Name of source: Fox News
A Washington-based group that has long questioned the official version of John F. Kennedy's assassination says the city of Dallas is trampling its rights by barring it from Dealey Plaza for this year's 50th anniversary of the murder of the nation's 35th president.
The Coalition on Political Assassinations has gathered every year since 1994 at the site where Kennedy was killed by a sniper on Nov. 22, 1963. The group typically observes a moment of silence and members often give speeches. But this year it was denied a permit, the group's director told FoxNews.com.
"It's ironic that the city wants to celebrate JFK's life -- and not his death -- at the very place where he was assassinated," John Judge, the executive director of the group, said. "They are afraid of the thousands of people that will come to the site to commemorate his death and call for the truth."...
Monday, January 14, 2013 - 12:14
Residents of a town under siege by the Roman army about 2,000 years ago buried two hoards of treasure in the town's citadel — treasure recently excavated by archaeologists.
More than 200 coins, mainly bronze, were found along with "various items of gold, silver and bronze jewelry and glass vessels" inside an ancient fortress within the Artezian settlement in the Crimea (in Ukraine), the researchers wrote in the most recent edition of the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia.
"The fortress had been besieged. Wealthy people from the settlement and the neighborhood had tried to hide there from the Romans. They had buried their hoards inside the citadel," Nikolaï Vinokurov, a professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University, explained....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 10:31
A long-awaited article on a Coptic papyrus fragment believed to reference the wife of Jesus has been left out of the Harvard Theological Review, furthering doubts about the artifact’s authenticity.
The scholarly journal was slated to publish a major article on the finding this month after Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), announced in September the discovery of a 4th century fragment of papyrus indicating that some early Christians believed Jesus was married. The text, written in Coptic and likely translated from a 2nd century Greek text, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 10:30
ALBANY, N.Y. – The upstate New York village that bills itself as the birthplace of the U.S. Navy hasn't done much to preserve one of the service's oldest warship relics: the hull of a schooner that was the first in a long line of American vessels to carry the name Ticonderoga.
The wooden remains of the War of 1812 ship are displayed in a long, open-sided shed on the grounds of the Skenesborough Museum in Whitehall. They've been stored there since being raised from the southern end of Lake Champlain by a local historical group more than 50 years ago. Now, with the approach of 200th anniversary of the battle at which the first Ticonderoga gained its fame, a maritime historian is hoping something can be done to stem the deterioration of a rare naval artifact.
"It was recovered for all the right reasons but before we knew all the implications of a shipwreck and bringing it up into an air environment," said Arthur Cohn, senior adviser and special projects developer at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vt....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 15:22
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Hatfield clan New Year's attack on Randolph McCoy's cabin marked a turning point in America's most famous feud -- the homestead was set ablaze, and two McCoys were gunned down. Hatfield family members and supporters were soon thrown in jail.
Artifacts recently unearthed appear to pinpoint the location of the 1888 ambush in the woods of Pike County in eastern Kentucky. Excavators found bullets believed to have been fired by the McCoys in self-defense, along with fragments of windows and ceramic from the family's cabin.
"This is one of the most famous conflicts in American history, and we've got bullets fired from one of the key battles. It doesn't get any better than that," said Bill Richardson, a West Virginia University extension professor who was part of the recent discovery....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 15:20
Name of source: AP
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."
Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president's death.
Saturday, January 12, 2013 - 19:56
HARTBEESPOORT, South Africa — Do you remember your first kiss? If you have a few years under your belt, maybe you stole it in the back of the movie theater, the projector whirring in the darkness. Or rather, back of the “bioscope,” a word for the cinema in South Africa in the old days.
The fantasy world of “Pretville,” a Grease-style film musical in the Afrikaans language, celebrates 1950s Americana, the thrill of first love and foot-tapping classics that evoke innocence and discovery.
It is also an affirmation of an Afrikaner identity that spent years in the doghouse after 1994 elections and the end of apartheid, the system of white minority rule imposed by Afrikaner nationalists in 1948. And while most of the actors are white, two who are not play authority figures, lampooning the now-discarded racial order....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 10:57
HANOI, Vietnam — School authorities in Vietnam have suspended an eighth-grade student for one year after she posted a parody of a speech by revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh on Facebook.
State-controlled media said Tuesday that the girl’s post used language from a famous speech by Ho Chi Minh in 1946 appealing for resistance against French colonialists.
