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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: Guardian (UK)
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (11-1-11)
When he decided to build his palace in the fields outside Rome in the second century AD, the emperor Hadrian wanted to escape the sounds and the smells of the capital.
Little did he imagine that 18 centuries later the stench of the city would follow him there thanks to plans to build an emergency rubbish dump near the villa, as Rome runs out of space to bury its trash.
But now, another Roman noble has stepped in to defend Hadrian's villa near Tivoli from the garbage trucks, which are expected in the new year. Prince Urbano Barberini, an actor, farmer and descendant of a 17th century pope, is mustering local farmers for a fightback against a scheme he claims will ruin the Unesco-listed ruins.
"This is like dumping rubbish next to the pyramids – what if tourists have to time their visits according to which way the wind is blowing?" said Barberini, who produces olive oil locally. "And should people attending the concerts held at the ruins bring masks?"...
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (11-5-11)
The late Muammar Gaddafi was fond of insisting on the links between his republic and sub-Saharan Africa. He was less interested, however, in celebrating the black African civilisation that flourished for more than 1,500 years within what are now Libya's borders, and that was barely acknowledged in the Gaddafi-era curriculum.
Now, however, researchers into the Garamantes – a "lost" Saharan civilisation that flourished long before the Islamic era – are hoping that Libya's new government can restore the warrior culture, mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories, to its rightful place in Libya's history.
For while the impressive Roman ruins at Sabratha and Leptis Magna – both world heritage sites – are rightly famous, Libya's other cultural heritage, one that coexisted with its Roman settlers, has been largely forgotten....
Name of source: Daily Mail (UK)
SOURCE: Daily Mail (UK) (11-2-11)
The SS indulged their bloodlust on men, women and children alike. While homes and shops blazed around them like some hellish inferno, women were violated and those who were pregnant were stabbed in the guts. Small babies were bayoneted in their cribs. The village priest was beheaded.
By the time Hitler’s men had left the Greek village of Distomo near the ancient town of Delphi on that bloody day in June 1944, 218 people were dead.
The Waffen-SS was pleased with its work: the local partisans who had dared to attack a German unit had been taught a bitter lesson in revenge.
The slaughter at Distomo was such an outrage that, in 2003, even a German Federal Court judge described it as ‘one of the most despicable crimes of World War II’....
SOURCE: Daily Mail (UK) (11-6-11)
For Star Trek, it truly was the final frontier.
More than 40 years after it was filmed, an episode of the famous show in which Spock and Captain Kirk dress up as Nazis has been shown in Germany for the first time.
The Patterns of Force episode was never screened in 1968 because it was little more than two decades after the downfall of Hitler's regime.
Although broadcaster ZDF showed it for the first time, it was not on until after 10pm - and viewers were warned that no-one under the age of 16 should see it.
In the episode the Starship Enterprise visits planet Ekon where the citizens have begun behaving like Nazis. The swastika is displayed throughout the episode....
Name of source:
A new book has been released in Germany that details how Soviet secret agents kidnapped Nazi diplomats after the war so that they could imprison, torture and secretly try them in Moscow.
'The Diplomatic Secrets of the Third Reich' draws on hitherto sealed Russian archives concerning the dreaded Lubianka jail in Moscow where the former top servants of Hitler were brought.
Alexei Matweyewitsch Sidnyew was the general in Soviet intelligence tasked in the early summer of 1945 to exact vengeance on Stalin's behalf against the diplomats he believed plotted the war against Russia.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had a pact that kept the peace until Hitler decided to invade the country in June 1941....
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (11-7-11)
Scientists have found evidence that leopard-spotted horses roamed Europe 25,000 years ago alongside humans.
Until now, studies had only recovered the DNA of black and brown coloured coats from fossil specimens.
New genetic evidence suggests "dappled" horses depicted in European cave art were inspired by real life, and are less symbolic than previously thought.
The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
SOURCE: BBC (11-7-11)
France has laid claim to a 17th Century painting currently being displayed by a London gallery at an art fair in Paris.
