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: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Aug 6, 2010
Before Congress left for its annual August recess, action on the long-stalled fiscal year 2011 budget bills began apace. A number of bills of interest to the historical and archival communities saw action in the final week before the recess.1. Fiscal Year 2011 Financial Service and General Government Appropriations bill (S. 3677) (
Source: New York Post
Aug 6, 2010
Plea negotiations broke down this morning for accused Dead Sea Scrolls cyber-bully Raphael Golb -- who now says he's taking his wacky identity theft and impersonation case to trial.
Golb, 49, is charged with trying to boost his historian father's scholarship on the 2,000 year old scrolls by going online in the name of rival scholars -- notably Dr. Lawrence Schiffman of New York University -- to discredit their work.
Plea negotiations before Manhattan Supreme Court Justi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2010
Even Roald Dahl could not have dreamt up the horrifying series of events that rocked his family in the 1960s, just as his career was taking off. In an exclusive extract from his intimate new biography, his friend Donald Sturrock reveals the extent to which Dahl’s life was shaped by catastrophe - and why his wife called him 'Roald the Rotten’.
The year 1960 began calmly enough for Roald Dahl, but it would prove to be tumultuous in many ways. Kiss Kiss, his fourth collection of short
Source: Discovery News
Aug 6, 2010
Even though it isn't wired for broadband, this prehistoric domicile does have beds and even a fireplace.
Anthropologists have unearthed the remains of an apparent Neanderthal cave sleeping chamber, complete with a hearth and nearby grass beds that might have once been covered with animal fur.
Neanderthals inhabited the cozy Late Pleistocene room, located within Esquilleu Cave in Cantabria, Spain, anywhere between 53,000 to 39,000 years ago, according to a Journal of Arc
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Aug 6, 2010
The popular public archaeology lab at Independence National Historical Park, forced from its longtime home at Third and Chestnut Streets by a land deal undertaken by the park and a private group, will not reopen in its new quarters for up to two years, park officials said this week.
When they closed it in June, the officials predicted a late-summer reopening for the lab, which is analyzing about one million artifacts unearthed in the park a decade ago.
Although the mo
Source: BBC
Aug 6, 2010
Southern Sudan has asked musicians and writers to compose a national anthem, six months ahead of a referendum on independence.
The South Sudan National Anthem Committee said the contest did not mean that it was backing separation.
However it said the region needed to be prepared for independence.
The BBC's Peter Martell in Juba says Sudan's national anthem is rarely played in the south, which fought a brutal two-decade war with the north....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2010
Nelson Mandela, the Former South African president, may have fathered an illegitimate daughter following a brief affair with a woman he met in Cape Town, in 1945, his foundation has admitted.
Mpho Pule spent almost 12 years battling to see the man she believed was her father but died just a month before his office wrote to say that they were close to confirming her claim.
Now her children are continuing her fight to be recognised as the seventh child fathered by the f
Source: CNN
Aug 6, 2010
While he's not on the ballot, George W. Bush is still vital to the midterm election as far as the nation's top Democrat is concerned.
President Obama has made a point recently to invoke Bush's name in what many say is a calculated effort to remind voters of the previous administration's economic policies, which Democrats argue led to the worst recession in modern history.
On Monday, the president told those attending a Democratic fundraiser in Atlanta, Georgia, that the
Source: ABC News
Aug 6, 2010
Their skin is charred. Their bones melted away. Many watched their parents die. Yet they consider themselves the lucky ones. 65 years ago, they survived the unimaginable: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They are called the Hibakusha. They are a unique group which hopes their dramatic stories will convey the need to eliminate the scourge that nearly killed them during two days that changed the world, 65 years ago.
Mikiso Iwasa says August 6th, 1945 began
Source: Guardian (UK)
Aug 6, 2010
When Wolf Hall won last year's Booker prize some commentators suggested that the term "historical fiction" was itself becoming a thing of the past. So many novels these days are set prior to the author's lifetime that to label a novel "historical" is almost as meaningless as to call it "literary". Eight of the last 10 Booker prize shortlists have included a novel set in the 19th century, and with the inclusion of David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoe
Source: The Sofia Echo (Bulgaria)
Aug 6, 2010
His name is Alexei Petrov. He used to be an officer, now he is a defendant in a case, accused of being part of an "organised crime group" and facing a 15-year sentence. But he's not "that" Alexei Petrov, the one arrested in "Operation Octopus", just a namesake. His alleged crime is stealing a tank.
