Breaking News
Follow Breaking News updates on RSS and Twitter
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: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (2-13-13)
Thousands of anti-fascist protesters blocked a neo-Nazi march in Dresden, Germany, on Wednesday night, on the 68th anniversary of the British and American air campaign that killed an estimated 25,000 people in 37 hours of bombing.
In recent years, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports, anti-fascist activists “have outnumbered neo-Nazis who previously had used Dresden’s bombing anniversary to stage large ‘funeral’ marches to recall the demise of Hitler’s Third Reich.” On Wednesday, about 800 neo-Nazis were prevented from marching by thousands of police officers and counter-demonstrators, as more than 10,000 anti-fascist protesters formed a human chain in the city....
SOURCE: NYT (2-17-13)
VATICAN CITY — What will he be called? Will he keep his white robes and trademark red loafers? And in the last absolute monarchy in the West, how does the dramatic resignation of Benedict XVI, the first pope to step down willingly in six centuries, change a role long considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be that of God’s representative on Earth?
In transforming an office with an aura of divinity into something far more human, Benedict’s decision has sent shock waves through the Vatican hierarchy, who next month will elect his successor. But it has also puzzled the faithful and scholars, who wonder how a pope can be infallible one day and fallible again the next — and whether that might undermine the authority of church teaching....
SOURCE: NYT (2-21-13)
In the year’s most haunting image of black Civil War soldiers, the opening battlefield sequence in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” Confederate forces massacre many fallen former slaves.
In reality, African-American prisoners of war were killed en masse. Black troops in action endured lower wages and poorer medical care and living conditions than their white counterparts. But soldiers of both races did have surprisingly easy access to the luxury of photography.
Photographers ran government-sanctioned booths near encampments, selling souvenir portraits. The images of black personnel, from officers to gravediggers, are now on view widely in 150th-anniversary commemorations of the Emancipation Proclamation. They provide a nuanced view of African-American life at the front, even though some of the subjects can no longer be identified....
SOURCE: NYT (2-15-13)
SOURCE: NYT (2-14-13)
JERUSALEM — In one room sits a sarcophagus of reddish-pink limestone believed to have held the body of King Herod, painstakingly reconstructed after having been smashed to bits centuries ago. In another, there are frescoes from Herod’s elaborate underground palace, pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. Throughout, elaborate animated videos show the king’s audacious construction — atop the desert fortress Masada; at his burial place, Herodium; and his most famous work, the Second Temple of Jerusalem.
The Israel Museum on Tuesday opened its most ambitious archaeological exhibition and the world’s first devoted to Herod, the lionized and demonized Rome-appointed king of Judea, who reigned from 37 to 4 B.C.E. and is among the most seminal and contentious figures in Jewish history. But the exhibition, which the museum director described as a “massive enterprise” that involved sifting through 30 tons of material from Herodium and reconstructing 250 artifacts, has also brought its own bit of controversy.
The Palestinian Authority says the exhibition is a violation of international law because much of its material was taken from near Bethlehem and Jericho, both in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. An Israeli group of archaeologists and activists complains that the museum, however unwittingly, is helping the Jewish settlement movement advance its contention that the West Bank should be part of Israel and not a Palestinian state....
Name of source: Huffington Post
SOURCE: Huffington Post (2-18-13)
Mississippi lawmakers have officially ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which banned slavery in 1865.
One hundred forty-eight years after three-fourths of the states voted to approve the amendment, Mississippi's legislature finally took steps to fix the glaring oversight last month. According to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the decision was inspired by the Oscar-nominated film "Lincoln," which depicts the 16th president's efforts to enact the amendment.
After University of Mississippi Medical Center professor Dr. Ranjan Batra saw the film last year, he was inspired to look into what happened after states voted on the amendment. He found that while the state had originally rejected the slavery ban, the state legislature eventually voted to approve the amendment in 1995. The measure cleared both legislative chambers, but was never sent to the Office of the Federal Register and therefore never made official....
Name of source: NBC
SOURCE: NBC (2-31-13)
Three of this year’s best picture contenders were based on real events – but just how accurate were their portrayals and what responsibility does a filmmaker have to tell the truth? NBC’s Mike Taibbi reports. [Discusses Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty.]
SOURCE: NBC (2-13-13)
A synagogue near the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz is on the verge of collapse, officials warned on Wednesday.
