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: Talking Points Memo
January 18, 2010
The conservative bloc on the Texas State Board of Education won a string of victories Friday, obtaining approval for an amendment requiring high school U.S. history students to know about Phyllis Schlafly and the Contract with America as well as inserting a clause that aims to justify McCarthyism.
Outspoken conservative board member Don McLeroy, who reportedly spent over three hours personally proposing changes to the textbook standards, even wanted to cut "hip-hop" in fav
Source: Der Spiegel (Germany)
January 18, 2010
The trial of John Demjanjuk in Munich may not be Germany's last major war crimes prosecution. Authorities are investigating Samuel K., 88, a retired German civil servant accused of being a death camp guard in World War II and of helping to kill at least 430,000 Jews. Public prosecutors may file charges soon.
Germany may stage a further spectacular Holocaust trial in addition to the one currently taking place in Munich against alleged SS helper John Demjanjuk.
The Centra
Source: Artdaily.org
January 19, 2010
A 1000-year-old stele with the sculpted image of a Mayan ruler was found in the archaeological area of Lagartero in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.
In the bas-relief sculpture the Mayan ruler rises above an individual who lies at his feet, "a scene representing the seizing of power by one Maya group from another," INAH said, adding that the archaeological area of Lagartero will be open to the public th
Source: The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
January 18, 2010
Cold winds may be blowing and the ground is definitely frozen, but the weather isn't slowing archaeologists in their decades-long effort to document Annapolis' past.
The scientists have merely moved indoors to their lab at the University of Maryland, where they continue to make sense of the pieces of bone, shards of china, bits of spice bottles and slivers of metal that have been unearthed in Annapolis.
Right now, the scholars in the Anthropology Department are looking
Source: Times of India
January 19, 2010
How to retain the pristine glow of the Taj Mahal? From application of mud pack to planting herbal hedge, authorities have in past, tried all tricks in the beauty book to arrest aging of the 350-year-old Mughal mausoleum.
Now comes another attempt from the ASI. The agency has ambitious plans up its sleeves — to cover with glass casing the famous intricate lapidary inlay work of the inner chamber, housing false sarcophagi of the emperor Shah Jehan and his consort Mumtaz Mahal, to ens
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 18, 2010
[A] survey suggested that nearly two in ten children thought Fagin played football for Manchester United rather than picked pockets in Dickens's Oliver Twist. And Moby Dick is, according to nearly half the children asked, a pop star not a man-eating whale.
The study asked 100 pupils, aged between eight and 10, some basic questions about children's literature, as well as asking 2,000 parents what stories they had read their children....
It found that 17 per cent of chil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 19, 2010
Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who went on to become a prominent supporter of Adolf Hitler, systematically falsified her brother's works and letters, according to the Nietzsche Encyclopedia.
Christian Niemeyer, the publisher, said he wanted to clear the revered thinker's reputation by showing the "criminally scandalous" forgeries by his sister had tainted his reputation ever since.
"Förster-Nietzsche did everything she could – such as telling stories about
Source: The Independent (UK)
January 19, 2010
The remains of a temple of Queen Berenike - wife of King Ptolemy III - have been discovered by archaeologists in Alexandria, Egypt.
Dr. Zahi Hawass said the remains discovered are 60 meters by 15 meters, and extend under Ismail Fahmy street. About 600 Ptolemaic statues - amongst which are beautiful depictions of the cat goddess Bastet - were also unearthed....
Early studies on site revealed that the temple’s foundation can be dated to the reign of Queen Berenike - the
Source: AP
January 18, 2010
Edgar Allan Poe's fertile imagination has endured for more than 150 years — and so has his pale, death-haunted image, with his sunken eyes, a trim mustache and unruly mop of curly hair.
However, scholars say Poe looked far more vigorous, perhaps even dashing, in his earlier years than he does in the well-known series of daguerreotypes taken in the final years of his life.
The more robust Poe is captured in a small watercolor by A.C. Smith, one of just three surviving po
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 18, 2010
Britain went to war in Iraq on an 'assumption' that Saddam Hussein still possessed weapons of mass destruction, according to Jonathan Powell.
Intelligence on Saddam's WMD was not the pivotal factor in Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq, Mr Powell, the former chief of staff to Mr Blair, has told the Chilcot Inquiry.
