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
January 15, 2010
Late medieval walls and the foundations of what appears to be a military spur, which formed part of the outer defences at Edinburgh Castle, have been found.
The defences, which date from at least the 16th Century, were discovered by archaeologists during foundation works for new Military Tattoo stands.
Service trenches were opened which revealed two structures about 2m beneath the esplanade.
Archaeologists will record the remains before they are reburied.
Source: BBC
January 15, 2010
Conservation experts have uncovered historic hidden text inscribed on the wall of Salisbury Cathedral.
The text in gothic lettering, thought to be more than 350 years old, was found behind the Henry Hyde monument.
The discovery was made when the conservators moved the Henry Hyde monument from the south aisle wall to repair and clean it.
Source: BBC
January 15, 2009
Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is to produce a TV documentary series on the rebuilding of New York's World Trade Center, to be shown in 2011.
Rebuilding Ground Zero will chronicle the engineering and building of the skyscraper being built on the site of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.
It will also pay tribute to those who died in the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 15, 2009
Australian Aborigines plan to ask Prince William for help finding and returning the head of an indigenous warrior who was killed and decapitated by British soldiers more than 200 years ago.
Prince William will visit Australia for three days next week, after an official trip to New Zealand. It will be the first time the Prince has set foot in Australia since visiting as a baby with his parents in 1983.
Elder Michael Mundine of the Aboriginal Housing Company said he bel
Source: NYT
January 14, 2010
Until 1923, the only school in the largely black farm settlement of Pine Grove was the one hand-built by parents, a drafty wooden structure in the churchyard. Anyone who could read and write could serve as teacher. With no desks and paper scarce, teachers used painted wood for a blackboard, and an open fireplace provided flashes of warmth to the lucky students who sat close.
This changed after a Chicago philanthropist named Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, took up
Source: Clarion Ledger
January 15, 2010
U.S. Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce legislation next week that would pave the way for the release of thousands of FBI documents on the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kerry said the bill, which failed in 2006, can pass this year in honor of King. "I want the world to know what he stood for," Kerry said. "And I want his personal history preserved and examined by releasing all of his records."
The bill calls for creating a Martin
Source: Spiegel Online (Germany)
January 13, 2010
The remains of five members of the Kawesqar Indian tribe, abducted by a German explorer 130 years ago for display in "human zoos," found their way back home to Tierra del Fuego on Tuesday. Theirs is a story of degradation, shared by indigenous peoples from around the world.
It was a greatly delayed homecoming. But on Tuesday, the remains of five Kawesqar Indians, kidnapped in 1881 and brought to Europe for display in zoos, were returned to Chile for burial in their ancestr
Source: AP
January 15, 2010
As Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial has gained acclaim with its World War I museum, the flow of donated artifacts has also greatly increased.
But officials are reeling from the immensity of a recent gift from the widow of a lifelong collector. A semi-trailer truck was needed to haul in the roughly 1,700 items, most of them related to the ferocious machine guns of that era.
“It was like getting a whole other museum,” said Eli Paul, vice president of museum programs at Libe
Source: PR Newwswire
January 14, 2010
Renowned auctioneers Alexander Autographs has uncovered an incredibly rare find: notorious Auschwitz death camp Dr. Josef Mengele's treatise on eugenics and euthanasia, written by him in 1960 while in hiding in Argentina. The document will be offered along with over 1,400 other lots of historic autographs at auction on January 20th and 21st commencing at 10:00 AM at the auction house's Stamford headquarters.
Mengele, who escaped capture until his death by drowning in 1979, proves hi
Source: AAP
January 14, 2010
The massive task of reburying 250 Australian and British World War I soldiers found in a mass grave in northern France will begin in late January.
The soldiers' bodies were unearthed from the series of unmarked pits on the outskirts of the village of Fromelles by a team of archaeologists in late 2009.