The post joked about never having to take exams again....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:46
WARSAW, Poland — Vladimir Lenin is not considered funny in Poland.
A Polish mobile phone operator that used a cartoon image of the Russian communist revolutionary found itself barraged by angry feedback and responded this week by stopping its advertising campaign.
Older Poles remember the late Soviet leader for shaping a communist regime that killed millions and imposed mass terror in the Soviet Union. A communist regime was later imposed on Poles against their will by the Soviets after World War II.... [HNN editor's note: The AP neglected to mention the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1921, which Lenin was more directly involved in, as he had the distinct advantage of being alive when it broke out.]
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:40
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Elvis Presley fans from as far as Japan and Brazil gathered Tuesday in Memphis to sing “Happy Birthday” to the late rock ‘n’ roll icon on the day he would have turned 78.
Hundreds of Elvis devotees watched as 13-year-old Isabella Scott cut a birthday cake on the lawn at Graceland, the singer’s longtime Memphis home. Scott, of Bonifay, Fla., heads an Internet-based Elvis fan club with more than 2,000 members....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:38
Slavery-era action figures tied to Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” are raising questions about whether they’re appropriate.
A line of figures of the movie’s main characters are on sale online, manufactured by toy maker NECA in partnership with the Weinstein Co.
Najee Ali, director of the advocacy group Project Islamic Hope, plans a news conference Tuesday with other Los Angeles black community leaders calling for the removal of the toys from the market....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:37
Name of source: WSJ
NEW YORK — Philanthropist and former Wall Street money manager Michael Steinhardt began collecting objects of Jewish history and culture three decades ago, eventually amassing a collection of manuscripts, textiles and art worth millions of dollars.
Now, the 72-year-old wants to sell his more than 500-piece collection so others can enjoy it.
Sotheby's will auction the collection in New York on April 29 after also exhibiting it in Moscow and Jerusalem and offering special presentations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil and several European and U.S. cities....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 12:10
Name of source: NYT
Between them, Senator John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have five Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in Vietnam, shared a harrowing combat experience in the Mekong Delta and responded in different ways to the conflict that tore their generation apart. But in nominating one as secretary of state and the other as defense secretary, President Obama hopes to bring to his administration two veterans with the same sensibility about the futilities of war.
Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the president’s choice for the State Department, came home from commanding a Swift boat in Vietnam to throw away his military decorations in a protest at the Capitol, accuse American troops of systematic atrocities and tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska who is the nominee for the Pentagon, returned home thinking of the war as justified and did his best to put it behind him. “I wanted a life,” he later said. Mr. Hagel eventually turned against the leadership of the war — “I can’t fathom that this country would allow something like that to happen, 16,000 young men killed in one year,” he told Vietnam magazine, a history publication, in October — but not its warriors. Today he is the chairman of the Pentagon’s advisory group for commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 12:05
DRESDEN, Germany — Seventy years ago this winter, Soviet forces surrounded and crushed Hitler’s Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The Germans’ defeat shattered the myth of an unstoppable Nazi war machine and marked a reversal of fortunes in World War II.
Now a special exhibition in Dresden returns to that wintry hell on the Volga. It’s being shown in the Military History Museum, once a museum for the Nazi and East German armies. Now run by the German armed forces, the site reopened in October 2011 after a redesign by the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind.
Prepared in cooperation with the Stalingrad Battle Museum in present-day Volgograd, the exhibit reveals Germany’s new self-confidence and acceptance of its historical responsibility. The show displays neither the ritual self-flagellation of the German left nor the twisted relativizations of the right....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 11:58
When Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave turned professional dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, published her memoir, “Behind the Scenes,” in 1868, the response was vitriolic. One Washington reviewer called Mrs. Keckley “treacherous” and asked: “What family of eminence that employs a Negro is safe from such desecration? Where will it end?”
What a difference 145 years make.
The memoir is now ensconced as a historic literary treasure, and in pop culture’s most recent outbreak of Lincoln fever, Mrs. Keckley is logging significant time onstage, on screen and on the page, where her remarkable life has allowed other writers to explore the complicated intersections of race and power in 1860s America.
“She had always prided herself on her integrity and dignity, and to suddenly be dismissed as a lowly servant telling tales was quite a shock,” said Jennifer Chiaverini, whose novel “Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker” is being published by Dutton on Tuesday....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 11:37
LONDON — The Simon Wiesenthal Center has prompted an outraged debate in Germany after it included a prominent German journalist’s remarks in its annual top 10 list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs.
