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: BBC News
Oct 18, 2010
A woman's account of escaping the sinking Titanic in 1912 has sold for £20,000 at auction.
Laura Francatelli's story was published for the first time in early October.
It was bought by an Eastern European collector when it went under the hammer at Henry Aldrige and Son in Wiltshire at the weekend.
In it, Miss Francatelli described how she heard an "awful rumbling" as the liner went down and "screams and cries" from 1,500 drowning passeng
Source: AlphaGalileo
Oct 17, 2010
The Falbygden area of central Västergötland in southwestern Sweden is home to one of northern Europe's greatest concentrations of megalithic graves from the New Stone Age (approx. 4000-1500 BC). A new archaeology thesis from the University of Gothenburg now shows that these “passage graves” were not designed to be visible across wide areas – instead they seem to be almost hidden within the landscape.
Tony Axelsson, doctoral student and archaeologist at the Västergötland Museum, has
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2010
For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be Named.
The reticence was a legacy of the ugly battles that erupted after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea of a “culture of poverty” to the public in a startling 1965 report. Although Moynihan didn’t coin the phrase (that distinction belongs to
Source: BBC
Oct 17, 2010
A new festival to honour Mold's Daniel Owen, often described as the Welsh Dickens, takes place in his home town.
Events take place in locations which would have been familiar to the author, including the chapel he attended, Bethesda.
The Pentan pub, formerly the tailor's shop where Owen worked, will host the highlight of the festival, the launch of the first English translation of Enoc Huws, his best-known novel.
Owen was born in 1836 into a mining family.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 17, 2010
A French researcher has unearthed evidence suggesting two French pilots beat America's Charles Lindbergh in his historic 1927 flight across the Atlantic only to vanish, perhaps shot down by Al Capone's bootleg mafia.
Charles Nungesser, known as French First World War aviation's "ace of aces" and François Coli, his navigator, were hailed as heroes when they took off from Paris on May 8, 1927, in the hope of reaching New York.
The prize for the first non-stop t
Source: AP
Oct 17, 2010
The U.S. government has recognized the World War II architect of a mission to rescue more than 500 U.S. bomber fliers shot down over Nazi-occupied Serbia -- the largest air rescue of Americans behind enemy lines in any war.
George Vujnovich, a 95-year-old New Yorker, is credited with leading the so-called Halyard Mission in what was then Yugoslavia.
On Sunday, he was awarded the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, presented by Rep. Joseph Crowley, at Manhattan's St. Sava Serbian O
Source: BBC News
Oct 17, 2010
It is not much to look at - a small pitted brass coin with a square hole in the centre - but this relatively innocuous piece of metal is revolutionising our understanding of early East African history, and recasting China's more contemporary role in the region.
A joint team of Kenyan and Chinese archaeologists found the 15th Century Chinese coin in Mambrui - a tiny, nondescript village just north of Malindi on Kenya's north coast.
In barely distinguishable relief, the t
Source: BBC News
Oct 17, 2010
Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered mathematical shapes known as fractals, has died of cancer at the age of 85.
Mandelbrot, who had joint French and US nationality, developed fractals as a mathematical way of understanding the infinite complexity of nature.
The concept has been used to measure coastlines, clouds and other natural phenomena and had far-reaching effects in physics, biology and astronomy.
Mandelbrot's family said he had died in a hospice in Camb
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2010
To old political hands, wise to the ways of candidates and money, 1972 was a watershed year. Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign was awash in cash, secretly donated by corporations and individuals.
Fred Wertheimer, a longtime supporter of campaign finance regulation, was then a lawyer for Common Cause. He vividly recalls the weeks leading up to April 7, 1972, before a new campaign finance law went into effect requiring the disclosure of the names of individual donors. “Contribu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 16, 2010
A new exhibition is to reveal the story of how a heroic British merchant navy captain tried to ram a German U-boat intent on sinking his vessel before he was executed by the Germans for his actions.
It was one of the most controversial episodes of the First World War, ruthlessly exploited by both sides for maximum propaganda advantage.
But while other stories from the conflict remain familiar, the act of bravery shown by British merchant sailor Charles Fryatt as he tri
Source: NYT
Oct 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — In some circles, President Obama’s veto of an obscure bill this month has proved more controversial than the legislation itself. The White House called it a “pocket veto.” Some constitutional experts beg to differ....
