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: Guardian (UK)
January 12, 2010
The traffic-choked roads still roaring past Stonehenge in Wiltshire have earned the world's most famous prehistoric monument a place on a list of the world's most threatened sites.
The government's decision to abandon, on cost grounds, a plan to bury roads around Stonehenge in a tunnel underground and the consequent collapse of the plans for a new visitor centre, have put the site on the Threatened Wonders list of Wanderlust magazine, along with the 4x4-scarred Wadi Rum in Jordan, a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 12, 2010
Despite the singer being close to the Mob and Democrats the former Republican president planned to establish "a personal relationship" with Sinatra.
Nixon's initiative, however, was blocked by the then attorney general John Mitchell because Sinatra had long been alleged to have personal and professional links with organised crime, including prominent figures such as Lucky Luciano.
The singer had been under watch by the FBI since the late 1940s. He was never pr
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 12, 2010
The lawyer representing John Demjanjuk, the 89-year-old accused of being an accessory to the murder of thousands of Jews at a Nazi death camp, today called for his trial to be suspended.
Ulrich Busch told the Munich hearing that German law can't be applied to the case of the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk.
He also argued that the trial should be suspended because documents from earlier proceedings against his client in the US, Israel and elsewhere weren't given to the defence
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 12, 2010
Richard Nixon never considered himself a great orator, a judgment shared by those who heard him speak.
But it has emerged that the US President was secretly envious of Winston Churchill's way with words and instructed his speechwriters to learn from the former British Prime Minister.
Preparing for an address to the Canadian Parliament in early 1972 the president worried that his rhetoric was so tedious it would cost him politically.
'The speeches I make ar
Source: Times (UK)
January 12, 2010
The invasion of Iraq had no sound mandate under international law, according to the Dutch inquiry into the war released this morning.
In a devastating rejection of the position of the British and Dutch governments, the inquiry, led by the former head of the Netherlands' Supreme Court, decided that the United Nations resolutions did not provide a legal basis for the use of force.
Dutch ministers were further criticised in the report of the Davids Commission, which sat
Source: Times (UK)
January 12, 2010
Tony Blair sent President Bush a series of secret notes in the run-up to the Iraq war in which he promised that Britain would "be there" if it came to military action against Saddam Hussein, it emerged today.
The existence of the letters, sent from Downing Street in 2002, was revealed by Mr Blair's chief spin-doctor, Alastair Campbell, as he gave evidence to an independent inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war.
The former director of communications at No
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
January 11, 2010
The Very Rev. David M. O'Connell went into the bathroom looking for paper towels. He came out with something a little better: an authentic Rembrandt etching.
Father O'Connell, president of the Catholic University of America, noticed a picture frame jutting out from underneath a pile of junk in one of his office building's bathrooms last January, the university says. He pulled out an etching and thought it looked familiar.
An appraiser confirmed that the 4.5-inch-by-5-in
Source: MyRecordJournal.com
January 7, 2010
Marie Secondo was near the end of her first year as curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington when, in the midst of organizing a supply closet, she came across a small shoebox that held a time-erasing bundle. Inside were letters, most of them still in the envelopes in which they'd been sent. She opened a few and, as she recalled, said, "Holy cow, can these be real?"
Though the letters were dated nearly a century and a half in the past, they were in fine enough shape to c
Source: Yomiuri (Japan)
January 9, 2010
A total of 331 broken pieces belonging to 81 ancient bronze mirrors have been unearthed from a stone chamber of the Sakurai Chausuyama burial mound in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, according to an archaeological institute.
The pieces, which belonged to 13 different kinds of mirrors, were the largest number to be excavated as burial items from an ancient tomb in the nation. The tomb dates to between the late third century and early fourth century.
Some of the pieces had been
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 12, 2010
A tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found Adolf Hitler's body in his Berlin bunker has been discovered.
The recording was made on October 25 1956 in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, site of the Fuehrer's mountaintop home in Bavaria. The court was convened to officially declare the former leader of Nazi Germany dead so that his fortune and rights to his book "Mein Kampf" could be seized by the state government.
Among those giving evidence
Source: BBC News
January 12, 2010
A historic map of the world, with China at its centre, has gone on display at the Library of Congress in Washington.
The map was created by Italian missionary Matteo Ricci in 1602. It is one of only two copies in existence in good condition.
Because of its rarity and fragility - the map is printed on rice paper - the map has become known as the "Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography".
This is the first time it has been on public show in north Am
Source: AFP
January 11, 2010
Jordan has complained to the United Nations in a bid to acquire the Dead Sea Scrolls from Israel, saying the Jewish state seized the ancient texts during the 1967 Six-Day war, an official said on Monday.
The scrolls, some of which are as old as the third century BC, were part of a display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum in Canada that ended on Sunday.
Jordan has asked Canada to seize the scrolls, invoking the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in
Source: Science News
January 8, 2010
Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go 'out of Africa.'
Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Tho
Source: Discovery News
January 11, 2010
Alexander's men wore linothorax, a highly effective type of body armor created by laminating together layers of linen, research finds.
A Kevlar-like armor might have helped Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) conquer nearly the entirety of the known world in little more than two decades, according to new reconstructive archaeology research.
Presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Anaheim, Calif., the study suggests that Alexander an
Source: Bloomberg News
January 11, 2010
The British Museum, which faces demands from Iran to lend an ancient artifact known as the Cyrus Cylinder, said it would delay sending the object there after making a discovery.
On Jan. 5, inscriptions similar to the Cylinder’s were found on two pieces of cuneiform tablets from Babylonia in the museum’s collections. The pieces will be studied to shed light on the Cylinder’s “missing” or “obscure” passages, the museum said, and presented at a London workshop involving Iranian colleag
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 10, 2010
British artist Andy Holden is to reveal how he stole a piece of the Egypt pyramids in a new exhibition at the Tate Britain in London.
Under Egyptian law, it is illegal to remove any item from a cultural heritage site without the Egyptian government's permission. An international Unesco convention also prohibits the removal of cultural artefacts without the country of origin's knowledge and permission.
In 2008, Mr Holden returned to Egypt and attempted to replace the ro
Source: The Boston Globe
January 11, 2010
Trilingual by dint of birth, Ihor Sevcenko grew up in a Ukrainian family that lived in Poland at a time when Russian was often the language of necessity. To his native Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian, he added fluency in many other Slavic and Western languages in their ancient, medieval, and modern forms while establishing himself as an international scholar of Byzantine literature and history.
Dr. Sevcenko, the Dumbarton Oaks professor emeritus of Byzantine history and literature at
Source: BBC
January 12, 2009
MPs are due to question the first minister and the justice secretary over the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill are to give evidence to the Scottish affairs committee at Westminster.
The Scottish Affairs Committee will question Mr Salmond and Mr MacAskill on Tuesday as part of an investigation into co-operation and communication between the Scottish and UK governments.
In particular MPs are looking at how this worked i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 11, 2010
A controversial painting linked to Leonardo da Vinci is expected to fetch more than £300,000 when it is auctioned 90 years after it prompted one of the 20th century's most feverish debates over a picture's authenticity.
Arguments over the origins of Portrait of a Woman Called La Belle 3 have raged since 1920 when it was given as a wedding gift to a car salesman in Kansas City, Missouri, by a family friend who said it was by Leonardo.
Sotheby's, which is selling the pai
Source: Associated Press
January 11, 2010
Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary not, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said Tuesday. She was 100.
Gies' Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.
Gies was the las
