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)
December 30, 2009
The heirs to Argentina’s most powerful media empire have been ordered to take DNA tests that could establish whether they were part of a forced adoption scheme during the country’s darkest era.
Civil rights campaigners claimed that the real parents of Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera, whose mother controlled the country’s biggest newspaper, were abducted and murdered by the last dictatorship during its “Dirty War” against Left-wing dissidents.
The pair were adopted in
Source: CNN
December 30, 2009
The attempted Christmas Day bombing of a commercial airliner has renewed questions of whether the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission have been taken seriously.
In its 2004 report on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the commission warned that the Transportation Security Administration and Congress "must give priority attention to improving the ability of screening checkpoints to detect explosives on passengers."
But at most airports,
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 1, 2010
Britain's special relationship with the United States is "stronger than ever" under Barack Obama, the American ambassador to London said today.
There has been speculation that Obama's foreign policy approach – and his personal history of his grandfather being tortured by British colonial authorities during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya – might lead to a cooler relationship than was the case when his predecessor George Bush and Tony Blair went to war together in Iraq and A
Source: Medieval News
December 30, 2009
A new article explores how Byzantine doctors treated people those suffering from lycanthropy, a mental disorder where a patient believes he or she is, or has transformed into, a wolf and behaves like one. This disease is the basis for the legendary werewolves.
In "Lycanthropy in Byzantine times (AD 330–1453)," four scholars from the University of Athens examine the writings of six Byzantine physicians to see what they believed lycanthropy was and how it should be treated.
Source: Lee P Ruddin
December 30, 2009
Over 100 people gathered to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Liverpool-born, four-time British Prime Minister William Gladstone on Tuesday.
A wreath was laid at the Gladstone memorial in St John’s Gardens before a specially commissioned exhibition dedicated to his life and work was opened in St George’s Hall, less then a mile from his birthplace.
Items on show in the Grade I-listed building include diaries and books from the Grand Old Man’s career, newspaper
Source: Atlantic
December 29, 2009
At The Atlantic, we pride ourselves on the foresight of our authors. We like to point out that “As We May Think,” Vannevar Bush’s 1945 meditation on information networks, foresaw the creation of the World Wide Web. We less often highlight “The Coming Air Age,” another Atlantic article of the same period, which predicted that the average businessman would soon be commuting to work in a helicopter.
The last decade has been no exception: we’ve published some 2,000 articles, and many tu
Source: The Economist
December 31, 2009
Man is one of a number of animals that make things, but man is the only one that depends for its very survival on the things he has made. That simple observation is the starting point for an ambitious history programme, "A History of the World in 100 Objects", which BBC Radio 4 will begin broadcasting on January 18th. A joint venture four years in the making between the British Museum (BM) and the BBC, the series features 100 15-minute radio broadcasts, a separate 13 episodes in which
Source: More Intelligent Life
December 31, 2009
Lady Jane Grey is mythologised, even festishised, as an innocent girl sacrificed on the altar of her mother's ambition. But behind the popular biographies of the Tudor Queen lies a different story of misogyny and masochism. It seems the much-maligned mother is in fact the victim.
The traditional story runs like this: Lady Jane Grey was born in 1537, the daughter of Henry VIII's royal niece, Frances, and her husband, Harry Grey, Marques of Dorset. The stout, bejewelled woman in a dou
Source: Yorkshire Evening Post (UK)
December 30, 2009
A 700-year-old stone cross discovered at a medieval settlement may have been an early "advert" reminding Christians to attend church, experts said today.
Archaeologists found the artefact in a remote part of Dartmoor as part of a student field exercise.
The cross was first thought to be a gatepost, but after some research experts found it probably served as a Christian signpost or boundary stone.
The team, led by Win Scutt and Ross Dean of City College
Source: Discovery News
December 28, 2009
Shuo Cao Cao, Cao Cao jiu dao, says a Chinese proverb. It means: "Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao will be there."
It's the equivalent of the English phrase "speak of the devil."
