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: Independent (UK)
July 30, 2009
Vladimir Putin received a rare public rebuff from the widow of Alexander Solzhenitsyn for using the term "propaganda" in discussing the author's account of Soviet Gulag life, The Gulag Archipelago.
The Prime Minister, a scion of the Soviet intelligence world that suppressed Solzhenitsyn's works for most of his life, had meant only praise in proposing his account of the horrors of camp life for Russia's school curriculum.
Language, however, can be a sensitive m
Source: Discovery News
July 17, 2009
The 57 tattoos sported by Oetzi, the 5300-year-old Tyrolean iceman mummy, were made from fireplace soot that contained glittering, colorful precious stone crystals, according to an upcoming study in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The determination supports prior research that the tattoos were associated with acupuncture treatments for chronic ailments suffered by the iceman, whose frozen body was found remarkably well preserved in the Similaun Glacier of the Alps in 1991.
Source: Discovery News
July 28, 2009
A 400-year warm spell helped the ancient Inca to build the largest empire ever to exist in the Americas, a new study has established.
Beginning around 1100 A.D., the increase in temperature served as a "perfect incubator" for the Inca's expansion, an international team of researchers report in the current issue of the journal Climate of the Past.
"Climate warming does not always have to be a negative issue. Our research shows that it can favor societal de
Source: AFP
July 30, 2009
A Nazi death camp may not seem a fit topic for comic books but a new series with real-life stories from Auschwitz has come out in Poland -- in Polish and English -- to teach youngsters about the Holocaust.
The drawings, at times as raw as the reality, are offset by the humanity of real, historically documented prisoners -- and jailers -- like the doomed, young lovers in the first adventure, "Love in the Shadow of Death".
The creators Beata Klos and Jacek Lech
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 30, 2009
More than 1.5 tonnes of silver coins, gold jewellery, crystal, Chinese porcelain, cannon, muskets and 400 bottles of wine were recovered by the treasure hunters from the Forbes, a ship that ran aground between Borneo and Sumatra in 1806.
The team believes the value of the find to be at least 7 million euros (£6m).
Martin Wenzel, one of the hunters, told The Daily Telegraph that the discovery had come like "a shot of adrenalin in the blood".
"
Source: BBC
July 30, 2009
The last surviving British veteran is Claude Choules, 108, who lives in Australia. The former seaman is also the last veteran to have served in both world wars.
Jack Babcock, 109, is Canada's only surviving veteran of WWI, but he never saw action.
In an interview with the Canadian Army website he said: "I don't consider myself to be a veteran, because I never got to fight." Frank Buckles, 108, is the last remaining member of
Source: BBC
July 30, 2009
Henry Allingham, who was in the Royal Naval Air Service in the war and later with the RAF, was the world's oldest man when he died 12 days ago aged 113.
Since his death, the last WWI veteran in Britain, Harry Patch, has also died.
Hundreds of people are expected to attend Mr Allingham's funeral in Brighton, which will be followed by a flypast of five replica WWI aircraft.
Among the guests will be the Duchess of Gloucester, the Veterans Minister Kevan Jon
Source: BBC
July 30, 2009
Chairman Sir John Chilcot will outline some details of the inquiry, although its exact terms of remit are not expected to be spelled out.
There have already been four inquiries into aspects of the war but critics say there are still questions to answer.
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said hearings would be in public unless there were national security concerns.
The inquiry is expected to take about a year and report back after the next general election.
Source: The Daily Beast
July 28, 2009
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell jumped into the fray on issues surrounding the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Tuesday night with a rebuke of the Harvard professor. Having been the victim of racial profiling "many times" himself, Powell said Gates should have practiced more restraint with the police officer who arrested him. "I think [Gates] should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal," Powell said on Larry King Live of the Gat
Source: Wired
July 28, 2009
It’s one of the few great archaeological mysteries of the world, and now a bunch of gadget-wielding geeks are going to try and solve it.
The tomb of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol empire and one of the world’s greatest and most ruthless emperors, has remained hidden for nearly eight centuries. According to legend, Khan died in 1227 near the Liupan mountains of China and is thought to be buried in the northeastern region of what is currently Mongolia.
Now a group of
Source: NBC Nightly News
July 29, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for
Source: Spiegel Online
July 28, 2009
The fate of Napoleon's Grand Army was sealed long before the first shot was fired. In the spring of 1812, more than 600,000 men marched towards Russia under the command of the diminutive Corsican -- an army larger than the population of Paris at the time.
The massive army was on its way to topple the Russian Czar Alexander I. Yet long before the fighting started, a few soldiers staggered out of the ranks and collapsed at the side of the road. Were the men drunk as skunks, or was som
Source: WaPo
July 29, 2009
Maytham Hamzah cast his eyes toward the remains of King Nebuchadnezzar's guest palace in Babylon, one of the world's first great cities. He smiled, bitterly.
"They destroyed the whole country," Hamzah, the head of the Babylon museum, said of U.S. forces in Iraq. "So what are a few old bricks and mud walls in comparison?"
U.S. forces did not exactly destroy the 4,000-year-old city, home of one of the world's original seven wonders, the Hanging Gar
Source: Foxnews
July 29, 2009
White supremacist James von Brunn was indicted Wednesday in the deadly June 10 shooting of a Holocaust Museum guard.
The seven-count indictment charges Von Brunn, 89, of killing Stephen Tyrone Johns at the museum in Washington, D.C.
If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Four of the counts also are punishable by death.
Source: National Geographic
July 28, 2009
Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men—their heads stacked neatly to the side—have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month.
The mass burial took place at a time when the English were battling Viking invaders, say archaeologists who are now trying to verify the identity of the slain.
The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacke
Source: Science News
July 28, 2009
Night-shining clouds created after space shuttle launches may offer clues into the cause of the Tunguska event, a mysterious blast which rocked southern Siberia more than a century ago.
Thin clouds have appeared at abnormally high altitudes over polar regions following space shuttle launches on several occasions in the past decade. These noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds typically occur in summer and lie at altitudes of about 85 kilometers, in a layer of the atmosphere called th
Source: Dallas News
July 9, 2009
Civil rights leaders César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall – whose names appear on schools, libraries, streets and parks across the U.S. – are given too much attention in Texas social studies classes, conservatives advising the state on curriculum standards say.
"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" – as in the current standards – "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curricul
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 29, 2009
Some children believe Bob Geldof discovered gravity and the Somme is a
world famous painting, according to new research.
The findings emerged from a study of 5,000 children, which revealed
most do not have a clue about basic historical facts.
One in 20 picked former Boom Town Rats singer Geldof instead of Sir
Isaac Newton when asked to name the man who discovered gravity.
And 12 per cent of youngsters thought the Somme was a famous painting,
rather than the site of the b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2009
Seventy years ago, the owner of a Suffolk estate invited guests to celebrate the unearthing of a 'Viking' ship on her land. Little did she know it would turn out to be one of the most important Anglo-Saxon finds of the century.
The sherry party that Mrs Edith Pretty threw at her home above the River Deben in Suffolk on July 25 1939 was one of those occasions that everyone remembers for the wrong reasons. The invitation, dispatched to the great and good of the locality – including t
Source: AP
July 29, 2009
The site of a history-changing battle lies somewhere amid the dense tangle of forest along the Lake Champlain shoreline in this Adirondack town.
Four-hundred years after French explorer Samuel de Champlain went to war against the Iroquois on July 30, 1609, the battleground's exact location remains elusive.
For years, the two locations claimed bragging rights as the site of Champlain's 1609 battle. But other historians have taken a closer look at the explorer's own accou
