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: BBC
June 18, 2009
The design for a memorial statue dedicated to the nurse and Crimean War heroine Mary Seacole has been chosen.
Artist Martin Jennings created the winning sculpture, which will stand in the grounds of St Thomas' Hospital in central London.
The Jamaican-born nurse was voted the greatest Black Briton of all time in a poll in 2004. The Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal was set up to create a permanent reminder of the 19th Century nurse.
Source: BBC
June 18, 2009
Chefs searching for an authentic medieval way to roast a porpoise can now look up the recipe online.
The Forme of Cury, compiled by master cooks to Richard II, is part of a collection of medieval texts held by the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
Now an edition of the cookbook dating from the early 15th Century, compiled in about 1420, has been digitalised and uploaded to the library's website. John Hodgson, keeper of manuscripts, said
Source: CNN
June 18, 2009
In his most critical comments to date of the Obama administration's policies, former President George Bush Wednesday warned against the nationalization of healthcare, government overreach in the country's financial system, and the potential effects of closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Asked directly if he thought his successor was embracing "socialist" polices, Bush stopped short of weighing in one way or the other, instead saying: "We'll see.&
Source: Pew Research Center
June 18, 2009
A solid majority of Americans (61%) continue to approve of Barack Obama’s job performance, although they express mixed views of several of his policies. An important positive sign for Obama is the public’s continued optimism that his policies will improve the economy – fully 65% express this view. A smaller majority (55%) is optimistic Obama will reduce the budget deficit over the long-term. Nonetheless, Obama’s job approval on the economy has declined from 60% in April to 52% currently.
Source: Time Magazine
June 17, 2009
Observers with a working knowledge of Iranian politics have largely been able to shrug off President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bluster and bullying, knowing the diminutive President must still answer to a far more powerful figure: Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Since 1989, the shadowy cleric — a former president himself — has sat at the apex of Iran's complex hierarchy as the final word in all political and religious matters. The massive protests roiling Tehran in the aftermath of the June 1
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
June 17, 2009
The rise of “the wall” between intelligence and law enforcement personnel that impeded the sharing of information within the U.S. government prior to September 11, 2001 was critically examined in a detailed monograph (pdf) that was prepared in 2004 for the 9/11 Commission. It is the only one of four staff monographs that had not previously been released. It was finally declassified and disclosed earlier this month.In April 2
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 9, 2009
The wartime pilot who launched the torpedo that led to the sinking of the Bismarck has told his story for the first time.
John Moffat was informed recently by the Fleet Air Arm museum that research had highlighted his role in sinking the German battleship.
The 89-year-old, who lives in Dunkeld, Perthshire, was flying a Swordfish biplane when he carried out the mission. Days before, Bismarck had sunk HMS Hood with the loss of 1,416 lives and Winston Churchill, the prime
Source: AP
June 17, 2009
HANCOCK, Vt. – The aged maple floorboards are scuffed and creaky, worn thin and smooth by thousands of youngsters over the years in the Hancock Village School. Banks of tall windows, a dozen panes over a dozen panes each, flood a pair of classrooms with sunlight.
A 19th-century image of Abraham Lincoln hangs on a back wall in one classroom where studies began in 1801, 60 years before he took office.
That history comes to a close on Thursday. Fewer kids and rising costs
Source: Zenit
June 16, 2009
New evidence published today by the newspaper of the Italian bishops gives more credence to the belief that Adolf Hitler had planned to either kidnap or kill Pope Pius XII.
It has long been conjectured that Hitler had ordered the SS commander in Italy, General Karl Wolf, to seize the Vatican and take the Pope.
Dan Kurzman wrote about it in his 1997 book "A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius the XII," which is based
Source: Zenit
June 15, 2009
A foundation that promotes interreligious dialogue announced that it has more than 2,300 pages of original documents illustrating Pope Pius XII's efforts to help Jews in the face of Nazism.
Gary Krupp, president of the New York-based Pave the Way Foundation, affirmed this today in a statement to ZENIT, and stated that the documents from the years 1940-1945 will be made available to the public for research.
