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: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2010
A grandmother has the world's oldest hot cross bun - baked on Good Friday in 1821.
A grandmother has the world's oldest hot cross bun - baked on Good Friday in 1821.
Nancy Titman, 91, was given the incredible 189-year-old bun when her mum died and amazingly it shows no traces of mould.
The bun, which was made the same year as Napoleon died, George IV was crowned king and poet John Keats passed away has been in her family for generations.
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Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2010
A Nepali sherpa will scatter the ashes of Sir Edmund Hillary on top of Mount Everest more than two years after the death of the climbing hero.
Sir Edmund, who climbed Everest in 1953 along with Nepal's Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, died in 2008 at the age of 88 in New Zealand.
He had wished that his ashes be scattered on the mountain and on Auckland's harbour, his former aides said.
The ashes destined for Everest have lain in a monastery in the sherpa village of T
Source: BBC News
April 1, 2010
The roulette wheel has stopped spinning and there is no more blackjack at Frank Sinatra's former casino.
Plunging numbers of gamblers mean operations have been halted at the Cal Neva Lodge, one of Nevada's most fashionable casinos in the early 1960s.
The venue was once popular with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr, before the rise of the Las Vegas Strip.
Its owner hopes to reopen, but analysts fear the landmark attraction has seen the last throw of the dice.
Source: BBC News
April 1, 2010
Peru's most treasured archaeological site, Machu Picchu, is due to be formally re-opened after it was closed for two months.
Heavy rains and landslides at the end of January destroyed rail access to the 15th Century Inca ruin - the most visited site in Latin America.
Every day the monument was closed, Peru lost $1m (£660,000) in tourism revenue.
The damaged railway line linking the citadel to the rest of Peru was mended with an urgency rarely seen before.
Source: BBC News
April 1, 2010
Herb Ellis, considered to be one of the great jazz guitar soloists, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 88.
The musician, who had Alzheimer's disease, died at his home, his son told the Los Angeles Times.
Ellis, whose career spanned six decades, performed with what is regarded as the classic line-up of the acclaimed Oscar Peterson Trio.
He also worked with jazz greats including Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Dorsey and Louis Armstrong.
Ellis - who
Source: BBC Radio 4
March 31, 2010
Was the great Florentine artist and scientist who painted the Last Supper, designed the legendary Sforza horse and did the first great studies of human anatomy also a sinister military genius whose inventions caused horrible deaths in the wars of sixteenth century Europe?
This was a question I came up against in researching my book The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance.
The book tells how, from 1504 to 1506, these tw
Source: AP
March 31, 2010
A newly released letter to then-Pope Paul VI indicates the Vatican was aware of clergy abuse in the U.S. nearly five decades ago.
In the 1963 letter released Wednesday, the head of a Roman Catholic order that oversaw treatment of pedophile priests tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry.
The letter is a summary of the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald's thoughts on problem priests that appears to have been requested by the pope after Fitzg
Source: Discovery News
March 30, 2010
Imagine if the shape of your head changed with the foods that you ate. That's what a team of paleontologists now thinks happened to the long-necked sauropod dinosaur, Diplodocus, which also was one of the least intelligent dinosaurs. Its head might have been interesting, in terms of shape, but previous studies suggest there wasn't a lot of brain power in it. But, as for all animals, it evolved what it needed for survival.
Diplodocus was a huge, hefty dinosaur that lived towards the
Source: Discovery News
March 30, 2010
Once thought to be rock art, carved depictions of soldiers, horses and other figures are in fact part of a written language dating back to the Iron Age.
The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.
The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been th
Source: Seattle Times
March 30, 2010
Travelers can once again get to Machu Picchu, the Inca citadel in Peru that has been cut off for several months.
Landslides and flooding caused by torrential January rains destroyed the rail line that is the only access to Machu Picchu (apart from hiking), forcing authorities to close the world-famous archaeological site although it wasn't damaged.
PeruRail began offering limited train service Monday from Piscacucho to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picc
Source: AFP
March 30, 2010
The last known population of woolly mammoths, roaming a remote Arctic island long after humans invented writing, were wiped out quickly, reports a study released Wednesday.
