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: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 8, 2010
Its most historic attractions may well be the jokes in the end-of-the-pier show, and children rather than archaeologists dig in its sands for lost treasures. But Blackpool could soon boast the same exalted status as the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China.
The Lancashire bucket and spade resort, famed for its tower, the illuminations and its amusement park, is on a typically eccentric list of British locations that could be put forward as new World Heritage sites.
Source: The Columbus Dispatch
Jul 8, 2010
These days, Edward Low is fighting on two fronts: to get his precious "Indian rock" back from the Ohio Historical Society and to stay alive.
The 77-year-old Reynoldsburg man has been in a three-year battle with the Historical Society to recover an artifact he found as a boy - a piece of pre-history from the Early Woodland Adena culture that was probably created 400 years or more before the birth of Christ. Its value at auction has been estimated at $200,000, possibly much
Source: The China Post
Jul 8, 2010
Archaeologists working at a site in Hanoi's Dong Anh District have stumbled across 11 tombs dating back to the Phung Nguyen culture, days before they were about to wind up the dig.
The Phung Nguyen remains, the best-preserved of any found in and around the city, date back about 4,000 years, archaeologists from the Viet Nam Archaeology Institute said.
The tombs were discovered 1.5 meters below ground.
One of the tombs, provisionally called number nine, cont
Source: Discovery News
Jul 8, 2010
Egyptian archaeologists unveiled on Thursday two rock-hewn painted tombs belonging to a man who had a supervising role in the construction of pyramids -- and his son.
It's considered among the most distinguished Old Kingdom tombs.
Dating from around 4,300 years old, the burials feature vividly colored wall paintings -- as fresh as if they were just painted. They were found in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo by an Egyptian team working in the area since 19
Source: BBC
Jul 8, 2010
A beam of light will be shone from the highest point of the Clwydian Range, to mark the 200th anniversary of Moel Famau's Jubilee Tower.
The tower's foundation stone was laid on 25 October 1810 to commemorate King George III's Golden Jubilee.
Wrexham-based artist Chris Oakley has been commissioned by Flintshire and Denbighshire councils to install a light beam in the tower.
It will be one of a series of events planned in October.
The councils h
Source: BBC
Jul 8, 2010
A wedding outfit on show at a Scottish museum is to take a starring role in a film being directed by Madonna.
She has asked for the dress for her directorial feature debut, W.E., about Edward VIII's wife Wallis Simpson.
The outfit is currently part of a Marriage in the Movies exhibition at the National Museum of Costume at Shambellie House near Dumfries.
The dress was worn by Joely Richardson, who starred in the 2005 television production Wallis and Edward.
Source: BBC
Jul 8, 2010
A Turner masterpiece has sold for almost £30m - a new auction record for the British master.
Joseph Mallord William Turner's Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, fetched £29,721,150 at Sotheby's in London.
The painting was sold by a descendant of the fifth Earl of Rosebery, who bought it in 1878 while on honeymoon with his wife Hannah Rothschild.
The previous record for a Turner was £20.5m for a view of Venice, which went under the hammer in April 2006....
Source: BBC
Jul 8, 2010
One of the largest ever finds of Roman coins in Britain has been made by a man using a metal detector.
The hoard of more than 52,000 coins dating from the 3rd Century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset.
The coins were found in a huge jar just over a foot (30cm) below the surface by Dave Crisp, from Devizes in Wiltshire.
Since the discovery in late April, experts from the Portable Antiquities Scheme at the British Museum have been working
Source: BBC
Jul 8, 2010
Speculation is mounting that the Austrian capital, Vienna, might be the venue for a cloak and dagger prisoner exchange straight out of a Cold War thriller.
And with a long history as a stomping ground for secret services from all over the world, Vienna has what it takes for a smooth spy swap.
After all, it is the capital of a neutral country at the heart of Europe.
And more than a century of spying history makes this romantic city a place where, 20 years a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 8, 2010
Britain's ambassador to Lebanon has been condemned by victims of Middle East terror groups for writing an appreciation of the spiritual leader of Hizbollah who masterminded the 1980s Lebanese hostage crisis.
