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: AP
Sep 14, 2010
...A New York attorney went on trial Tuesday on criminal charges that accuse him of adopting electronic aliases to discredit one of his professor-father's academic rivals. The debate is over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Prosecutors say Raphael Golb turned commentary into crime with e-mails and blog posts that accused his father's adversary of plagiarism. The rival academic denies it.
Golb does not acknowledge crafting the messages. His lawyers say the online mus
Source: Independent (UK)
Sep 14, 2010
German state prosecutors are investigating nine crematorium workers and an accomplice who are suspected of having routinely sold off gold tooth fillings sifted from the ashes of hundreds of corpses in a case that has evoked disturbing memories of the Nazi Holocaust.
The nine stokers employed at Hamburg's Öjendorf crematorium have all been suspended from duty while prosecutors conduct their investigation. The probe follows a police raid on their homes in late August which netted €146
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 14, 2010
With obscure technical diagrams and notes scrawled over its pages of faded colour maps, this book might appear as nothing more than an uninspiring aerial survey.
But these pictures are taken from Adolf Hitler's original war dossier of the planned Nazi invasion of Britain.
Unveiled for the first time 70 years to the day of Hitler's planned onslaught on England's south coast, the blueprints offer a chilling insight into what might have been on the morning of September 15,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 14, 2010
She died alone, with no known relatives to attend her funeral, but Eileen Nearne had a remarkable secret.
She once lived a daring life as a secret agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Nazi-occupied France in the Second World War.
Although she will be given a simple funeral next week, organised by her local council, she has been described as an unsung heroine of the war, serving as a radio operator, under the codename Rose....
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Sep 13, 2010
The legal battle over a recently discovered Lake Erie shipwreck -- believed to be the storied, Canadian-built brig Caledonia from the War of 1812 -- took another twist last week in a New York court as the U.S. salvage company that found the sunken vessel rejected accusations by state lawyers it has "plundered" the wreck site and disturbed human remains.
The struggle over the fate of the well-preserved wreck -- purported to be a 203-year-old troop transport involved
Source: Reuters
Sep 13, 2010
Conservation experts almost gave up when they first saw the severely damaged wall paintings they had come to rescue in the ancient city of Petra.
Cloaked for centuries in grimy soot from bedouin camp fires, the blackened murals appeared beyond repair.
But three years of restoration revealed intricate and brightly-colored artwork, and some of the very few surviving examples of 2,000-year-old Hellenistic wall painting.
"It has actually been quite nerve-r
Source: Fox News
Sep 13, 2010
Conservation experts almost gave up when they first saw the severely damaged wall paintings they had come to rescue in the ancient city of Petra -- a site made famous in the final scene in the film, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."
Cloaked for centuries in grimy soot from bedouin camp fires, the blackened murals appeared beyond repair.
But three years of restoration revealed intricate and brightly-colored artwork, and some of the very few surviving exampl
Source: LiveScience
Sep 13, 2010
Lead poisoning isn't just a problem for post-industrial city kids — the children of samurai suffered from it too, a new study suggests. An analysis of bones of children who lived as many as 400 years ago showed sky-high lead levels, which scientists now think came from their mothers' makeup.
During the Edo period, from 1603 to 1867, Japan was ruled by a series of shoguns. Below the shogun, a few hundred feudal lords presided over the country's agricultural domains, each from within
Source: AFP
Sep 13, 2010
Russian explorers Monday said they had found a sailor's log from aboard a legendary Arctic expedition that vanished as it sought to forge through the ice-choked Northeast Passage in 1912.
For decades mystery clouded the fate of the adventurer Georgy Brusilov -- captain of the first Russian crew to seek the elusive Arctic trade route from Asia to the West -- inspiring a generation of books and films.
But the famed voyagers' remains and a journal -- dated to May 1913 from
Source: Digital Journal
Sep 13, 2010
Archaeologist Michel Guyot had a dream to build a real Medieval castle with Medieval building techniques, and finally his dream is being realized.
Just south of Paris, France, in the rolling countryside a Medieval castle is being built. Techniques from the 13th century are being used (under the supervision of working regulations) which have not been used in more than 700 years, claims the AOL News article.
