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
February 23, 2009
Bidding failed to meet expectations Saturday on a uniquely complete skeleton of a Jurassic-era dryosaurus -- a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur -- so it was no-sale for the centerpiece at an auction of rare skeletons, fossils and other prehistoric memorabilia.
Auctioneers at the I.M. Chait Gallery had hoped the 150-million-year-old, 9-foot-long dryosaurus would sell for as much as $500,000, but the bidding did not add up.
Two museums are said to still be interested i
Source: NYT
March 22, 2009
ROOSEVELT, N.Y. — The weathered copper box from 1929 was always meant to be opened sometime in the future, but too many years and failing memories had relegated it to a forgotten past.
So that copper box — a time capsule, really — stayed unopened year after year in its resting place behind the cornerstone of Centennial Avenue Elementary School here on Long Island as teachers and students rushed by unaware. It might still be there if not for the demolition of part of the original bui
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 22, 2009
Declassified government files have revealed how Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials launched a top-level probe into a diamond shaped aircraft seen hovering above a Scottish village.
Officials were so alarmed by the object, which was captured on camera, that they broke with established procedures and referred the sighting to ministers.
They also overrode rules prohibiting investigations into UFO sightings not considered an immediate threat to national security, and spent
Source: PC World
March 22, 2009
The Internet Archive organization plans next week to announce the opening of a new data center to house two petabytes of information for its Wayback Machine, the digital time capsule that stores archived versions of Web pages dating back to 1996.For example, this is what
Source: AP
March 22, 2009
Egypt will soon file an official request with U.S. authorities to return a 3,000-year-old wooden coffin illegally smuggled out of the country more than a century ago, the country's top archaeologist said Sunday.
In a statement, Zahi Hawass said the nearly 5-foot-long coffin was taken from Egypt in 1884 after it was stolen from a tomb in Luxor, an ancient pharaonic capital in southern Egypt.
Hawass says the ornamented coffin belonged to Pharaoh Ames of the 21st Dynasty, which
Source: Christian Science Monitor
March 20, 2009
SKOPJE, MACEDONIA - As part of a stunning new homegrown ideology of history and identity based on Alexander the Great, this capital city's main square may soon boast a huge new statue of the ancient conqueror.
Two years ago, the national airport was renamed after Alexander, infuriating Greece.
In January, despite a recent Greek nixing of Macedonia's NATO bid over the airport name, the ruling nationalists here changed the name of its main roadway to Alexander of Macedon
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 23, 2009
Historians at Cambridge unearthed a series of six financial record books which reveal intriguing insights into the naturalist's day-to-day college life.
They show that Darwin, who studied at Christ's College between 1828 and 1831, lived the life of a 19th century gentleman and paid people to carry out tasks such as stoking his fire and polishing his shoes.
He also paid extra to buy vegetables to supplement his college meals, the records show.
Darwin's colle
Source: Guardian (UK)
March 23, 2009
Eyes bleared from gunsmoke and salt spray, the face of the man who may have sunk the Mary Rose has been revealed, more than 400 years after he went to the bottom of the Solent in the wreck of Henry VIII's flagship.
The head has been modelled by the internationally renowned forensic artist Richard Neave from a skull recovered from the wreck. Only a handful of the more than 400 crew and soldiers survived when the ship sank so fast and so close to shore that helpless watchers on the cl
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 23, 2009
Mr Brown will meet Cristina Kirchner on Friday at a progressive forum of left-of-centre leaders in Vina del Mar, Chile, during his visit to Latin America.
Mrs Kirchner has made the issue of the islands a personal priority, announcing in her inaugural speech that Argentina's sovereignty was non-negotiable and repeating the claim on the 26th anniversary of the 1982 invasion last year.
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 20, 2009
American flags were set on fire Friday to chants of "no, no for occupation" as followers of an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric marked the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war.
In Baghdad and five other Iraqi cities, supporters of Moktada al-Sadr either marched or stood in protest after prayers to demand the release of their allies detained at Iraqi and U.S.-run prisons.
