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: KBIA (Missouri)
March 18, 2009
Numerous Native American artifacts dating back more than 800 years have been discovered outside a Kirksville museum. KBIA's Bobby Meeder has more.
Construction workers in Kirksville were working outside of a historical museum on Wednesday when they found some artifacts of their own.
Workers were digging for a water main outside of the Washington Museum of Natural History when museum director Charles Tharp decided to take a closer
look.
The numerous f
Source: Yemen News Agency
March 18, 2009
A Yemeni archaeologist team has discovered a mosaic statue of a women sitting on a throne with here chest engraved with Musnad letters.
The archaeologists also found other relics including a stone board with faith signs engraved on it.
Two pulls separated by a tree were carved on the stone board, a symbol that was know as "Life's Tree" in ancient Yemeni civilization, director of the authority Ali al-Sanabani said.
The discoveries were revealed
Source: LAT
March 19, 2009
California corrections officials released a photograph taken Wednesday of aging convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, replete with receding hairline, fading forehead swastika carving and a thick, heavily graying beard.
The photograph of the 74-year-old cult leader was taken at Corcoran State Prison, where he is serving a life sentence, and is part of periodic updates of inmate images by prison officials, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Correctio
Source: CNN
March 19, 2009
Six years ago Thursday, then-President George W. Bush appeared on television screens across America and somberly addressed the nation.
"My fellow citizens," he began his four-minute speech, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger."
Six years later, the conflict in Iraq drags on -- with war-fatigued Americans shoving the mi
Source: Huffington Post (Blog)
March 19, 2009
President Barack Obama, the best-selling author who received royalties of $2.5 million last year, has signed a deal for a youth-oriented version of his published memoir and a nonfiction book after he leaves office.
Obama reached a deal in early January, shortly before his inauguration, for an abridged version of "Dreams From My Father" that would suitable for middle school or young adult readers. Crown Publishing Group is giving him a $500,000 advance plus 15 percent of th
Source: AP
March 18, 2009
The U.S. government knew that top Guatemalan officials it supported with arms and cash were behind the disappearance of thousands of people during a 36-year civil war, declassified documents obtained by a U.S. research institute show.
The National Security Archive, a Washington D.C.-based institute that requests and publishes declassified government documents, obtained diplomatic and intelligence reports from the U.S. State Department under the Freedom of Information Act and posted
Source: Spiegel Online
March 18, 2009
The most catastrophic war of the 20th century may have claimed another victim, after the detonation of what appears to have been a World War II shell in a German town on Monday night.
One man died and another was seriously injured in the incident which took place in the small town of Niemegk, near Berlin. On Wednesday, Christoph Lange, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Potsdam, told reporters that the explosion had probably been caused by a World War II shell. However,
Source: Tehran Times
March 18, 2009
On this day, the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent pledged to create an independent homeland, where they could live in accordance with their religious and cultural values.
From 22 to 24 March, 1940, the All India Muslim League held its annual session at Minto Park, Lahore. The session proved to be historical.
On the first day of the session, father of the Pakistani nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah narrated the events of the last few months. And then in an off the cuff spe
Source: Sky News
March 18, 2009
The 20-year old photo depicts two world leaders - US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - in Moscow.
But, according to the man who took the photo, it also captures Mr Putin disguised as a tourist.
Pete Souza, now President Obama's official photographer, captured the moment when he worked for President Reagan during the political thaw that soon ended the Cold War.
Mr Reagan took a stroll around Red Square accompanied by the Russi
Source: BBC
March 19, 2009
The rug, known as the Pearl Carpet of Baroda, was created using an estimated two million natural seed pearls.
It is decorated with hundreds of precious stones, including diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds.
Bidding is expected to start at about $5m but experts say its eventual selling price could be far higher.
Tradition has it that the Pearl Carpet of Baroda was commissioned by India's wealthy Maharaja of Baroda as a gift to sit at the tomb of the
Source: BBC
March 18, 2009
A discovery in China has prompted researchers to question the scaly image of dinosaurs.