The Los Angeles-based organization, named for a celebrated Nazi-hunter and dedicated to fighting anti-Jewish bigotry, listed Jakob Augstein, a well-known editor and columnist, among 2012’s top perpetrators of the slurs.
It ranked his comments alongside those of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement, racist European soccer fans and Louis Farrakhan....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 11:10
Name of source: WaPo
Not for the first time, I’m confused. My search for a gin distillery has led me to a quiet residential street in West London. Can this really be the place? I check my dog-eared A-Z map again. Yeah, this is right: The garage in front of me — little more than a lean-to, really — is the spot.
This is the home of Sipsmith, the first copper-pot distillery to open in London in almost 200 years. This is where London’s recent gin revival began....
It’s a great story, not least because London, home of the world’s most popular gin style (London Dry), is so inextricably linked to the juniper-infused spirit. The city’s residents have been knocking the drink back in varying quantities ever since the end of the 17th century, when William of Orange arrived from the Netherlands bearing muscular Protestantism and a drink called Jenever. William’s obsequious courtiers soon began drinking Jenever, and his thirsty subjects followed suit. By the middle of the 18th century, everyone was drinking gin, and plenty of people were making it: One house in every four in the City of London reputedly contained distilling equipment.
This was the era of “Gin Madness,” and it didn’t end well. The drink became so cheap that it represented a serious health hazard, at least if you believe William Hogarth, the British artist who produced a very famous and frequently reproduced etching called “Gin Lane” in 1751. The image illustrates the multitudinous ill effects of drinking gin: Most notable is the central image of a mother, her face grotesquely aged and her legs scarred due to malnutrition, who in her gin-addled stupor is allowing a child to fall from her lap to its likely death....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 11:04
“Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.”
— Former President Bill Clinton, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9, 2013
A colleague spotted this eye-popping statistic by the former president and wondered if it was correct....
In the highly charged debate over guns, it is important for politicians on both sides to get their facts straight. In this case, the available data shows that Clinton was way off-base in his assertion, making an exaggerated claim — which his office would not even defend.
Ordinarily, this might have been a Four Pinocchio claim. Given the fuzziness of the data and questions about definitions, we are going to cut Clinton a bit of slack in the final ruling. But such uncertainty in the data means politicians need to be very careful in making claims about gun violence.
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 11:01
HONOLULU — Herbert Yanamura is an American, born and raised among the coffee farms of Hawaii’s Kona district. Yet the U.S. government branded him an “enemy alien” after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor because he looked like the invaders.
So Yanamura volunteered to join the Army to prove his loyalty.
Nearly 70 years later, that same government honored him and the thousands of other Japanese-Americans who served in World War II with one of its most elite rewards: the Congressional Gold Medal....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 10:59
LONDON — Busy, congested, stressful. This is how the world’s first subway system was depicted by London newspapers in 1863. It’s a situation that would be familiar to nail-biting passengers of the present as the Tube turned 150 years old Wednesday.
“The constant cry, as the trains arrived, of ‘no room,’ appeared to have a very depressing effect upon those assembled,” The Guardian newspaper reported on the public opening of London’s Metropolitan Line on Jan. 10, 1863. The first stretch of rail had opened the day before, on Jan. 9.
The line — the first part of what is now an extensive London transport network that has shaped the British capital and its suburbs — ran 120 trains each way during the day, carrying up to 40,000 excited passengers. Extra steam locomotives and cars were called in to handle the crowds....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:42
Martin Luther King Jr. carried a black leather King James Bible on his journeys as a young pastor starting out in Montgomery, Ala. He turned to this “traveling Bible” for inspiration, his family says, as he fought for freedom and equality.
President Obama will put his hand over King’s well-worn Bible at his public swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, the holiday celebrating the birthday of the slain civil rights leader. King’s Bible will be stacked with the burgundy velvet and gilded Bible used by President Abraham Lincoln at his first inauguration.
Obama chose the Lincoln Bible for his inauguration in 2009, making him the first president to do so since it was initially used in 1861. President Harry S. Truman also used two Bibles, as did Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon.....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:35
MERRILLVILLE, Ind. — A World War II veteran who served in France during the war has been reunited with his Army-issued duffel bag nearly seven decades after it went missing.