The Carrying of the Cross by the French master Nicolas Tournier was bought last year for 400,000 euros ($550,000) by the Weiss Gallery of London.
But the French government says it is stolen property and that its whereabouts had been a mystery for nearly 200 years.
France has put an export ban on the work to prevent it leaving the country.
Tournier's life-sized study of Christ carrying the cross once hung in the chapel of the Company of the Black Penitents in the southern French city of Toulouse....
SOURCE: BBC (11-1-11)
We are likely to see many of their names and faces every day, but how much do we know about the historical characters on our banknotes?
As of 2 November, Matthew Boulton and James Watt have joined the range of people from the past whose portraits are found on the pound.
Following a long process of selection, design and manufacture, the new £50 banknote is in circulation, with the industrialist and engineer as the first dual portrait produced on a Bank of England note.
In time they will replace Sir John Houblon, the first governor of the Bank of England, as the faces of the £50 note....
SOURCE: BBC (11-1-11)
Nelson Mandela's biography The Long Walk to Freedom became an international bestseller and is being made into a film. But the famous book may never have seen the light of day if it wasn't for the bravery and persistence of another Robben Island inmate.
"We were housed in individual cells, each cell had a window looking out into the corridor. Warders patrolled day and night, lights were on 24 hours a day."
Mac Maharaj was one of four long-term prisoners on Robben Island secretly collaborating on the first draft of the autobiography of Nelson Mandela - along with other Africa National Congress activists Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu.
"Mandela had to write every night. He wrote on average 10-15 pages with very little reference material - he wrote by discussion and recollection," says the 76-year-old....
Name of source: San Antonio Express-News
SOURCE: San Antonio Express-News (11-8-11)
All across Texas, the bones of history lie in watery graves. From the ribs of sunken ships to the grave sites of prehistoric Texans, uncounted treasures abound beneath the surface of rivers and lakes. For state archaeologists, these sites are untapped treasures — hard to reach but relatively protected.
But now, with the state in the grip of devastating drought, such sites are emerging from receding waters and — for the first time in years, experts worry — becoming vulnerable to looters and vandals.
Since midsummer, the Texas Historical Commission, which oversees such locations, has on average learned of a newly exposed site each month, said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the agency's archaeology director.
Among the sites are four cemeteries, including an apparent slave burial ground in Navarro County, southeast of Dallas. In Central Texas, fishermen recovered a human skull thought to be thousands of years old.
An unspecified number of additional sites have emerged from waters overseen by the Lower Colorado River Authority. An agency spokeswoman refused to discuss details, saying that even divulging the number of newly exposed sites could induce the unscrupulous to search out and pilfer them....
Name of source: Austrian Times
SOURCE: Austrian Times (11-7-11)
Oetzi the prehistoric iceman may not have been murdered, say scientists, who now believe he could be the world's first known mountaineering victim.
The ancient natural mummy was believed to have died 5,300 years ago when he was hit by an arrow during a hunting trip.
Scientists - who examined his frozen remains when they were discovered frozen in the Alps between the Austrian and Italian border 20 years ago - thought he had then been finished off with a vicious club blow to the head....
Name of source: LiveScience
SOURCE: LiveScience (11-3-11)
A miniature photograph of the moon, beard hairs whose owner has been dead for centuries, a shaving of Egyptian mummy bone, flowerlike patterns constructed from butterfly scales and algae called diatoms, and engravings of biblical text.
During a good part of the 19th century, called the Victorian times, a peek through a microscope could reveal very different sights than ones we'd expect to see today. In the mid- to late-1800s, microscopes were not only instruments of scientific discovery, but they were tools for popular entertainment, particularly in Britain. And an industry of inventive slide makers sprung up to feed the public appetite for this new way of seeing.
