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
October 28, 2009
Police found a list of potential
IRA bombing targets, including Buckingham Palace, during a raid in London in 1975, newly released files show.
Hundreds of names, including those of MPs and soldiers, was found in a flat used by the IRA's Balcombe Street gang.
The four-man unit carried out a series of bombings and murders in the 1970s.
National Archive files show that Prime Minister Harold Wilson was told about the police find, but he was told that it did
Source: gothamist
October 26, 2009
This past Friday, as construction on Washington Square Park's redesign entered Phase II, a tombstone was unearthed. Dun dun dun. An eagle-eyed reader of the WSP Blog wrote in to that website Friday after "he noticed that there was a large hole dug about 6 feet below the surface in the fenced-off construction area" where two people were seen dusting off the tombstone. Creepy!
Washington Square Park was a potter's field from 1797 to 1826, and in early 2008, during a soil tes
Source: Truthout
October 28, 2009
Montevideo, Uruguay - During Uruguay's last dictatorship, which ruled from 1973 to 1985, approximately 200 Uruguayans were forcibly disappeared. Thousands more were held as political prisoners and tortured. In this small country of 3.5 million people, hundreds of thousands fled into exile.
Last Sunday, October 25, voters here had the chance to repeal a controversial amnesty law, which has shielded many officials from prosecution for these crimes. The measure failed, garnering only 4
Source: NYT
October 26, 2009
A new examination of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, discovered in Iraq almost a century ago, appears to support a more grisly interpretation than before of human sacrifices associated with elite burials in ancient Mesopotamia, archaeologists say.
Palace attendants, as part of royal mortuary ritual, were not dosed with poison to meet a rather serene death. Instead, a sharp instrument, a pike perhaps, was driven into their heads.
Archaeologists at the University of
Source: WSJ
October 29, 2009
Berlin
To many observers, the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, symbolized the triumph of liberal democracy and free markets over their last serious ideological rival.
Two decades and one financial crisis later, a new debate is growing over whether that assessment was premature.
Some Western thinkers now argue that democracy is in a new competition with unexpectedly robust authoritarian regimes over which form of government can better deliver prosper
Source: Truthout
October 28, 2009
Democratic lawmakers said Tuesday that the CIA misled and/or lied to Congress about its intelligence programs at least five times since 2001, including one previously alleged instance in which the agency failed to disclose to top members of the House and Senate intelligence committees that the CIA tortured war on terror detainees.
Moreover, a top intelligence official revealed during a House Intelligence Committee hearing that there were other "minor instances" where Congr
Source: Yahoo News
October 28, 2009
ALFACAR, Spain – Forensic experts on Wednesday began exhuming a mass unmarked grave that could hold the remains of the acclaimed poet Federico Garcia Lorca, in a milestone in Spain's drive to address the legacy of its 1936-39 civil war.
Working under a tent-like structure, the team started preliminary work staking out and cleaning surface soil at the site in southern Spain in preparation for digging in earnest, said Sara Gil, an archaeologist who is a member of the team.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 28, 2009
The secret behind Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile has been explained by scientists who believe it changes depending on which part of the eye sees it first.
One of the charms of the world's most famous painting is that she appears radiant one moment and then serious and sardonic the next.
Now scientists claim to have come up with an answer to her changing moods - our eyes are sending mixed signals to the brain.
They believe Mona Lisa's smile depends on what cell
Source: Canadian Press
October 27, 2009
CAIRO — The warren of slum alleys is called the Jews' Quarter, but no Jews live there. The ancient synagogue still stands, but its roof is gone. The government is renovating it but is doing so at a moment when anti-Israel feeling is running especially high in Egypt.
The Ben Maimon synagogue exemplifies this country's conflicted relationship with its Jewish past.
The Jewish community that once flourished in the Arab world's most populous nation left behind physical trace
Source: BBC
October 28, 2009
A former member of the Nazi SS has gone on trial in Germany charged with the wartime murder of three civilians in the Netherlands.
Heinrich Boere, 88, has previously acknowledged shooting dead three people in 1944, as reprisals for attacks by the Dutch resistance.
The trial went ahead after an appeal court ruled he was fit to be tried.
Anti-Nazi protesters gathered outside the court in Aachen as the trial opened.
