This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Discovery News
April 26, 2010
Some of the world's largest dinosaurs headed for the hills and evolved all-terrain bodies to support mountain living, suggests a new study in the journal Paleobiology.
These dinosaurs were titanosaurs, plant eaters that first emerged around 160 million years ago. One of the largest titanosaurs, Argentinosaurus, may have reached lengths of 100 feet.
But palaeontologists Philip Mannion and Paul Upchurch at University College London found that inland and mountain-dwelling
Source: BBC
April 28, 2010
A road has been named in honour of the first man to fly from London to Manchester - on the 100th anniversary of his achievement.
Louis Paulhan, from France, made the 195-mile (298km) flight in his Farman biplane, landing in a field in Burnage, Manchester, on 28 April 1910.
The flight took four hours and 12 minutes and made news across the world.
A road by the Aviation Viewing Park at Manchester Airport will now be known as Louis Paulhan Way.
Source: CNN
April 28, 2010
Laura Bush suggests she, her husband, and several aides were poisoned during a 2007 visit to Germany for the G8 summit - one of several new details in the former first lady's forthcoming memoir, "Spoken for the Heart."
Due to hit bookshelves May 4 but acquired early by the New York Times, Mrs. Bush says she and former President George W. Bush became mysteriously sick on the Germany trip to such a degree that the president became bedridden. According to Mrs. Bush, doctors a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 23, 2010
A condemned murderer will become only the third person to be executed by firing squad in the United States in more than three decades.
State court Judge Robin Reese signed the warrant Friday morning for Ronnie Lee Gardner, who killed a man during a failed escape 25 years ago.
Under state law, Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that har
Source: NYT
April 23, 2010
When I think back on Poland’s period of mourning after the plane crash that claimed the lives of the country’s president and 95 other people, what stands out are flickering votive candles by the thousands and murmured prayers in unison from as many mouths; the priests sprinkling holy water on the president’s coffin; and the high pointed hats of bishops that seemed to tower above the crowds at every event.
And from the Saturday of the crash until last Sunday, eight days later, when P
Source: AP
April 28, 2010
Russia's state archives posted documents on the Internet for the first time Wednesday about the Soviet Union's World War II massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens.
The step was a gesture to Poland in a case that looms large in Polish history and has soured relations between the two countries for decades.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the documents posted on the archives' Russian-language website, reflecting a new willingness in Rus
Source: City Hall News
April 27, 2010
This article has been updated
He's fresh," went John Lindsay’s mayoral campaign slogan from 1965,"everyone else is tired."
Now, 45 years after the dashing silk-stocking Republican first hit the hustings, a cadre of former Lindsay aides and family members are launching a media blitz in an attempt to keep the former mayor’s image fresh in the minds of New Yorkers.
On May 4, the Museum of the City of New York will open an exhibit entitled “America’s Mayor: John
Source: Times Online (UK)
April 27, 2010
The existence of the Loch Ness Monster was “beyond doubt” in the mind of one of Scotland’s most senior police officers, according to a file released yesterday by the National Archives of Scotland.
William Fraser, chief constable of Invernessshire in the 1930s, was convinced that not only was “some strange creature” bobbing about in Scotland’s second largest loch but it was in danger of being hunted to extinction. He contacted the Under Secretary of State at the Scottish Office in 19
Source: FOX News
April 27, 2010
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say wooden remains they have discovered on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey are the remains of Noah's Ark.
The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.
Yeung Wing-Cheung, fro
Source: The Root
April 20, 2010
Most African Americans who visit Cape Town around the New Year are initially shocked by what is traditionally known here as The Coon Festival--a weeklong reverie of parties and parades where mixed race or "colored" people dress up in costumes and blackface to perform minstrel shows.
The Coon Festival, more recently renamed the Minstrel Festival, has been an annual affair in Cape Town for over 150 years and may be the most public manifestation of an engagement between Afric
Source: BBC
April 27, 2010
Evidence found at the Roman site of Silchester could mean it was the site of one of Boudicca's battles.
