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: Detroit News
Aug 26, 2010
Detroit -- Once headed to the trash heap, a cache of rare papers have been found that trace the history of the Nation of Islam.
The collection of papers, documents and photos, many dating to the 1930s, detail the innerworkings of the religious group of black Muslims, including the surprisingly prominent role of women in its founding.
They were uncovered earlier this month at a home on Detroit's west side.
The find includes handwritten and typed letters related to
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 26, 2010
An amateur historian has discovered the mummified body of a World War I solider frozen into an Italian glacier.
Dino De Bernardin made the grim find as he walked in mountains close to his home, which had been the scene of bitter fighting between Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops between 1915 and 1917.
At an altitude of 2,800metres, his attention was drawn to a 'bundle of rags’ that he saw emerging from the melting ice....
Source: New York Times
Aug 25, 2010
Marcel Albert, who became one of the leading French fighter pilots of World War II, flying Soviet-built planes in duels with German aircraft on the Eastern front, died Monday in Harlingen, Tex. He was 92.
His death, at a nursing home, was announced by France’s Order of the Liberation, founded by Gen. Charles de Gaulle during the war. The cause was complications of cancer, his nephew Jean Mavinger told The Associated Press in Paris.
Mr. Albert was among four pilots of th
Source: Earth Times
Aug 25, 2010
The remains of 5,600 Wehrmacht soldiers and ethnic Germans who died on Czech territory during and shortly after World War II now have a final resting place there.
The place is the town of Cheb, known in German as Eger, in the Sudetenland region near the Bavarian border. The new war cemetery, the largest and last burial site for German war dead on Czech territory, will be officially opened on September 11, some 65 years after the war.Hundreds of plain granite cro
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2010
The Germans planned to invade Britain in 1940 by dressing up in British uniforms and making use of two stairways cut in the cliffs at Dover to creep along the beach, MI5 files disclose.
The invasion plans are revealed in a report by a member of a German intelligence unit called Sonderstab (Special Force) Hollmann.
It was led by Wilhelm Hollmann, described as 45 years old “but looks at least 50…a trifle stooped” with a “gold right incisor” tooth and “very little hair.”
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2010
A beautiful and refined Russian ballerina working as a Nazi spy helped to turn the course of the first major conflict of the Second World War, newly released files from MI5 disclose.
Marina Lie – who also used the names Marina Goubonina, Marie Alexevna, and Luise Lohmann – stole plans that helped turn the campaign in Norway against the Allies just as they were about to claim victory.
The defeat led to the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and his replacement as prime
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2010
The Nuremberg Laws, which laid the legal groundwork for the execution of six million Jews during the Holocaust, have been handed over to the US National Archives.
Consisting of four pages, and signed by Adolf Hitler, the anti-Semitic documents were appropriated by US General George Patton at the end of the Second World War after being discovered in Bavaria.
Gen Patton disobeyed orders that Nazi documents were to be handed over to the government and spirited them out o
Source: NYT
Aug 25, 2010
For many 19th- and 20th-century immigrants or their children, it was a rite of passage: Arriving in America, they adopted a new identity.
Charles Steinweg, the German-born piano maker, changed his name to Steinway (in part because English instruments were deemed to be superior). Tom Lee, a Tong leader who would become the unofficial mayor of Chinatown in Manhattan, was originally Wong Ah Ling. Anne Bancroft, who was born in the Bronx, was Anna Maria Louisa Italiano.
Th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2010
The residents of an entire Leicestershire village have joined a dig to find archaeological remains, with over 200 people involved in the excavation which found relics stretching back as far as the Roman Empire.
The dig took place in Kibworth, just off the A6. It even involved taking up the tarmac of the car park at the local pub, the Coach and Horses, so that the earth below could be excavated.
The results will be seen in a new series on BBC Four this autumn, Story of
Source: Discovery News
Aug 25, 2010
The smell of freshly baked bread wafted through Egypt’s western desert more than 3,500 years ago, according to new findings at the El-Kharga Oasis announced on Wednesday.
During excavation work for the Theban Desert Road Survey, a project to map the ancient desert routes in the Western desert, a team of Egyptian and US archaeologists from Yale University stumbled upon the remains of what appears to be an ancient bakery town.
