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: AP
September 12, 2009
After fighting his way across Europe during World War II, John Pistone was among the U.S. soldiers who entered Adolf Hitler's home nestled in the Bavarian Alps as the war came to a close.
Making his way through the Berghof, Hitler's home near Berchtesgaden, Germany, Pistone noticed a table with shelves underneath. Exhilarated by the certainty of victory over the Nazis, Pistone took an album filled with photographs of paintings as a souvenir.
"It was really a great
Source: AFP
July 12, 2009
MOSCOW (AFP) – An officer with the Russian intelligence service the FSB on Monday dismissed a US report suggesting a fragment of Hitler's skull held in Moscow is actually from a woman, insisting their relic is genuine.
"The FSB archives hold the jaw of Hitler and the state archives a fragment of Hitler's skull," said Vassili Khristoforov, head of the FSB archives, told Interfax.
"With the exception of these remains, seized on May 5, 1945, there exist no o
Source: Artdaily.org
December 8, 2009
Former President George H.W. Bush is helping dedicate a $15.5 million gallery expansion that carries his name at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Texas.
Bush is expected at the museum in Fredericksburg on Monday, the 68th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Bush was a World War II naval aviator and survived being shot down by the Japanese over the Pacific.
The museum expansion has been planned for about a decade. It takes visitors on a chronological jour
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 8, 2009
Russian secret service officials claim they have genuine fragments of the skull of Adolf Hitler and have dismissed American reports which suggest it belongs to a woman.
Vassili Khristoforov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), said: ‘The FSB archives hold the jaw of Hitler and the state archives a fragment of Hitler’s skull.
‘With the exception of these remains, seized on May 5, 1945, there exist no other bits from the body of Hitler.’
In Sep
Source: Times (UK)
December 8, 2009
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, has a network of 300 metre (1,000 ft) deep emergency escape tunnels connecting Pyongyang with key sites around the country, a top-level defector claims.
The tunnels, reminiscent of the lair of a James Bond villain, are reported to contain railway lines, a water supply and even vegetation. According to Hwang Jang Yop, formerly North Korea’s chief political philosopher, they connect areas as far as 30 miles (50km) away from Pyongyang, enabling th
Source: The National Security Archives
December 8, 2009
Washington, DC - As the case of "Operation Mexico"—death squad murders, disappearances and rendition efforts by the Argentine secret police—is presented to a court in Rosario, Argentina, the National Security Archive today posted a selection of records that corroborate the testimony of the only surviving witness, Jaime Dri. The documents were provided to a tribunal of five judges yesterday by Archive analyst Carlos Osorio who testified that "the records reveal how the Argentine di
Source: NYT
December 7, 2009
Nearly one in six American workers is foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1920s, according to a census analysis released Monday.
Because of government barriers to immigration, the share of foreign-born workers dipped from a 20th-century high of 21 percent in 1910 to barely 5 percent in 1970, but has been rising since then, to the current 16 percent.
In 2007, immigrants accounted for more than one in four workers in California (35 percent), New York (27 percen
Source: Physorg
December 7, 2009
The oral history archive, held at Cambridge University, features more than 300 recordings, including first-hand accounts of meetings with Mahatma Gandhi and testimonies by freedom fighters whose terrorist acts aimed to force an end to British rule.
Alongside the campaigners, freedom-fighters and assassins, ordinary people such as doctors, missionaries, farmers and police officers give intimate reminiscences of Empire, Indian independence, and of partition.
The collectio
Source: NYT
December 7, 2009
AYODHYA, India — To reach the most hotly disputed religious site in India, a pilgrim must negotiate a maze of caged paths, designed so that worshipers can approach it only single file, pockets emptied of everything but lint. Only the monkeys are not frisked by its thorough phalanx of security guards.
From 1528 until 1992, a squat, nondescript mosque sat on this spot. But 17 years ago this week, a mob of Hindu activists tore the building to pieces with little more than their bare han
Source: The Japan Times Online
December 8, 2009
Document from 1904 indicates Russia wanted to avoid conflict, forge alliance
Before starting the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the Japanese government ignored a tip that a Russian politician long considered a key war advocate was trying to avoid the conflict by proposing an alliance with Japan, according to papers uncovered by a University of Tokyo historian.