The head of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, which maintains the historic building in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim, said in a phone interview that the synagogue is on unstable ground and if it is not reinforced soon, it may crumble.
"There are already small cracks visible," Tomasz Kuncewicz said. "A thorough examination found that the ground is unstable and with heavy rain or something similar, anything can happen."...
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (12-21-13)
A U.S.-based Jewish group Thursday rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's suggestion to house disputed historical collections of books and documents at a Jewish museum in Moscow.
Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for the Jewish group Chabad, said in a statement provided to The Associated Press that Chabad is the rightful owner and Putin's proposal is not acceptable.
"The collection must be returned to the Agudas Chasidei Chabad library at Chabad's worldwide headquarters in Brooklyn, New York," Lewin said...
...There are two collections at issue: 12,000 religious books and manuscripts seized during the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian Civil War nearly a century ago; and 25,000 pages of handwritten teachings and other writings of religious leaders stolen by Nazi Germany during World War II, then transferred by the Soviet Red Army as war booty to the Russian State Military Archive. The books and manuscripts, some hundreds of years old, record Chabad's core teachings and traditions...
SOURCE: AP (12-12-13)
...International Olympic Committee leaders dropped wrestling from the Summer Games on Tuesday. The move is set to take effect for the 2020 Olympics and eliminates a sport that has been a staple of both the ancient and modern games. Though wrestling's chances of making it back onto the Olympic program by 2020 are considered slim, the sport has two chances left to stop the drop.
Wrestling was voted out from a final group that also included modern pentathlon, taekwondo and field hockey, officials familiar with the vote told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the voting details were not made public.
But the IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be made at the IOC session, or general assembly, in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Wrestling will now join a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu - all of which are vying for a single opening in 2020...
SOURCE: AP (12-13-13)
One of the country's poorest Native American tribes wants to buy a historically significant piece of land where 300 of their ancestors were killed, but tribal leaders say the nearly $4 million price tag for a property appraised at less than $7,000 is just too much.
James Czywczynski is trying to sell a 40-acre fraction of the Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The land sits adjacent to a gravesite where about 150 of the 300 Lakota men, women and children killed by the 7th Cavalry in 1890 are buried.
Czywczynski, whose family has owned the property since 1968, recently gave the tribe an ultimatum: purchase the land for $3.9 million or he will open up bidding to non-Native Americans. He said he has been trying to sell the land to the tribe for years...
Name of source: FoxNews
SOURCE: FoxNews (2-21-13)
A plea for help penned in 1836 by the commander of the besieged rebel Texas forces at the Alamo, in which he vowed "Victory or Death," returns to old Spanish mission for the first time Friday.
William Barret Travis' famous letter to "the People of Texas and All Americans in the World," will get a police escort from the state archive in Austin to the Alamo, which is now in the heart of downtown San Antonio. The weathered, single-page letter will go on display for two weeks, starting this weekend, and will be kept in a special display cabinet and given round-the-clock guards....
Name of source: Washington Examiner
SOURCE: Washington Examiner (2-19-13)
DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland ignored the mistreatment of thousands of women who were incarcerated within Catholic nun-operated laundries and must pay the survivors compensation, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said Tuesday in an emotional state apology for the decades of abuses in the so-called Magdalene Laundries.
"By any standards it was a cruel, pitiless Ireland, distinctly lacking in a quality of mercy," Kenny said, as dozens of former Magdalenes watched tearfully from parliament's public gallery overhead.
Kenny told lawmakers his government has appointed a senior judge to recommend an aid program for the approximately 1,000 women still living from the residential workhouses, the last of which closed in 1996. He also pledged government funding for the erection of a national memorial "to remind us all of this dark part of our history."...
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-19-13)
Some 18 crates of gold and platinum may lie buried under the bed of the Stolpsee, a 988-acre stretch of water to the north of the German capital.
Yaron Svoray, who has the backing of German authorities, will use the latest sonar and radar equipment to try and locate the gold, which, the story goes, was dropped into the lake under the orders of Hermann Goering as the Red Army made its final push for Berlin in March, 1945.
One eyewitness, Eckhard Litz, told a post-war commission that he saw around 30 concentration camp prisoners unloading heavy crates from lorries parked by the Stolpsee. The boxes were then ferried into the middle of the lake, and thrown into its waters ....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-20-13)
David Cameron has been criticised for failing to meet the families of Indians killed by British troops as he tried to make amends for a "deeply shameful" Imperial massacre.
