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: LA Times
May 29, 2010
Ulysses S. Grant IV, a grandson of the Civil War general and U.S. president, was a geology professor at UCLA.
More than 30 Confederate soldiers are buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Rosecrans Avenue was named for Union Army general (and later Los Angeles-area resident) William Rosecrans.
UCLA history professor Joan Waugh ticks off such facts to illustrate that, though it's natural to associate the Civil War with cities in the East and the South, links t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2010
Almost 100 tombs belonging to German soldiers killed in the two world wars were desecrated overnight at a cemetery in eastern France, according to police.
Crosses were broken and tombstones overturned in the Guebwiller Franco-German cemetery in the Alsace region. The vandalism affected 95 tombs.
An offensive message was written on at least one of the tombs, the Haut-Rhin departmental police authority said, without giving further details....
Source: The Root
May 28, 2010
When Adele Logan Alexander was doing research for her doctorate at Howard University, she stumbled on a remarkable and largely forgotten power couple who were born nearly 150 years ago: William Henry Hunt and Ida Alexander Gibbs. Hunt was the first African American to enjoy a full-fledged career in the U.S. State Department; he served as consul in Madagascar, in eastern France and Guadeloupe. His wife was one of the early black female internationalists, helping W.E.B. Du Bois organize the Pan-Af
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 28, 2010
The sight was bewildering. Four white students dressed like Ku Klux Klansmen walked through the cafeteria last week at Lumpkin County High School, heading to a class project on racism and walking straight into news reports around the world.
But when a similar scene unfolded in a Gwinnett County middle school last week, when the students wearing the Klan outfits were African-American, as was their teacher, the story changed.
What seismic sociological shift has occurred i
Source: Newsweek
May 28, 2010
...The flow of undocumented immigrants began to taper in the middle of the past decade. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the influx averaged 800,000 per year from 2000 to 2004, then dropped to about 500,000 per year from 2005 to 2008. It has almost certainly decreased even more since then, as the Great Recession has wiped out demand for foreign labor. People think of the torrent of illegal immigration in the recent past, and “it scares the pants off them,” says Dowell Myers, a professor in
Source: NYT
May 28, 2010
She was Britain’s prima ballerina, an international idol of dance whose performances, with Rudolf Nureyev in particular, entranced and dazzled her audiences.
But she was also a plotter alongside her Panamanian husband, seeking the support of Fidel Castro to overthrow the Panamanian government in 1959 in a conspiracy that one British official called “highly reprehensible and irresponsible” and another likened to a comic opera at sea aboard her yacht.
In its broad detail
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
More than 100 years ago paleontologist E. D. Cope of "Dinosaur Wars" fame found a few fragmentary bones of a reptile in the deserts of New Mexico. He named the reptile Typothorax. A century later Typothorax, which belongs to a group of reptiles called aetosaurs, remained something of a mystery, known mainly from pieces of armor, a few limb bones, and some sections of tail.
Now, thanks to two remarkably complete skeletons discovered by volunteers and described in the latest
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
It was not necessary to be literate to be able to access rune carvings in the 11th century. At the same time those who could read were able to glean much more information from a rune stone than merely what was written in runes. This is shown in new research from Uppsala University in Sweden.
Rune stones are an important part of the Swedish cultural environment. Many of them are still standing in their original places and still bear witness about the inhabitants of the area from a th
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
Demonstrating that chemistry sometimes can inform history, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Colorado College and Mount Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Md., have shown that sensitive nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques can be used to determine the elemental composition of ancient coins, even coins that generally have been considered too corroded for such methods.
Along the way, the researchers' analysis of coins minted in ancie
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
Scientists have found the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide 'burp' that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.
The results provide the first concrete evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) was more efficiently locked away in the deep ocean during the last ice age, turning the deep sea into a more 'stagnant' carbon repository -- something scientists have long suspected but lacked data to support.