Mr Powell said there was a long-standing "assumption" that Saddam had WMD because of the fact that he had used them in the past.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 18, 2010
Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981, proclaimed the world will end this century as he was released from prison in Turkey.
Agca has promised to explain his motives for the failed assassination attempt in 1981 but questions about his mental state and outlandish claims have raised doubts over whether the mystery will ever be solved.
He was taken to a Turkish military hospital where doctors concluded that he was unfit for compulsory milita
Source: BBC
January 18, 2010
China's oldest cliff-carved Buddha statue is to be saved from collapse, with a $10.8m (£6.6m) facelift, a state-run news agency has reported.
Found by a farmer in 2005, the 1,459-year-old statue was carved on Meng Mountain near Taiyuan, Shanxi province.
But the huge form was now in danger of collapsing into abandoned coal mines, Xinhua news agency said.
Seven coal mines in the area had been closed in 2007 to protect the ancient stone statue, Xinhua said.
Source: BBC
January 18, 2010
Welsh museums are joining a BBC campaign to create a unique digital record online telling a history of the world through objects.
People are being asked to log on to a BBC website to upload their own entries and build a picture of the impact of Wales on the world.
It will coincide with television and radio programmes looking at artefacts in museums across the UK.
The History of the World will be shown on BBC Wales in the spring.
Source: LA Times
January 18, 2010
Amateur historian Rick Rogers just knows Europeans visited the islands two centuries before Captain Cook landed in 1778. Trying to prove it and convince professionals, that's another story.
Finding evidence of a shipwreck beneath the ocean would finally prove a theory that Rogers, an amateur historian, has been promoting for decades. He thinks a handful of Spanish and Dutch ships visited Hawaii in the centuries before Captain Cook landed there in 1778. Some Europeans came ashore aft
Source: AFP
January 18, 2010
The mystery of Russia's famed Amber Room, seized as the spoils of war by the Nazis, has puzzled historians and experts since it disappeared in 1945.
Sergei Trifonov, however, believes he has solved the riddle, and that the treasure -- ornately carved panels of glowing amber, formed from fossilized resin -- lies underneath a bunker in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
To test his theory, Trifonov has begun to probe the soil under the bunker using a ground-penetrating r
Source: LA TTimes
January 17, 2010
A little-known program of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services provides information that bridges oceans.
At first glance, the photo-copied documents simply looked like government forms and applications.
But when Susanne Mori read more closely, she found the story of her grandfather's life as he made his way in America more than five decades ago.
The documents came from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which runs a little-known genealogy s
Source: Times Online (UK)
January 19, 2010
A Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 offered to sell his story to the media when he was released from prison yesterday.
But hopes that Mehmet Ali Agca would reveal details of an alleged Soviet-era plot behind the St Peter’s Square assassination attempt receded after he issued a statement calling himself “the Christ eternal”.
His lawyer, Haci Ali Ozhan, said that more than 50 foreign publishers and film-makers had offered to buy his story. He is
Source: Times (UK)
January 18, 2010
A half-smoked cigar stubbed out by Sir Winston Churchill in the Second World War is expected to fetch £300 at auction.
The 4in long stub was left by the Prime Minister before he dashed off for a Cabinet meeting on August 22, 1941 - the day German troops reached Leningrad.
Whitehall valet Nellie Goble found it when cleaning and sent it to a friend, with a note on No10 paper reading: 'Just a small souvenir to remind you at some future date of one of the greatest men that
Source: Fox News
January 18, 2010
It always falls down. That's how the apple helped Isaac Newton.
An 18th-century account of how Newton developed the theory of gravity was posted to the Web Monday, making the fragile paper manuscript widely available to the public for the first time.
Newton's encounter with the apple ranks among science's most celebrated anecdotes, and it can now be read in the faded cursive script in which it was recorded by William Stukeley, Newton's contemporary.
Roya
Source: BBC News
January 18, 2010
A Spanish court has agreed to extradite a pilot held for his alleged role in Argentina's "dirty war".
Julio Alberto Poch, 57, an airline pilot, has been in custody in Madrid since his arrest last month.
He is wanted in Argentina for allegedly flying planes used to dump opponents of the military regime into the sea - known as "death flights".
Some 30,000 people disappeared or died during the junta's 1976-1983 rule. He denies the allegatio
