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)
July 27, 2009
A book released to mark the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing – complete with a piece of Moon rock in the binding – is to go on sale for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Only 12 copies of the special edition of MoonFire will be available, because of the scarcity of the rock.
The commemorative book is based on accounts of the Apollo 11 mission by Norman Mailer, the US author and space exploration enthusiast who died in 2007.
The extra-large tome featu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 27, 2009
An extremely rare copy of Mein Kampf, signed by author Adolf Hitler and dedicated to a fellow inmate at Landsberg prison, is being sold at auction.
The red cloth book is thought to be one of only a handful of pre-publication copies given to the Nazi dictator in 1925.
Translated as "My Struggle", Hitler dedicated the political manifesto to fellow Nazi, Georg Maurer.
A lucid black scrawled inscription reads, "Herrn Johann Georg Maurer. In me
Source: BBC
July 25, 2009
Mr Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died.
He was raised in Coombe Down, near Bath, and had been living at a care home in Wells, Somerset.
The oldest British World War I veteran is now Claude Choules who is aged 108 and lives in Australia.
Henry Allingham, who served in the Royal Navy and the RAF in WWI, died at the age of 113 a week ago.
Source: NYT
July 25, 2009
Even if [President Obama] goes the bipartisan route and succeeds, the end result could be comparatively modest: Perhaps fewer than 10 Senate Republicans, and perhaps not even that many in the House, party officials said. Social Security, by contrast, passed in 1935 with the support of 16 of the 25 Republican senators and 81 of the 102 Republican representatives.
Still, ending partisan infighting was a central pledge Mr. Obama offered the nation from the earliest days of his candidac
Source: CNN
July 27, 2009
Fifteen years ago this month, Rwanda declared a cease-fire in a genocide that left more than 800,000 dead. In the attacks that started in April 1994, Hutu militias and members of the general population sought out Tutsis and moderate Hutus -- and went on a 100-day killing rampage.
Civilians and children got incentives to take part in the atrocities, including promises of land belonging to their Tutsi neighbors.
It was one of the most brutal genocides in modern history.
Source: WBBM
July 26, 2009
As America marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, a new book has captured the history and drama of the mission which included man’s first landing on the moon. “Rocket Men – The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon” by author Craig Nelson provides a detailed account of the mission and draws from 23,000 pages of NASA and CIA documents, interviews and oral histories.
“The more you know about this story, the prouder you are to be an American,” said Nelson in an interview with Newsr
Source: NYT
July 26, 2009
AS the National Park Service readies for its close-up this fall in Ken Burns’s new documentary, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” the frenzy of attention sure to accompany the series will fix a spotlight the size of the Grand Canyon on the country’s famed wilderness areas like Yellowstone and Yosemite.
But the film itself, according to Mr. Burns, will focus on the evolution of the park system and the “history of the idea” behind it, going far beyond the iconic natural spots
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
July 26, 2009
A team of U.S. scientists that has unearthed a layer of microscopic diamonds on a California island (USA) is calling the find a possible 'smoking gun' to prove a controversial theory that debris from a massive comet - believed to have smashed into northern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago - wiped out the woolly mammoth and dozens of other Ice Age mammals, triggered a 1,000-year period of global cooling and threatened the fragile foothold of North America's earliest human inhabitants.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
July 26, 2009
The earliest suggestion of something worth uncovering on thias plateau above the Huron River (Ohio, USA) were some dark electronic smudges on a piece of graph paper. The smudges piqued Brian Redmond's professional curiosity, though. They were a kind of map of the field's subsurface, traced by an instrument called a fluxgate gradiometer. Sweeping one a few inches above the ground produces a sort of magnetic fingerprint of subsurface soil that's been disturbed in some way, whether by digging or bu
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
July 26, 2009
In a new study, a scientist is analyzing how humans came to develop clothing, and how that innovation might have in turn given our species an evolutionary edge over other hominids. According to a report in Science Alert, the scientist in question is Ian Gilligan, a doctoral researcher from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at ANU (Australian National University). In his study, Gilligan wants to understand the physiological, psychological and prehistoric aspects of clothing. "I'm in
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
July 26, 2009
The Directorate-General of Antiquities, Lebanon, has said that it plans to resume excavation at the Freres archaeological site in the old city of Sidon in collaboration with a delegation of the British museum, in order to uncover more ancient ruins. Earlier excavation procedures at the site led to the discovery of several of the citys underground layers, which dated back to 1,000-4,000 BCE.