Working on a marine sediment core reco
Source: NYT
May 28, 2010
WHEN Big Brother regimes crumble, they sometimes leave an unintended paper trail, a pathway into the dark tradecraft of oppression.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, for just one example, many Germans discovered from files kept on them that children or spouses had spied on them for the Stasi secret police. And in Romania, Doru Pavaloiae, an economist, learned that a man he thought of as a friend, a popular singer in his hometown, was an informer — code name: Minstrel — for
Source: NYT
May 28, 2010
THREE hundred years ago, after becoming king of the creaky behemoth that was Russia, Peter Romanov went west. Traveling under a pseudonym, the czar turned himself into an apprentice — studying European advances in shipbuilding, firefighting, dentistry, locksmithing and parliamentary procedure, among other cutting-edge technologies.
He returned to remake Russia. The poor rebelled at switching to the European calendar (as far as they knew, it was 7208) and aristocrats stood in livid s
Source: NYT
May 28, 2010
USUALLY, there is a familiar cycle to Korea crises.
Like a street gang showing off its power to run amok in a well-heeled neighborhood, the North Koreans launch a missile over Japan or set off a nuclear test or stage an attack — as strong evidence indicates they did in March, when a South Korean warship was torpedoed. Expressions of outrage follow. So do vows that this time, the North Koreans will pay a steep price.
In time, though, the United States and North Korea’s n
Source: LA Times
May 28, 2010
Sitting along a lonely stretch of highway in the Texas Panhandle, McLean isn't so small that you'd miss this hamlet in the blink of an eye.
It would take probably five or six blinks to blow through this town, which has never recovered from being bypassed by Interstate 40.
McLean's heyday coincided with Route 66's, when a seemingly endless stream of vehicles sped through. Each day, thousands of motorists drove by a large cinder-block building on the south side of the hig
Source: BBC
May 28, 2010
A tiny piece of metal which gave vital clues to the true location of the Battle of Bosworth has been declared treasure by a coroner.
The silver boar badge was dropped in the mud more than 500 years ago by a knight who fought alongside King Richard III, historians believe.
The white boar was the king's personal emblem and silver gilt boars were made for his knights and nobles.
The emblem will be independently valued by a committee of experts.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2010
Silvio Berlusconi has compared himself to Benito Mussolini, complaining that like the Second World War leader he does not have enough real power.
The Italian prime minister said he empathised with Il Duce, who had complained that he lacked real authority and that true power lay with officials in his fascist administration.
Mr Berlusconi said he had recently been reading Mussolini's diaries, which had led him to reflect on the challenges of governing Italy in the 21st
Source: AP
May 28, 2010
A French auction house is selling rare memorabilia of Tintin, the comic strip reporter and globe trotter whose stories have been translated into 80 languages and sold over 200 million books in the past eight decades.
The late Belgian creator Herge launched the adventures of Tintin and Snowy the dog in 1929. Tintin fans, known as Tintinophiles or Tintinologists depending on their level of involvement, often compete fiercely for any artifact linked to the cartoon hero.
Th
Source: AP
May 28, 2010
Rwandan police arrested a U.S. lawyer on Friday on allegations of genocide denial days after he arrived in the country to organize legal defense for a Rwandan opposition leader, the police spokesman said.
Peter Erlinder, who came to Rwanda four days ago, will be presented in court to face charges, said police spokesman Eric Kayiranga.
Erlinder is in Rwanda to help a team provide legal defense for presidential hopeful Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader who was arres
Source: CNN
May 28, 2010
In his West Virginia home, Peter Ruplenas, a three-time war veteran spends his days thumbing through his personal photography collection.
His compilation is vast and includes countless photographs of B-24 bombers, soldiers in the field and the aftermath of war.
He holds up a photograph of himself taken by fellow photographer Dick Durrance during the Vietnam War. In it, Ruplenas trudges through a rice paddy after returning from a sweep in Cu Chi, Vietnam. He struggles t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2010
Jay McInerney, novelist and ladies' man, describes his serial crushes on Jane Austen's heroines - and how they shaped his romantic life
We love Jane Austen through her heroines. Knowing so little about her, we worship her surrogates. And generally speaking, unless we are cranky scholars or celibate critics, we love and rank the novels according to our regard for the female principals. I can’t help finding my own response to the novels coloured by the degree to which I find the heroi