About 150 years later, it's still possible to see some of these strange and beautiful sights, and to learn about the mounters who assembled them, thanks to antique slide collectors who delve into the lives of those who made these microscopic pieces of art. [Nature Under Glass: Gallery of Victorian Microscope Slides]
SOURCE: LiveScience (11-3-11)
Frontier settlers, who "live on the edge," may be more likely to have larger families than those who stay snuggled at the core of a settlement, based on new research of how the French settled Quebec centuries ago.
A study of Quebecois records determined that the women among the families at the outskirts of the population were about 15 percent more fertile than those who lived in more-established settlements, and consequently their families contributed much more to Quebec's modern gene pool....
Name of source: LA Times
SOURCE: LA Times (11-6-11)
St. Cornelius, known as Cornély in France, opens his arms in blessing from a niche above the old stone church in Carnac. Legend has it that he was persecuted by Rome for his opposition to animal sacrifice and chased by soldiers all the way to the Brittany coast. Trapped, he turned around and changed them into 3,000 rough-hewn stones that still stand in military rows on a chain of fields just north of here.
There are other hypotheses about the Carnac boulders, carbon dated to 4000 to 2000 BC. They mark one of Caesar's camps during the Gallic Wars from 58 to 50 BC. Or they were snake worship sites for ancient Celts whose territory included parts of England and Ireland as well as Brittany. Or maybe they were goblin lairs and fairy treasures. But St. Cornelius works for me.
It's the same story with other prehistoric monuments in Western Europe. No one knows for sure who built them or why, although sites have been found, from Scandinavia to Spain, that have various configurations: upright stones, known as menhirs or megaliths, standing alone or in groups, as at Stonehenge, England; dolmens, Neolithic tombs made of massive boulders, laid on top of one another; and tumuli, or artificial mounds, where ancient man buried the departed under heaps of rubble....
SOURCE: LA Times (11-7-11)
War films have always been a staple of cinema — providing the inspiration for some of the greatest and most honored films ever.
...On Veterans Day on Friday, the U.S. pays homage to the military men and women who have served our country in past and current conflicts. For this occasion we asked writer and film producer Steven Jay Rubin, author of the book "Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010," to select Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam combat films he most admires.
Civil War
"Gettysburg," 1993. Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell; stars Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger.
"Ron Maxwell probably created the most ambitious Civil War movies ever made. The Battle of Little Round Top, in which Jeff Daniels plays Col. Joshua Chamberlain fighting off the Confederates, is viscerally one of the most amazing combat sequences ever done of any war film — the brutality, the whole scope of it, the sense of time and place and the physicality of the battle. There is nothing genteel about the Civil War. It was brutal and this was perhaps one of the most brutal battles of the Civil War. The way Ron Maxwell shot it with the moving camera was very complicated. They had to create a dolly that would go up and down a hill, which obviously is very difficult for a camera crew."...
Name of source: Independent (UK)
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (11-7-11)
"You'd think after 40 years things would have changed, wouldn't you?" said Jo Robinson, waving placards as her friends shouted: "Shame on you" at the dinner-jacketed crowds on the way into the Miss World beauty pageant.
The competition, won at London's Earls Court yesterday by Ivian Sarcos (Miss Venezuela), is 60 years old this year, and Ms Robinson is a few months shy of her 70th birthday. It is 41 years since she spent a night in the cells and a morning in the magistrates' court after storming the 1970 contest at the Royal Albert Hall. Stink bombs, smoke bombs and flour bombs were thrown. And now she is back to register her opposition again.
"Look what happens," she said. "What society expects from young women. There is terrible pressure put on them to look a certain way. I wear make-up, I want to look nice, but to go to such an extent as to have operations performed on yourself?"...
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (11-7-11)
PARIS — He has lost much of his hair and, after a 10-day prison hunger strike last month, a bit of his signature paunch. But as he prepares to stand trial on Monday for a series of bombings he is accused of orchestrating in the early 1980s, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, seems to have lost little of his bravado.
