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: Discovery News
Jul 20, 2010
You might have thought there would be more than a few degrees of separation between President Abraham Lincoln and the infamous Donner Party, the group of pioneers who, legend says, was forced into cannibalism to survive a harsh winter crossing the Sierra Nevadas in the late 1840s. No direct evidence of that has ever been found, but that's neither here nor there for this post.
Because ... surprising new facts released yesterday show that, cannibalism or no, a member of the Donner Pa
Source: Discovery News
Jul 20, 2010
Researchers who probed tiny fragments of a Dead Sea Scroll with protons found its chemistry matches that of the water in the area where the ancient document was found.
Proton beams have shed new light on the origin of the longest of the Dead Sea scrolls, suggesting its parchment was manufactured locally.
According to a study carried out at the labs of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Catania, Sicily, the 28-foot-long Temple Scroll was made in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
Archeologists have uncovered the site of Bolshevik-era executions and mass graves at St Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress.
The remains of over 80 bodies were found shot through the head in six mass graves dating to after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
The graves were discovered when archeological digs began this summer in Russia amid restoration work, said Dmitry Masliakov, museum spokesman....
Source: NYT
Jul 20, 2010
Mao slept here. So, too, did the imperial eunuchs who found themselves unemployed after China’s last emperor was sent packing. For much of the last 700 years, however, the most prominent residents of the quarter just north of the Forbidden City have been a pair of massive brick towers whose drums and bells helped Beijing’s citizenry keep track of the hour.
More recently, those who reside in the neighborhood known as Gulou are anxiously counting the days until construction crews begi
Source: Salon
Jul 20, 2010
Few people some 20 years ago, near the start of the administration of George Bush Sr. — when cyberpunk was still a fresh notion, when there existed only three "Star Wars" films, all good, and when the word "steampunk" had only just been coined — would have predicted that in the early 21st century some of the most entertaining and deftly rendered science fiction being currently published would derive from the pen of a Frenchman dead for a century, whose legacy had long been se
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
SS chief Heinrich Himmler set up a secret unit in the Dachau concentration camp after becoming convinced he could turn sand into gold, a book has claimed.
His personal alchemist was a man named Karl Malchus who convinced Himmler he could make the metal.
Gold was vital for the Nazi regime in Germany to use to buy armaments and technology from abroad. When Himmler was approached by the scientist in 1937, after the regime had been in power for four years.
The
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
The statue – which will be up to 180ft (55m) tall – is to be erected in Southampton, the city where the aircraft was designed and first built.
The Spitfire Tribute Foundation, the organisation behind the scheme, is launching a public competition, backed by The Sunday Telegraph, to select the design
The winner will see their concept built at a cost of £2 million.
The foundation hopes the memorial will be completed by the end of next year, the 75th anniversar
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2010
With every step toward the gate, Jerzy Bielecki was certain he would be shot.
The day was July 21, 1944. Bielecki was walking in broad daylight down a pathway at Auschwitz, wearing a stolen SS uniform with his Jewish sweetheart Cyla Cybulska by his side.
His knees buckling with fear, he tried to keep a stern bearing on the long stretch of gravel to the sentry post....
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2010
Protesters and police scuffled Tuesday at a school board meeting in North Carolina over claims that a new busing system would resegregate schools, roiling racial tensions reminiscent of the 1960s.
Nearly 20 people were arrested, including the head of state NAACP chapter who was banned from the meeting after a trespassing arrest at a June school board gathering.
"We know that our cause is right," Barber said shortly before police put plastic handcuffs on his wr
Source: The Virginian-Pilot
Jul 20, 2010
After surviving perhaps 400 years in the sand and surf off the North Carolina coast, the 12-ton remains of a shipwreck are making their final port-of-call.
What could be the oldest wreck ever found on the North Carolina coast was loaded onto the back of a truck Monday for a 90-mile trip to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.