The protests came as a suicide bomber in Fallujah killed an Iraqi police officer and five other people
Source: BBC
March 20, 2009
Badu Bonsu II, leader of the Ashanti tribe, is believed to have been decapitated in retaliation for the killing of two Dutch emissaries.
The Leiden museum, which has been storing the head, said it hoped it could now have a dignified burial.
Ghana had said the king would not be at rest if the head remained where it was.
King Bonsu is thought to have been executed after the two officials were killed during a rebellion against European rule in the country,
Source: BBC
March 22, 2009
Khadijeh Saqafi, who was known as the "mother of the Islamic revolution", died on Saturday at the age of 93.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior officials took part in the funeral prayer, led by current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
She was buried at Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine in Tehran.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
March 21, 2009
Archaeologists announced they have begun underwater excavations of the prehistoric site of Limantepe in western Turkey. The underwater research, headed by Professor Hayat Erkanal of the Archaeology Department of the Ankara University, explores the prehistoric settlement located in the coastal town of Urla near İzmir in western Turkey.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
March 21, 2009
A new dating method finally is allowing archaeologists to incorporate rock paintings into the tapestry of evidence used to study life in prehistoric times. In the study, Marvin W. Rowe points out that rock paintings, or pictographs, are among the most difficult archaeological artifacts to date. They lack the high levels of organic material needed to assess a pictograph's age using radiocarbon dating, the standard archaeological technique for more than a half-century. Rowe describes a new, highly
Source: NYT
March 21, 2009
The questions flew hard and fast at President Obama last week as he stood on the White House South Lawn, preparing to escape for California’s gentler climes. How, Mr. Obama was asked, would he quell public anger over $165 million in bonuses for employees of the bailed-out insurance giant, A.I.G.?...
Mr. Obama is hardly the first American president to grapple with a distraction, a diversion — an outright red herring, some might call it — that grew bigger than itself. Ronald Reagan h
Source: NYT
March 21, 2009
A wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former professor against the University of Colorado has been unfolding in exciting fashion in a courtroom here.
The professor, Ward L. Churchill, was dismissed by the university in July 2007 on grounds that he plagiarized and falsified parts of his research on Native Americans. But Mr. Churchill contends that he was fired in retaliation for an essay in which he described office workers killed in the World Trade Center attacks as “little Eic
Source: NYT
March 21, 2009
For many, the excitement of the 2008 presidential election was about witnessing a moment that people would one day read about in history books.
Well, the first draft of history has a release date: this fall.
On Page 1,126 of the newest edition of “United States History,” a Pearson textbook for high schoolers that is due in classrooms this fall, a picture of Barack Obama at his election night rally in Chicago appears next to the red-lettered headline “An Historic Moment.
Source: NYT
March 21, 2009
Setting aside specific problems now facing the economy — like the credit crisis and the continuing troubles in the housing and financial sectors — the math of recovering from downturns of this magnitude is hard to overcome quickly. James B. Stack, editor of the InvesTech Market Analyst, a newsletter in Whitefish, Mont., studied bear market recoveries since 1929; he found that after the most significant downturns — like this one — it has taken more than seven years for stocks to fully recoup loss
Source: NYT
March 20, 2009
“Dokdo Island is Korean territory,” the ad [printed on the plastic dry cleaning bag] declared. “The Japanese government must acknowledge this fact.”
To understand the message on the bag is to go back more than a century, to the beginning of an emotional land dispute between Japan and Korea.
The conflict is over a cluster of barely inhabitable islets and reefs in the sea between the countries — called Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan — and much more, especiall
Source: AP
March 20, 2009
Chinese security forces have detained a former soldier who publicly expressed regret over his role in the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests near Tiananmen Square, a human rights group said Friday.
The former soldier, Zhang Shijun, 40, published an open letter to Hu Jintao, the Communist Party leader, on the Internet in which he called on the party and government to reconsider its condemnation of the student-led protests.
He said he hoped his example woul
