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: Xinhua News Agency
Sep 19, 2010
More than 120 renowned Chinese archaeologists on Sunday agreed that an ancient tomb belonged to Cao Cao, a cunning general and ruler who lived some 1,800 years ago, amid doubts about its authenticity.
"After discussions about excavated items from the tomb, a consensus has been reached that it belongs to Cao Cao", Bai Yunxiang, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told a symposium after a brief study of the tomb
Source: Yahoo News
Sep 19, 2010
On the day Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, a young American soldier nabbed a souvenir of epic proportions: He took home the French flag that hung from the Arc de Triomphe, a symbol of the end of four years of struggle and shame.
Six and a half decades later, the aging veteran has given the flag back to the city of Paris.
Officials from Paris City Hall took possession of the 12-meter (13-yard) tricolor flag Saturday in a ceremony in southern France, a step in
Source: AP
Sep 19, 2010
On the day Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, a young American soldier nabbed a souvenir of epic proportions: He took home the French flag that hung from the Arc de Triomphe, a symbol of the end of four years of struggle and shame.
Six and a half decades later, the aging veteran has given the flag back to the city of Paris.
Officials from Paris City Hall took possession of the 12-meter (13-yard) tricolor flag Saturday in a ceremony in southern France, a step in
Source: Washington Times
Sep 19, 2010
...Not much is left of the camp where thousands of French Gypsies were interned in this village in the Saumur wine region during World War II. Here, hungry children once crowded behind barbed wire, hoping Sunday strollers might toss them leftover food. Anyone caught trying to escape was locked in a filthy hole underground, a prison within a prison.
As today's France expels a wave of Romanian Gypsies seeking an escape from hardship back home, children of the camp's survivors have bee
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 19, 2010
Britain’s “courageous resistance” to the “evil ideology” of Nazism was honoured by the Pope as he spoke to a crowd of more than 50,000 in Birmingham.
Benedict XVI said it was “deeply moving” to recall the sacrifices made by Britons during the Second World War and paid particular tribute to nearby Coventry, which was heavily bombed during the Battle of Britain 70 years ago.
Speaking at the Beatification Mass for Cardinal John Henry Newman in Cofton Park, near where the
Source: AOL News
Sep 19, 2010
For the first time in nearly a century, Turkey will allow a Mass at a 10th-century Armenian Orthodox cathedral in eastern Turkey, but the state's failure to restore a cross atop the building has soured the occasion for many Armenians.
Some 5,000 members of the Armenian diaspora are expected to descend upon tiny Akdamar Island on Lake Van for Sunday's Mass. The Turkish government has portrayed the event as a gesture of religious tolerance and rapprochement with Armenia, which is at o
Source: BBC
Sep 19, 2010
A Spitfire and a Hurricane have taken part in a flypast to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
It was watched by Prince Charles, Prince William and Prime Minister David Cameron, who all attended a service at Westminster Abbey.
The 1940 battle saw RAF pilots repelling a German bid for air superiority, making an invasion of the UK impossible.
The Westminster Abbey service was attended by veterans of the Battle of Britain and representatives of
Source: BBC
Sep 19, 2010
A research team reports new findings of stone age tools that suggest humans came "out of Africa" by land earlier than has been thought.
Geneticists estimate that migration from Africa to South-East Asia and Australia took place as recently as 60,000 years ago.
But Dr Michael Petraglia, of Oxford University, and colleagues say stone artefacts found in the Arabian Peninsula and India point to an exodus starting about 70,000 to 80,000 years ago - and perhaps even
Source: AFP
Sep 18, 2010
Opponents of a Canadian gold mine project in a Romanian village on Saturday called on the Romanian culture ministry to save a threatened ancient site in the area.
Alburnus Maior says it represents hundreds of locals opposed to the open-cast gold mine project by Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), the daughter company of Canadian firm Gabriel Resources -- which holds 80 percent of RMGC.
RMGC recently sent a request to the Romanian culture ministry for a new archaeolog
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 18, 2010
A 'mild-mannered' bank manager who never discussed the First World War with his family has been revealed as a hero soldier who fought behind enemy lines.
Corporal Reginald ''Rex'' Billingham became stranded in a shell hole after his battalion was ordered to recapture a French village from German forces in May 1917.