Previously, experts thought the first feathered dinosaurs appeared about 150 million years ago, but the find suggests feathers evolved much earlier.
This has raised the question of whether many more of the creatures may have been covered with similar bristles, or "dino-fuzz".
Hai-Lu You, a researcher from the Insitute of Geology in Beijing, was part of the t
Source: CNN
March 18, 2009
Their public positions seemed largely in harmony for eight years, but George Bush and Dick Cheney are striking markedly different tones in their initial months away from the White House.
While the former vice president has been highly critical of the new administration — most recently in an interview with CNN's John King — the president has refrained from disparaging his successor, and is mostly ducking the national spotlight altogether.
Tuesday night, in his first appe
Source: Brown University press release
March 16, 2009
A commission established by Brown University in cooperation with the City of Providence and the State of Rhode Island has released a report recommending how the history of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Rhode Island should be commemorated in Rhode Island, Providence, and on College Hill. Topping the group’s six recommendations is a proposal that the Public Arts Committee of Brown be asked to commission a memorial about how slavery was intertwined with the University’s early benefa
Source: NYT
March 17, 2009
PINGYAO, China It was a time of new wealth, a gilded age in which entire families came into fortunes overnight.
To move the money, businessmen here in this city in northern China opened banks, the first in the nation’s history. Soon branches sprang up across the country, and they began making loans. Money flowed this way and that.
Then, as quickly as it started, the entire system crumbled. The banks shut down and the city fell into ruin.
So went the histor
Source: McClatchy
March 18, 2009
Less than 5 miles from the futuristic Dallas Cowboys football stadium, University of Texas at Arlington students are digging up fossils of prehistoric turtles, sharks, giant crocodiles and duck-billed dinosaurs that were bigger than trucks.
The fossils are from about 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Source: http://www.tampabay.com
March 18, 2009
They lived through the Great Depression, so they knew poverty firsthand: what it was like to sleep four to a bed, make your own noodles for supper or hang your used tea bag on the clothesline to dry so it could be steeped for another day's cup. They remember the long lines to the soup kitchens and how people finagled, bartered, took odd jobs or sold stuff on street corners: an apple for a nickel, a pencil for a penny. • Of course a penny was worth something back then. • And so, it turns out, are
Source: SCNow (South Carolina)
March 17, 2009
Historical remnants from a Civil War-era gunboat will be pulled from the depths of the Pee Dee River by a team of underwater archaeologists looking to preserve and, in the future, display a part of the area’s early history.
The team is preparing to raise three Confederate cannons — each weighing more than 15 tons — from the watery resting places some 150 years after they were sunk by Confederate troops as Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s troops bared down on the Pee Dee, said state u
Source: The Times (UK)
March 17, 2009
Police officers in northern Scotland have been accused of vandalising a Bronze Age site through ignorance after they removed bones and textiles from the 4,000-year-old burial chamber, apparently because they thought they were investigating a crime scene.
The burial chamber, or cist, was discovered intact, in a field near Oykel Bridge in Sutherland. The area is rich in Bronze Age remains, but this find was of huge importance to archaeologists. Unlike the vast chambered cairns of the
Source: Ethiopian Review
March 17, 2009
So it was that New Jersey archaeologist David Braun tempered his excitement after he and other researchers, among them a Rutgers University professor and a group of Rutgers students, found what looked to be very unusual footprints in the ancient sediment of a riverbed in Kenya.
"We knew we might have something special, but we also kept thinking, 'OK, these could be from a baboon,'" Braun said.
Turns out all that caution was unnecessary. Over three summers, Bra
Source: New York Times
March 17, 2009
Shortly before President George W. Bush left office, his administration signed an agreement with China that imposed import restrictions on a sweeping range of Chinese art and antiquities in an effort to quash the growing illicit trade in looted artifacts, a volatile issue that has polarized the international art, museum and archaeological worlds and led to several high-profile restitution cases.
The agreement, signed on Jan. 14, covers all of China’s cultural heritage from the Paleo