The finding could lead to a revision of the widely accepted view in Japan that it was goaded by Russia into
Source: Live Science
December 4, 2009
A massive volcanic eruption that occurred in the distant past killed off much of central India's forests and may have pushed humans to the brink of extinction, according to a new study that adds evidence to a controversial topic.
The Toba eruption, which took place on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia about 73,000 years ago, released an estimated 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere that blanketed the skies and blocked out sunlight for six years. In the aftermath, globa
Source: U.S News & World Report
October 7, 2009
Youth has always been a double-edged sword for America's presidents. It tends to inject the White House with fresh ideas and energy, but it can also lead to impetuousness and a disregard for the tried and true. So far, Barack Obama has demonstrated both the positive and the negative sides of the equation. As the nation's fifth-youngest chief executive—he turned 48 on August 4—he is both innovative and vigorous, but at the same time he is unseasoned and perhaps too willing to experiment and take
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 8, 2009
A remote-controlled dinosaur robot worth about £60,000 has been stolen from Australia's "Walking with Dinosaurs" show in Guadalajara, event organisers said on Monday.
It was the first time an exhibit has been stolen from the show, which has toured worldwide and been seen by more than four million people, she said.
"Walking with Dinosaurs" opened in Guadalajara on Friday, and staff discovered that one of the smaller robots was missing after the show
Source: AP
December 8, 2009
Investigators say the accidental discharge of a World War II-era flare gun ignited a fire that heavily damaged a home in Reno.
A man who lived in the house was inspecting the flare gun when it went off just before 11 a.m. on Monday.
Reno fire spokesman Steve Frady says the man and a woman who also lived there escaped with a pet cat unharmed.
Source: Times (UK)
December 7, 2009
Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II nearly 30 years ago, is to be released from a Turkish prison in January after 28 years in Italian and Turkish jails. He plans to pray at the late pontiff's tomb in Rome.
It was reported in Italy that he hoped to move to the country after he is released on January 18, 2010 from Yenikent prison in Ankara, where he is serving a sentence for crimes committed before the attack on the Pope.
La Repubblica said t
Source: Columbus Dispatch
July 12, 2009
Edward Low knew he wasn't supposed to play there, high up on a sandy hill in Parkersburg, W.Va., overlooking the silver ribbon of the Ohio River.
But the 12-year-old and two friends, armed with boyish curiosity and a World War II trench shovel, had sneaked away from home to explore.
While digging a foxhole to play soldier, Low hit something hard about 15 inches deep in the soil. The thin piece of sandstone, about 5 inches by 3 inches, was engraved with Indian markings o
Source: Times (UK)
December 8, 2009
Gordon Brown failed to grasp the significance of the war in Afghanistan until a few months ago, according to General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff who now advises the Conservative Party.
General Dannatt claimed that the Prime Minister did not understand the importance of the Afghan military campaign until late this summer, even though British troops had been fighting there since the 2001 invasion.
The general was outspoken in his criticism
Source: Christian Science Monitor
July 12, 2009
On Pearl Harbor Day 2009, here is a look at lingering questions such as: How did the Japanese fleet get so close to Hawaii without being spotted?
How did the Japanese do it? That question remains 68 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that spawned some of the greatest unanswered questions of US military history.
The completeness of the surprise, as well as the enormity of the attack's destruction, have led conspiracy theorists to surmise that President Frankli
Source: Times (UK)
December 8, 2009
Egypt’s most senior antiquities official will visit Britain tomorrow to push on with a campaign to have the Rosetta Stone returned from the British Museum to its native country.
Speaking in his offices, amid piles of Pharaonic books, museum records and archaeological dig requests, Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he would not be swayed by the British Museum’s refusal to return the item, which he considers the “icon of Egyptian identity”.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 12, 2009
Adolf Hitler's war record is among hundreds of thousands of First World War documents to be published on an online archive.
Ancestry.co.uk said the records detail the full military careers of 1.5 million Bavarian soldiers and were originally held by the Bavarian State Archives.
Individual records detail the name, rank, date and place of birth, service record, religion, occupation and other information.
Among the soldiers named are 25-year-old Lance Corporal
