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: BBC
April 7, 2010
A soldier who died almost 60 years ago is being honoured in his Devon home town.
Private David Hamson, from Sidmouth, was killed in the Korean War in 1951, aged 20.
Now a plaque bearing his name has been put up in his memory at St Giles and St Nicholas Parish Church.
Space has been left on the memorial so names of other people from the town involved in future conflicts can be added.
Source: BBC
April 7, 2010
A boat in Rwanda carrying people to genocide commemorations has sunk.
Authorities told the BBC six people have died, at least 12 more are feared dead and 50 passengers were rescued.
The vessel capsized in strong winds on Lake Kivu - which lies on the Democratic Republic of Congo border - while on its way to the town of Kibuye.
Rwanda is holding a series of events on Wednesday to mark the 16th anniversary of the start of the genocide in which some 800,000
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 7, 2010
The British museum is to come under renewed pressure to give up leading treasures as 16 countries plan to sign a declaration that demands the return of artefacts sent overseas generations ago.
The demand, issued in Cairo at the end of a two-day conference, is addressed to every country that holds ancient relics.
Western museum hold most of the items listed by countries ranging from China to Mexico. The British museum is the principal target because of the prominence o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 7, 2010
The number of cars on Britain's roads has fallen for the first time since the Second World War, industry figures have shown.
The recession, the Government's "cash for bangers" scrappage scheme and stricter enforcement of laws against unroadworthy vehicles has led to the decline, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
There were 31,035,791 cars on British roads at the end of last year, a drop of 0.7 per cent compared with 12 months previ
Source: CNN
March 7, 2010
A traditional three-shot volley salute and the solemn sound of taps echoed across the black cemetery in the Delta flatlands of Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee.
The military honors were followed by the jubilant singing of "Amazing Grace." The service had been five decades in the making.
Everyone was here to honor Isadore Banks, an African-American veteran of World War I who was chained to a tree in June 1954, doused in gasoli
Source: LA Times
April 6, 2010
A lawyer, he later became the first non-engineer to oversee the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. His wartime service reportedly influenced his management style.
John H. Lauten, a lawyer who helped plan the invasion of Normandy as an Army captain during World War II and later became the first non-engineer to oversee the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, has died. He was 96.
Lauten died of natural causes March 22 at an assisted-living
Source: LA Times
April 7, 2010
On Aug. 6, 1945, Jeppson and another man armed the bomb called 'Little Boy' aboard the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay. The bombing is credited with bringing an early end to WWII.
Morris "Dick" Jeppson, a weapons specialist who was mid-flight when he completed arming the first atomic bomb, which the Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress dropped on Hiroshima in World War II, has died. He was 87.
Jeppson, a retired scientist and businessman, died March 30 of complications
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
April 6, 2010
The family of a Holocaust survivor has been allowed to keep a $10million (£6.6million) ancient gold tablet he received in exchange for cigarettes on the streets of post-war Berlin.
Berlin's Vorderasiatisches Museum had demanded the 3,200-year-Assyrian artefact be returned because it was looted by Soviet troops.
But a judge on Long Island has ruled that Polish Auschwitz survivor Riven Flamenbaum's family no longer has to hand over the valuable relic.
Flamenb
Source: BBC News
April 7, 2010
It was a glorious last supper.
The menu for the final meal for first class passengers on board the liner Titanic is a feast for the eyes.
Little did the diners dream as they sailed along on the calm waters of 14 April 1912 of the nightmare that lay ahead.
They feasted on a menu of up to 13 courses - they would have been at table enjoying the luxury of silver service for between four and five hours - what else was there to do at sea?
From foie g
Source: BBC News
April 6, 2010
The Polish prime minister will attend Wednesday's ceremony in Russia marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of Poles by Soviet forces. It is an unprecedented step, and one which could herald a new era in strained relations between Poland and Russia, says the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw.
The families of the victims of the Katyn massacre have endured decades of lies, discrimination and frustration.
For 50 years, the Soviet Union blamed the murder of more than
Source: Discovery News
April 5, 2010
The oldest known example of a man-made structure was found within a prehistoric cave in central Greece, according to the Greek culture ministry.
