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: WaPo
Oct 31, 2010
NEW YORK -- President John F. Kennedy's aide and speechwriter, Theodore C. Sorensen, a symbol of hope and liberal governance, died at a time of contempt for Washington and political leaders.
Sorensen's passing Sunday came just as supporters of his friend and boss were preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a very different moment in history: The election of Kennedy as president and the speech that remains the greatest collaboration between Sorensen and Kennedy and the standa
Source: The Boston Globe
Oct 30, 2010
The Tea Party movement is too diverse (and too rowdy) to be easily stereotyped. In fact, the one thing holding it together may be its commitment to history — and to the idea that America has deviated from its constitutional course.
This notion that the Tea Party represents a return to original American values is lodged deep in the movement’s DNA. “If you read our Founding Fathers,” cable commentator Rick Santelli said during the 2009 CNBC segment that first raised the idea of a Tea
Source: BBC
Oct 30, 2010
Silbury Hill acquired its distinctive shape in more modern times, according to new archaeological evidence.
It is traditionally thought that the hill, with its steep banks and flat top, was conceived and completed in pre-historic times.
But new research presented in a new book suggests the final shape was a late Anglo-Saxon innovation.
The hill, near Avebury in Wiltshire, is Europe's largest man-made prehistoric mound....
Source: CNN
Oct 30, 2010
Relatives divided since 1953 reunited for the first time Saturday at a South Korean-built tourism resort in North Korea amid tensions between the two sides.
Elderly men in suits and women in traditional Korean silk hanbok dresses sat at numbered tables in a large restaurant,
Many burst into tears; some sat, spoke and exchanged photographs; others simply looked bewildered as they clutched hands and stared into faces unseen for six decades. The relatives have been separat
Source: BBC
Oct 29, 2010
Back in 1989, in the basement of a house in the Bolivian city of La Paz, a trunk containing dozens of metal drums of film negatives was found. Among the discoveries was Wara Wara, the only known surviving work from Bolivia's silent-film era.
About 28,000 films, almost half of them Bolivian, are gathering dust on the archives' shelves.
Some have not even been opened, let alone catalogued or restored, because of a lack of funding and the necessary skills....
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 29, 2010
BERLIN (Reuters Life!) – Six and a half decades after the Holocaust, the first Jewish publisher of children's books in Germany will issue its inaugural title on Monday.
Filmmaker and author Myriam Halberstam, a German-American Jew, said she set up "Ariella Books" in May 2010 because there was a lack of children's books on Judaism in Germany.
"A Horse for Hanukkah" -- a humorous story about a horse who wreaks havoc on a family's celebrations during Ha
Source: Virginia Gazette
Oct 29, 2010
WILLIAMSBURG –- Colonial Williamsburg has acquired a large amount of cash, but it's not the kind the foundation can spend.
The collection of colonial paper currency was issued by North Carolina prior to the American Revolution.
Comprised of more than 6,600 notes in varying denominations issued between 1748 and 1771, the stash of cash was worth about 7,176 pounds sterling in 1775. If legal tender today, the currency would have purchasing power of more than $750,000.
Source: BBC News
Oct 29, 2010
As fresh details emerge about the extraordinary bravery of wartime spy Eileen Nearne, the BBC has unearthed an interview conducted with her for a television documentary in 1997.
Miss Nearne died of a heart attack in Torquay in September 2010, at the age of 89.
Following her death, previously classified files about her work were released by the National Archives.
Miss Nearne worked undercover in the Paris region in 1944.
But she was caught by the Gest
Source: BBC News
Oct 29, 2010
Newly released documents about World War II heroine Eileen Nearne reveal she was assessed as "scatter-brained" just two months before she was dropped behind enemy lines in Paris.
Previously classified documents say she was not ready for the dangerous spy work she was sent to do.
The story of Miss Nearne's amazing bravery only emerged following her recent death in Torquay, aged 89....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2010
Precious views of Hampton Court Palace will be destroyed forever if permission is given for a hotel on the riverbank opposite, campaigners said, in what one leading historian has described as "an international scandal".
The campaigners oppose plans passed by Elmbridge council to develop the site in west London, which is directly across the Thames from the 16th Century palace, which was built for Cardinal Wolsey and once belonged to Henry VIII.
Permission was g
Source: Fox News
Oct 29, 2010
For 130 years, the kilogram has weighed precisely one kilogram. Hasn't it? The U.S. government isn't so sure.