The Prime Minister invoked Sir Winston Churchill as he lamented the "monstrous" killings in Amritsar in 1919.
Mr Cameron flew to Amritsar at the end of a trade visit to Delhi and made a public show of British contrition over the massacre, which left at least 379 Sikh civilians dead.
The Prime Minister visited a memorial in the Jallianwala Bagh gardens, laying a wreath and writing in a book of remembrance....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-15-13)
Tomorrow marks the 90th anniversary of the moment that the Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter, working in primitive conditions in the desert, found and opened the tomb.
They became the first people to lay eyes upon the boy king's sarcophagus in 3,000 years, and also made an “extraordinary contribution” to our historical understanding, the fifth earl’s ancestor and namesake George Herbert has said.
Ahead of the anniversary the current Lord Carnarvon praised the "determined and stoic behaviour" of the archaeological team....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-15-13)
The route will wend its way through several sites in north-east Scotland, in a move that organisers hope will boost tourism to the region, as well as separating the facts from Shakespearean myths. Details will be unveiled today at Glamis in Angus, where Macbeth died in the play.
The Scottish MSP Alex Johnstone was the driving force behind the new trail.
"Many people don't realise that Macbeth existed," he told the Herald Scotland....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-5-13)
His remains are believed to lie in an unmarked grave in Winchester and a team is reportedly applying for permission to dig up the spot at St Bartholomew’s Church.
It is thought Alfred’s skeleton could be found among a collection of bones there.
But the job is expected to be much harder than the analysis on Richard III, as finding a living relative to provide a DNA sample would involve searching a much older family tree.
Katie Tucker, an archaeologist from Winchester University, told The Times: “As far as we’re aware there are five skulls plus other bones. The most simple part will be to work out ages, sexes, and put the bones back together....
Name of source: Illinois Times
SOURCE: Illinois Times (2-15-13)
Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball. A guitar once owned by Eric Clapton. A model of the Starship Enterprise.
These are among the items that an appraiser used in 2007 to establish the value of a collection of Lincoln documents and artifacts held by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Appraiser Seth Kaller accepted the asking price of $23 million as the fair-market value of the collection sold by Louise Taper, a California collector, to the museum's private fundraising foundation, which is now raising money to retire the debt.
Kaller, who owns a business that acquires historic artifacts in New York state, wrote in his appraisal that he accepted the museum's claim that the items are authentic and that his assignment did not include authentication....
Name of source: KTAR (AZ)
SOURCE: KTAR (AZ) (2-19-13)
PHOENIX -- The buildings stretch from 11th Avenue to 52nd Street and include five homes and one church all designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and all are part of a new plan by the Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission.
The proposed plan, which would cost $1.2 million, was created after a home Wright designed for his son in the Arcadia area narrowly escaped demolition. A developer bought the land and planned to tear down the 2,500 square foot concrete house and build two new houses in its place....
Name of source: CNN.com
SOURCE: CNN.com (1-11-13)
(CNN) -- The Founding Fathers are frequently quoted in the gun control debate, but many of those quotations turn out to be fake.
The most popular comment on a recent story about gun control featured a purported quotation from Thomas Jefferson. More than 2,000 votes pushed it to the top.
"When governments fear the people, there is liberty," reads the quotation. "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
The same quotation has been posted dozens of times in other readers' posts. Some readers worked to debunk it by mentioning Monticello.org, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's website, which has a section devoted to "spurious" quotations that have been attributed to the third president of the United States. The website lists several variations of the quotation, featured on two pages, and says staff "have not found any evidence that Thomas Jefferson said or wrote" those words....
Name of source: CBS News
SOURCE: CBS News (2-20-13)
Cameras and microphones are virtually everywhere these days, and it seems just about everything that happens is preserved forever on the internet.
Of course, it wasn't always that way. The Library of Congress has just reported that 80 percent of motion pictures filmed before 1930 -- and countless audio recordings from that era -- are gone. But the library has a plan to stop this bleeding of priceless history.
A 1936 Louis Armstrong recording is an artifact nearly lost to time. It's a nickel-plated disc widely used to record sound in the first half of the 20th century.
