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 15, 2009
Part of a Neanderthal man's skull has been dredged up from the North Sea, in the first confirmed find of its kind.
Scientists in Leiden, in the Netherlands, have unveiled the specimen - a fragment from the front of a skull belonging to a young adult male.
Analysis of chemical "isotopes" in the 60,000-year-old fossil suggest a carnivorous diet, matching results from other Neanderthal specimens. The North Sea is one of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 15, 2009
A naked portrayal of the Mona Lisa, which was once attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, forms one of the highlights of the biggest exhibition ever held on the Renaissance genius.
The mysterious portrait of a semi-nude woman, looking straight at the viewer with an enigmatic smile and with her hands crossed, bears a remarkable resemblance to Leonardo's world famous painting.
Hidden for almost a century within the panelled walls of a library, the portrait appears to have been
Source: AP
June 15, 2009
Historians and archaeologists want to know who was buried in an apparently forgotten cemetery uncovered in a Miami construction site.
Construction crews uncovered bones, crumbled headstones and nails and metal handles from coffins in the site off Interstate 95. A search of the lot in April failed to uncover any names, records or documents detailing who had been buried there. Only two commercial maps from 1925 and 1936 label the site as a cemetery.
Some longtime resident
Source: TheDailyBeast.com
June 15, 2009
In his first interview since taking the job, Panetta tells The New Yorker's Jane Mayer that, when he took over, he "wanted to be damn sure" that no one was on the payroll who could be prosecuted for war crimes. But once the agency was clean, he "didn't want to spend a lot of time dealing with the past and what mistakes were made." Panetta also says that he actually supported a truth commission to investigate the CIA's use of torture, at least until President Obama nipped the
Source: Time Magazine
June 5, 2009
Sometimes location is everything. Other times, it's just a convenient place
to spend the night.
On both sides of the Atlantic, much has been made of Barack Obama's decision
to spend Thursday night in Dresden, the German city known primarily as the
site of a horrific bombing campaign by U.S. and British forces just months
before the end of World War II. The bombing, which lasted 63 minutes,
started fires that ultimately claimed the lives of between 18,000 and 25,000
Germans, accordin
Source: Mental Floss
June 12, 2009
Perhaps your history teachers failed to alert you to these Civil War facts: Jefferson Davis nearly got mugged by an angry female mob; Abraham Lincoln loved the Confederate anthem "Dixie," and Paul Revere was a Civil War casualty.
The Civil War, in addition to being among the defining moments of U.S. history, is also the source of some bizarre and surprisingly cool trivia.
1. Lincoln's first solution to slavery was a fiasco
2. Hungry ladies effecti
Source: AP
June 15, 2009
A rare leather-bound book that played an influential role in America's early history could bring a windfall for a soldier training for his second tour in Iraq.
Indiana National Guard Capt. Nathan Harlan was a high school junior when he paid $7 for a 1788 first edition of volume one of "The Federalist" — a two-volume book of essays calling for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Harlan, a 35-year-old from Granger, Ind., said he always thought his find mi
Source: AP
June 14, 2009
A rare Abraham Lincoln stamp that was stolen in 1967 and surfaced 39 years later has sold at auction for more than $430,000.
The stamped envelope was auctioned Saturday at Manhattan's Robert A. Siegel galleries.
The stamp vanished from its owner's safe in Indianapolis and turned up in 2006 at a home in Chicago, about 200 miles away. A collector notified police.
Source: AP
June 14, 2009
Caught in the hail of bullets and bombs, a Plainville soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Lincoln Clifford May, lay among the mounds of the dead.
But in 1993, the North Koreans handed over 208 boxes of bones from U.S. soldiers who perished in that bleak landscape.
Using DNA provided by May's two nephews, Glenn and Cliff Block of Bristol, some of the bones have been identified after all these years by military experts as belonging to the long-dead Plainville soldier.
Source: IHT
June 9, 2009
The president of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, who has hung on by his fingernails through repeated periods of friction with the Kremlin, pushed his luck last week when he gave a scathing interview to a Moscow newspaper, charging that Russia’s political institutions were “embarrassing to look at” and that the country “is walking away from the process of democratization.”
