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: National Security Archive
July 17, 2009
Pentagon classification authorities are treating classified historical documents as if they contain today's secrets, rather than decades-old information that has not been secret for years. Today the National Security Archive posted multiple versions of the same documents--on issues ranging from the 1973 October War to anti-ballistic missiles, strategic arms control, and U.S. policy toward China--that are already declassified and in the public domain. What earlier declassification reviewers relea
Source: http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com
July 15, 2009
Images of the looted archaeological museum in Baghdad in the wake of the second Gulf War alerted the initial community to the issue of archaeological material passing into the market. There were swift moves to protect cultural property; these included the UN Security Council Resolution 1483 to Protect Iraq's Heritage.
Professional bodies such as the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) have kept a close watch on developments (see Earthwatch for Iraq). Professor Brian Rose, pres
Source: Science Daily
July 21, 2009
A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.
In a paper appearing online ahead of regular publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Oregon archaeologist Douglas J. Kennett and colleagues from nine institutions and three private research companies report the presence of shock-synthesized hexag
Source: Time
July 21, 2009
What's in an apology? Some expressions of remorse are commonplace — we hear them on the playground when kids smack each other on the head, or they land in your inbox after a friend forgets your birthday. It's the grand-scale apologies, it seems, that are harder to come by.
On July 17, the California legislature quietly approved a landmark bill to apologize to the state's Chinese-American community for racist laws enacted as far back as the mid–19th century Gold Rush, which attracted
Source: Scotsman
November 2, 2007
A SINISTER group of Nazi sympathisers is aiding a former death-camp guard, tracked down by a British historian, to avoid prosecution.
Last month, the historian Guy Walters revealed he had traced Erna Wallisch, 85, who lives alone in a flat outside Vienna.
She looks like a harmless old grandmother, but is wanted for beating prisoners to death at the Majdanek extermination camp in Poland during the Second World War, when she worked as an SS guard.
She is on t
Source: Time
July 21, 2009
On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing — or was it just a sinister hoax? — TIME looks back at 10 of the world's most enduring conspiracy theories.
Source: MSNBC
July 20, 2009
[HNN Editor: Rick Perlstein ("Nixonland") directed our attention t
Source: USA Today
July 21, 2009
A president's standing after his first six months in office doesn't forecast whether he'll have a successful four-year term, but it does signal how much political juice he'll have for his second six months in office.
That's the lesson of history.
Barack Obama, who completed six months in office Monday, has a 55% approval rating in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, putting him 10th among the dozen presidents who have served since World War II at this point in their tenures.
Source: Cleveland.com
July 20, 2009
Huron County- The first clue that something unusual lay hidden beneath the old bean field didn't come from digging in the hard-packed dirt. Archaeology is still fundamentally about digging, but that would come later.
No, the earliest suggestion of something worth uncovering on this plateau above the Huron River was some dark electronic smudges on a piece of graph paper. To an untrained eye, they looked like random squiggles - a few dots, two stripes running roughly parallel to each
Source: CBS
July 17, 2009
Walter Cronkite, who personified television journalism for more than a generation as anchor and managing editor of the"CBS Evening News," has died Friday night in New York. He was 92.
Known for his steady and straightforward delivery, his trim moustache, and his iconic sign-off line -"That’s the way it is" - Cronkite dominated the television news industry during one of the most volatile periods of American history. He broke the news of the Kennedy assassination, reported extensively on
Source: The Times (UK)
July 21, 2009
To those who heard them live they are among the most unforgettable words uttered anywhere on - or off - the earth. But was Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” speech as he became the first man to set foot on the moon actually coined by a British scientist based at a deep space tracking station in the Australian outback?
He was stationed at Tidbinilla, an 85ft satellite dish near Canberra, and in the run up to the landing was wondering what the first words spoken on the moon would be.
Source: Discovery News
July 21, 2009
A set of 15 mysterious life-size masks, reminiscent of ancient Roman drama, have been rediscovered in Pompeii after being forgotten for more than two centuries, according to Italian archaeologists who have shown them for the first time at an exhibition in Naples, Italy.
Made of plaster, the rather heavy masks were unearthed in 1749 in Pompeii during the excavations promoted by King Charles of Bourbon. They were deposited, along with many other artifacts, in the Royal Palace of Porti
Source: Wiltshire Times
July 21, 2009
The family of a Bradford on Avon soldier who died in a First World War battle 93 years ago this month hope that DNA from a living relative will help to find his remains in a mass grave so they can give him a proper burial.
Westbury woman Rosina Clark, whose great uncle Private Walter John Deverell died in the Battle of Fromelles in northern France in July 1916, stumbled across the news of her relative’s death while researching her family tree and has been looking into his life for
Source: AP
May 21, 2009
Bucket loaders and bulldozers are tearing apart a hill that researchers call the foundation of an ancient Native American site to provide fill dirt for a Sam's Club store, a move that appalls preservationists.
Tribal advocates and state officials say a large stone mound that tops the 200-foot rise was put there a millennium ago by Indians during a religious observance. It is similar to rock mounds found up and down the Eastern Seaboard, historians say, and likely dates to Indians of
Source: BBC
July 21, 2009
A Romanian mayor has been strongly criticised by Jewish groups after appearing dressed in a Nazi uniform at a local fashion show.
Radu Mazare, mayor of Constanza, appeared with his similarly dressed 15-year-old son at the event.
The Simon Wiesenthal human rights centre called on Mr Mazare to admit he made a mistake, apologise and resign.
He added that the uniform was a German army one, not that of an SS officer. And, he said, he had attempted to cover up
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2009
The French government has been accused of covering up the extent of violence during last week's Bastille Day festivities.
The interior ministry said that around 500 cars were burned by gangs of youths around the country on the night of July 13. However it has refused to issue figures for July 14, saying only that it was "relatively calm".
Journalists on local and national newspapers who tried to find out more were told by police that strict instructions had b
Source: CNN
July 21, 2009
A prosecutor is dropping a charge against prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the city's police department recommended that the matter not be pursued.
According to the report, officers responded to a call Thursday from a woman who said she saw "a man wedging his shoulder into the front door" at Gates' house near the university. The report, obtained by CNN affiliate WCVB-TV, indicates Gates refused to identify him
Source: Reuters
July 17, 2009
The 15th century Vinland Map, the first known map to show part of America before explorer Christopher Columbus landed on the continent, is almost certainly genuine, a Danish expert said Friday.
Controversy has swirled around the map since it came to light in the 1950s, many scholars suspecting it was a hoax meant to prove that Vikings were the first Europeans to land in North America -- a claim confirmed by a 1960 archaeological find.
Doubts about the map lingered even
Source: AP
July 18, 2009
Until a few years ago, the memory of three African American soldiers was buried beneath the sandy, desert in New Mexico, their remains left behind by the military and to the mercy of looters.
With some investigating and modern forensics, government archaeologists excavated the remains and identified them as Army Pvts. Thomas Smith, David Ford and Levi Morris. They were among the famed Buffalo Soldiers, African-American members of the U.S. Army who served at remote outposts on the We
Source: BBC
July 16, 2009
The Cheddar Gorge in Somerset was one of the first sites inhabited by humans when they returned to Britain towards the end of the last Ice Age.
New radiocarbon dates on bones from Gough's Cave show people were living there some 14,700 years ago.
The results confirm the site's great antiquity and suggest human hunters re-colonised Britain at a time of rapid climate warming.
Interest in the site was stimulated by the discovery in 1903 of "Cheddar Man&q