The precise weight of the kilogram is based on a platinum-iridium cylinder manufactured 130 years ago; it's kept in a vault in France at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Forty of the units were manufactured at the time, to standardize the measure of weight.
But due to material degradation and the effects of quantum physics, the weight of those
Source: Reuters
Oct 29, 2010
GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Days before Halloween on a darkened street Dwight Stoutzenberger aimed his digital camera at a wall not far from where a guide was telling ghost stories to a group of tourists.
Gettysburg, a historic Civil War town, is famous for ghosts and reportedly haunted sites where uniformed soldiers mysteriously walk through closed doors, or ornaments shift positions on a mantelpiece.
As Stoutzenberger scrolled through his photos he found seve
Source: Irish Times
Oct 29, 2010
TWO IRISH heroes of Chile’s struggle for independence were honoured yesterday with commemorative postal stamps issued in both countries.
Bernardo O’Higgins, whose father was from Sligo, was once supreme ruler of Chile and is known as the country’s founding father, while John (Juan) MacKenna was born in Monaghan but went on to serve as commandant general of the Chilean army.
The 82 cent stamps are being issued in the context of the bicentenary of Chile’s independence and
Source: CHE
Oct 29, 2010
Some 2,000 years after falling silent, the Babylonian and Assyrian languages of ancient Mesopotamia are echoing again, online.
Want to hear sections of the Codex Hammurabi, the codification from 1790 BC that is one of the world’s oldest set of laws? Or sections of the Gilgamesh Epic, in which the gods instruct the eponymous hero-king to prepare a boat ahead of a great flood, a tale familiar to anyone reared on the Bible? Or how about the “Poem of the Righteous Sufferer,” which prefi
Source: BBC News
Oct 29, 2010
Ehud Netzer, the Israeli archaeologist credited with discovering the tomb of the biblical King Herod, has died after falling during a dig. He was 76.
The Hebrew University professor died on Thursday from injuries sustained when a railing gave way at the Herodium archaeological site in the West Bank.
Prof Netzer had worked at the Herodium site for more than 30 years before he located King Herod's palace in 2007.
Israel's prime minister released a statement m
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2010
Former US President George W. Bush has disclosed in a memoir how he gave the order to shoot down planes on September 11, 2001.
He said he initially thought that one of the hijacked flights, United Airlines Flight 93 that came down in Pennsylvania, had been shot down on his orders.
Parts of Mr Bush's highly anticipated memoir, Decision Points, were leaked to website the Drudge Report, and he intends to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on Nov 9 to promote the "very
Source: WTKR
Oct 28, 2010
JAMES CITY — A Hampton historian and author on Thursday filed a lawsuit to halt the deletion of a controversial passage from a fourth-grade history textbook that scholars say mischaracterized the role of African-American soldiers in the South during the Civil War.
Veronica Davis, author of "Here I Lay My Burdens Down," a study of black cemeteries in and around Richmond, filed the injunction against the book's publisher, Five Ponds Press, as well as the state Board of Educa
Source: Bloomberg News
Oct 28, 2010
Allied military intelligence indicated Adolf Hitler had built an underground Alpine fortress to house “the elite of Nazi Germany” in a desperate, final stand in World War II, according to documents released today.
Intelligence reports from 1944 and 1945, the last two years of the war, suggested that leading Nazis would seek refuge from an allied invasion of Germany in a vast underground network of tunnels and caves in a “Nazi National Redoubt” hidden within the Austrian Alps, the se
Source: Irish Central
Oct 28, 2010
A report reveled in a new book "The IRA: A Documentary History 1916-2005" claims that the death of Irish freedom fighter Michael Collins involved a hail of gunfire.
Collins was killed while exchanging rifle fire with ambushers.
He was the only fatality wounded in this battle.
He had ordered his convoy to stop and return fire, instead of choosing the safer option of driving on in his touring car or transferring to the safety of the accompanying arm
Source: Fox News
Oct 28, 2010
A delicate, sophisticated way to craft sharp weapons from stone apparently was developed by humans more than 50,000 years sooner than had been thought.
The finding could shed light on what knowledge people were armed with when they started migrating out of Africa.
The artful technique is known as pressure flaking. Early weapons' makers typically would use hard blows from a stone hammer to give another stone a rough blade-like shape, then would use wood or bone implement