Professor Michael Fulford said that 13 years of excavations at Calleva had revealed evidence of the first gridded Iron Age town in Britain.
The site also bears the scars of possible early Roman military occupation, and evidence of later, widespread burning and destruction.
This suggests the site could have been destroyed at the hands of Boudicca.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 27, 2010
The last rat was seen on the tiny island of Canna four years ago after specialist pest controllers were brought in from more than 11,000 miles away to deal with the problem.
But now islanders are complaining that the rodent's disappearance has led to thousands of rabbits invading the island because there are no rats to keep their numbers down.
The problem is so bad that locals say historic monuments are being "devastated" by the rabbits and they are devouring
Source: Guardian (UK)
April 27, 2010
Four Roman sculptures are to be withdrawn from auction tomorrowamid claims that they were stolen from archaeological sites overseas.
Photographs seized by police suggested that the sculptures – funerary busts and a marble statue of a youth from the second century AD – were illicitly excavated, archaeologists told the Guardian.
A spokesman for Bonhams auctioneers said: "Whenever a serious question is raised about an item's provenance we withdraw it from sale pending
Source: MSNBC
April 27, 2010
Web sites are buzzing over claims that remains from Noah’s Ark may have been found on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. The finders, led by an evangelical group, say they are "99.9 percent" that a wooden structure found on the mountainside was part of a ship that housed the Biblical Noah, his family and a menagerie of creatures during a giant flood 4,800 years ago.
But researchers who have spent decades studying the region – and fending off past claims of ark discoveries – caution th
Source: Live Science
April 27, 2010
Ancient Mayans farmers, builders and servants left records of their daily lives with the objects they embedded in the floors and walls of their homes during rituals in which their houses were burned down and then rebuilt, giving archaeologists today a window into everyday Mayan life.
Many of the more famous records of the Mayan civilization come from the writing and images about royals carved into monuments.
Even though the records differed between the classes
,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 27, 2010
Noriega, Panama's former dictator, appeared at Paris's Palais de Justice a day after being extradited to France straight from an American prison, where he had served a 17-year sentence for helping Colombian drug barons smuggle cocaine to the US.
A French court in 1999 sentenced him to 10 years in prison after convicting him in absentia for laundering $7 million of drug money through French bank accounts and by buying luxury flats in Paris.
The 76-year-old now faces a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 27, 2010
Plans for "Tsar Marathons" with competitors running from the spot where Russia's last royal family was executed to the spot where they were buried have been met with disbelief by their descendants.
German Lukyanov, a spokesman for Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, the disputed head of the Romanov Dynasty, said he was profoundly shocked by the idea and demanded an explanation.
The idea, they say, is to hold regular 'Tsar's Marathons' starting and finishing at
Source: WaPo
April 27, 2010
The Confederate prisoners were lined up 15 paces from the Union firing squad. The order was given, and the six rebels died instantly. Five of them were shot through the heart, the Union officer in charge reported, adding that the execution was conducted to "my entire satisfaction."
So what if they were innocent POWs. A band of rebels had massacred captured Union soldiers and their commanding officer a few weeks before. Now, Union commanders just needed to select a Confede
Source: Medieval News
April 23, 2010
A battle between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings will be at the centre of this year’s Birmingham St George’s Day festivities on Saturday 24 April in Chamberlain Square.
The free event organised by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham St George’s Day Association will host an exciting mix of new and traditional activities in the city centre.
New for 2010 is the creation of an Anglo-Saxon village in Chamberlain Square where history re-enactors ‘Regia Anglorum’ will recreate an
Source: Medieval News
April 26, 2010
The Irish government announced last month that the Walled Towns Initiative will receive €850,000 in funding this year. The news came as part of an announcment by John Gormley, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government of over €11.5m to support built heritage projects in Ireland.
The Minister stated “This funding package underlines the continued commitment to the preservation and conservation of our rich built heritage by the State. Our built heritage is inextricabl