Although forbidden from communicating with anyone other than his family and his lawyers, Mr. Ramírez managed to organize interviews last month with a French newspaper and a radio station that were conducted using a smuggled mobile phone. In those conversations, the 62-year-old Venezuelan came across as combative and rambling, attacking unspecified “falsifications” in the case against him, though refusing to either admit to or deny the allegations.
“I am not in the habit of making egocentric declarations,” Mr. Ramírez told the newspaper, Libération, when asked whether he was responsible for the bombings. “Nor will I play the prosecution’s pitiful games.”...
SOURCE: NYT (11-1-11)
By nature, a marathon promotes melodrama. Weary minds make bad decisions. Overused muscles malfunction. Logistical challenges create unexpected mishaps. A zoned-in runner misreads the course and stumbles in midstride or falls. The latter happened to Bill Rodgers in the 1980 New York City Marathon when he fell over Dick Beardsley, who had tripped in a pothole, and finished fifth. Rodgers had won New York the four previous years.
A lot of memorable moments have happened over the course of the New York City Marathon’s 42 years. There have been close races, tumbles by top runners, wrong turns, a short course and even a dust cloud that obscured the top men as they neared the finish.
Perceived social injustice prompted a sit-in at the 1972 race. The Amateur Athletic Union, then the governing body for marathoning in the United States, thought that women should not run more than 10 miles. The A.A.U. also thought that women should start at a different place or time from the men in a marathon. In New York in 1972, that was to be 10 minutes before the men.
To protest, the six women who officially started the race sat down on their starting line, with a few other women, for 10 minutes, then started with the men. As a penalty, 10 minutes were added to their times....
Name of source: Fox News
SOURCE: Fox News (11-4-11)
Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are expressing outrage after the Obama administration announced its objection to adding President Franklin Roosevelt's D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The objection was noted during a congressional hearing on Rep. Bill Johnson's, R-Ohio, bill -- the "World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011."
"It is unconscionable that the Obama administration would stand in the way of honoring our nation's distinguished World War II veterans," Johnson said. "President Roosevelt's prayer gave solace, comfort and strength to our nation and our brave warriors as we fought against tyranny and oppression."
Name of source: CBS News
SOURCE: CBS News (11-3-11)
Pulled from the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington are photos of children -- more than 1,100 of them who were orphaned or displaced by the Nazi persecution.
These portraits were taken by aid workers trying to reunite the children with surviving families.
"Most of them were in hiding during the war and after the war, they were put into children's homes all over Europe," said Lisa Yavnai, who heads a new project called "Remember Me."
SOURCE: CBS News (11-2-11)
"I think you had to prove yourself first and let them know this is our country - we're loyal," George Iwasaki tells CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy.
Iwasaki never lost faith in America, even when America had no faith in him. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. government ordered 120,000 Japanese, more than half of them American citizens, to internment camps.
"I didn't believe it," Iwasaki said. "I was an American - I thought."...
The 442nd became one of the most decorated units in U.S. military history. On Wednesday they received one of America's highest civilian honors, the Congressional Gold Medal.
Name of source: National Geographic
SOURCE: National Geographic (11-1-11)
...The Staffordshire Hoard, as it was quickly dubbed, electrified the general public and Anglo-Saxon scholars alike. Spectacular discoveries, such as the royal finds at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, had been made in Anglo-Saxon burial sites. But the treasure pulled from Fred Johnson’s field was novel—a cache of gold, silver, and garnet objects from early Anglo-Saxon times and from one of the most important kingdoms of the era. Moreover, the quality and style of the intricate filigree and cloisonné decorating the objects were extraordinary, inviting heady comparisons to such legendary treasures as the Lindisfarne Gospels of the Book of Kells.
Once cataloged, the hoard was found to contain some 3,500 pieces representing hundreds of complete objects. And the items that could be securely identified presented a striking pattern. There were more than 300 sword-hilt fittings, 92 sword-pommel caps, and 10 scabbard pendants. Also noteworthy: There were no coins or women’s jewelry, and out of the entire collection, the three religious objects appeared to be the only nonmartial pieces. Intriguingly, many of the items seemed to have been bent or broken. This treasure, then, was a pile of broken, elite, military hardware hidden 13 centuries ago in a politically and militarily turbulent region. The Staffordshire Hoard was trilling and historic—but above all it was enigmatic....
