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: NYT
June 26, 2009
The speculation over the future of the marriage of Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor, after his recently disclosed affair is likely to die off well before the family’s pain. So, too, will the unsolicited lectures — about his hypocrisy, about her obligations, about the dire state of marriage in general.
Yet if recent research is any guide, the marriage itself has a chance to outlast all of it, the public leer and the private sting, by many years....
A comparison
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 28, 2009
Medieval Scottish soldiers fought wearing bright yellow war shirts dyed in horse urine rather than the tartan plaid depicted in the film Braveheart, according to new research.
Historian Fergus Cannan states that the Scots armies who fought in battles like Bannockburn, and Flodden Field would have looked very different to the way they have traditionally been depicted.
Instead of kilts, he said they wore saffron-coloured tunics called "leine croich" and used a r
Source: LAT
June 28, 2009
At the center of a desolate valley in the middle of Nevada, more than a dozen miles from the nearest paved road, one of the few signs of human activity is a rusty steel well casing that juts oddly out of the desert floor.
Nobody lives here, but it has a name: the Central Nevada Test Area. It was once a hub of scientific activity. Today, it is an abandoned outpost of the Cold War.
In the lore of the nuclear arms race, the Central Nevada Test Area has occupied a special
Source: Reuters
June 28, 2009
Vatican archaeologists using laser technology have discovered what they believe is the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle, dating from the late 4th century, on the walls of catacomb beneath Rome.
Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, revealing the find on Sunday, published a picture of a frescoed image of the face of a man with a pointed black beard on a red background, inside a bright yellow halo. The high forehead is furrowed.
Source: National Geographic
June 16, 2009
For about as long as humans have created works of art, they've also left behind handprints. People began stenciling, painting, or chipping imprints of their hands onto rock walls at least 30,000 years ago.
Until recently, most scientists assumed these prehistoric handprints were male. But "even a superficial examination of published photos suggested to me that there were lots of female hands there," Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Dean Snow said of European ca
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 27, 2009
Bricks marked with swastikas on a crumbling building in Brazil have
helped historians trace an astonishing plan by Adolf Hitler for a Nazi
empire in South America.
They have also found some of the young men who were kept as slaves by
German settlers and local Nazi supporters.
They were known as ‘ Nummernmenschen’ – the number people – as the
dehumanisation practised in the concentration camps was exported.
It had long been known that fleeing Nazis moved into remote reg
Source: AP
June 27, 2009
Raymond Castro was a regular at The Stonewall Inn in 1969, finding it
a haven from a world where gay men and women could be arrested for
kissing or holding hands in public. Inside the bar, where plywood
covered the windows, warning lights served as a signal for couples to
stop dancing.
When police raided the bar in the past for selling liquor without a
license, patrons normally submitted to arrest or dispersed quietly.
But on June 28, Castro recalled, people fought back.
As o
Source: Chicago Tribune
June 26, 2009
Duffers and history buffs alike will get to follow in the footsteps of Bobby Jones and Bob Hope this weekend as they retrace a vanished golf course considered one of the best in the country in its day.
The beautifully manicured fairways of Mill Road Farm, built in the 1920s, were replaced by subdivisions after World War II. Last winter 30 Lake Forest College students used original plats and satellite images to flag about 10 holes.
"What we found more than greens an
Source: http://www.hometownannapolis.com
June 26, 2009
Who would think a series of dark spots in the ground and a tiny clay pot could generate such excitement?
The dark smudges in the earth, deemed to be posts supporting Native American wigwams, found by county archaeologists this spring could be the oldest structures yet discovered in Maryland.
Carbon dating has determined the settlement along the Patuxent River near Jug Bay dates from A.D. 1290 and 1300.
Source: Discovery.com
June 26, 2009
Some of the world's first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts that date to 6,000-5,000 years ago.
