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 News
January 3, 2010
Children of Blackshirt women, who joined Oswald Mosley's pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists, often feel that they have had to live with the burden of the guilt and shame caused by their mother's fascist sympathies.
When I was 11, I was taken by my mother to visit her birthplace in Kennington, London.
As we walked around my mother showed me where the air-raid shelters were during the war, but then she began telling me about the Blackshirt meetings.
At 11 it
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 3, 2010
It was a turning point in the Second World War. As the Allies prepared to invade Sicily in 1943, they wanted to dupe the Germans into thinking that their attack would be aimed elsewhere.
To carry out the deception, a plan was concocted in which a body was dumped in the sea, to be discovered by Axis forces, carrying fake 'secret documents' suggesting the invasion would be staged in Greece, 500 miles away.
Incredibly, the trick worked and the diversion of German troops
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
January 1, 2010
We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are. The Declaration of Independence, the Midnight Ride, Valley Forge—the whole glorious chronicle of the colonists’ rebellion against tyranny is in the American DNA. Often it is the Revolution that is a child’s first encounter with history.
Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps m
Source: http://www.dailynews.com
December 14, 2009
While the possibility of a nuclear attack in Los Angeles seems almost unthinkable, local officials are inventorying hundreds of old bomb and fallout shelters as part of their preparations for a "radiological or nuclear event."
Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas are drafting emergency plans while federal agencies study how to prepare the public for what county public health Director Jonathan Fielding describes as a "low-likelihood, huge-consequences event."
Source: BBC
January 2, 2010
A Blue Plaque has been unveiled in a Devon fishing port to commemorate a dramatic rescue at sea during WWI.
On 1 January 1915, the crew of the Brixham trawler Provident saved 71 sailors from HMS Formidable after she was torpedoed by a German U-boat.
Despite Provident's efforts, more than 500 of HMS Formidable's sailors lost their lives.
The English Heritage blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to serve as a historical marker and com
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 1, 2010
With hindsight we can see that two events occurring within days of each other in late 2001 brought about an epochal change in the world's strategic system, drawing China and the Mid-East oil powers into each other's arms again after five centuries of estrangement. The old Silk Road came back to life.
The Twin Towers attack of 9/11 – and the backlash that followed – caused the Arab world and its money to turn away from the US. That much is well known.
Six days later, t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2010
Relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing are launching a new legal bid to force the Government to hold a public inquiry.
UK Families Flight 103, the relatives' campaign group, will use human rights laws in a bid to uncover the truth about the terrorist attack, which claimed 270 lives in December 1988.
The group has hired Gareth Peirce, the prominent human rights solicitor better known for her work representing terror suspects, to devise a legal strategy to
Source: Fox News
January 2, 2010
House Democrats began an ad campaign in December assailing Republicans for opposing legislation restructuring federal financial rules and recalling the final days of the Bush presidency, when the economy tanked
With the congressional GOP poised for a comeback in the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats are dusting off an old playbook, using George W. Bush as their boogeyman and castigating Republicans as cozy with Wall Street.
But that was three years ago. Democrats have b
Source: AP
January 2, 2010
A Somali man was charged with two counts of attempted murder on Saturday for an attack on a Danish artist whose 2005 cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad ignited riots and outrage across the Muslim world, authorities said.
The 28-year-old Somali man with ties to Al Qaeda broke into Kurt Westergaard's home in Aarhus on Friday night armed with an ax and a knife, said Jakob Scharf, head of Denmark's PET intelligence agency.
The 75-year-old artist, who has been targeted with sev
Source: Reuters
January 1, 2010
An Antarctic expedition has found what it believes to be remains of the first aeroplane brought to the frozen continent, on an icy shore near where it was abandoned almost a century ago.
Australia has searched for many years for the old single-propeller Vickers plane at Cape Denison, where the nation's most famous polar explorer, Douglas Mawson, abandoned it after it proved to be a failure during his 1911-14 expedition.
The Mawson's Huts Foundation, an officially backed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 1, 2010
A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives that has been published for the first time.
Although scholars have had access to the secret archives since 1881, they remain closed to the general public
The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.
High-quality reproduct
Source: Deseret News (Utah)
January 2, 2010
Remember the last scene of the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where the Bible's ark of the covenant is packaged up and lost in a large government warehouse?
That actually is happening to untold artifacts and documents, because the Department of Interior largely doesn't know what is in its collections, often doesn't know if items were obtained legally and doesn't properly care for many of them, according to the department's inspector general.
"Elements o
Source: Guardain (UK)
December 31, 2069
According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.
The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history wh
Source: Guardain (UK)
December 29, 2009
Molar that was discovered in attic of Blickling Hall is thought to date from second world war.
The National Trust is appealing for information about a human tooth that has turned up alongside Jacobean furniture and old masters during the annual winter cleaning of a stately pile.
The badly decayed molar, still with small scraps of flesh attached, was found in an attic cabinet at Blickling Hall, former home of the Boleyn family whose most famous member, Anne, lost her hea
Source: Washington Post
January 1, 2010
Margaret Garritsen deVries, 87, an economist and historian at the International Monetary Fund, died of pneumonia Dec. 18 at Suburban Hospital. She lived in Bethesda.
Dr. deVries was among the first employees hired by the IMF, joining it as an economist in 1946. She represented the agency on missions to Mexico, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Turkey, Israel, Yugoslavia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
She was appointed assistant chief of the multiple exchange rate divisio
Source: BBC
December 31, 2009
A councillor who became a spokeswoman for the people of Lockerbie in the wake of the 1988 aircraft bombing has become an MBE in the New Year Honours list.
Marjory McQueen, 63, was a Conservative councillor for Lockerbie on Dumfries and Galloway Council for 12 years.
Mrs McQueen became a public face for the town during the trial of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted of carrying out the atrocity.
She also co-ordinated the media during the 10th ann
Source: BBC
January 1, 2010
A Scottish poet who killed himself after being rejected by a publisher is to be remembered on the 200th anniversary of his death.
Robert Tannahill, also known as the Weaver Poet, was once viewed as being almost comparable to Burns.
The centenary of his death saw 15,000 people head to Paisley's Gleniffer Braes, one of his favourite spots, to listen to his songs. It is hoped that Paisley buddies and poetry lovers will again turn out in force to pay tribute to the poet.
Source: BBC
January 1, 2010
A Belfast-based choreographer who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp has died aged 93.
Helen Lewis, who had a long association with the Lyric Theatre, settled in Northern Ireland after WWII.
Born in Czechoslovakia, she trained as a dancer and having made a new life in Belfast became involved in dance teaching and choreography.
In 1992 she published a widely acclaimed autobiography A Time To Speak which recounted her time in the camp.
Source: BBC
January 1, 2010
A replica of a Roman pavement worth about £1m and currently on show at an abbey in Gloucestershire is for sale as it is not attracting enough visitors.
The original mosaic, the Great Orpheus Roman Pavement, was part of a floor of a Roman villa in Woodchester and is now buried in the village churchyard.
The real pavement, thought to date from AD 325, was last shown in 1973 and was seen by 140,000 people in 50 days.
It was decided not to unearth it again fo
Source: BBC
December 31, 2009
An artwork by Impressionist artist Edgar Degas has been stolen from a Marseilles museum, police have said.
Les Choristes (The Chorus) was missing when staff at the Catini Museum opened the premises on Thursday morning.
There were no signs of a break-in, said Jacques Dallest, the French city's public prosecutor. The museum will now remain closed while the theft is being investigated, including the examination of CCTV footage from securit