SOURCE: CBS News (2-19-13)
Name of source: Guardian
SOURCE: Guardian (2-19-13)
Finding Richard III (on the premises of Leicester social services no less) is testament to the ingenuity of archaeologists. Weaving together findings from historical analysis of texts with scientific analysis of the skeleton and the site, they have made an overwhelming case that these are the remains of the king....
Name of source: SciNor
SOURCE: SciNor (2-15-13)
This is the crux of a doctoral dissertation that researcher Ingrid Ystgaard will defend this spring at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
She has studied weapons found in graves and the battle techniques they suggest during the transition from the early to the late Iron Age. The division between these periods was around 500 AD....
Name of source: PopuArch
SOURCE: PopuArch (2-20-13)
Its remains rest almost unnoticeable near the small village of Rakhigarhi in northwest India. On the surface, its most visible features consist of well-ordered mounds of cow dung cakes, nature's fertilizer for the present-day local villagers' farming operations. Ox carts routinely transport their agricultural supplies over its ancient mounds and into the fields every day. Below the surface, however, lay an expansive network of ruins and artifacts that would betray an ancient city that would rival, and likely exceed, the enormity of the Indus Valley civilization's best known archaeological site, Mohenjo-Daro. At 224 hectares, it is the largest known Harrapan (Indus Civilization) site in India....
SOURCE: PopuArch (2-20-13)
Aleppo's medieval covered market has already been gutted by fires which also ripped through the city's Umayyad mosque. Illegal excavations have threatened tombs in the desert town of Palmyra and the Bronze Age settlement of Ebla, and Interpol is hunting a 2,700-year-old statue taken from the city of Hama.
In a country which also boasts stunning Crusader castles, Roman ruins and a history stretching back through the great empires of the Middle East to the dawn of human civilisation, the task of safeguarding that heritage from modern conflict is a daunting responsibility....
Name of source: ArtDaily
SOURCE: ArtDaily (2-19-13)
In a pharmaceutical company’s premises, located in the municipal district of Miguel Hidalgo of Mexico City, specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH-Conaculta) recovered two burials that are over 500 years old, as well as other ceramic remains. Given the possibility that there could be more pre Hispanic element findings in the area, INAH elaborated an archaeological salvage project that will take place in said area....
Name of source: PastHorizons Blogger
SOURCE: PastHorizons Blogger (2-18-13)
In the course of my research of Viking Age woodcraft, I somewhat unexpectedly turned up information about a most delightful archaeological find: an entire hoard of children’s toys, found at Market Harborough parish church, England. A charming stash of the everyday playthings of sixteenth or seventeenth century children, the hoard throws a rare spotlight on the material culture of children in the archaeological record....
Name of source: Novinite
SOURCE: Novinite (2-18-13)
A Bulgarian team of archaeologists have discovered well-preserved remains of a Roman bath in the ancient Bulgarian town of Sozopol.
The news was revealed by National Museum of History director Bozhidar Dimitrov.
"The team, led by Sozopol Archaeology Museum director Dimitar Nedev has made the discovery as part of its digs in the area in front of Sozopol's fortress walls," said the historian....
Name of source: SciDaily
SOURCE: SciDaily (2-17-13)
DNA preserved in calcified bacteria on the teeth of ancient human skeletons has shed light on the health consequences of the evolving diet and behaviour from the Stone Age to the modern day.
Name of source: NEH
SOURCE: NEH (2-14-13)
Pittsburgh’s Hill District, or “The Hill” as it is locally known, was the heart of the city’s African-American community during the twentieth century. As a freelancer, newspaper man, and portrait studio owner Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908–1998) lovingly captured his community’s vibrant cultural, economic, and political life through nearly 80,000 photographs. These pictures tell much more than just a local story....
Name of source: NaParksTrav
SOURCE: NaParksTrav (2-17-13)
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin near present-day Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809; and the curious case of his well-traveled birthplace cabin is a historical labyrinth of veneration, profit seeking, confused identity, and cross-pollination with historic relics from the Confederate States of America. Could it be that those Lincoln Logs you played with as a child were really Jeff Davis logs?...
Name of source: ArchNews
SOURCE: ArchNews (2-19-13)
Back in 1995, a hoard of 400 Roman coins was discovered west of Didcot in Oxfordshire (England), indicating the land had been lived on for centuries. When archaeologists began digging the fields in 2010 they knew it was a site of historical interest, but even they were surprised by the wealth of finds their trowels unveiled, proving that people have been living in Didcot for about 9,000 years....