Michel Guyot was inspired when he discovered 13th century archit
Source: BBC
Sep 13, 2010
Archaeologists digging at a site in south Wales have uncovered an entire suit of Roman armour and some weapons.
The rare discovery was made during an excavation at the fortress of Caerleon in south Wales, one of Britain's best known Roman sites.
Dr Guest, senior lecturer in Roman archaeology at Cardiff's school of history, archaeology and religion, explained that a number of objects were first spotted last week on top of a floor in one room of a warehouse on the Priory
Source: Annapolis Capital
Sep 13, 2010
Four Naval Academy midshipmen and a professor, along with Navy scientists, head to the North Sea on Wednesday to search for the remains of Capt. John Paul Jones' ship, Bonhomme Richard.
This search for one of the most famous ships of the American Revolution will combine oceanography, historical analysis and naval engineering and employ cutting-edge technology. A multibeam sonar, for example, will give researchers three-dimensional pictures of objects on the ocean floor, and a gradio
Source: Fox News
Sep 13, 2010
Ukrainian guards risked being killed by their SS supervisors if they tried to flee Nazi death camps where they served, according to evidence presented Monday at the trial of John Demjanjuk, the retired Ohio autoworker accused of being a death camp guard.
The 90-year-old, Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk has denied ever having served as a guard. However, the historical evidence could bolster his defense's separate argument that any Ukrainians who agreed to serve the Nazis did so to escape de
Source: BBC News
Sep 13, 2010
The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, introduced the world's first state pension system in the 1880s.
You had to be 70 years old - and the expectation was that you would probably only live a few years after that to collect it. But in 1916, they lowered the pensionable age to 65.
It has remained at 65 for almost a century and it will take a brave government to juggle with the political sensitivity of raising that age again.
"It is a part of our poli
Source: BBC News
Sep 13, 2010
People who were still developing in the womb at the time of severe World War II food shortages did worse than others of similar ages at mental tests almost 60 years later, researchers say.
Scientists, writing in the PNAS journal, said the 1944 Dutch "famine" may have accelerated brain ageing.
They studied nearly 300 adults who had been foetuses at the time.
UK experts said even severe morning sickness was unlikely to cause a similar level of malnu
Source: Maryland AP News
Sep 13, 2010
A piece of Civil War literary history is for sale in Frederick. The Barbara Fritchie House is on the market with an asking price of $185,000. The two-story, red-brick structure is a replica of the house from which the 90-something widow defiantly waved a Union flag at Confederate General Stonewall Jackson in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem....UPDATE: As of May 2011, neither the Barabara Fritchie House nor the museum are currently for sale.
Source: Bloomberg News
Sep 13, 2010
Russian scientists found the remains of Emperor Ivan VI in the village of Kholmogory in the northern Arkhangelsk region, Interfax reported, citing Anatoly Karanin, head of the archaelogical team that made the discovery.
Karanin said the likelihood that the remains are genuine is “extremely high,” the Moscow-based news service reported today....
Source: AP
Sep 13, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI will break his own rule this weekend when he beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman, the renowned 19th Century Anglican convert who greatly influenced the Roman Catholic Church.
Newman remains a complicated figure within the Anglican church he abandoned, and the pope's glorification of him during a state visit to Britain could unleash new tensions between churches already divided over issues like the ordination of women and gay bishops.
Benedict will mov
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 13, 2010
An ally of Angela Merkel who was criticised for implying Poland was jointly to blame for the outbreak of the Second World War is to resign from her party’s leadership.
Erika Steinbach, who heads a league representing the 12.5 million Germans expelled from eastern Europe after the war, had come under fire in her own Christian Democratic (CDU) party for saying Poland mobilised its armed forces before Germany did.
Claiming that she had become an “alibi” as Mrs Merkel’s par
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 13, 2010
Members of a record-breaking group of factory workers whose exploits were made into a Second World War propaganda film have been reunited.
The group, who made RAF Wellington bombers at a factory in Broughton, North Wales, were filmed as they built a plane from scratch in just under 24 hours - beating the record set by the Americans by more than a day.
The 12-minute film, complete with an American voice-over, was shown in the US to prove to North American audiences that