Ninety-two-year-old William Kadar of Merrillville opened a carefully wrapped package Tuesday to find his drab green duffel bag inside. The folded up bag is still stenciled with his name and serial number....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:34
OAKLAND, Calif. — The Oakland Museum of California offered a $12,000 reward Wednesday for the safe recovery of a stolen gold-encrusted jewel box — the latest in a series of thefts involving Gold Rush-era artifacts across the region.
The box stolen Monday depicts images of early California history and was originally a wedding anniversary gift from a San Francisco pioneer to his wife in the 1800s, museum director Lori Fogarty said.
It’s the size of a small shoebox and weighs about three pounds.
Oakland city officials have said the box was valued at more than $800,000, but Fogarty said it was difficult to put a price on the artifact....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:33
WASHINGTON — A Jewish group and the Justice Department argued in court Wednesday about the best way to get Russia to return the group’s historic books and documents.
The group, Chabad-Lubavitch, wants the judge to impose civil fines on Russia. The department says fines won’t help resolve the dispute and in fact would be counterproductive....
Chabad-Lubavitch, based in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, has already convinced Lamberth that it has a valid claim to the tens of thousands of religious books and manuscripts, some up to 500 years old, which record the group’s core teachings and traditions. The judge ruled the records are unlawfully possessed by the Russian State Library and the Russian military archive. And in 2010, he ordered the Russian government to turn them over to the U.S. embassy in Moscow or to Chabad’s representative. The lawsuit is more than eight years old....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:33
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Artists often put oil to canvas at this time of year to render the official portrait of a governor or legislative leader who’s coming or going from office.
Oil paintings of American politicians go back to George Washington. It’s a tradition that’s been made largely immune to budget pressures thanks to private funding.
But the practice isn’t without its challenges. The commissioning and placement of the portraits — most consistently governors, but also legislators, justices and other statewide officials — can raise quirky questions.
What of the Ohio governor whose portrait probably took longer to paint than her 11-day tenure in office? Or the image of an Oregon governor whose past misdeeds were later revealed?...
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:53
The death of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was savagely beaten and gang-raped on a moving bus in New Delhi last month has spurred widespread protests and debate about violence against women. Here are some other past high-profile rape cases in India, as reported in Indian news media:
Hetal Parekh, 14, was raped and killed by Dhananjay Chatterjee, a guard in her apartment building, in Kolkata. Chatterjee was hanged in 2004.
1992
Bhanwari Devi was gang-raped in Rajasthan as a punishment for protesting the traditional practice of child marriage. The case is still dragging on in court. Two of the accused have died....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:49
President Obama has picked Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain civil rights icon Medgar Evers, to deliver the invocation at his public swearing-in later this month. It is believed to be the first time a woman, and a layperson rather than a clergy member, has been chosen to deliver what may be America’s most prominent public prayer.
The inaugural committee Tuesday plans to announce that the benediction will be given by conservative evangelical pastor Louie Giglio, founder of the student-focused Passion Conferences, which draw tens of thousands of people to events around the world.
The contrasting choice of speakers are typical of a president who has walked a sometimes complicated path when it comes to religion — working to be inclusive to the point that critics at times have questioned his faith....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:45
The two sites have little in common, save perhaps the fact that each was started by a small group of women who have developed deep expertise in their particular field of interest: American Food Roots on the history and evolution of U.S. gastronomy and Food Tank on the contradictory and problematic Western food system.
In early December, four D.C.-area food writers launched American Food Roots, led by NPR contributor Bonny Wolf , who conceived of the project years ago. Wolf recruited three other culinary scribes — Domenica Marchetti, Michele Kaya l and Carol Guensburg — to start building out the site in September 2011.
Together, the quarter have put together a charming and informative site that combines research into the cuisines of all 50 states with features, videos and recipes on all kinds of American cooking, whether the increasingly international flavor of the Thanksgiving spread or the decreasing presence of coddies in Baltimore. Trust me, if you read American Food Roots, you’ll learn something about the meals you eat, like the Christmas tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes. (Is it an Italian tradition or an American one?)
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:42
Wherever he goes, 11-year-old Adam Webb looks for Civil War artifacts to collect. In his bedroom, he displays 150-year-old Civil War items, including buttons and bullets. He also has a collection of books about the war. He sketches pictures of Civil War heroes and uses Lincoln Logs to build replicas of homes from the 1800s.