More than 1,700 years after his death, Cao Cao, warlord and ruler of northern China during the Three Kingdoms period, has indeed appeared, according to China Daily.
According to the report, Chinese archaeologists might have found the body of the legendary general
Source: Discovery News
December 29, 2009
Experts are studying the first Mayan hieroglyphic script dealing with the life of a high priest, his blood sacrifices and acts of penance, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said.
The text consists of 260 glyphs carved into a series of seashell earrings and manta ray stingers found inside a burial urn.
The urn, which also contained the remains of an important Maya priest, wrapped in bright red cloth, was uncovered during excavations 11 years
Source: BBC News
December 30, 2009
Japan was asked not to greet Britain's first female prime minister with a security escort of 20 "karate ladies", newly-released government papers show.
Margaret Thatcher visited Tokyo for an economic summit in June 1979 - a month after winning the general election.
After Japanese officials confirmed the "karate ladies" story, the Lord Privy Seal wrote to the Foreign office.
He said Mrs Thatcher wanted "to be treated in exactly the
Source: CNN
December 30, 2009
For thousands of years men and women across the Middle East have retreated to their local hammams to sweat, get scrubbed and socialize with friends.
Public bathing dates back to the Greeks and the Romans. And though the tradition faded in much of the Western world, hammams remained popular in the Middle East, flourishing under the Ottomans --hence their English name "Turkish baths."
The first Islamic hammams were annexed to mosques to facilitate these ablution
Source: Woai.com (Texas)
December 31, 2069
The Battle of Medina was a massacre in the early 19th century involving the Spanish Army from the south and the Republican Army from the north. It is known as the bloodiest battle on Texas soil. But one very important detail of the battle is still unknown -- where it happened.
This mysterious battle is missing in action, so to speak. Historians have never been able to agree where exactly it took place. Some say near Poteet, others say it was near Pleasanton.
News 4 WOAI
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2009
– Coin flipping as a game was known to the Romans as "navia aut caput" (ship or head), as some coins had a ship on one side and the head of the emperor on the other.
– A related game, Cross and Pile, was played in medieval England. The cross was the major design on one side of many coins, and the Pile was the mark created by the hammer used to strike the metal on the other side.
– One of the most significant coin tosses in the United State's history involved t
Source: New York Times
December 31, 2009
An organization called the Berlin Underworlds offers visitors an unexpected perspective of the German capital.
Founded in 1997, Underworlds is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the documentation and preservation of Berlin’s vast network of subterranean spaces. It funds its projects by giving tours of bunkers, sewers, air raid shelters and catacombs. The tours are offered in a variety of languages, including English.
The 300-plus members of the association inclu
Source: Haaretz (Israel)
December 31, 2009
An American appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts.
Holocaust survivors from Cro
Source: BBC News
December 31, 2009
Much has changed in the 10 years since Vladimir Putin first became Russia's president. Now serving as prime minister with a possible view to running for the presidency again in 2012, James Rodgers assesses the rise and rise of the spy who came to control the Kremlin.
Cast your mind back to 31 December 1999. In Moscow, it is the last day of a century that has seen revolution and the collapse of communism.
Everyone in the Russian capital is waiting for reassurance from re
Source: CNN
December 31, 2009
Off the coast of Algiers one day in 1944, a young Navy officer plea-bargained with God as his torpedoed ship, the USS Lansdale, took on water.
If he survived, he vowed, he would dedicate his life to public service.
"I'd always thought of going into government service," Robert M. Morgenthau recalled recently. "But when my ship was torpedoed off Algiers and I was floating around in the water, I made promises to the Almighty."
He kept those
Source: Sun Advocate
December 30, 2009
"In memory of our fellow brothers, sister, and coworkers who needlessly lost their lives in the Wilberg Coal Mine disaster."
Those words are the introductory phrase inscribed on the Wilberg Coal Mine disaster monument located at SR-10 and the Wilberg mine road. The monument was placed on a piece of ground near the mine to memorialize the 26 men and one woman who lost their lives 25 years ago in the mine.
The fire which began on Dec. 19, 1984 at the Wilberg min