Their remains laid undiscovered until an amateur historian from Melbourne tracked down their mystery resting place, paving the way for their bodies to be recovered.
Source: The Star (Malaysia)
January 13, 2010
Earth-works for the new ring road and sewage system in Chinatown here have uncovered hundreds of ancient coins and other artefacts.
And there is concern that workers at the site and the public may have been quietly digging up these items to sell.
Site manager Omar Mahmod said many items might have been sold before he realised that his worksite contained buried treasures when he uncovered a porcelain vase that he believed was from ancient China.
He questione
Source: ABC News
January 14, 2010
The Netherlands will on Thursday return to Iraq a 4 000-year-old clay tablet discovered when it was put on sale on an online auction site, the government in The Hague said.
"The police found the tablet last December on the Marktplaats auction site," the culture ministry said in a statement. "The owner voluntarily gave it up after being informed that it was illegal to trade in Iraqi cultural artefacts."
The tablet, 7cm by 4.5cm, has been dated to 2040
Source: AP
January 15, 2010
It should have been a death knell: "Brace for impact."
But a year after 155 people lived through the water landing of the incapacitated US Airways Flight 1549 in the middle of the frigid Hudson River, many of them are gathering to celebrate the anniversary of their unlikely survival.
On Friday, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger is expected to join other crew and passengers to revisit the site where he deftly set down his Airbus A320 on Jan. 15, 2009
Source: Fox News
January 14, 2010
Former chief United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter was arrested in a Pennsylvania sex sting in November on a litany of charges involving a lewd Internet conversation with a person he thought was a 15-year-old girl.
Ritter, 48, allegedly masturbated in front of a Web camera while he was engaged in conversation in an Internet chat room with an undercover cop posing as the teenage girl. He declined to discuss the charges Thursday when reporters visited his New York residence.
Source: Kyiv Post (Ukraine)
January 15, 2010
Two members of Russia's State Duma, in interviews with Interfax, sneered at an initiative by Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko to set up an international tribunal to investigate alleged crimes by the Soviet regime and said he himself deserved being put on trial for "crimes against his own people."
Since I am convinced that it was the Americans who brought Yuschenko to power in order to ruin Russian-Ukrainian relations as much as possible, I see his initiative to set up
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 14, 2010
The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will be moved at 3pm GMT for the first time in two years.
The timepiece in New York is supposed to represent how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction – represented by midnight.
Created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 - two years after the US dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan in World War II - it was first set at seven minutes to midnight.
Since then the Bulletin's scientific board, which
Source: BBC News
January 15, 2010
The Doomsday Clock - a barometer of nuclear danger for the past 55 years - has been moved one minute further away from the "midnight hour".
The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) now stands at six minutes to the hour.
The group said it made the decision to move the clock back because of a more "hopeful state of world affairs".
The clock was first featured by the magazine in 1947, shortly after the
Source: AP
January 12, 2010
Yale University says a lawsuit by Peru seeking the return of thousands of Inca artifacts removed from the famed Machu Picchu citadel nearly a century ago should be dismissed because a statue of limitations expired.
Peru rejects the argument, saying Yale never owned the artifacts and that its claim is not subject to a statute of limitations under Peruvian law. Peru also says Yale did not assert ownership of the artifacts until late 2008.
"The artifacts are of immens
Source: National Geographic magazine
January 13, 2009
Slate may show early colonist efforts to communicate with Indians.
With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.
Both sides of the scratched and worn 5-by-8 inch (13-by-20 centimeter) tablet are covered with words, symb
Source: CBS News
January 14, 2009
Researchers who examined an Egyptian mummy with the latest imaging technology found no evidence that a packet inside her was an offering to the gods of the ancient world.
Previous tests led to speculation that the packet was a bird mummy something researchers said would be an unusual and exciting find but high-resolution tests Thursday at Quinnipiac University showed no remnants of a bird.
Instead, researchers said the packet and a few others in the mummy likely contain