Relatives of some of the vict
Source: BBC
October 27, 2009
A new online portal has been launched to help pupils, teachers and the general public learn more about Scotland's history.
Scotland's History Online features more than 200 topics ranging from prehistoric times to the modern day.
The story of Scotland and its people is told through a wide range of interactive material alongside links to more than 1,000 other online resources.
The website was developed by Learning and Teaching Scotland.
Source: BBC
October 28, 2009
A whale's tooth carved by a royal marine who sailed with Charles Darwin has been found buried in the bottom of a wardrobe in Cheshire.
Known as scrimshaw, the ornate gift is tells the story of the explorer's encounter with Indians in Tierra del Fuego in south Argentina in 1830.
An elderly lady in Macclesfield found the tooth, believed to belong to her husband's great great grandfather.
It could be sold for more than £40,000 when it goes to auction in Nove
Source: BBC
October 28, 2009
It is more than 500 years since the Battle of Bosworth saw the death of Richard III and ushered in the Tudor dynasty.
Since then scholars have argued over the precise location of the battle with several different locations given serious consideration.
Now a team of historians and archaeologists says it has found the site -and it is not where everyone thought it was. Richard III, thrown from his horse and maddened with blood lust, offers up hi
Source: BBC
October 28, 2009
Drawn half a millennium ago and then swiftly forgotten, one map made us see the world as we know it today... and helped name America. But, as Toby Lester has discovered, the most powerful nation on earth also owes its name to a pun.
Matthias Ringmann, two obscure Germanic scholars based in the mountains of eastern France, made one of the boldest leaps in the history of geographical thought - and indeed in the larger history of ideas.
Near the end of an otherwise ploddi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 28, 2009
A secret agent who trained members of the French Resistance behind enemy lines was told he had "no business" in France when he met General de Gaulle, newly released files disclose.
Peter Lake was parachuted into the Dordogne on the night of April 9 1944 to train members of the Resistance in sabotage and guerilla warfare in preparation for D Day.
After the landings he led a daring operation to blow up the main railway line between Perigueux and Coutras.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 28, 2009
A British holidaymaker has uncovered what is believed to be a lost, ancient temple while snorkelling in the Mediterranean.
Michael Le Quesne, 16, was swimming off a popular beach in Montenegro with his parents and his ten-year-old sister Teodora when he spotted an odd looking 'stone' at a depth of around two metres.
It turned out to be a large, submerged building which may have been the centrepiece of an important Greek or Roman trading post, swallowed up by the sea du
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 27, 2009
Lord Horatio Nelson was giving orders 30 minutes after his arm was amputated, according to journals in the National Archive that illustrate the importance of medical skill in securing Britain's naval might.
A collection of 1,200 naval journals, not seen for 200 years, depicts the horror of life on board British fighting vessels in the 18th and 19th centuries, including details of the medical treatment given to Nelson.
Researchers at the National Archives in Kew have g
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 27, 2009
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, whose interior used to be a Victorian “labyrinth”, has been given a clean-cut 21st century, multi-million pound re-fit in a bid to cut "museum fatigue".
Almost two-thirds of the old building has been demolished to make way for 39 new galleries surrounding a six-storey Portland Stone staircase, flooded with natural light from above.
The £61 million price tag has also bought such basic facilities as a loading bay – something the
Source: DVIDS
October 27, 2009
While many Soldiers head home in the late hours of the second shift, Sgt. Ronald Peters sits at his desk scanning over imagery, maps and the Internet, sometimes as late as 5 a.m., looking for answers.
Peters, a geospatial analyst from Fort Lewis, Wash., with Multi-National Corps-Iraq C-7, is undertaking the largest mapping projects of his career. His work is helping to resolve a concern shared by both the U.S. military and the Iraqi government as troops have pulled out of cities and
Source: WSJ
October 28, 2009
WASHINGTON -- U.S. prosecutors in Chicago charged two men with plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that in 2005 printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, in a case that authorities said reveals the reach of a Pakistani militant.
The alleged plot brought together David Coleman Headley, a 49-year-old U.S. citizen, and Ilya Kashmiri, whom prosecutors describe as a Pakistani militant with ties to al Qaeda. Prosecutors have arrested Mr. Coleman and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a 48-year-old