The distinction between a pocket veto and a regular veto goes to the fundamental Constitutional balance of powers zealously guarded by both branches. A pocket veto kills legislation outright, giving the president the final say; a regular veto allows Congre
Source: Discovery News
Oct 15, 2010
Our slower development and longer lives could have given humans an evolutionary edge over Neanderthals.
Neanderthals reached full maturity faster than humans do today, suggests a new examination of teeth from 11 Neanderthal and early human fossils. The findings, detailed in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, portray Neanderthals as a live fast and die young species.
Our characteristically slow development and long childhood therefore appear to b
Source: CNN.com
Oct 15, 2010
(CNN) -- The brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s brought Cambodia to its knees. Pol Pot and his cadres persecuted anything they regarded as middle-class or intellectual -- from pop musicians to tennis players.
Former tennis coach turned journalist Robert Davis told CNN of the extremes to which the Khmer Rouge were willing to go.
"When the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh and Cambodia, anyone who was elite or academic was exterminated," said Davis.
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 15, 2010
WINDHOEK (AFP) – Church bells ring out on the dot of noon in the heart of Namibia's sleepy capital Windhoek, still precise 100 years after the church was built as an emblem of Imperial Germany's colonial reach.
"It is like being at home. It is wonderful to hear these beautiful bells here in Namibia, nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,000 miles) away from Germany," said tourist Annelise Schmieder from Stuttgart.
"I am thrilled that I could see the 'Christuskirche
Source: Belfast Telegraph
Oct 15, 2010
Archaeologists are to dig out a portal tomb in Northern Ireland for the first time in 50 years.
The collapse of Tirnony Dolmen near Maghera has produced a rare opportunity to discover what lies beneath — and exactly how old it is.
Normally portal tombs, which are among the oldest built structures still standing in Northern Ireland, are off limits to excavators and must be preserved.
But after the massive capstone of this portal tomb fell to the ground earli
Source: BBC
Oct 15, 2010
A Damien Hirst artwork created entirely from thousands of butterfly wings has been auctioned in London for £2.2m.
I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds - previously owned by the city's Gagosian Gallery - had been expected to fetch between £2.5m and £3.5m.
The title of the work - Hirst's largest using butterfly wings - echoes words scientist J Robert Oppenheimer later said after the first atomic bomb.
Christie's sale of post-war and contemporary art continu
Source: Foreign Policy
Oct 15, 2010
The Avtomat Kalashnikova, C.J. Chivers writes in The Gun, is "the world's most widely recognized weapon, one of the world's most recognizable objects." The AK-47 and its descendants have defined and exacerbated half a century of guerrilla conflict, terrorism, and crime; it is the most abundant firearm in the world, with as many as 100 million Kalashnikovs in circulation, 10 times more than any other rifle.
Chivers, a Marine Corps veteran and senior writer at the New York T
Source: Detroit News
Oct 15, 2010
Fighter planes flown by the nation's first African-American military aviators are hard to find.
That's why officials at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum jumped at the chance to buy one.
The museum spent a year raising the funds to pay for a World War II T-6 training plane — known as the "pilot maker" — once used by the celebrated all-black aviation unit.
The $200,000 deal was finalized in late September.
One other such plane exists
Source: AOL News
Oct 15, 2010
A former New Jersey high school science teacher has discovered something that would have wowed his students: a three-toed Jurassic dinosaur footprint embedded in a slab of rock at a construction site near his home.
Chris Laskowich spotted the footprint in Clifton -- 15 miles west of New York's Empire State Building -- at an old stone quarry that's being cleared to build an 800-unit housing development. It's a popular place for fossil hunters to browse through piles of old stones on
Source: CNN
Oct 15, 2010
Police in Boulder, Colorado, want to talk to the older brother of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old girl slain at home on Christmas night 14 years ago, the Ramsey family's attorney said.
Supporters of the family call it harassment. The brother, Burke Ramsey, has no interest in once again answering questions he has answered for many investigators many times, said the attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta, Georgia.
And yet the mere hint of activity in one of the nation's most famo