“I love learning about the history of the Civil War,” says the Ashland Elementary School fifth-grader. Growing up in Manassas, he says, he has been surrounded by Civil War history his entire life....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:36
It’s hard to find a city with a more complicated history than Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest and one of the continent’s spots most affected by colonialism. Several moments in that long history come crashing together in the city’s annual new year’s celebrations, some of which are still going strong.
Technically, the Cape Town holiday of Tweede Nuwe Jaar, which is Afrikaans (the language used by mostly Dutch descendants of European settlers in South Africa) for “second new year,” takes place on Jan. 2. But it can continue for days or even weeks in some parts of the city. It’s about partying, yes, but also street performances and marches from groups called “Klopses,” face-painted troupes that might look familiar to anyone who has seen Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.
The story of Tweede Nuwe Jaar goes back to the early Dutch settlers. Specifically, it has to do with the city’s history as a slave trading port. That’s right: This fun, free-wheeling holiday has its roots in the slave trade and in Cape Town’s history as an economic center of colonialism’s worst practices. Dave Mayers, with the CBS-affiliated news site SmartPlanet, runs down the origin of the story as it’s commonly told....
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:35
Name of source: WaP
Students at St. Mary’s College of Maryland think they may have found the site of the home of Thomas Gerard, who oversaw thousands of acres known as St. Clement’s Manor when Maryland was still a colony.
Despite his land wealth and political influence, Gerard joined a brief rebellion against the Calvert family, which established the colony. The land where Gerard is thought to have lived is now home to Levi and McCue, two American paint horses off Oscar Hayden Road, near Bushwood.
The archaeological group of the anthropological research methods class from St. Mary’s College spent several Saturdays digging around the Foxwood Farm in the fall. The landowners, James and Gena Clifton, said they had suspicions 10 years ago that there was a deeper history to the property. They opened their land and home to the students while they worked....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 11:00
Name of source: WaPo Answer Sheet
Why do so many students find history boring? Here’s why, from David Bernstein, a nonprofit executive who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., and has two sons, ages 7 and 15.
By David Bernstein
When I took high school history in the early 1980s, the job of the history teacher was to provide a steady stream of facts, and the job of the student was to commit those facts to memory. Even though I was deeply interested in public affairs, I found both American and World history boring and irrelevant. But later in life, I came to realize, like so many others, that it was impossible to understand modern politics and the interplay of ideas without some grounding in the subject.
When my son reached middle school, I was curious if teaching history had changed. At first, I was pleasantly surprised. In eighth grade, he had a charismatic teacher who eschewed the memorization curriculum in favor of interesting projects and interactive lesson plans that brought historical ideas to life. But, unfortunately, that year turned out to be an exception. Since then, it’s been mostly one big lesson in historic trivia....
Friday, January 11, 2013 - 10:51
Name of source: Daily Mail (UK)
A new documentary has cast doubt on Neil Armstrong's claims that he came up with his iconic 'one small step' line hours after touching down on the surface of the moon.
The first man on the moon had stubbornly maintained up until his death in September that his historic words were unplanned, but a recent interview with his brother claims that he thought up the famous speech months before the July 1969, Apollo mission - and that the phrase he planned to utter did include an 'a'.
Hundreds of millions around the world heard the NASA astronaut say, 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind', but Armstrong insisted that he said 'a man' but that the 'a' was not heard because of static.
In a rare interview three months after the NASA pioneers death, his brother, Dean, recalled that Neil showed him a written version of the speech months before the Apollo 11 launch, clearly stating, 'that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.'...
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 15:19
A high-street clothing retailer is selling a T-shirt which features some of the world's most notorious dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
Urban Outfitters - which is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and has 24 stores across the UK - is selling the white T-shirt for £32 and it features the black heading of 'D.W.A. - Dictators with Attitude'.
The T-shirt, which is listed as an ‘online exclusive’ on the company’s website, jokes that Gaddafi, Hitler and Hussein are in the ‘world's most notorious rap group’ along with Idi Amin and Kim Jong-Il....
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 10:56
Name of source: Discovery News
Two centuries after the French people beheaded Louis XVI and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, scientists believe they have authenticated the remains of one such rag kept as a revolutionary souvenir.
Researchers have been trying for years to verify a claim imprinted on an ornately decorated calabash that it contains a sample of the blood of the French king guillotined in Paris on January 21, 1793.
