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: Independent (UK)
Nov 18, 2010
Neolithic engineers may have used ball bearings in the construction of Stonehenge, it was claimed today.
The same technique that allows vehicles and machinery to run smoothly today could have been used to transport the monument's massive standing stones more than 4,000 years ago, according to a new theory.
Scientists showed how balls placed in grooved wooden tracks would have allowed the easy movement of stones weighing many tons.
No-one has yet successf
Source: CNN
Nov 18, 2010
Its wide green expanses and scenic trails are nestled alongside Denver's skyline.
But beneath Cheesman Park lies an eerie history, unearthed from time to time by city workers.
Last month, workers digging a new irrigation system uncovered four well-preserved skeletons buried in a 19th-century cemetery upon which the park was built.
In the late 1800s, Mount Prospect Cemetery was converted into a public park, but as many as 2,000 bodies were never removed, acc
Source: BBC
Nov 18, 2010
Italy's prime minister is under attack for authorising what amounts to plastic surgery on two Roman marble statues.
The statues, which depict the naked gods Venus and Mars, are on show in Silvio Berlusconi's Rome residence.
Mr Berlusconi ordered a replacement for the missing penis on the statue of the ancient god of war, and a missing hand for Venus.
Art experts say it is tasteless and aesthetically wrong to replace the missing body parts.
The
Source: BBC
Nov 18, 2010
Two previously unknown violin sonatas by Antonio Vivaldi have been uncovered after lying hidden in a collection of manuscripts for 270 years.
The works, thought to have been written for amateur musicians, were found in a 180-page portfolio after it was donated to the Foundling Museum in London.
One of the rediscovered compositions will be performed at Liverpool Hope University on Sunday.
It is likely to be its first airing in the modern era, the university
Source: BBC
Nov 18, 2010
One of 13 children from a middle-class Protestant family in Omagh, Alice Milligan became an Irish nationalist and supporter of the 1916 Rising who was on first-name terms with WB Yeats, James Connolly and Roger Casement.
A political activist, human rights campaigner and writer, her legacy had been all but forgotten until her story was unearthed by a historian from Trinity College, Dublin.
An exhibition in Alice's honour is to open at the National Library of Ireland on
Source: BBC
Nov 18, 2010
One of the oldest pictures of Niagara Falls, shot by a Cumbrian chemist, has gone on display.
The image was taken by Hugh Pattinson of Alston in 1840 and had, until recently, been sitting on a shelf at Newcastle University since 1926.
It would have taken Mr Pattinson 20 minutes to take the picture using the newly-invented daguerreotype camera.
The university has now loaned the image to the Niagara Parks Commission in Canada, to mark its 125th anniversary..
Source: BBC
Nov 18, 2010
The first Guantanamo detainee tried in a US civilian court has been found guilty on just one out of 285 terror charges over the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa.
Tanzanian Ahmed Ghailani, 36, was found guilty of conspiracy to damage or destroy US property with explosives.
But he was cleared of many other counts including murder and murder conspiracy.
Ghailani faces a minimum of 20 years in prison. The verdict comes as the US weighs other civilian te
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 18, 2010
Angelia Jolie has been chased out of Bosnia after a rumour spread that the film she was making there contained an inter-ethnic rape scene.
The Hollywood actress had planned to spend 10 days in the country filming her directorial debut, which is about a Serb man and a Bosnian Muslim woman in love during the 1992-95 war.
But she has moved most of the production of the as-yet-untitled picture to Hungary following protests from women who were sexually assaulted during the
Source: AP
Nov 18, 2010
Fidel Castro says he is happy with the direction in which Cuba is moving under the leadership of his brother Raul, his most explicit remarks to date about the sweeping economic changes the country is undergoing.
Castro, 84, remains head of the Communist Party, though in his remarks to the students he gave the impression he had delegated many of his official duties to others.
Part of the meeting with the students was carried on national television Wednesday, but not Cast
Source: AP
Nov 18, 2010
Scientists have concluded taking samples of the remains of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that they hope could help them shed light on his sudden death more than 400 years ago.
On Monday, an international team opened his tomb in the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn near Prague's Old Town Square, where Brahe has been buried since 1601 to lifted a tin box like a child's coffin in which Brahe's remains were placed after the only previous exhumation, in 1901.
