a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program, an arm of the National Park Service.
“The completion of this landmark transaction is g
Source: Discovery News
Dec 10, 2010
A tiny bone fragment could provide crucial information about the fate of Amelia Earhart, the legendary pilot who disappeared 73 years ago while flying over the Pacific Ocean in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
Collected on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, the bone has raised the interest of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the Earhart
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 10, 2010
A battalion of German combat troops is to be officially stationed in eastern France on Friday for the first time since Nazi forces ended the Reich's occupation at the end of the Second World War.
The battalion, part of the joint Franco-German Brigade, will be stationed at Illkirch-Graffenstaden outside Strasbourg, near the German border, and will eventually consist of 600 soldiers.
The historic move, aimed at cementing friendship between the neighbours who fought three
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 10, 2010
A giant stork big enough to eat human infants roamed the island of Flores in Indonesia 18,000 years ago, scientists have discovered.
Fossilised bones belonging to the oversized bird were found on the island, which was home to the tiny "hobbit" humans during the same period.
The 6ft stork, which weighed up to 35lbs and would have been too big to fly, would have been larger than the adults hobbits, who only grew to 3ft tall, the Indepdendent reports.
Source: AP
Dec 10, 2010
At South Carolina's Secession Gala, men in frock coats and militia uniforms and women in hoopskirts will sip mint juleps as a band called Unreconstructed plays "Dixie." In Georgia, they will re-enact the state's 1861 secession convention. And Alabama will hold a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Across the South, preparations are under way for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. And while many organizations are working to incorporate both the b
Source: CNN
Dec 10, 2010
Senate Democrats failed Thursday to win a procedural vote to open debate on a bill that would provide medical benefits and compensation for emergency workers who were first on the scene of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The motion for cloture, or to begin debate, needed 60 votes to pass due to a Republican filibuster, but fell short at 57-42 in favor.
While supporters said they would try to bring the bill up again, either on its own or as part of other legis
Source: CNN
Dec 10, 2010
The Genocide Archive of Rwanda opened its doors to the public Friday at the Kigali Genocide Memorial grounds in the country's capital, offering an in-depth look at the horrors of the country's 1994 genocide.
The new site rests on the slopes above the mass graves containing the bodies of 250,000 Rwandans murdered in 1994.
The physical archive at the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, showcases 1,500 audiovisual recordings and more than 20,000 documents and photographs from geno
Source: CNN
Dec 10, 2010
A flag that accompanied Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry into their final battle 134 years ago will be put up for auction by the auction house Sotheby's on Friday.
Custer led more than 200 other other soldiers into battle against thousands of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors on June 25, 1876, at the Little Bighorn River in what is now Montana. None of the U.S. soldiers survived the battle.
The flag is tattered and fragile, measures 27½ by 33 inc
Source: CHE
Dec 10, 2010
It is a gusty autumn day on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and two deer carcasses lie stretched on the lawn of a small farm, gutted and ready to be butchered.
Twelve students from an experimental-archaeology course at nearby Washington College crouch over the animals with razor-sharp stone blades that their professor, Bill Schindler, helped them produce weeks earlier using flint-knapping techniques that are as much as 2.5 million years old.
"Are we all set, or are we ki
Source: Life Magazine
Dec 9, 2010
Swastikas and Tannenbaum
The image is chilling, bordering on surreal: On December 18, 1941, as World War II rages and countless innocents endure the horrors of the Third Reich's "final solution" -- killing operations at the Chełmno death camp, for instance, began less than two weeks before -- Adolf Hitler presides over a Christmas party in Munich. Stark, jarring swastika armbands offset the glint of ornaments and tinsel dangling from a giant Tannenbaum; festive ca
Source: MSNBC
Dec 9, 2010
The great grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian.
The legend of St. Ismeria, presented in the current Journal of Medieval History, sheds light on both the Biblical Virgin Mary's family and also on religious and cultural values of 14th-century Florence.
"I don't think any other woman is mentioned" as Mary's grandmother in the Bible, Catherine Lawless, author of the paper, told Discov
Source: CNN.com
Dec 9, 2010
New York (CNN) -- One of the most expensive sports-related documents, Dr. James Naismith's "Founding Rules of Basketball," will be up for auction Friday in New York.
The original rules are 119 years old and still intact. Naismith's youngest grandson, Ian, owner of the pages, will sell the family treasure to benefit the Naismith Foundation for children.
The two pages may go for at least $2 million.
"This is the birth certificate. It started he
Source: WaPo
Dec 9, 2010
John Demjanjuk's attorney has filed a motion in the Munich state court where Demjanjuk is on trial saying his client's rights are being violated by keeping him in jail and demanding damages "in the millions."...
Source: BBC
Dec 9, 2010
Russia has honoured British Cold War spy Kim Philby with a plaque at the headquarters of the country's foreign intelligence agency.
Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, is depicted in a sculptured portrait on the plaque as the two-faced Roman god of gates, Janus.
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov attended the ceremony in Moscow.
Philby passed secrets to the Soviets while working for British intelligence.
Philby, who died in 1988
Source: BBC
Dec 9, 2010
Artefacts discovered at a Roman villa near Aberystwyth are making archaeologists rethink the way the Romans lived in the area.
The remains of the 4th Century building were discovered at Abermagwr in 2006 and confirmed by excavations in July 2010.
And now some of the most important finds at the dig will go on display at Aberystwyth's Ceredigion Museum.
They include pieces of a Roman cooking pot and Roman coins.
Also exhibited will be fragment
Source: BBC
Dec 9, 2010
A historic tree of religious significance in Glastonbury has been cut down overnight, prompting a police investigation.
The Holy Thorn tree on Wearyall Hill is thought to have been planted by Joseph of Arimathea nearly 2,000 years ago.
There are several Holy Thorn trees located around Glastonbury.
On Wednesday, a ceremony was held at nearby St John's Church where a sprig from the Holy Thorn was cut for the Queen.
This is a tradition which dates
