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 2, 2010
Romania's central bank has issued a special coin commemorating a prime minister and religious leader who stripped Jews of their citizenship before World War II. The move prompted protest Monday from Romanian Jews as well as a director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Radu Ioanid, who runs the museum's international archives, said he was "shocked" by the bank's decision to mint the coin depicting late Patriarch Miron Cristea, who led the Romanian Orthodox Church from
Source: CNN
Aug 2, 2010
The defense in the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor filed an emergency motion to delay supermodel Naomi Campbell's testimony against him, the court announced Monday.
She is scheduled to take the stand against him at the Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone on Thursday.
Prosecutors say Taylor gave her a diamond during the brutal war in Sierra Leone, contradicting Taylor's testimony that he never handled the precious stones that fueled the conflic
Source: CNN
Aug 2, 2010
The wave of Independence across Africa in the 1950s and 1960s brought to the end around 75 years of colonial rule by Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and -- until World War I -- Germany.
Before 1880, Europeans had only made small incursions into Africa, with forts and trading posts mainly around the coast, according to Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society in Britain.
In 1884-5, the Berlin Conference was called to carve up Africa between Britain
Source: Guardian (UK)
Aug 2, 2010
Their right hands rise to black-clad chests and flash out in salute to their nation: "Sieg heil!" They praise Hitler's devotion to ethnic purity.
But with their high cheekbones, dark eyes and brown skin, they are hardly the Third Reich's Aryan ideal. A new strain of Nazism has found an unlikely home: Mongolia.
Once again, ultra-nationalists have emerged from an impoverished economy and turned upon outsiders. This time the main targets come from China, the risi
Source: Irish Times
Aug 2, 2010
HEIRS OF Hungary’s greatest prewar art collector are suing the country in the US courts over ownership of paintings worth an estimated $100 million (€76 million) in the largest unresolved claim for art confiscated during the Holocaust.
The collection of banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog included works by El Greco, Lucas Cranach the Elder, de Zurbaran, van Dyck, Velázquez and Monet, some of which now hang in Budapest’s finest museums. But they are tainted by the tragedy that befell Europ
Source: AP
Aug 1, 2010
An ultra-strong glass that has been looking for a purpose since its invention in 1962 is poised to become a multibillion-dollar bonanza for Corning Inc.
The 159-year-old glass pioneer is ramping up production of what it calls Gorilla glass, expecting it to be the hot new face of touch-screen tablets and high-end TVs.
Gorilla showed early promise in the '60s, but failed to find a commercial use, so it's been biding its time in a hilltop research lab for almost a half-cen
Source: AP
Aug 1, 2010
In 1632, John Tuttle arrived from England to a settlement near the Maine-New Hampshire border, using a small land grant from King Charles I to start a farm.
Eleven generations and 378 years later, his field-weary descendants — arthritic from picking fruits and vegetables and battered by competition from supermarkets and pick-it-yourself farms — are selling their spread, which is among the oldest continuously operated family farms in America....
Source: WaPo
Aug 1, 2010
The original Tea Party may have been in Boston, but some modern-day "tea party" activists are finding a powerful narrative this summer at a different historic landmark: Colonial Williamsburg....
They stand in the crowd listening closely as the costumed actors relive dramatic moments in the founding of our country. They clap loudly when an actor portraying Patrick Henry delivers his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. They cheer and hoot when Gen. George Wa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 1, 2010
One of David Cameron’s ancestors helped suppress the Indian Mutiny, it has emerged.
Just days after the Prime Minister won praise for his first visit to the subcontinent, it was disclosed that Mr Cameron’s great-great-grandfather was a British cavalryman who fought the Indians more than 150 years ago.
William Low left behind graphic accounts of how he slew rebels with his sabre and participated in a mass hanging of civilians during the two-year mutiny against British
Source: AP
Aug 1, 2010
UNESCO added five cultural sites to its World Heritage List on Sunday, including the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long-Hanoi in Vietnam.
The citadel, built in the 11th century by the Viet Dynasty, became the 900th site listed as a World Heritage Property. With the other four sites added, the total increased to 904.