Jens Vellev, a pro
Source: WAVY
Nov 18, 2010
BERRYVILLE, Va. (AP) - It's truly the gift that keeps on giving.
A week after receiving a metal detector for his seventh birthday, Lucas Hall's gift is already paying dividends for the first-grader.
While metal detecting with his father, Gary, on private property outside Berryville, Lucas had a feeling the two needed to stop and look.
His hunch paid off....
Source: Salon
Nov 18, 2010
President Barack Obama, pressing for quick Senate ratification of a U.S.-Russia nuclear arms-reduction treaty, summoned a number of former secretaries of defense and state, Republicans and Democrats, to the White House to rally support for the imperiled agreement.
The White House said Obama wanted to discuss at the gathering why it is in the national interest for the Senate to approve the treaty this year, a move that a key Senate Republican says would be premature.
Tho
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2010
It was a classic skirmish of the 1960s culture war, pitting a nonconformist rock star and his bohemian fans against clean-cut defenders of acceptable behavior, the counterculture against the mainstream, and Jim Morrison against Anita Bryant.
Now the governor of Florida says he will seek to put an end to it by pursuing a posthumous pardon for two criminal convictions that Morrison, the frontman for the Doors, received after some very bad behavior at a 1969 concert in Miami.
Source: CNN.com
Nov 17, 2010
London, England (CNN) -- Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient Roman landscape beneath a park in west London, with a Roman road, evidence of a settlement, and unusual burials among the finds.
They say the discovery -- at the site of a planned luxury hotel near the edge of the River Thames -- gives valuable and rare insight into the daily life of what was then an agricultural village.
Dating back nearly 2,000 years, the village would have supplied the ancient Roman ci
Source: BBC News
Nov 17, 2010
A previously unseen archive featuring the testimonies of Guernsey people who were deported to German prison camps during World War II has been uncovered.
The file of about 200 pages had been in a wardrobe since the 1960s before being given to a Cambridge University team.
They were in Guernsey researching the story of the 2,000 people deported from the Channel Islands in 1942-43.
Dr Gilly Carr said it was "the single most important resistance archive ev
Source: AFP
Nov 17, 2010
The first Native American to arrive in Europe may have been a woman brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, a study by Spanish and Icelandic researchers suggests.
The findings boost widely-accepted theories, based on Icelandic medieval texts and a reputed Viking settlement in Newfoundland in Canada, that the Vikings reached the American continent several centuries before Christopher Columbus travelled to the "New World."
Spain's CSIC scien
Source: WaPo
Nov 17, 2010
The first atom bomb wiped out Andrews Air Force Base. The second burst above Dulles International Airport. It was three times as big as the Andrews nuke - 10 megatons vs. three - and its effects were felt for miles.
Shock waves toppled the Washington Monument and cracked the cast-iron dome of the U.S. Capitol. That the blasts killed only 26,800 people and injured 68,300 seems amazing, but, of course, those numbers don't include the people who would later die from the radioactive poi
Source: NYT
Nov 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — In June, the Supreme Court issued a decision on the privacy rights of a police officer whose sexually explicit text messages had been reviewed by his employer. Ever since, lower court judges have struggled to figure out what the decision means.
The case “touches issues of far-reaching significance,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote. Then he explained why the court would decide none of them. A definitive ruling should be avoided, he said, because “it might have implicati
Source: Press Release
Nov 17, 2010
Washington, D.C. (November 17, 2010) – Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, joined by the Guam Preservation Trust and We Are Guåhan, filed a legal action against the U.S. Department of Defense challenging its plans to construct a complex of five firing ranges in Guam that are immediately adjacent to and directed toward an ancient settlement, Pågat Village. The firing ranges are a component of the Guam “Buildup,” a multi-billion dollar effort to relocate 8,600 Marines from Okinawa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 17, 2010
A new sci-fi film about Nazis has reignited a debate in Germany about Hitler's development of UFOs.
The Finnish sci-fi comedy 'Iron Sky' centres on real-life SS officer Hans Kammler who was said to have made a significant breakthrough in antigravity experiments towards the end of WW2....
But a new report out this week in Germany in the magazine PM purports that there is "strong evidence" that a Nazi UFO programme was well advanced.
Hitler ordered