He was surrounded by German troops and survived grenades and mortar fire for four nights and three days before dodging a hail of bullets to return to Britis
Source: BBC
Sep 18, 2010
A 'barrel' mortuary and the records of Victorian shipwrecks will be revealed at Llanfaelog church on Anglesey on Saturday.
Canon Madalaine Brady said the idea to reveal more about the graves and their history has really fired up people's interest.
St Maelog church yard dates from the 12th Century and the event is part of UK-wide Open Churches Day.
Llanfaelog church, on the west coast of Anglesey, will open from 1000-1500 BST....
Source: BBC
Sep 18, 2010
The restored grave of the last known "sin-eater" in England has been at the centre of a special service in a Shropshire village churchyard.
Campaigners raised £1,000 to restore the grave of Richard Munslow, who was buried in Ratlinghope in 1906.
Sin-eaters were generally poor people paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of the deceased.
Frowned upon by the church, the custom mainly died o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 18, 2010
She is a former Marxist guerrilla whose organisation once stole $2.5 million from the safe of the governor of São Paulo.
Locked up and tortured by the dictatorship which ran Brazil during the 1970s, she was once branded by a prosecutor as the "Joan of Arc of subversion".
Yet in less than a month's time Dilma Rousseff is on course to become Brazil's first woman president, entrusted with running the largest and fastest-growing economy in Latin America.
Source: USA Today
Sep 17, 2010
Three centuries after the birth of Christianity, at least one wealthy family in the town on Sussita, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee, was still adorning its home with images of goddesses.
Archeologists from the University of Haifa in Israel and Concordia University in Minnesota discovered a wall painting of Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune.
They also found a figure of a maenad, one of the female companions of the wine and fertility god Dionysus.
Source: Huffington Post
Sep 17, 2010
Several weeks ago, in an interview with the Huffington Post, a senior Obama adviser tried out a new campaign-themed line in the hope of imparting the gravity of the situation to Democratic voters. Should Republicans take back Congress, he said, their policy agendas could be worse then those offered by George W. Bush.
On Friday, the White House hit the theme again. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking at the daily briefing, accused some in the GOP of wanting to not just privatize S
Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle
Sep 17, 2010
Georgia is gearing up for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, expecting it to be the most significant heritage tourism opportunity in coming years.
The commemoration is being called “CW150” and will run from 2011 to 2015 to coincide with the war, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
Over the next four years the state will spend close to $3 million promoting Civil War tourism, including roughly $726,000 this year.
Events are planned at Kennesaw Mountain Natio
Source: Yahoo News
Sep 17, 2010
SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian study has uncovered signs that the country's ancient Aborigines may have been the world's first stargazers, pre-dating Stonehenge and Egypt's pyramids by thousands of years.
Professor Ray Norris said widespread and detailed knowledge of the stars had been passed down through the generations by Aborigines, whose history dates back tens of millennia, in traditional songs and stories.
"We know there's lots of stories about the sky: songs,
Source: Independent (UK)
Sep 17, 2010
In all the twists and tragedies spanning 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, few would think to look for a happy subplot in the world of archaeology. But consider the travails of 362 tiny clay tablets. Forged in southern Iraq 4,000-odd years ago, then crushed in the collapse of the twin towers, the tablets are now back in Iraq.
Decorated with cuneiform script – the oldest-known form of human writing – the tiny tablets were shipped in early 2001 from Dubai to the Port of Newark in New Jer
Source: AFP
Sep 17, 2010
Less than one in five (19 percent) Germans is aware of the full scale of the use of forced labour by the Nazis in World War II, a survey showed on Friday.
Only 13 percent of Germans over 65 correctly estimated the number of people from all over Europe forced to work in horrendous conditions for the German war machine at more than 13 million, the poll by Infratest-Dimap showed....
Source: Monsters & Critics
Sep 17, 2010
Prague - A Czech court ruled in favour of the Free State of Bavaria on Friday, ordering a Czech publisher to pull out and destroy its Czech-language edition of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, court spokeswoman said.
The Municipal Court in Prague agreed with Bavaria, which sued the company, KMa s.r.o., for publishing the book without having the copyright, which is held by the Bavarian Ministry of Finance until 2015.
The court also ordered the company to withdraw and destroy