Frances Guy, who has been ambassador since 2008, wrote a blog marking the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah who died last week. She described the ayatollah as a "decent" man who ranked as the person she most admired out of all those she had encounter
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 8, 2010
Four US senators have written a letter calling on Britain to investigate the circumstances surrounding last year's release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi.
New York Democratic senators Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez have written to the British ambassador in Washington.
The letter follows British cancer expert Professor Karol Sikora's admission to a newspaper earlier th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 8, 2010
A woman from a remote mountain village in Georgia is turning 130, making her the oldest person on Earth, officials in the former Soviet republic said.
A spokesman for the national register said Antisa Khvichava from western Georgia was born on July 8, 1880.
Authorities visited the woman on Thursday in her village of Sachire and displayed two Soviet-era documents noting her date of birth as indicated in her birth certificate, which had been lost....
Source: AP
Jul 8, 2010
A collection of paintings, antiques and assorted household items owed by the aristocratic family of the late Princess Diana sold for a total of 21.1 million pounds ($32 million) in London, Christie's auctioneers said Thursday.
The eclectic collection featured hundreds of items in a range of prices — from a masterpiece portrait by Peter Paul Rubens to horse carriages, dishes and jugs.
All the items offered at the three-day sale once belonged at Althorp House, the Spence
Source: AP
Jul 8, 2010
Some of the most notorious figures of Argentina's "dirty war" were convicted Thursday of kidnapping, torturing and murdering 22 people at the beginning of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship when the country cracked down on leftist dissent.
Family members of the victims cheered and hugged as a judge handed down the sentences for Gen. Luciano Menendez and former police intelligence chief Roberto Albornoz: life in prison for crimes against humanity committed at a secret dete
Source: Slate
Jul 8, 2010
It's a question that drives the extraordinary German site Lost Films. Begun in December 2008 by the Berlin museum Deutsche Kinemathek, it's a collaborative effort with other archives that now encompasses an astonishing range of films: The more than 4,000 movies listed as M.I.A. range from an actual jazz-era version of The Great Gatsby (1926) to a re-enactment of The Battle of Gettysburg (1913) staged while the veterans were still alive. But even more curious is the site's "Identify" section—an open call to other museums and the public to I.D. films that sometimes survive without title cards, without canister labels, without so much as a cast or director or country of origin....
Source: Talking Points Memo
Jul 8, 2010
...As we'd reported, Glenn Beck kicked off his "Beck University" online lecture series last night, and the first topic was "Faith 101." We signed up for the $9.95/month "university." Last night's class was subtitled "Black-Robed Regiment," and "Professor" and right-wing historian David Barton talked for half an hour about happier times in American history, when clergy were a welcome and influential part of American politics.
The lect
Source: BBC News
Jul 8, 2010
One of the largest ever finds of Roman coins in Britain has been made by a man using a metal detector.
The hoard of more than 52,000 coins dating from the 3rd Century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset.
The coins were found in a huge jar just over a foot (30cm) below the surface by Dave Crisp, from Devizes in Wiltshire.
"I have made many finds over the years, but this is my first major coin hoard," he said....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jul 8, 2010
An economist's research into the Nazi regime's dismissals of Jewish mathematics professors in the 1930's has led him to conclude that in Ph.D. supervision, big is beautiful.
Between 1933 and 1934, about 18 per cent of all mathematics professors in Germany were stripped of their posts by the Nazis, including some of the most eminent scholars of the day. Fabian Waldinger, assistant professor in the department of economics at the University of Warwick, in Britain, studied the impact of
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 7, 2010
...All this leads one to ask the question that has vexed historians since 1945: why didn't Hitler use chemical weapons against the Allies? After all, he had shown no qualms against using gas on Jewish men, women and children, so why not against enemy troops as well?...
But now a startling new explanation has come to light. According to Frank J. Dinan, a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York State, a scientist close to Hitler e
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jul 7, 2010
Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator, was sentenced to seven years in jail today after a French court found him guilty of laundering €2.3m (£1.9m) worth of drug profits during his time in power.
Noriega, who was ousted by Washington in 1989 and has spent the past 20 years in jail the United States, looked startled as the verdict was read out in the austere Tribunal correctionnel in Paris and had to be helped from the court by gendarmes.
During his trial last w
