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
Jul 19, 2010
The remains of a World War I soldier left in a mass grave for more than 90 years were moved by four-horse cart to a new cemetery for reburial with full honors Monday in a ceremony attended by Prince Charles, relatives and high-ranking government officials.
German machine guns and artillery left more than 5,500 Australians and more than 1,500 British killed, wounded or missing in under 24 hours at the Battle of Fromelles, the first Australian combat operation on the Western Front.
Source: BBC News
Jul 19, 2010
An undiscovered Caravaggio painting may have been found in Rome, according to the Vatican newspaper.
The painting depicts the martyrdom of St Lawrence and belongs to the Jesuits in Rome.
It will now be examined in detail by art historians to find out if it really is the work of the famous Baroque painter.
Italy celebrated the life of the great master over the weekend on the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's death.
A gallery housing his work and
Source: BBC News
Jul 19, 2010
The last of 250 British and Australian World War I troops recovered from mass graves has been reburied with full military honours in northern France.
Prince Charles and the relatives of identified soldiers attended a commemorative ceremony at the new Fromelles Military Cemetery.
It comes 94 years after the soldiers were killed in the Battle of Fromelles.
Work to excavate and identify the soldiers began two years ago, after the bodies were discovered.
Source: CNN
Jul 19, 2010
Safe deposit boxes believed to contain manuscripts and drawings by the late author Franz Kafka are due to be opened at a bank in Zurich.
The move is the latest twist in a long legal battle over who owns the papers.
Two Israeli sisters say they inherited the documents from their mother, but the Israeli state claims them as part of the country's cultural heritage.
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Source: DW World
Jul 18, 2010
Officials at Germany's Stasi archive have agreed to release some information showing West Germany's secret service employed former Nazi criminals. But some key data remains under wraps.
It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics. Who were those people, what positions did they hold in Nazi Germany and later in post-war West Germany?
Source: NYT
Jul 18, 2010
...For the Cajuns of South Louisiana — exiled in the 1700s from French settlements in Acadia, now part of eastern Canada, for refusing to swear allegiance to the British — life along the bayous has been bittersweet, with the constant threats of lightning-quick destruction from hurricanes and floods on top of the slow-motion agony of coastal erosion.
What they got in return for their tolerance of living in what early cartographers called No Man’s Land was a world-class bounty of seaf
Source: Mediaite
Jul 18, 2010
I don’t happen to know any leaders of the Tea Party, but I think I can guess their reaction when Mark Williams posted his letter mocking “Coloreds”: OY.
The fall-out: Williams has been booted from the National Tea Party Federation, according to spokesperson David Webb this morning on Face the Nation. CNN reports:
“We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 18, 2010
The public are being given the chance to design a national memorial in honour of the Spitfire which will be up to three times the size of the original fighter.
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.
Source: ANDINA
Jul 18, 2010
Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed the remains of what is believed to have been a high-ranking official of the Sican culture who lived about 1,200 years ago.
A team co-led by Peruvian archaeologist Carlos del Carpio found the tomb, along with many burial artifacts, about 1,500 meters west of the Lord of Sican's tomb in Huaca Las Ventanas archaeological site, near the Pomac Forest Historical Sanctuary, in the northern Lambayeque region.
According to Peruvian daily El
Source: Vancouver Sun
Jul 18, 2010
A star-studded group of history advocates trying to secure an original copy of "Canada's birth certificate" is drawing some inspiration for the patriation project from Australia, where former prime minister Bob Hawke led a controversial — and somewhat underhanded — battle with British archives for his country's founding document 20 years ago.
Canada's former national archivist, Ian Wilson, doesn't expect to precisely emulate the Australian example in the quest he's leading
Source: The Observer
Jul 18, 2010
Howard Carter spent years documenting the thousands of artefacts from Tutankhamun's tomb. Now, thanks to the efforts of an Oxford archaeologist, this remarkable archive of pictures and notes can be viewed online.
A total of 5,398 objects were found in the tomb, covering every aspect of ancient Egyptian life, from weapons and chariots to musical instruments, clothes, cosmetics and a treasured lock of the royal grandmother's hair. A few, like Tutankhamun's gold burial mask, are instan
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
Jul 18, 2010
Officials at Germany's Stasi archive have agreed to release some information showing West Germany's secret service employed former Nazi criminals. But some key data remains under wraps.
It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics. Who were those people, what positions did they hold in Nazi Germany and later in post-war West Germany?
Source: Los Angeles Times
Jul 18, 2010
With names like Morgan, Getty and Huntington attached to impressive collections available for public view, the history of art collecting in America has acquired a new level of scholarly scrutiny.
The artistic legacies of American collectors get serious attention in scholarly circles. The back story is another matter. Biographers and journalists may revel in the messy business of how and why rich and powerful Americans spend fortunes on Rembrandts, Monets, Picassos and Rauschenbergs.
Source: BBC
Jul 18, 2010
Archaeologists have unearthed a second ancient figurine at a dig on Orkney.
The discovery was made at the same site as the Orkney Venus, the earliest representation of a human figure to be found in Scotland.
The Orkney Venus, a 5,000-year-old female carving which was found last summer, was just 4cm tall and composed of sandstone.
The new find is the same size and shape as the original Venus but is made of clay and is missing its head.
The olde
Source: AP
Jul 18, 2010
A South African community once riven by anti-foreigner violence came together Sunday in the spirit of Nelson Mandela to play a little soccer.
The so-called "goodwill games" were among activities around the world marking Mandela Day, which falls on Mandela's July 18 birthday and was conceived as an international day devoted to public service. Community leaders in Atteridgeville organized the unity-building tournament of teams of South Africans, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and
Source: AP
Jul 18, 2010
Trapped by two Chinese divisions, troops of the 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment were left to die in far northern Korea, abandoned by the U.S. command in a Korean War episode viewed as one of the most troubling in American military history.
Sixty years later those fallen soldiers, the lost battalion of Unsan, are stranded anew.
North Korea is offering fresh clues to their remains. American teams are ready to re-enter the north to dig for them. But for five years the U.S. gover
Source: AP
Jul 18, 2010
Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren't enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who's now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.
Jason "J.T." Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on "narco-terrorists" and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers who were given water and handed over to the Border Patrol. Once, they also found a decayin
Source: ABC (AU)
Jul 17, 2010
Archaeologists say a rock painting in Arnhem Land is the nation's oldest dated picture showing Aboriginal people's first contact with the outside world.
The rock painting is a picture of a sailing boat and it is located at a remote shelter in north-west Arnhem Land.
Archaeologist Paul Tacon says there are telling signs it is a depiction of a Perahu - a boat popular in Indonesia and Malaysia around the 17th century....
Source: NY Times
Jul 17, 2010
Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities perpetrated by a few brutal women have always stood out, like aberrations of nature.
Enlarge This Image
There were notorious camp guards like Ilse Koch and Irma Grese. And lesser known killers like Erna Petri, the wife of an SS officer and a mother who was convicted of shooting to death six Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland; or Johanna Altvater Zelle, a German secretary accused of child murder in the Volodymyr-Volynskyy
Source: AP
Jul 17, 2010
Who has the right to dance at Auschwitz, to make light of the Holocaust, to shoot videos set amid cattle cars and gas chambers?
A home video that has gone viral on the Internet showing a Holocaust survivor dancing at Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites to the disco classic "I Will Survive" with his daughter and grandchildren has brought such questions to the fore.
To some, images of Adolek Kohn and his family shuffling off-beat at such hallowed places is an in
