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: ABC News
Sep 1, 2010
The Cardy family of Door County has a lot to be proud of -- not only because their property dates back generations but because on that property are artifacts older than the Egyptian pyramids.
On Wednesday, one of Wisconsin's most significant archeological finds came under new ownership.
Archaeologists call the Cardy Camp on the southeastern edge of Sturgeon Bay the most important archaeological site of its era in Wisconsin.
Scientists say it was a hunting c
Source: Discovery News
Sep 1, 2010
Ultra millionaire sponsorship deals such as those signed by sprinter Usain Bolt, motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi and tennis player Maria Sharapova, are just peanuts compared to the personal fortune amassed by a second century A.D. Roman racer, according to an estimate published in the historical magazine Lapham's Quarterly.
According to Peter Struck, associate professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, an illiterate charioteer named Gaius Appuleius Diocles ea
Source: BBC News
Sep 1, 2010
A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret.
Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.
Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".
What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.
By a bizarre twist,
Source: Fox News
Sep 1, 2010
The South Korean government, in an effort to raise money for its military, wants to sell nearly a million antique M1 rifles that were used by U.S. soldiers in the Korean War to gun collectors in America.
The Obama administration approved the sale of the American-made rifles last year. But it reversed course and banned the sale in March – a decision that went largely unnoticed at the time but that is now sparking opposition from gun rights advocates.
A State Department s
Source: BBC
Sep 1, 2010
Thieves have targeted a historically important submarine wreck lying in the English Channel, it has emerged.
English Heritage said divers stole the torpedo tube hatch of the Holland 5, which sank six miles off Eastbourne in East Sussex in 1912.
The theft was discovered during a licensed dive by the Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) in June and confirmed during a dive last month.
Sussex Police and English Heritage have appealed for help to catch the perpetr
Source: The Canadian Press
Sep 1, 2010
Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed a 3,000-year-old Iron Age temple with a trove of figurines of ancient deities and circular clay vessels used for religious rituals, officials said Wednesday.
The head of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, Ziad al-Saad, said the sanctuary dates to the eighth century B.C. and was discovered at Khirbat 'Ataroz near the town of Mabada, some 20 miles (32 kilometres) southwest of the capital Amman.
The sanctuary and its artifacts — h
Source: BBC
Sep 1, 2010
The remains of a huge 12,000 year old feast have been found in a cave in Northern Israel.
Archaeologists working in Hilazon Tachtit found what they thought was a late Palaeolithic campsite, when they discovered tools and animal bones.
However they soon realised they were looking at a large burial site, with huge numbers of animal bones.
They found the remains of at least three aurochs - giant extinct cattle - and over 70 tortoise skeletons....
Source: BBC
Sep 1, 2010
A 75-year-old Surrey woman cleared out her attic and found two paintings that could fetch up to £30,000 at auction.
The woman decided she wanted to throw the oil paintings away, but first went to her neighbour Spencer Wright to ask how to dispose of them.
Mr Wright said he realised they should not be consigned to the bin, and used an iPhone app to contact Christie's.
The artworks were painted in 1904 to celebrate the founding of the Australian army by Major
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 1, 2010
A New York art courier entrusted with helping to sell a $1.3 million (£850,000) painting is being sued after it vanished while he was on a night out.
James Carl Haggerty is now being sued by one of the owners of “Portrait of a Girl” by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Owner Kristyn Trudgeon is suing for the value of the painting, which was completed in about 1857 and spent years at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 1, 2010
Fidel Castro has acknowledge discrimination against homosexuals during his rule in the 1960s and 70s, regretting that he did not pay enough attention to the “great injustice” suffered.
The former Cuban revolutionary leader said if someone was responsible, it was him, but he was primarily concerned with other matters.
Castro did not blame the ruling Communist Party for the discrimination, instead regretting that he himself did not pay enough attention to the plight of
Source: CNN
Sep 1, 2010
Former U.S. President George W. Bush was a "true idealist" who displayed "genuine integrity and political courage," former British prime minister Tony Blair reveals in his memoirs.