The dried, hollowed squash is adorned with portraits of revolutionary heroes and the text: "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation"....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 15:18
Swedish scientists have solved the mystery over a a zinc coffin found 21 years ago at the German estate of Hitler's right-hand man, Hermann Göring, by identifying the skeletal remains as those of Göring's first wife Carin.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Carin Fock married the decorated pilot Hermann Göring in 1923. The couple settled in Germany, where Carin enjoyed a high social status as the wife of a central leader in the growing National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).
"Adolf Hitler liked her. She has been called the mascot of the Nazi party," Marie Allen, professor of forensic genetics at Uppsala University, Sweden, and colleagues wrote in the journal PLoS ONE....
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 19:01
An ancient doctor likely knew the composition of the medicines loaded aboard a doomed ship preparing to sail into the Mediterranean. But it would be another approximately 2,200 years until anyone else learned the ingredients of the six grey pills, which were lost beneath the waves along with the rest of the ship, known as the "Relitto del Pozzino."
A team of Italian archeologists, chemists and biologists deciphered the chemical clues to the composition of an ancient medicine packed in the cargo of a ship sunk in 18 meters (59 feet) of water off the coast of Tuscany.
The six flat disks were held in a tin container which was probably once held in a larger wooden box that rotted away. Other medical implements of the time were found nearby.
Discovery News reported on an earlier study that discovered the medicine contained a mixture of mineral and plant materials, but not exactly which chemicals....
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 16:11
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine President, has been left “frustrated” by the refusal of other Latin American nations to back Argentina’s long-standing claim to the Islands, Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London, said.
An emotional open letter from Kirchner to David Cameron demanding the return of the Islands which she claims were “forcibly stripped” from her country, published today in the Guardian newspaper, is a sign of “profound weakness,” Prof Dodds said.
The Islands had no established Argentine population at the time the British took control - and Mrs Kirchner's country was itself an ambitious colonial power in the nineteenth century, he added....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 15:14
Crude and vicious anti-Semitism; narrow, bigoted nationalism; and total indifference to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people – these are not attitudes we expect from philosophers. On the contrary, these academic thinkers are supposed to have sophisticated ethical outlooks. They aim to be supremely rational, and to believe only what they can show to be true.
So it comes as a surprise to be reminded of the story told in Hitler’s Philosophers. This forthcoming book by Yvonne Sherratt, to be published by Yale, looks at the way some academics in Germany reacted to the coming of Adolf Hitler. And what an intensely depressing story it is. Most of them, including Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest names in 20th-century philosophy, did not merely reconcile themselves to Hitler. They enthusiastically espoused Nazi ideology, and came up with all sorts of elaborate reasons to justify the purging of Jews, the persecution of dissidents, and the conquest and oppression of other nations. They went out of their way to flaunt their loyalty to the Nazi cause. Heidegger used to lecture in military uniform, in a hall that he arranged to be decked out with swastikas and other Nazi flags. He got rid of Jewish academics with relish, even betraying his own teacher, Edmund Husserl, who had kindly arranged Heidegger’s professorship for him....
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 19:27
It was not immediately clear how much damage the water may have caused, and searchers could not definitively say what was inside the crate.
But British aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall, who is driving the hunt for the rare Spitfires, called the results "very encouraging."
"It will take some time to pump the water out ... but I do expect all aircraft to be in very good condition," Mr Cundall said from Rangoon, Burma's main city.
The single-seater Spitfire, which helped Britain beat back waves of German bombers during the war more than six decades ago, remains the most famous British combat aircraft....
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 10:53
Name of source: CNN.com
(CNN) -- Forty years after they were convicted by a jury of firebombing a grocery store in Wilmington, North Carolina, civil rights activists who became known as the "Wilmington 10" were pardoned Monday by the state's outgoing governor.
"These convictions were tainted by naked racism and represent an ugly stain on North Carolina's criminal justice system that cannot be allowed to stand any longer," said Gov. Beverly Purdue. "Justice demands that this stain finally be removed."
In 1972, nine black men and one white woman were convicted in the store firebombing in the coastal city despite their claims of innocence and their supporters' vehement argument that the defendants were victims of racially biased prosecutors....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 15:13
(CNN) - One of the most anticipated articles in religion circles will be absent from the pages of the January edition of the Harvard Theological Review. Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King's final article on the "Jesus wife" fragment did not make the scholarly journal because further testing on the Coptic papyrus fragment has not been finished.