The president, himself a Jew, reported that these papers, found
Source: Voice of America
June 16, 2009
Senate confirmation hearings begin July 13 for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. Experts say that Sotomayor's confirmation is likely, given the Democrats' majority in the Senate. But history shows that the confirmation process can be unpredictable.
If confirmed by the Senate, Judge Sotomayor would become the country's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
From humble beginnings in New York City to some of the country's fi
Source: USA Today blog
June 17, 2009
Who killed off werewolves? Darwin did it, says a science historian, by linking humans to ape-like ancestors.
In a July meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, historian Brian Regal of Kean University in Union, N.J., will demonstrate how werewolves, feared hiding behind every tree in travelers' tales for centuries, died out in folklore following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859.
"The spread of the idea of evolution helped kil
Source: Globe and Mail
June 17, 2009
As high school students across the country sit to write their final examinations this month, Canadians may be shocked to discover that few of them will be tested on what they know about Canada's history.
For more than a decade, the Dominion Institute has commissioned surveys chronicling the national malaise about Canada's history: Four in 10 Canadians cannot name our first prime minister or identify the year of Confederation. Young Canadians often know even less about our country's
Source: AP
June 17, 2009
John Calvin, the Great Reformer, used dictatorial means in making Geneva a "Protestant Rome," but he also planted the seeds of modern democracy.
He enforced rigid morality and stressed the importance of helping others, while he also had a share in developing capitalism. He supported the destruction of religious statues and other images, but described the arts as gifts from God.
This is how Calvin's role in history is being assessed by theologians and historian
Source: Statesman (Texas)
June 17, 2009
He was little more than a teenager, about 19 or 20 years old. Small and slight for warfare on the frontier, he had the delicate facial bones of a boy and had likely once been a slave.
He was a Buffalo Soldier: one of the legendary African American members of the U.S. Army who served at remote military outposts in the years after the Civil War.
But his grave outside an abandoned New Mexico fort had been violated. His bones were scrambled. And investigators think his sk
Source: HNN Staff
June 17, 2009
On the day John Dean is releasing a new edition of his autobiography, Blind Ambition, one of his old critics is charging that Dean admitted to him that the book was based on incomplete research.
In a note to HNN Len Colodny reported that in a 1989 interview Dean admitted"I'm gonna be very honest with you. I didn't even reread my testimony when I wrote my book."
In the original acknowledgements to the book Dean wrote that he had reviewed his own testimony in writing the bo
Source: Irish Times
June 17, 2009
THE MOUNTAINS of Mourne may be fabled in song but now they have a new focus as scientists believe they were the source for most of Ireland’s prehistoric gold.
Ireland has a very high level of prehistoric gold objects especially from the early Bronze Age (2400-1800BC) when large quantities of it was used by skilled craftsmen.
They turned out beautiful objects such as the gold collars or lunula similar to the one which turned up recently following a robbery in Co Roscommo
Source: BBC
June 17, 2009
During a holiday to Northern France, Ayrshire man Robert Taylor came across the grave of an Edinburgh pilot who died during a wartime mission in February 1944. Catherine Lyst recounts his two-and-a-half-year quest to trace the young airman's relatives.
Flt Sgt Archibald Blyth Kirkwood's headstone read: "Treasured memories of Archie our beloved elder son and brother."
Robert and his wife Elizabeth, from Dalmellington, Ayrshire, also noted the next grave, that
Source: BBC
June 17, 2009
A new dinosaur unearthed in western China has shed light on the evolution from dinosaur hands to the wing bones in today's birds.
The fossil, from about 160 million years ago, has been named Limusaurus inextricabilis.
The find contributes to a debate over how an ancestral hand with five digits evolved to one with three in birds.
The work, published in Nature, suggests that the middle three digits, rather than the inside three, remain.
Source: BBC
June 17, 2009
Woolly mammoths lived in Britain as recently as 14,000 years ago, according to new radiocarbon dating evidence.
Dr Adrian Lister obtained new dates for mammoth bones unearthed in the English county of Shropshire in 1986.
His study in the Geological Journal shows the great beasts remained part of Britain's wildlife for much longer than had previously been supposed.
Mammoths may finally have died out when forests encroached on the grassland habitats they fa