About 1 km (0.6 miles) long from north to so
Source: Press Release from the National Archives
Aug 25, 2010
In a transfer ceremony at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens today, Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero accepted on behalf of the U.S. Government the original Nuremberg Laws presented by Steven S. Koblik, Huntington president. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. deposited the documents at the Library for safekeeping at the end of World War II. He died in December of 1945 in an automobile crash before he could discuss their final disposition.In pres
Source: BBC
Aug 25, 2010
A man convicted of the 2003 assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic has been extradited from Croatia to Serbia.
Sretko Kalinic was arrested in June after being shot by an accomplice in Djindjic's murder, Milos Simovic, who was later arrested himself.
Both men had been at large since the reformist Mr Djindjic was killed by a sniper linked to former paramilitaries.
In 2007, they were sentenced in absentia in Serbia to 30 years in jail.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 25, 2010
Archaeologists discovered a Roman "industrial estate" near a ruined fort that may once have been home to a legendary missing legion.
The unearthed site includes the remains of a water-powered flour mill used to grind grain and produce food for the soldiers, clothes, food remains, graves and pottery.
It also contains evidence the Roman occupants might have worn socks, experts who analysed ancient sandals said.
The site was excavated as part of a
Source: AP
Aug 25, 2010
For generations, the lore of "One Thousand and One Nights" helped shape Western notions about Muslim culture. The collection of tales described an exotic world of harems and flying carpets, Sinbad and monsters, Aladdin and the jinn, Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.
Now an exhibition about innovation in Muslim civilization seeks to highlight what organizers say is an overshadowed period of history, a "Golden Age" in which advances in engineering, medicine and architec
Source: Sky News
Aug 25, 2010
white farmer has accused the South African government of genocide in a petition submitted to the United Nations.
The man, who has remained anonymous for fear of reprisals, blamed the African National Congress' (ANC) policies for a wave of murders and criminal attacks against the white community, what he called the "Afrikaner Boer."
At least 3,000 white farmers have been killed in South Africa since the end of apartheid.
The petition was sent to th
Source: AP
Aug 25, 2010
Egypt's antiquities department announced Wednesday the discovery of a 3,500-year-old settlement in a desert oasis, showing the existence of vibrant desert trade routes that stretched from the Mediterranean down into Sudan from the early days of the Egyptian civilization.
The settlement at Umm el-Mawagir in Egypt's Kharga Oasis, more than 300 miles (500 kilometers) south of Cairo, has been excavated for the past year by a Yale University expedition, whose initial findings suggest it
Source: CNN.com
Aug 25, 2010
Key West, Florida (CNN) -- For more than 20 years, the bulletproof museum case housed a small piece of yesteryear: a gold bar recovered from a sunken Spanish galleon. Today, its case is broken, littered with black fingerprint dust. The treasure is gone. Stolen. Two thieves were caught in the act by the museum's security cameras.
"This is a special piece," said Melissa Kendrick, executive director of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida.
"Al
Source: Cleveland Plains-Dealer
Aug 25, 2010
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city has condemned the Cleveland house where celebrated 20th century writer Langston Hughes lived during high school.
It's the latest twist for the 120-year-old house on East 86th Street that has been vacant, slated for renovation and nominated for landmark designation.
But city officials don't expect the three-bedroom house to be torn down.
The city's building and housing department condemned the house June 4 -- unaware of its histor
Source: WaPo
Aug 25, 2010
...It is no secret the residents of these isles like a drink, or three. An inebriated King James I once fell to the royal floor while greeting the King of Denmark, and a room at the Priory - the London rehabilitation clinic - is something of a rite of passage for British celebrities. But even here, the national outcry is reaching a fevered pitch over lager lad hooligans and increasingly, their female counterparts, ladettes, turning British cities and towns into what the new Conservative Prime Mi
Source: NYT
Aug 25, 2010
Two dozen members of an association to abolish the monarchy were settled around a table in a spacious apartment in the north end of the capital when someone in the back of the room muttered, “Two hundred years since the French Revolution, and still we have a king.”
In other times and in other places, these would-be regicides might have been hounded by the king’s agents. But here in liberal Sweden, they are thriving.
Indeed, so fast has membership in the Swedish Republic