SOURCE: National Geographic (11-1-11)
Under a former Native American village in Georgia, deep inside what's now the U.S., archaeologists say they've found 16th-century jewelry and other Spanish artifacts.
The discovery suggests an expedition led by conquistador Hernando de Soto ventured far off its presumed course—which took the men from Florida to Missouri—and engaged in ceremonies in a thatched, pyramid-like temple.
decThe discovery could redraw the map of de Soto's 1539-41 march into North America, where he hoped to replicate Spain's overthrow of the Inca Empire in South America. There, the conquistador had served at the side of leader Francisco Pizarro....
Name of source: Live Science
SOURCE: Live Science (10-31-11)
Once laid to rest, the remains of many who died in medieval Europe were not left in peace. As much as 40 percent of graves from the mid-fifth to mid-eighth centuries appear to have been disturbed after burial.
Grave robbers, searching for wealth buried along with the dead, have frequently born the blame from archaeologists.
"This sort of behavior has always been described as grave robbery," said Edeltraud Aspöck, a postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. "It has always been thought that it was criminal gangs and foreigners that have been plundering, and it was all about material gain."...
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (11-1-11)
Researchers have found that people in East Asia share genetic material with Denisovans, who got the name from the cave in Siberia where they were first found.
The new study covers a larger part of the world than earlier research, and it is clear that it is not as simple as previously thought.
Professor Mattias Jakobsson, of Uppsala University in Sweden who conducted the study together with graduate student Pontus Skoglund, said hybridisation took place at several points in evolution and the genetic traces of this can be found in several places in the world.
He said: "We'll probably be uncovering more events like these.
"Previous studies have found two separate hybridisation events between so-called archaic humans - different from modern humans in both genetics and morphology - and the ancestors of modern humans after their emergence from Africa....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (11-2-11)
The ancient race are believed to have to discovered North America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus.
Now experiments have shown that a crystal, called an Iceland spar, could detect the sun with an accuracy within a degree – allowing the legendary seafarers to navigate thousands of miles on cloudy days and during short Nordic nights.
Dr Guy Ropars, of the University of Rennes, and colleagues said "a precision of a few degrees could be reached" even when the sun was below the horizon....
Name of source: National Park Service Press Release
SOURCE: National Park Service Press Release (11-2-11)
The National Park Service has recognized the historic significance of gay rights activist Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, by listing his home in the National Register of Historic Places. "Dr. Kameny led a newly militant activism in the fledgling gay civil rights of the 1960s," said NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. "He was a landmark figure in articulating and achieving gay civil rights in federal employment and security clearance cases, and in reversing the medical community’s view on homosexuality as a mental disorder." Kameny’s efforts in the civil rights movement, modeled in part on African American civil rights strategies and tactics, significantly altered the rights, perceptions, and role of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in American society.
Franklin Kameny (1925-2011) was a Harvard trained astronomer and World War II veteran. In 1957, Dr. Kameny was fired from his job with the Army Map Service for refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation. Based upon an Executive Order issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, thousands of men and women lost their federal civil service jobs solely due to their sexual orientation, based upon a belief that homosexuality posed a security risk. Dr. Kameny waged a four-year legal fight against the idea that sexual orientation could make one unfit for federal service. Although the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, it was the first time that an equal-rights claim had been made on the basis of sexual orientation.
In 1961 Kameny co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, an organization committed, through activism to achieving equal social and legal rights for homosexuals. Through lobbying of government officials, testifying before congressional committees, bringing court challenges, and picketing the White House, Kameny and his allies pressured the U.S. Civil Service Commission to eventually abandon its policy of denying homosexuals federal employment. Kameny led efforts to remove homosexuality as a basis for denying government security clearances. He was also involved in the first legal challenge to the U.S. military’s policy of discharging gay and lesbian service members, including the much-publicized case of gay Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich. Kameny played a leading role in attacking the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) definition of homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973, the APA voted to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. In 1998, President Clinton signed an Executive Order banning discrimination in federal employment based upon sexual orientation.