Detailing the close professional and personal relationship which developed between the two leaders in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. and during the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Blair writes that Bush was "very smart" while having "immense simplicity
Source: CNN
Sep 1, 2010
Divers are recovering bottles of champagne that have been lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for about two centuries, an autonomous Finnish island official said Wednesday.
About 70 bottles lie mostly undamaged at 50 meters deep [roughly 164 feet] south of the Aland Islands.
Juslin said that the cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. It could have possibly been sent by France's King Lo
Source: Washington Times
Sep 1, 2010
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that history will judge whether the war in Iraq was worth it.
In Iraq to mark the formal close of the U.S. combat mission and the departure of the top U.S. war commander, Mr. Gates visited troops at Camp Ramadi in western Iraq.
Asked whether the U.S. was still at war in Iraq, Mr. Gates answered succinctly, "I would say we are not."
Fewer than 50,000 U.S. troops are still in Iraq, down from more than
Source: Reuters
Sep 1, 2010
Former British prime minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday he could have not have imagined what he called the "nightmare" that unfolded in Iraq but still did not regret joining the U.S.-led invasion.
In a political memoir Blair echoed previous statements that the 2003 invasion was justified because Saddam Hussein posed a threat and could have developed weapons of mass destruction.
The self-penned volume "A Journey" was published on the day the United
Source: Bill Donahue in the Atlantic
Sep 1, 2010
[Bill Donahue is a writer living in Portland, Oregon.]
When he went marauding about the known world some 800 years ago, Genghis Khan almost certainly never slept on a bed scattered with rose petals. He was a hard guy. So it seems fitting that the journey east from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital, toward a 131-foot stainless-steel statue of the infamous Mongol warlord is a stark experience. The roadside is barren of trees and unpeopled, and brown rubbly mountains stretch into the dis
Source: National Geographic News
Aug 31, 2010
Cannibalism helped meet protein needs, keep rivals in line, study suggests.
For some European cavemen, human meat wasn't a ritual delicacy or a food of last resort but an everyday meal, according to a new study of fossil bones found in Spain.
And, it seems, everyone in the area was doing it, making the discovery "the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date," the study says.
The 800,000-year-old butchered bones from the cave, called Gr
Source: New York Times
Aug 31, 2010
In sharp contrast to the rest of the Detroit metropolitan area, an area known as Midtown just north of the central business district has been holding its own in the recession.
Much of the success of Midtown — as it was branded a decade ago — is a result of the strength of institutions like Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center, the Henry Ford Hospital and the Detroit Institute of Arts, all of which contribute students and employees as well as residents.
Source: Texas A&M News
Aug 31, 2010
Texas A&M University researchers working to restore the hull of La Belle, a light frigate recovered from its underwater grave, are using an unconventional method to preserve the pieces: a state-of-the-art freeze dryer big enough to hold a few head of cattle.
La Belle was carrying 43 people when it sank in Matagorda Bay in January 1686. The ship’s remains now lie in a vat of oily preservative on Texas A&M’s Riverside Campus, the former Bryan Air Force Base that serves as head
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aug 31, 2010
Call it the second evacuation of Kennesaw, thanks to the Civil War.
Students waited outside the building for the all clear Monday. A Kennesaw State University classroom building was evacuated Monday because of Civil War relics that authorities feared were dangerous.
When General William T. Sherman rode through in 1864, folks got out of the way; and hundreds of Kennesaw State University students were evacuated from a classroom Monday because of two live cannonballs on ca
Source: Live Science
Aug 31, 2010
The Magna Carta helped form the foundation for modern English and U.S. law. Now one of two copies known to exist outside England is headed for a special new case to preserve it.
The very first Magna Carta dates to 1215, when English barons forced King John to write down the traditional rights and liberties of the country's free persons. A copy of the Magna Carta signed by King Edward I in 1297 currently resides within a helium-filled casement at the National Archives Building in Was
