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
Aug 11, 2010
Two ancient animal bones from Ethiopia show signs of butchering by human ancestors, moving back the earliest evidence for the use of stone tools by about 800,000 years, researchers say.
The bones appear to have been cut and smashed some 3.4 million years ago, the first evidence of stone tool use by Australopithecus afarensis, the species best known for the fossil dubbed "Lucy," says researcher Zeresenay Alemseged.
The study authors said the bones indicate the
Source: USA Today
Aug 11, 2010
More evidence that The Flintstones didn't tell us the whole story about cavemen. Our prehuman ancestors cannibalized one another for the "nutritional value" starting about a million years ago, finds an analysis of bones left in a Spanish cave.
In the journal Current Anthropology, a team led by archaeologist Eudald Carbonell of Spain's University of Rovira and Virgili, report fossil evidence of continuous cannibalism - cut marks and butchering remains - as a way of life amo
Source: USA Today
Aug 11, 2010
Western Europe's massive prehistoric tombs were built in a burst of activity over a few centuries around 4000 BC, suggests dating evidence, rather than continuously throughout the Stone Age.
In the current European Journal of Archaeology, archaeologist Chris Scarre of the United Kingdom's Durham University, looks at the latest dating of "megalithic" prehistoric tombs stretching from Sweden to Spain. The mound-shaped burial sites are better known as "barrows" in G
Source: AP
Aug 11, 2010
Archaeologists say they have uncovered the heaviest and most valuable gold coin ever found in Israel.
The 2,200-year-old coin weighs an ounce (28 grams) and was found at the Tel Kedesh site near the Lebanon border on June 22, according to Wednesday's statement from the antiquities authority.
It said this coin is six times the weight of most others from that era....
Source: BBC
Aug 11, 2010
Osama Bin Laden's former cook and driver has been sentenced to 14 years in prison by a Guantanamo Bay tribunal.
Sudanese-born Ibrahim al-Qosi, 50, had admitted conspiracy and providing support for terrorism.
However, he could serve far less time because of a plea deal which is likely to remain secret for several weeks.
Qosi, who was detained in Afghanistan in 2001, also admitted working as Bin Laden's bodyguard and helping him avoid capture by US forces....
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 11, 2010
MUNICH—A German historian on Wednesday presented evidence at the trial of John Demjanjuk that suggested he worked as a guard at the Nazis' Flossenbuerg concentration camp.
Matthias Meissner of Germany's Federal Archive showed the Munich state court original documents from Flossenbuerg listing a man called "Demianiuk" and "Demenjuk" as a guard there in October 1943.
The ID number on the card was the same as on the key piece of evidence in the trial --
Source: MSNBC
Aug 11, 2010
Check out the red coats.
They will be easy to spot in Boston this month, especially if you are willing to do a little time travel.
Travel back to the 18th century and you can even ask a British Regular, famous for their red coats, what it was like to serve so far from home where everyone seemed to hate them. (Not so much different from today, is it?) Watch the Regulars' Changing of the Guard at the site of their original garrison at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The British
Source: Global Post
Aug 11, 2010
“Not only idiotic but a crime,” read the cover the Przeglad weekly on Aug. 1, the anniversary of the Warsaw uprising.
Such an overt negative assessment of the uprising against the German occupiers that ultimately failed after 63 bloody days, leaving the capital a sea of ruins and more than 200,000 dead, was once unthinkable.
Sixty-six years later, closer scrutiny of events surrounding the uprising has emboldened critics.
Controversy has surrounded the upri
Source: The Province
Aug 11, 2010
To right historic wrongs done to the Chinese community, the federal government has given the University of B.C. $900,000 to help run a Chinese-Canadian history website.
Alice Wong, Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism, made the announcement Monday at the University's library.
Wong said the government has apologized on behalf of all Canadians for the so-called "head tax" the country charged Chinese immigrants to enter Canada between 1885 and 192
Source: San Antonio Current
Aug 11, 2010
South Texas veterans have a new site to visit on August 14, the day that ended the War in the Pacific in 1945, bringing World War II to a close: a Texas Historical Commission Marker in Three Rivers commemorating the Rice Funeral Home as the site of the Felix Longoria incident.