Salvaged from the pounding surf in April, the wreck has rested under the shade of an oak tree near the Currituck Beach Lighthouse for
Source: BBC
Jul 20, 2010
A man dubbed the "Tome Raider" after he stole rare books valued at £1m has been sent back to jail for taking 13 antique volumes from a London library.
William Jacques, 41, was found guilty of removing the works from the Lindley Library at the Royal Horticultural Society between 2004 and 2007.
Prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court he stole in a "systemic" manner.
Jacques was jailed for three-and-a-half years. He was previously jailed in
Source: Deccan Herald
Jul 20, 2010
It was a long walk through a hilly landscape mottled with green where bristly bushes wormed their way between brown boulders. There was nary a soul in sight but every so often, the clear sound of a goatherd calling to a stray member of his herd came wafting through the air, followed sometimes by a line of goats crossing our path, nosing and grazing their way through the scrub. It was an idyllic scene and I was almost loath to reach our destination. Almost, but not quite, for at our destination l
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
Rescue workers have called off a week-long search for three missing treasure hunters in Arizona's forbidding Superstition Mountains.
The local sheriff said that the three men had probably died from dehydration during their trek in the unforgiving landscape.
The adventurers left on July 6 in search of The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine, telling their families that they would be back in four days. Their vehicle was found on July 11 with no trace of the men, Maricopa County S
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
An exhibition showcasing hundreds of never-before-seen artworks painted by serving US soldiers has been unveiled for the first time in America.
More than 300 paintings created by serving US servicemen and women depict various images of war that were witnessed first hand.
The paintings, most which never have been placed on public display, were selected from about 15,000 artworks collected by the US Army since the 1840s.
The exhibition, which covers every
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
The grave of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the man who failed to kill Adolf Hitler, may have been discovered in a wood in Germany.
Stauffenberg and other co-conspirators were summarily executed after a bomb the army officer planted at Hitler's east Prussian HQ failed to kill him on July 20 1944.
Stauffenberg and several others were shot dead in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, the army HQ in the centre of Berlin, in the hours following the coup attempt. Their
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2010
David Cameron has asked the UK's top civil servant to review the Government's documentation on the release of the Lockerbie bomber, it has been disclosed.
The Prime Minister has instructed Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to ensure that all material that "should be made public has been made public".
Downing Street signalled the move amid efforts to defuse renewed anger in the US over the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi last y
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2010
The war in Iraq led to a loss of focus on the threat from al-Qaida, emboldened the group's leader Osama bin Laden, and helped to breed a generation of homegrown terrorists, Britain's former domestic spy chief told an inquiry Tuesday.
Making the sharpest criticism so far aired in Britain's inquiry into mistakes made in the Iraq war, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of the MI5 agency between 2002 and 2007, said Britain's government paid little attention to warnings that the war would
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2010
The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to approve Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.
The 13-6 vote sends Kagan's nomination to the full Senate, where she's expected to be confirmed as early as next week to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Just one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, joined panel Democrats in supporting President Barack Obama's second Supreme Court nominee. A few more Republicans are likely to back her in the full
Source: CNN
Jul 20, 2010
British Prime Minister David Cameron has offered to meet with four U.S. senators Tuesday to discuss the 2009 release of a Libyan man convicted of playing a role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
It was not immediately clear if the four senators from New Jersey and New York -- Robert Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer -- would be able to accept Cameron's invitation to meet with him at the British ambassador's residence in Wa
Source: Newsweek
Jul 20, 2010
Faulkner speaks! Fifty years after he spent two years as writer in residence at the University of Virginia, the school has posted online recordings of the two addresses, the dozen readings, and the 1,400 questions that students, faculty, and interested townspeople of Charlottesville, Va., posed to the author. For Faulkner fans, these 28 hours of talking and reading are Christmas in July.
Apart from brief stints in New Orleans, New York City, and Europe, Faulkner lived in only two pl