If you follow the news closely, you will likely remember the story from two and a half years back, when police arrested two German nationals as they attempte
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2010
A gang of thieves on Friday staged a remarkable break-in near the Swedish royal family's residence in Stockholm, smashing display cases at a historic 18th-century Chinese-style landmark and getting away with artifacts that police called potentially priceless.
The heist at the ornate Chinese Pavilion, a birthday gift from King Adolf Fredrik to Queen Lovisa Ulrika in 1753, took just six minutes, and occurred just after security guards had made their rounds at 2 a.m., police spokeswoma
Source: CNN
Aug 6, 2010
A court hearing is scheduled for Friday in the case of an Army officer who has refused to deploy to Afghanistan because, in his view, President Barack Obama has not proven that he was born in the United States and is therefore ineligible to be president.
Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin is scheduled to go before a judge in Virginia to enter a plea on charges that include disobeying a lawful order and dereliction of duty.
He is a decorated Army doctor and an 18-year veteran who is now
Source: BBC News
Aug 6, 2010
Bronislaw Komorowski has been sworn in as Poland's new president, a month after his election victory.
Mr Komorowski defeated Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the late President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash in April.
In a gesture to Kaczynski supporters, he vowed to work for national unity.
His first foreign visits would be to Brussels, Paris and Berlin in order to "show Poland's European roots", the new, strongly pro-EU l
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 5, 2010
An early piano believed to have been played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has surfaced in Germany and could be worth millions of pounds.
Public broadcaster SWR said the instrument was built in 1775 and acquired in the 1980s by piano manufacturer Martin Becker in the southern German city of Baden-Baden from an antiques dealer in Strasbourg, eastern France....
Source: BBC
Aug 5, 2010
A doctor who examined the Lockerbie bomber says he could not have faked his illness.
Leading oncologist Professor Karol Sikora examined Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, in prison and estimated he had about three months to live.
Last August, the Libyan was released from jail on compassionate grounds.
Former prison doctor and writer Theodore Dalrymple agreed that it would be impossible for Megrahi to fake the severity of his disease...
Source: AP
Aug 5, 2010
A city in southern Mexico agreed Wednesday to consider a petition by Mayan Indians to remove a recently installed monument to the Spanish conquistadores who led the bloody conquest of the region in the 1500s.
Over 100 Mayan groups and individuals from Yucatan and other Mexican states signed the petition asking that the monument to Francisco de Montejo and his son be removed from a boulevard in Merida, Yucatan's state capital. It was installed in June.
Between 1528 and 1
Source: AFP
Aug 5, 2010
A Danish archeologist shot dead a polar bear that attacked and severely clawed his colleague during a dig in Greenland, the museum that employs them said Wednesday.
Bjarne Groennov killed the animal after it threw fellow expert Jens Fog Jensen to the ground in the incident on Saturday, said the National Museum of Denmark.
"It was a shocking experience but in such a situation we are just glad to get out alive and more or less unharmed," Jensen was quoted by the
Source: Balkan travellers
Aug 5, 2010
A team of archaeologists discovered what they believe is an ancient winery during their continued exploration of the Late Antiquity-Early Byzantine fortress on the Saint Atanas Cape on Bulgaria’s northern Black Sea coast.
The supposed winery, according to reports, consisted of two stone buildings connected through a wooden passage. One of them would be filled with grapes that were pressed with large rectangular stones.
Several structures thought to be ancient wineries
Source: AP
Aug 5, 2010
A new Iranian website that denies and mocks the Holocaust with cartoons showing Jews as hook-nosed worms burrowing holes through a history book provoked outrage in Israel on Thursday.
The site, holocartoons.com, features caricatures including a Jew with a hook nose and a black hat emblazoned with a Star of David tracing fake bodies on the ground at a concentration camp. The website design uses Nazi imagery, with the icon for flipping pages marked with a swastika.
"