The new sites are the historic monuments of Dengfeng in China, the archaeological site Sarazm in Tajikistan, the Episcopal city of Albi in France and a 17th-cen
Source: Daily Press
Jul 31, 2010
The Allies stormed Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and Army medic James E. Baker landed there the next day.
Germans fired from the hills and bodies were in the water. Wounded soldiers cried out for help, and Baker came across an Army lieutenant who had caught a bullet in the knee. But this officer wasn't happy to see a medic, at least not Baker, who recalls the officer's greeting.
Get your black hands off me.
Today, the retired psychiatrist who will soon turn
Source: BBC
Jul 30, 2010
Its name in Arabic is Wadi Hitan but it is known as the Valley of the Whales.
For years palaeontologists have been unearthing a remarkable collection of whale fossils, all the more surprising because the area is now inland desert in upper Egypt.
It is believed that about 40 million years ago the area was submerged in water, part of the Tethys Sea. As the sea retreated north to the Mediterranean it left a series of unique rock formations and also a cornucopia of fossils
Source: Iceland Review
Jul 30, 2010
A skeleton from a person who suffered from the Paget’s disease of bone was unearthed this week during an archeological excavation project at Skriduklaustur in east Iceland, where a monastery was once operated.
Archeologist Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, who is responsible for the project, told Fréttabladid that many curious things have come to light during the excavation, which is taking place for the ninth summer in a row.
“We know now that a hospital was operated in the mo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 30, 2010
Two tobacco tins used by Lawrence of Arabia’s army have been discovered during an excavation of a campsite used during the 1916-18 Great Arab Revolt.
The tins were discovered by archaeologists who have been surveying the Arab army site in Wuheida, southern Jordan, since it was discovered in November.
They were used to supply Wills cigarettes from Bristol to British and Arab troops fighting the Ottoman Turks during the First World War.
Archaeologists from
Source: Discovery News
Jul 30, 2010
The legendary outlaw Billy the Kid may have stolen horses and cattle, escaped from jail and killed 21 men, according to legend. But nearly 130 years after his death, all of that is water under the bridge, right?
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson thinks so, and he's looking to pardon this outlaw of the Old West.
Shortly after slaying Billy the Kid, Sheriff Garrett published a book, "The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid," one of the earliest accounts that soli
Source: Live Science
Jul 30, 2010
Five thousand years ago, in North Africa, humans formed an alliance with the wild ancestors of the donkey, twice.
This was no insignificant feat; domestication of the donkey's ancestors helped these ancient cattle herders become more mobile and adapt as the Sahara Desert expanded. Donkeys also expanded over-land trade and contributed to the growth in the early Egypt state.
New research answers, and raises, questions about who these wild animals were and how humans bro
Source: Art Daily
Jul 30, 2010
Polish historians have created an unusual 3D film that documents the shocking sea of rubble that Warsaw was reduced to during World War II.
Jan Oldakowski, the director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, said the film "City of Ruins" is mainly meant for young people who do not realize the degree to which Poland's capital was destroyed from 1939-45.
"Young people do not understand what it means that Warsaw was in ruins; they think it was just a few collapsed h
Source: National Parks Traveler
Jul 30, 2010
Music has been called a universal language, and now a unique musical instrument has been created to commemorate not only two important historic sites, but also some ideals that are central to the story of our nation. The Spirit of America Gibson Les Paul Guitar has just gone on display at Ellis Island in New York, and you can see it there until next August.
The concept of honoring historic structures and sites by incorporating bits and pieces from those locations isn't new, but this
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 30, 2010
Reptile footprints, believed to be the oldest ever discovered, provide evidence of the first creatures to live exclusively on land, scientists say.
The 318 million-year-old fossilised reptile footprints were found in sea-cliffs on the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, Canada by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang of Royal Holloway, University of London.
The discovery proves the theory that reptiles were the first to make the continental interiors their home.
This is because
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 30, 2010
Ancient Greek will be taught in state primary schools to boost children’s language skills, it emerged today.
Some 160 pupils in three schools will be given lessons in the native tongue of Archimedes and Herodotus from September.
The move follows the successful introduction of Latin to dozens of state primaries in England.
The Iris Project, a charity campaigning for the teaching of the Classics, which is leading the latest drive, said the subject had subs