For years, Dr. Kameny’s residence at 5020 Cathedral Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC, served as a meeting place, archives, informal counseling center, headquarters of the Mattachine Society, and a safe haven for visiting gay and lesbian activists. It was here that Dr. Franklin E. Kameny developed the civil rights strategies and tactics that have come to define the modern gay rights movement.
Name of source: Boston Globe
SOURCE: Boston Globe (11-1-11)
Dewey Square and South Station in 1901, as a bustling center of transportation and industry, and in 2011, where even the 5 p.m. commuters can’t compare to the activity of 110 years earlier. The Occupy Boston tent city is just past the Fiduciary Trust Building at the left edge of the frame.
Long before Dewey Square became the site of Occupy Boston, it was a transportation hub surrounded by warehouses and light industry, a small park of limited usefulness, and the site of some of the most complex construction Boston has ever seen.
The square alongside Atlantic Avenue was named for one of the great heroes of the Pacific, George Dewey, a commodore in the US Navy who led the American Asiatic Squadron to victory in the first major battle of the Spanish-American War. Dewey later became the only person in US history to reach the rank Admiral of the Navy, the most senior rank in the US Navy....
Name of source: Press Release
SOURCE: Press Release (11-3-11)
WASHINGTON, D.C./PROVO, Utah, November 3, 2011 – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Ancestry.com announced that material from four Museum collections containing information on more than 30,000 victims of Nazi persecution is now available online at Ancestry.com and can be searched at no cost. The collections contain information on thousands of individuals including displaced Jewish orphans; Czech Jews deported to the Terezin concentration camp and camps in occupied Poland; and French victims of Nazi persecution.
The collections are being made available through the World Memory Project, launched in May 2011. The project is recruiting the public to help build the world’s largest online resource on Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of non-Jews who were targeted for persecution by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, allowing victims’ families and survivors themselves to discover missing chapters of their history, learn the truth about the fate of their relatives and honor those who were lost.
World Memory Project contributors are continuously keying information that will form new searchable databases of historical collections when complete. To date, more than 2,100 contributors from around the world have indexed more than 700,000 records. Anyone, anywhere can contribute to the project by simply typing information from historical records into the online database.
“World Memory Project contributors are helping Holocaust survivors and their families learn the truth about what happened to loved ones,” says Lisa Yavnai, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum WMP project leader. “It is an incredible gift that anyone can give to those who survived the horrors of Nazi Germany. In a few months, the contributors’ efforts have resulted in more online searchable records than the Museum alone could have produced in many years.”
The World Memory Project utilizes proprietary software and project management donated by Ancestry.com, which hosts its own online archival project to transcribe historical records. Once Museum records are transcribed, the indices are hosted exclusively on Ancestry.com and are permanently free to search. The Museum provides copies of documents upon request at no cost. The original documentation remains in the Museum’s archival collection.
“We’ve been inspired by the steadfast efforts of the thousands of contributors who have in some cases spent hundreds of hours transcribing this important material,” remarked Tim Sullivan, CEO, Ancestry.com. “These early results would likely have taken years without the dedication of the many individuals who have embraced the mission of the World Memory Project.”
To find out more about the World Memory Project or to learn how to become a contributor, please visit www.WorldMemoryProject.org.