King announced the findings of the 1.5-by-3 inch, honey-colored fragment in September at the International Association for Coptic Studies conference in Rome. In a draft version of the article submitted for publication in the January edition, King and her co-author said the scrap had written in Coptic, a language used by Egyptian Christians, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife," but was then cut off.
King said the fragment dates to the 4th century but could be a copy of an early gospel from the 2nd century. King and her research partners dubbed the hypothetical text "the Gospel of Jesus' Wife."
Despite King's insistence, the discovery did not prove anything definitive on the marital status of Jesus....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 12:15
Name of source: Yahoo News
A collector of vintage photography equipment got an extra bonus when he picked up a French camera at an antique store: never-before-seen images circa World War I France.
Anton Orlov details the story of the lucky find on his blog the Photo Palace, where all of the eight photos from the Jumelle Belllieni stereoscopic camera can be seen.
Orlov writes in his blog that he came across the images completely by accident, as he was cleaning the recently purchased camera. He opened up the film chamber and found the negatives on a stack of glass plates....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 11:10
Name of source: Religion News Service
Whether by accident, serendipity or divine design, four future heavyweights of American Catholicism found themselves in the Class of 1962 at St. John’s Seminary.
Momentous societal changes were surfacing all around the young men, but seminary life for George Niederauer, Roger Mahony, William Levada and Tod Brown continued much the same as it had for centuries. The four friends — a pair of cardinals-to-be, a future archbishop and bishop — were assigned alphabetically to desks and dorms. They arose at 5:30 a.m. and, within a half hour headed to the chapel for prayers and Mass. Silence was required during meals and after 7:30 p.m. Moral theology and philosophy classes were taught in Latin.
The priests-in-waiting had neither televisions nor telephones and were forbidden to leave the campus in Camarillo, Calif., without permission. They could read about current events — such as the 1960 election of the first Catholic to the White House — but only in clips from approved newspapers....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:36
Name of source: MinnPost
This week in 1933, Minnesota’s charismatic young governor took the oath of office for the second time. In his inaugural speech Floyd Olson embraced a progressive agenda as Minnesotans struggled with high unemployment and foreclosed farm mortgages.
Two years earlier, in November 1930, Olson had been elected governor just days after his 39th birthday. That year, Olson and his Farmer Labor Party had prevailed in three-way race with the long-dominant Republicans and the anemic Democrats, just as the Great Depression was tightening its grip. Now, he was beginning his second term while his state was reeling under the Depression’s full force.
Olson had run unsuccessfully for governor in 1924, before his newly created party had established a firm political footing in Minnesota. Over the next six years, the Farmer-Labor leader would make a name for himself as a crusading Hennepin county attorney, who battled municipal corruption in City Hall....
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:29
Name of source: The Root
Anonymous (Bohemia), Queen of Sheba.
Illustration in Bellifortis by Conrad of Kyeser; before 1405.
(The Root) -- This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Click here or on the SOURCE link to read more about the image.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 11:18
Name of source: Inside TV
National Geographic Channel’s new film Killing Lincoln explores a key part of the 16th president’s story that Steven Spielberg’s big screen hit largely passed over.
Based on Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s bestselling book, Killing Lincoln chronicles the final days of President Lincoln (Billy Campbell) and the plot by his assassin John Wilkes Booth (Jesse Johnson). Below is the first trailer for the movie, which debuts next month.
Killing Lincoln spends time portraying both men as it builds toward, as narrator Tom Hanks puts it, “the most resonant crime in the history of the nation,” and then chronicles the extensive manhunt to bring Booth to justice. The show’s auspices are quite impressive. In addition to Hanks, Killing Lincoln is produced by Ridley and Tony Scott (the latter having joined the production before his death last year) and is directed by Adrian Moat (Gettysburg). “This is really the Lincoln story you’ve never seen before,” Ridley Scott says.
Saturday, January 5, 2013 - 02:49
Name of source: BBC/AFP
A team of scientists have said they believe an old gourd contains the blood of French King Louis XVI.
The monarch was killed by guillotine by French revolutionaries more than 200 years ago, on 21 January 1793.
The scientists said the DNA is very similar to genetic material from what is believed to be the mummified head of an earlier French king, AFP reports...
The team of experts from Spain and France has published its findings in Forensic Science International journal.
Analysis of DNA taken from blood traces found inside the vegetable container had already revealed that it probably matched someone of Louis' description but scientists could not prove it belonged to the beheaded king as they had no genetic material from any of his relatives...
Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - 18:34