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (2-17-13)
One hundred years ago, the United States completed what was then the most expensive, complex but ultimately successful government program in human history. It was a project where everything went wrong.
The French had tried to build the Panama canal a few years earlier, but despite putting the builder of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps, on the job, they left in total failure. The American project’s first chief engineer quit after the first year. His replacement left as well. Only with the third did the project start moving. Yellow fever killed thousands of workers and caused others to flee in fright. The engineering challenges were immense and they often seemed insurmountable. Media reports about the project were largely negative....
SOURCE: CNN (2-15-13)
In the next few weeks, Fatima Shaik, an African-American, Christian woman, will travel “home” from New York to Kolkata, India.
It will be a journey steeped in a history that has remained unknown until the publication last month of a revelatory book by Vivek Bald. And it will be a journey of contemplation as Shaik, 60, meets for the first time ancestors with whom she has little in common.
“I want to go back because I want to find some sort of closure for my family, said Shaik, an author and scholar of the Afro-Creole experience.
Name of source: Reuters
SOURCE: Reuters (2-17-13)
President John F. Kennedy's Air Force One bomber jacket sold for $570,000 at an auction on Sunday of items that belonged to a longtime aide, nearly 50 years after the president's assassination.
The jacket was among thousands of items, including letters, photographs and books, that had been tucked away in drawers and file cabinets at the home of David Powers, who died in 1998, said Dan Meader, auction appraiser at John McInnis Auctioneers.
They were discovered in recent years by relatives as they prepared Powers' Arlington, Massachusetts, residence for sale, Meader said....
SOURCE: Reuters (2-15-13)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A strike from a big asteroid more than 300 million years ago left a huge impact zone buried in Australia and changed the face of the earth, researchers said on Friday.
"The dust and greenhouse gases released from the crater, the seismic shock and the initial fireball would have incinerated large parts of the earth," said Andrew Glikson, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
The asteroid was bigger than 10 km (6 miles) in diameter, while the impact zone itself was larger than 200 km (120 miles) - the third largest impact zone in the world....
Name of source: Discovery News
SOURCE: Discovery News (2-13-13)
Is the world only a Pope away from the End? Yes, if you believe a chilling 12th-century prophecy.
Attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop canonized in 1190, the Prophecy of the Popes would date to 1139. The document predicted that there would be only 112 more popes before the Last Judgment — and Benedict XVI is 111.
The list of popes originated from a vision Malachy said he received from God when he was in Rome, reporting on his diocese to Pope Innocent II.
The story goes that St. Malachy gave the apocalyptic list to Innocent II and that the document remained unknown in the Vatican Archives some 440 years after Malachy’s death in 1148. It was rediscovered and published by Benedictine Arnold de Wyon in 1590....
Name of source: PHYS
SOURCE: PHYS (2-13-13)
Crews renovating a public square in the U.S. Virgin Islands have discovered a 1,500-year-old landfill stuffed with shells, bones and pottery fragments.
Public Works Commissioner Darryl Smalls says a team of specialized archaeologists will arrive soon to further excavate the pre-Columbian site. It is located in the capital of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas....
Name of source: PastHorizons
SOURCE: PastHorizons (2-14-13)
A new archaeology project has begun to bring to light hundreds of secretive inscriptions that have lain hidden on the walls of Norwich Cathedral for many centuries.
Although the survey volunteers have already identified many dozens of medieval inscriptions within the cathedral they have discovered that just as many inscriptions relate to later centuries. During the English Civil War the cathedral was reputedly used as a stable by Roundhead troops, who were notorious for defacing religious buildings, and the walls appear to bear testament to this turbulent time. In many areas of the building it is still possible to clearly make out long lists of names and initials, all with dates that link them to this period....
Name of source: LATimes
SOURCE: LATimes (2-14-13)
Did the rulers of the ancient city of Teotihuacan dedicate their largest pyramid to the god of fire, the so-called old god with a signature beard and fire atop his head?
Mexican archaeologists announced this week that a figure of the god, called Huehueteotl, was found in a covered pit at the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, a popular archaeological site north of Mexico City.