Source: Times (UK)
July 26, 2009
English Heritage is to rewrite guides to its properties to ensure they can be understood by visitors with the reading age of a 10-year-old.
The government’s custodian of historic sites is to launch an intellectual audit of the 400 sites it manages following criticism that it is too high-brow and has not done enough to attract visitors from lower socioeconomic groups.
English Heritage, whose properties include Stonehenge and the site of the battle of Hastings, is to laun
Source: BBC
July 27, 2009
The house's owner says she has failed to find an institution interested in preserving the building's legacy, so she is selling it on the open market.
Gandhi is thought to have lived there for three years from 1907 - when he began to formulate his philosophy of non-violent resistance.
He lived in South Africa for 21 years, working as a lawyer and activist.
Source: Guardian (UK)
July 27, 2009
A Virginia man has been sentenced to life in prison for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-president George W Bush.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who grew up in Falls Church, Virginia was convicted in federal court in 2005. He was originally sentenced to 30 years in prison, but an appeals court sent back the case out of concern that the sentence was too lenient.
US judge Gerald Bruce Lee said the new sentence takes into account the fact that Abu Ali has never renou
Source: Bloomberg News
July 22, 2009
Archaeologists in Cyprus found evidence that inhabitants of the Mediterranean island may have abandoned a nomadic lifestyle for agriculture-based settlements earlier than previously believed.
The excavations at the Politiko-Troullia site, near the capital Nicosia, unearthed a series of households around a communal courtyard, and proof of intensive animal husbandry and crop-processing, according to a statement today on the Web site of the Cypriot Interior Ministry’s Public Informati
Source: Reuters
July 22, 2009
A pre-Incan mummy and eight other skeletons have been dug up from under what used to be a shanty town in the middle of Peru's capital, archeologists said on Wednesday.
Urban squatters had lived on the Huaca Huantille ruins for years, unaware they contained an ancient burial site.
Archeologist Roberto Quispe working on the excavation said the bones were from the Ychsma civilization dating from between 1000 and 1400 AD.
Source: BBC
July 24, 2009
Imagine finding a 2,000 year old Roman coin near the ancient path of the Ridgeway that had slipped from the fingers of a Celtic warrior in 207BC. Thatcham metal detectorist Malcolm Langford has discovered the UK's oldest Roman coin.
He has found everything from stone age artefacts to Roman coins, and enjoys taking his finds to schools to pass on his passion for the past.
Malcolm said he discovered the age of the coin when he took it, along with another Iron Age silver c
Source: ANSA
July 24, 2009
An amateur scuba diver has discovered what may be the ruins of an ancient city off the coast of Calabria, a local town council said Friday.
Alessandro Ciliberto, an architect with a passion for scuba diving, discovered a group of stone blocks around 3-4 metres under water while he was diving 15 metres from the shore near the town of Squillace on Calabria's east coast.
Squillace town council said it was possible that the ruins belonged to the ancient seaside city of Scyl
Source: BBC
July 26, 2009
The sacrifices of the World War I generation are to be commemorated in a special national service, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.
It is likely to be held at Westminster Abbey and will be attended by the prime minister, Downing Street said. The Queen is also expected to attend.
The announcement comes after the death of Harry Patch, the last British survivor of the World War I trenches.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
July 26, 2009
Newly declassified images have been released showing the devastating impact of global warming in the Alaska.
The graphic photographs, released last week by the American military, show huge swathes of summer ice cover have disappeared from the Chukchi Sea.
The photos were kept strictly secret by the Washington administration under George W Bush and were declassified by the White House last week.