In late 1944, Three Rivers’ resident Felix Longoria was drafted into the U.S. Army....Private Longoria, killed by an enemy sniper, was posthumously awarded a Bronze Service Star, a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct
Source: WaPo
Aug 11, 2010
In February 2005, Monika Stoy and her husband, Tim, sent letters to the mayors of more than 250 cities in the south of France, towns that ranged from the Mediterranean playground of St. Tropez to the tiny village of Urschenheim, in Alsace. As varied as the towns were, they had one thing in common: All had been liberated in the late summer and early fall of 1944 by members of the 3rd Infantry, the same division that the Stoys, both U.S. Army officers, were part of.
The letters weren'
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2010
As if things in Russia were not looking sufficiently apocalyptic already, with 100-degree temperatures and noxious fumes rolling in from burning peat bogs and forests, there is growing alarm here that fires in regions coated with fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 24 years ago could now be emitting plumes of radioactive smoke.
Several fires have been documented in the contaminated areas of western Russia, including three heavily irradiated sites in the Bryansk region, the e
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2010
BERLIN — For 20 years, a graffiti-covered ruin of a former department store here has housed studios and workshops for artists who occupied it and saved it from demolition shortly after the Berlin Wall fell.
The building, known as Tacheles, is now protected as a historic site. The artists, meanwhile, without a lease for nearly two years, face eviction to make way for a lavish new development.
For Berlin, more is at stake than the age-old gentrification dilemma. The threa
Source: CNet News
Aug 11, 2010
The National Cryptologic Museum holds a fantastic history of code and code-breaking machines, which we've striven to catch on film.
There's no doubt that the star of the museum is the Enigma, the German device used by the Nazis in World War II to encrypt their messages and which the Allies finally broke.
A Dutchman, Hugo A. Koch, conceived the idea of the Enigma in 1919. The first commercial model was produced in 1923.
"Impressed by Enigma's security,
Source: BBC News
Aug 11, 2010
A US museum is trying to raise funds to restore five dresses worn by Vivien Leigh in the 1939 Oscar-winning film Gone With The Wind.
The Harry Ransom Center in Texas has launched an appeal to raise $30,000 (£19,000) to exhibit the gowns to mark the movie's 75th anniversary in 2014.
"The costumes are in fragile condition and cannot currently be exhibited," the centre said in a statement.
It also hopes to loan the dresses to other museums around the
Source: BBC News
Aug 11, 2010
A linguistic mystery has arisen surrounding symbol-inscribed stones in Scotland that predate the formation of the country itself.
The stones are believed to have been carved by members of an ancient people known as the Picts, who thrived in what is now Scotland from the 4th to the 9th Centuries.
These symbols, researchers say, are probably "words" rather than images.
But their conclusions have raised criticism from some linguists.
The
Source: BBC News
Aug 11, 2010
The bodies of more than 50 people have been found in a lake by investigators searching for victims of the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
The discovery was made on the shores of Lake Perucac on the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.
It is part of an ongoing investigation by Bosnia's International Commission for Missing Persons.
Most of the bodies are believed to date from a massacre of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in the town of Visegrad.
More th
Source: BBC News
Aug 11, 2010
Russia is mounting extra patrols to fight wildfires in a region hit by nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, amid fears that radiation could spread.
Crews put out several fires in Bryansk, the emergencies ministry said, amid concern that wind or fire could whip up radioactive particles in the soil.
Officials say they are assessing the danger and there is no cause for panic.
Fires have swept western Russia for a week, though officials say many are now under contro
Source: BBC News
Aug 11, 2010
A commission set up to examine the last years of Sri Lanka's civil war has held its first sitting amid international claims that it lacks credibility.
Human rights groups say government troops as well as the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels may have committed war crimes before the war ended last year.
But they believe the panel, appointed by the Sri Lankan government, will fail to fully investigate their accusations.
Sri Lankan officials have dismissed calls for
Source: BBC
Aug 11, 2010
It may not come as a huge surprise that communist and anti-capitalist philosopher Karl Marx died a poor man.
But why did the German, who had seven children by his wife and died in north London, leave his meagre £250 (£23,000 today) to his youngest daughter Eleanor?
New online records are offering tantalising insights into the financial affairs of famous figures from the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Official summaries, or indexes, of more than six million wills