The culprit might have been disease, humans or a catastrophic weather event, but was almost certainly not climate change, suggests the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Exactly why a majority of the huge tuskers that once strode in large herds across Eurasia and north Americ
Source: BBC
March 31, 2010
A signed copy of a Jane Austen novel published in 1816 has been bought for £325,000.
The book is a first edition copy of Emma which Austen presented to her friend Anne Sharp, the inspiration for Mrs Weston in the novel.
Jonkers Rare Books in Oxfordshire paid £180,000 for it at auction in 2008.
It is understood that a British collector bought the book, which is one of 12 special 'presentation' copies Austen gave to friends and family.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 31, 2010
Great-great-grandmother Florrie Baldwin was in her 50s when the NHS was formed and had been a pensioner for more than a decade when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon.
The centenarian, who became the oldest woman in Europe last year, celebrated the big day with her family, care home residents and the obligatory telegram from the Queen - her 11th.
Florrie, who was three when the Boer War broke out and married two years after the end of the First World War,
Source: BBC News
March 31, 2010
South Africa's ruling African National Congress has expressed fury at a court decision to ban the singing of a song with the words "Shoot the Boer".
It says a campaign by white activists to get the song banned is an attempt to "elevate apartheid agents as victims".
It wants the Constitutional Court to overturn a ruling by a white judge that the words amount to hate speech.
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema recently sang the song, lea
Source: NYT
March 30, 2010
An official photograph of a B-52 bomber at Barksdale Air Base in Louisiana shows it with a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons it can carry all at once — 14 air-launched cruise missiles, four B61-7 gravity bombs and two B83 gravity bombs.
But when it comes to the new arms control treaty to be signed next month by the United States and Russia, those 20 warheads count as just one.
The history of arms control is replete with quirky counting rules that do not easily corr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 31, 2010
The inventors of Post-it notes and the technologies that led to video games, modern scuba diving equipment and Global Positioning System technology are among 16 new members of the U S National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his fellow Frenchman and colleague, Emile Gagnan, are entering the Hall posthumously for their invention of the aqualung breathing equipment.
Previous members include Edward Calahan, inventor of the stock ticker, and Samuel Blum fo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 31, 2010
Tourists visiting the Turin Shroud next month will get the chance to view the burial cloth in 3-D, revealing details invisible to the naked eye.
The glasses, which will be sold to pilgrims for £1.80 a pair when the shroud goes on display for six weeks after Easter, will allow visitors to see wounds on the figure of the man on the linen cloth.
The Holy Shroud is held by many Christians to be the cloth that Jesus Christ was buried in, but others believe it is a forgery cr
Source: Spiegel Online
March 31, 2010
Serbia on Wednesday took an important first step towards addressing its troubling recent history by passing a resolution condemning the massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia. But the resolution aimed at steering a path towards EU membership for the Balkan nation steers clear of the term "genocide."
After more than 13 hours of debate, the Serbian parliament passed a resolution apologizing for the massacre at Srebrenica with a slim majority early Wednesday morning. The resolution &
Source: The Saratogan (NY)
March 29, 2010
Mount McGregor is well known as being home to a correctional facility but is often forgotten as being an important landmark in history. It was atop Mount McGregor that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, spent the last six weeks of his life before succumbing to throat cancer.
It was June 1885 when Grant left his New York City home for a cottage in Saratoga County. Already given his cancer diagnosis and the grim outlook of imminent death that came with it,
Source: Spiegel Online
March 26, 2010
"Holy harlots" in Jerusalem, temple sex in the service of Aphrodite? Many ancient authors describe sacred prostitution in drastic terms. Are the accounts nothing but legends? Historians are searching for the kernel of truth behind the reports.
The "ugliest custom" in Babylon, the historian Herodotus wrote (who is believed to have lived between circa 490 to 425 B.C.), was the widespread practice of prostitution in the Temple of Ishtar. Once in their lifetimes, all