The structure is a stone wall that blocked two-thirds of the entrance to the Theopetra cave near Kalambaka on the north edge of the Thessalian plain. It was constructed 23,000 years ago, probably as a barrier to cold winds.
Excavated since 1987, the Theopetra cave is well known to palaeontologists as it was used and inhabited c
Source: Discovery News
April 2, 2010
There's no story in the Bible about a long-eared, cotton-tailed creature known as the Easter Bunny. Neither is there a passage about young children painting eggs or hunting for baskets overflowing with scrumptious Easter goodies.
According to University of Florida's Center for Children's Literature and Culture, the origin of the celebration -- and the Easter bunny -- can be traced back to 13th century, pre-Christian Germany, when people worshiped several gods and goddesses. The Teut
Source: BBC
April 6, 2010
A stolen Leonardo Da Vinci painting was handed over to a private investigator in a pub car park, a court has heard.
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder began its journey back to Scotland in 2007, four years after it was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire.
Robert Graham, 57, of Lancashire, told Edinburgh High Court that he met an underworld figure in a Liverpool car park and paid £350,000 for the canvas.
Source: BBC
April 6, 2010
Druids have lost a bid to have an ancient skeleton which was unearthed in Wiltshire reburied at one of the county's most famous stone age sites.
The Council of British Druid Orders told an official consultation that the body of a neolithic child, found in 1929, should be reinterred at Avebury.
The druids contend that the remains which are on display in the village need to be treated with more respect.
But English Heritage, which owns the site, says the bo
Source: The Virginian-Pilot
April 6, 2010
It was a race against the tide to dig the 12-ton remains of the shipwreck, more than 300 years old, free of the soft sand and get it up on a homemade wooden sled and down the beach to high ground, where it would not disappear or break apart any further.
This ship is one of a dozens along the coast visible in the surf or just offshore and among some 5,000 recorded wrecks along what’s known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. But this wreck of hand-hewn beams of various sizes fastened
Source: Live Science
April 6, 2010
A prehistoric town that had remained untouched beneath the ground near Syria for 6,000 years is now revealing clues about the first cities in the Middle East prior to the invention of the wheel.
The town, called Tell Zeidan, dates from between 6000 B.C. and 4000 B.C., and immediately preceded the world's first urban civilizations in the ancient Middle East. It is one of the largest sites of the Ubaid culture in northern Mesopotamia.
Now archaeologists from the Universit
Source: Spiegel Online
April 6, 2010
Wewelsburg Castle, once a pseudo-religious sanctum for Hitler's SS, has been shrouded in mystery since 1945. Its echoing crypt and mysterious occult symbols have spawned fantasies of pagan, torch-lit ceremonies held by the murderous brotherhood. A new exhibition at the site aims to dispel such myths -- and reflects Germany's new approach towards explaining its darkest places.
Wewelsburg Castle in northwestern Germany was the spiritual home of Hitler's murderous SS and ever since 194
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 6, 2010
A dazzling pink and grey crystal discovered in an Alpine crevasse and described as the "mineral Mona Lisa" has just been made a national cultural treasure – a historic first for a mineral.
The 11lb (5kg) crystal made of cognac fluorite on a smoked quartz base was found more than 3,000m (10,000ft) up Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain range.
Mr Peray found the rock on the Aiguille Verte (Green Needle), one of the most beautiful and perilous peaks in the Mo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 6, 2010
The Turin Shroud, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, was secretly hidden in a Benedictine abbey during the Second World War because the Vatican feared that Adolf Hitler wanted to steal it.
The shroud was transferred for its safety to the Benedictine sanctuary of Montevergine in Avellino, in the southern Campania region of Italy in 1939 and was only transferred to Turin in 1946.
The current director of the library at the abbey, Father Andrea Cardin, said the reason
Source: AP
April 6, 2010
The only prisoner known to have died in the CIA's network of secret prisons once rescued Hamid Karzai, wading through rocket and small-arms fire to take the wounded future president to safety in Pakistan, according to his brother and former associates.
The prisoner, Gul Rahman, died in the early hours of Nov. 20, 2002, after being shackled to a cold cement wall in a secret CIA prison in northern Kabul known as the Salt Pit, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the case co