Name of source: Yahoo News
SOURCE: Yahoo News (2-14-13)
"Arbeit macht frei" means "labor makes one free" in German. These words became a symbol of Jewish oppression under the Third Reich, as the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz bore this legend. In February, this slogan appeared in graffiti across the walkway of Detroit's derelict Packard plant on East Grand. It ignited a firestorm of debate. Jewish groups and Holocaust survivor collectives pushed for its removal, saying it was an offensive, ugly reminder of past suffering, reports the Detroit Free Press. Packard has a long history of notoriety in Detroit.
The walkway where the sign appeared connects two sides of what was Packard's 35-acre industrial complex. The plant opened in 1903 and became the luxury auto leader in the '20s, outselling Cadillac and all competitors combined, says a Detroit Free Press special report....
SOURCE: Yahoo News (2-14-13)
PARIS (AP) — France is returning seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners during World War II, part of an ongoing effort to give back hundreds of looted artworks that still hang in the Louvre and other museums.
The works were stolen or sold under duress up to seven decades ago as their Jewish owners fled Nazi-occupied Europe. All seven were destined for display in the art gallery Adolf Hitler wanted to build in his birthplace of Linz, Austria, according to a catalog for the planned museum....
SOURCE: Yahoo News (2-14-13)
Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered what they believe is a temple, estimated to be up to 5,000 years old, at the site of El Paraíso, north of Lima.
Inside the ruins of the ancient room, which measures about 23 feet by 26 feet (7 meters by 8 meters), there's evidence of a ceremonial hearth, where offerings may have been burned, archaeologists say. The temple also had a narrow entrance and stone walls covered with yellow clay, on which traces of red paint were found, according to a statement from Peru's Ministry of Culture....
Name of source: TheRoot
SOURCE: TheRoot (2-13-13)
For many African Americans the paper trail back to your ancestral origins hits a wall once you reach the slavery era. During the hunt for information about my great-great grandmother, Jane Gates, who was born into slavery in 1819, we were able to find her in the 1870 census, the oldest census to list all African Americans by name. Before then, few counties listed slaves by name, so we shifted gears and searched the "slave schedules" for the 1860 and 1850 census information for slave owners named Gates. However, we weren't able to find anyone under that name who owned a slave that was around her age. This means that she was owned by someone with a surname other than Gates, and the only way to find her by using records would be to undertake a systematic search of the estate papers, wills and tax records, and other documents of every slave holder in Allegany County, Md....
Name of source: Teesdale Mercury (UK)
SOURCE: Teesdale Mercury (UK) (2-13-13)
MILITARY laser technology normally used to map out the battlefield is coming to the aid of crumbling prehistoric rock carvings in Teesdale.
No one knows who created the carved rocks that appear in a number of spots on the fells of Teesdale – or why.
The Neolithic art created 5,000 years ago bears a series of mysterious shapes, including concentric circles, interlocking rings and hollowed cups....
Name of source: The Tennessean
SOURCE: The Tennessean (2-13-13)
FRANKLIN — The land where the bloodiest day in Franklin’s history occurred will one day be a new Columbia Avenue park one day — and no one will owe any money after its purchase.
A ceremony on Wednesday marked the sale of the Columbia Avenue Domino’s Pizza restaurant and a small retail strip center next door to the Civil War Trust. The property is at 1225 Columbia Ave.
After years of work, the trust and local supporters raised a total of $2.2 million in pledges, donations and grants to purchase the 1.5 acres of land, which will be used in what will be a seven acre park....
Name of source: AtlanticW
SOURCE: AtlanticW (2-12-13)
A Navy officer testified on Tuesday that microphones disguised as smoke detectors were installed in the rooms where suspected terrorists meet with their lawyers. It's unclear who put the microphones there — not that many people have access to those rooms, however — and the military has denied their existence in the past. But don't worry. The officer swears they never used them....
SOURCE: AtlanticW (2-12-13)
A fragment of lower jaw recovered from a Serbian cave has now been dated as the oldest hominin ancestor found in this part of Europe. The fossil was dated to between 397,000 and 525,000 years old, a time when distinctly Neanderthal traits began to appear in Europe. The evolution of these traits was strongly influenced by periodic isolation of groups of individuals, caused by glacial episodes.
According to research published in February 2012 in the open access journal PLoS ONE, the individual probably evolved under different conditions than populations who inhabited more western parts of the continent during the same time frame....