The cart models, which may have been ritual objects or children's toys, were found at Altyndepe, a Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in Western Central Asia near Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Together with other finds, the cart models provide a history of how wheeled transportation first emerg
Source: Media Newswire
June 26, 2009
Today, the National Park Service announced the award of 33 grants totaling $1,360,000 to assist in the preservation and protection of America's significant battlefield lands. This year's grants provide funding at endangered battlefields from the King Philip's War (1675-1676), Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Second Seminole War, Mexican-American War, Civil War, World War II and various Indian Wars.
Source: http://www.dominicantoday.com
June 26, 2009
SANTO DOMINGO.- The attorney-turned-archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, who’s proud to proclaim that her work is part of a larger effort by a Dominican-Egyptian team, today said that her search for Cleopatra’s tomb continues and is convinced she’ll soon find it.
She said her search in the region, kilometers west of the ancient port city of Alexandria, has lasted four years in 4 to 5-month periods, and in addition to the Egyptian queen, expects to find at her side the mummified body 50
Source: WFSB
June 26, 2009
An unusual military funeral was held in Plainville on Friday as family and friends gathered to say goodbye to a man who was killed in the Korean War.
From the 21-gun salute to the lone bugler, it was like any other funeral with full military honors. The only difference was that the funeral came nearly 60 years late.
Sgt. 1st Class Lincoln "Cliff" May was killed while fighting in Korea in 1950. His unidentified remains came back to the U.S. in 1993 and were rec
Source: BBC
June 27, 2009
The Red Cross is marking the 150th anniversary of the battle which inspired Henri Dunant to found the world's best known humanitarian movement.
At the end of June 1859, the armies of France and Sardinia, led by Napoleon III, confronted the Austrians at Solferino in northern Italy.
The Red Cross is marking the 150th anniversary of the battle which inspired Henri Dunant to found the world's best known humanitarian movement.
At the end of June 1859, the armie
Source: BBC
June 27, 2009
At the end of the Bosnian Civil War, it was agreed that the country would remain a single nation.
However, the Serbs were granted their own officially-recognised region, known as the Republika Srpska.
The Republika Srpska parliament has issued a declaration, insisting that it has the right to make its own rules in certain key areas, like immigration and customs. That move was vetoed this week by Bosnia's High Representative, the intern
Source: BBC
June 26, 2009
Dozens of prominent Chinese academics have signed a petition calling for the release of veteran political activist Liu Xiaobo.
They say his arrest shows that no one in China has the right to publicly express their opinions.
Mr Liu was formally arrested on Tuesday - more than six months after he was detained by the authorities.
He has been charged with inciting subversion by spreading rumours and defaming the government.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 27, 2009
Meriwether Lewis, one half of the Lewis and Clark explorer duo who first reached the Pacific by land, may have been murdered, say descendants who want his body exhumed.
Now, as the 200th anniversary of his death approaches, his descendants have mounted a fresh push to have his body exhumed and the cold case reopened, believing that modern forensic procedures could settle the mystery.
An often melancholy character, his death was noted as a suicide and, despite his stat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 27, 2009
From riderless horses disappearing through castle walls mischievous spirits apparently barging into visitors, English Heritage has compiled a new survey of "hauntings" and unexplained events recorded at its sites.
One medieval palace is even said to be haunted by a former member of staff.
Many of the events involve staff and visitors seeing mysterious figures, while others involve complaints that people were pinched or pushed, when there was nobody standing
Source: CNN
June 27, 2009
Former First Lady Laura Bush — who has kept a low profile since her husband's administration came to an end — is speaking out on a cause she championed while in the White House: the ongoing situation in Burma.
In a Washington Post op-ed set to be published in the paper's Sunday edition, Bush draws parallels between the events in Iran and Burma (Myanmar), and urges the United Nations to press the ruling regime there to end human rights abuses.
In her op-ed, Bush also say
Source: NYT
June 25, 2009
The black and white bars designed in the 1970s to read
prices and track inventory are now scanned more than 10
billion times a day.
