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: CNN
July 17, 2009
President Obama slowly walked across the grounds of Cape Coast Castle, a slave outpost in Ghana where hundreds of thousands of Africans were shipped as human cargo to a life of bondage in the United States, South Africa and the Caribbean.
Obama's recent trip to Ghana and the slave-shipping outpost comes on the heels of last month's apology by the U.S. Senate about slavery. The Senate passed a nonbinding resolution that "acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality
Source: CNN
June 17, 2009
Families of September 11 victims visiting Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday urged the Obama administration to drop plans to close the facility and to restart terror trials there.
Other September 11 families have visited Guantanamo Bay for previous hearings and voiced support for using the facility for terror trials. The government uses a random process to select names of family members invited to observe.
The family members said they think Guantanamo detainees have been
Source: CNN
July 16, 2009
In many places across the South you can walk in the footsteps of slaves, and if you understand the history, it is not a happy journey. The same is true at Friendfield Plantation outside Georgetown, South Carolina.
It's not exactly "Gone With the Wind," but what makes this overgrown 3,300 acres of marsh and pine trees stand out is this: The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 16, 2009
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, is reportedly going to skip a celebration of his achievement to mark the Apollo 11 mission's 40th anniversary.
The notoriously publicity-shy Armstrong will appear briefly at an event on Sunday, but will not appear in public on Monday, 40 years to the day since he set foot on the Moon.
The event at Nasa's headquarters in Washington will be attended by his fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and one of the last men t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 16, 2009
Marking the 40th anniversary of man's first lunar landing, more than 50 items related to the Apollo 11 mission are to go up for auction on Thursday.
Bonhams New York said many of the articles were acquired directly from the astronauts or were originally in their collections.
Among the highlights from the historic July 20, 1969, mission of Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin is a lunar module landing sequence – three sheets that list "entry commands to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 16, 2009
Oscar Wilde, whose flamboyant homosexuality shocked Britain in the 19th century, won an unlikely endorsement from the Vatican on Thursday.
In a surprise act of reconciliation with the playwright, the Holy See's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, praised the poet as a "lucid analyst of the modern world".
Wilde, who was sent to prison for acts of gross indecency with Lord Alfred Douglas and later converted to Catholicism, has been regarded by the Roman
Source: CNN
July 16, 2009
One hundred years after the birth of the NAACP, the civil rights group welcomes a major address by the first African-American president.
President Obama speaks before the annual convention Thursday night in New York, the city where the organization was founded a century ago.
The excitement over Obama is in stark contrast to the reception of former President Bush, who had a strained relationship with the NAACP and declined the group's invitations for five years.
Source: AP
July 16, 2009
Museums are seeing an increase in donations and oral histories from the swell of former U.S. prisoners of war eager to leave their legacies. But museum officials still worry that too many POWs approaching their late 80s and 90s will go to their graves without publicly telling their stories.
The National Prisoner of War Museum, in Andersonville, Ga., said it expects to have a 40 percent increase in artifacts, journals and other donations from former POWs this year compared to last y
Source: AP
July 16, 2009
When Enid Pinkney was a girl in the 1940s, her grandmother would tell her stories about a black cemetery nestled in the northwest corner of Miami in an area once called Lemon City.
Pinkney never saw any headstones or tombs on the former farm land, which gradually became surrounded by small homes, car lots and industrial warehouses starting in the 1950s and 1960s. Interstate 95 rumbles past a few blocks away.
But Pinkney's grandmother was apparently right. The bones of a
Source: Telegraph
July 16, 2009
Saddam Hussein spent billions building dozens of vast, gaudy palaces all over Iraq, many of which are still occupied by US troops. But the Iraqi government is divided - as usual - on what to do with them once the soldiers have gone.
There is, as yet, no instructed estate agent, but should one come along, their marketing pitch will for once need no over-egging. ‘For sale/rent: 80 presidential palaces, average unit living space half-a-million square feet. Attached gardens featuring di
Source: AP
July 16, 2009
The Watergate Hotel made famous by a presidential scandal is expected to be on the auction block next week.
Alex Cooper Auctioneers is announcing that it will take bids Tuesday on the Washington landmark.
A 30-day foreclosure notice expires Thursday. It was sent to hotel owner Monument Realty last month after the company defaulted on its loan and lists an outstanding $40 million balance.
Source: Salon
July 16, 2009
An elegant white sign at Arlington National Cemetery informs visitors they are inside "our nation's most sacred shrine." Run under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army, Arlington is the final resting place of John and Robert Kennedy, Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Earl Warren, and the nation's military royalty from the Civil War to the Iraq war. More than 4 million people visit Arlington every year to tour the legendary grave sites, which include those of "Malte
Source: Economic Times
July 16, 2009
Every week Roger Launius, chief historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, devotes his time to debunking one of history's favourite such theories: That astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never landed on the moon.
The entire July 20, 1969, landing and the spacewalk several hours later was just a show, all lies, filmed in a Hollywood studio or in a desert, the sceptics say.
At one time, up to 10 percent of Americans may have believe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 15, 2009
Neil Armstrong's historic moon landing will be shown in new light on Thursday when Nasa releases a new film of the first manned lunar excursion.
It has been restored and digitally enhanced using state-of-the-art technology and will be much clearer and less grainy than previously released footage of the 1969 landing.
It features 15 key moments from the historic lunar walk, and is part of Nasa's comprehensive Apollo 11 restoration project which is expected to be complet
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 15, 2009
Two ancient miniature "cheat sheets", designed to aid students sitting Imperial examinations, have been discovered in China.
The tiny booklets, printed on silk, date from the middle of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) and may have been used by students to jog their memories of Confucius' Analects and other works of literature required for the Imperial civil service examinations.
One of the texts, discovered in Qingdao, is thought to be the smallest book ever
Source: BBC
July 15, 2009
Signs are to be erected at Culloden Battlefield asking visitors to respect the site as a war grave following a complaint about picnickers.
A member of A Circle of Gentlemen, a society which recalls the Jacobite cause, said he was furious at the behaviour of some tourists.
Alasdair MacNeill said he saw a family picnicking on top of one of the grave mounds.
Culloden, near Inverness, saw the defeat of the Jacobites in April 1746.
Source: Foxnews
July 15, 2009
President Obama has promised relatives of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack victims that they would be part of the process of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison but some have been frustrated by the administration's effort.
Obama has promised relatives of the victims that they would be part of the process of closing the prison. In February, he met with roughly 40 family members of the victims and said he wanted what they do: justice for their loved ones.
The Defense and Just
Source: AP
July 14, 2009
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor testified at his war crimes trial Tuesday that the case against him was built on lies and misinformation, and he denied he had commanded and armed rebels who killed and tortured tens of thousands of civilians.
Taylor, the first African leader to stand trial for war crimes, is charged with 11 counts of murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers and terrorism during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war.
An es
Source: BBC
July 15, 2009
Archaeologists from Berkshire say they have discovered evidence of an Iron Age town underneath the remains of a Roman settlement in north Hampshire.
The University of Reading's Archaeology Department has been excavating at the Silchester Roman site, Calleva Atrebatum, since 1997.
Now the team believe they have found evidence of one of Britain's earliest Iron Age towns with a planned layout
Source: Discovery.com
July 14, 2009
Egyptian archaeologists digging near the Suez Canal have discovered the remains of what is believed to be the largest fortress in the eastern Delta, Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced.
Located at the site of Tell Dafna, between El-Manzala Lake and the Suez Canal, the remains reveal the foundation of a military town about 9 miles (15 kilometers) northeast of the city of western Qantara.
"The fortress covers an area of about 380 by 625 meters (1,247