What World Memory Project contributors are saying:
“I chose to try to make available to the public a few documents from Poland during WWII. I found it to be a very emotional and most privileged moment in my life.” ─ Valentina, Australia
“I feel privileged and honored to bring historical accuracy and facts to the many families out there today who may not have known, until now, what became of their family members. It was extremely important to me to key in these documents with the utmost care.” – Donna, United States
“…It brought home to me the fact that each of these names had been a person who probably once reached out with their hands to others for help, and for many of them, that help never came… Ultimately, though, I took comfort in the idea that, while he might have been among those who were taken from the world through bigotry and hatred, at least I was helping in a little way to make sure he and others like him were not forgotten.” ─ Kerri, United States
About the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum www.ushmm.org
A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanent place on the National Mall, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by generous donors. For more information, visit www.ushmm.org.
About Ancestry.com www.ancestry.com
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with more than 1.7 million paying subscribers. More than 7 billion records have been added to the site in the past 15 years. Ancestry users have created more than 28 million family trees containing over 2.8 billion profiles. Ancestry.com has local Web sites directed at nine countries that help people discover, preserve and share their family history, including its flagship Web site at www.ancestry.com.
Name of source: West Virginia Gazette
SOURCE: West Virginia Gazette (11-2-11)
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Friends of Blair Mountain held a rally Tuesday at the Culture Center and submitted a petition to the State Historical Preservation Office signed by more than 26,000 people supporting preservation of the historic site on the Boone-Logan county border.
Brandon Nida, a West Virginia native and doctoral student in archaeology at the University of California-Berkeley, said, "The largest labor battle in U.S. history took place on Blair Mountain back in 1921. We need to preserve it, develop it and promote the economy."
Joe Stanley, a retired miner born and raised in Mingo County, said, "I am not anti-mining or anti-coal. I am anti-mountaintop-removal mining. The Battle of Blair Mountain helped start the middle class."
Stanley said the SHPO is supposed "to protect historic structures, objects and sites."...
Name of source: CIA
SOURCE: CIA (10-31-11)
The Central Intelligence Agency, in partnership with the National Declassification Center, hosted a symposium on 27 October 2011 at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the subsequent construction of the Berlin Wall. In conjunction with the event, more than 370 declassified documents – totaling more than 4800 pages of material about this crucial time period – were released from the records of multiple U.S. Government agencies. This collection marks the first time so many government entities have compiled their declassified documents on a single historic event in one place.
“Eleven U.S. Government organizations contributed to the material being presented today – from intelligence reports to contingency plans to photographs to maps – all of these revealing the tremendous challenges U.S. analysts faced in predicting Nikita Khrushchev’s intentions and actions during the Berlin Crisis,” said Joseph Lambert, CIA’s Director of Information Management Services (IMS). “These documents also afford a glimpse of the many differing opinions held by Kennedy Administration advisors and various military leaders about which tactics and strategies offered the most effective U.S. response.”
Historians, intelligence experts, retired CIA officers, and policymakers from the Berlin Crisis era participated in the event. The symposium featured a keynote address by Dr. William R. Smyser, the last person to cross the Potsdamer Platz in a car as the Berlin Wall was being erected. Dr. Smyser, who now teaches at Georgetown University, discussed his firsthand experiences serving as the special assistant to General Lucius Clay, President Kennedy’s personal representative to Berlin, and as a political counselor at the American Embassy in Bonn....
Name of source: UCLA
SOURCE: UCLA (11-1-11)
Name of source: Vancouver Sun
SOURCE: Vancouver Sun (11-1-11)
A 340-year-old coin from China has been unearthed by archeologists near a planned Yukon gold mine, shedding fresh light on historic trade links between 17th-century Chinese merchants, Russian fur traders and first nations in the northwest corner of North America.
The coin is etched with traditional Chinese characters indicating it was minted during the Qing Dynasty reign of Emperor Kangxi, who ruled China from 1662 to 1722. But other information stamped on the money piece - which has a large central hole and four smaller ones - shows it was minted in China's Zhili province between 1667 and 1671.
The coin was discovered during a dig near Western Copper and Gold Corp.'s proposed Casino mine site about 300 kilometres northwest of Whitehorse. A heritage impact assessment for the Vancouver mining company was being conducted by Ecofor Consulting Ltd., based in B.C. and Yukon, when the find was made....
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