Murtaza G. Rakhimov, 75, who has led Bashkortostan, an energy-rich southwestern region, since 1990, comp
Source: Reuters
June 12, 2009
The Bosnian war crimes court jailed a Bosnian Serb wartime commander for 25 years on Friday for ordering a mortar attack in 1995 on a northern town that killed 71 people and wounded more than 150. Novak Djukic was found guilty of war crimes against civilians and of violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions, the court council in Sarajevo said. Darko Samardzic, the court council president, read the verdict. He said, “One missile hit the very center of the town, Kapija, killing 71
Source: AP
June 13, 2009
In a culture that teaches not to revisit suffering, a proposal to memorialize routes that Navajo and Mescalero Apache Indians marched as they were forced from their homelands has stirred up painful memories.
The march in the 1860s from tribal lands to a desolate tract in eastern New Mexico, known as the Long Walk, led to the deaths of thousands of American Indians.
So while the federal designation as a national historic trail is supported by some tribal members who beli
Source: BBC
June 13, 2009
Seven bodies have been removed from Spanish Civil War graves in the first court-ordered exhumation.
The remains were transferred from two mass graves in the cemetery of Santa Marta village to a medical lab for official identification.
Archaeologists recovered the remains, belonging to men executed by supporters of Gen Francisco Franco in 1936.
This could be the first of thousands of official exhumations that have been the focus of a lengthy legal wrangle.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 13, 2009
Recordings include a fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth's first BBC broadcast on Children's Hour, in which the young Princess sends her best wishes to the children who have been evacuated from Britain to America, Canada and elsewhere.
She can be heard saying: "Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your homes and be separated from your fathers and mothers. My sister Margaret Rose and I feel so much for you as we know from experience what it means to be away from
Source: Foxnews
June 13, 2009
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was honored by the Palestinian government Saturday and pledged to support the Palestinians' campaign for independence to the end of his days.
In his acceptance speech, Carter urged the Palestinians to end their internal divisions and stop persecuting their rivals.
He was referring to the growing rift between the Islamic militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza, and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in charge of the
Source: CNN
June 12, 2009
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin isn't saying what's in her political future.
Asked if she definitely plans to seek re-election in 2010 -- a move unlikely for someone seeking the White House -- Palin told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I'm not definitely going to do anything yet."
In the past week alone, the former Republican vice presidential nominee appeared at a GOP fundraiser in Washington, attended a baseball game in New York and led a small-town parade on the East Coast th
Source: AP
June 12, 2009
The spears that John Brown ordered for his abolitionist army were fearsome, primitive things. Nearly seven feet long, the pikes had 10-inch steel blades made for slashing and impaling those who resisted the slave rebellion Brown envisioned.
Instead, after Brown's ill-fated raid on the arsenal on Oct. 16, 1859, many pikes were seized as souvenirs and today command high prices. One bearing the serial number 846 was sold through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries in 2007 for $13,0
Source: BBC
June 12, 2009
Greece would not accept a short loan of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum as it would "legalise their snatching", the Culture Minister said.
Antonis Samaras said any loan would mean renouncing Greece's claim to the 2,500-year-old sculptures.
The Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, have been in London since they were sold to the museum in 1817.
Greece hopes one day to display the collection in the Acropolis Museum, which opens i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 11, 2009
A Bosnian television station has broadcast footage it claims show war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic living freely in Serbia.
The hour-long video purports to show him enjoying the snow in a ski resort and going on family outings, despite being wanted on war crimes charges in connection with the Bosnian civil war.
The previously unseen images, some of them allegedly filmed as recently as a few months ago, appear to confound Serbia's insistence that it is doing all it can
Source: AP
June 11, 2009
A New York City lawyer whose father is a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been accused of stealing the identities of academics to discredit his father's rivals.
Prosecutor Elise Roecker said Thursday in a Manhattan court that an indictment has been filed against 49-year-old Raphael Golb.
He is the son of Dr. Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. Prosecutors say the defendant used Internet aliases to falsely accuse Dr. Lawrence Schiffman of New York University of
