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: Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2009
It was the question that preoccupied President Ronald Reagan: Was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a religious believer? Reagan held a series of summits with Gorbachev from 1985 to 1988, and as their meetings proceeded, Reagan sometimes speculated to his aides that Gorbachev's use of phrases such as "God bless" might be an expression of religious faith. Many of the summit sessions involved large groups of U.S. and Soviet officials, discussing issues like arms control and regional confli
Source: Times (UK)
March 9, 2009
John Holt was a dedicated experimental physicist whose work had a deep impact on our understanding of the physics of matter at its most fundamental level and contributed to the development of the atom bomb.
He was one of the few remaining links with the momentous days of the 20th century after the discovery of nuclear fission and was later one of the pioneers of elementary particle physics research which blossomed after the Second World War.
John Riley Holt was born i
Source: Times (UK)
March 8, 2009
HE has moved house to Dallas, popped down to the shops, tried out the nearest Mexican restaurant and been serenaded by a British pianist. Now it is back to work for George W Bush, the former president, who is off to Canada next weekend to begin his new career as a celebrity speaker.
Bush’s public re-emergence at a Calgary convention centre after six weeks of post-White House seclusion coincides with an unexpected shift in popular attitudes to the president who left office with some
Source: Times (UK)
March 8, 2009
VETERAN communists including Mao Tse-tung’s surviving personal secretary, who is 91, have braved the wrath of party leaders in an appeal for more democracy in China, an end to censorship and an independent legal system.
Sixteen party veterans made the call in a letter to President Hu Jintao, ostensibly to voice concern at the lack of public scrutiny of China’s £400 billion economic stimulus package.
“We fear that the privileged class and corrupt officials will make us
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 9, 2009
Around 1.3 million people perished in the Nazi death camp during the Second World War, but a survey of more than 1,000 secondary school pupils aged 11-16 revealed that a quarter still did not know its purpose.
Of those, about 10 per cent were not sure what it was, 8 per cent thought it was a country bordering Germany, 2 per cent thought it was a beer, the same proportion said it was a religious festival and a further 1 per cent said it was a type of bread.
Miramax and t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2009
Alfonso Ensenat de Villalonga has disputed conventionally-accepted narratives on the explorer's origins - that he was the son of a weaver in Genoa, Italy, or that he was from Catalonia or Galicia in Spain.
In fact, he was from Genoa, but he was "the son of shopkeepers not weavers and he was baptised Pedro not Christopher," Mr Villalonga told Spain's ABC newspaper on Sunday.
And his family name was Scotto, and was not Italian but of Scottish origin.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2009
Scientists found the skull, with its mouth agape and a large slab of rock forced into its mouth, while excavating a mass grave dating from the Middle Ages on an island near Venice.
Female "vampires" were often blamed for spreading the plague epidemics through Europe, said Matteo Borrini of Florence University.
Wedging a rock or brick into the mouth of a suspected vampire was a way of preventing the person from feeding on the bodies of other plague victims and
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 9, 2009
Written to accompany his TV documentary series, it has been a bestseller for Andrew Marr.
But all unsold copies of A History of Modern Britain are being withdrawn after the BBC journalist allegedly falsely claimed in the book that a women's rights campaigner had ties to a group of militant bombers.
Publisher Pan Macmillan has issued an 'urgent' stock recall notice on the book, which has already sold around 250,000 copies.
It is believed the books will ha
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 9, 2009
When John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, was selected by President George W. Bush in May 2004 to join a government board charged with releasing historical Nazi and Japanese war crimes records, trouble quickly followed.
The Abu Ghraib torture scandal was exploding, and fellow panelists learned that Yoo had written secret legal opinions saying presidents have sweeping wartime power to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. They protested that it was absurd to name Yoo, who they
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 6, 2009
As if economic depression were not enough, the city of Kirov is reviving the long-dormant Russian debate over whether or not to change its name.
Name-changing was all the rage after the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia reached back to its roots for old-new identity. Gorky Street, the main shopping boulevard in Moscow, reverted to Tverskaya; Leningrad to St. Petersburg, and so on.
After that initial burst of remaking history, the fashion for substituting old names for S
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 8, 2009
The federal court records read like variations on the same morality play sharing the same opening scene: A neighbor known as quiet and friendly is accused of Nazi war crimes, stunning residents of nearby bungalows or adjoining apartments.
"He was always out ready to help his neighbors," Kathy Blitch testified at the trial of Conrad Schellong, with whom she shared a back porch on Chicago's Northwest Side.
But Schellong, a retired machinist, was also among a num
Source: Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2009
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- To attract tourists, Alabama has long promoted its white sand beaches, Civil War battlegrounds and antebellum mansions. Now, with the election of Barack Obama and a surge of interest in the civil rights movement, the state is trying to attract visitors to the sites of church bombings and police attacks on demonstrators.
This month the state will release a newly expanded Civil Rights Trail guide that prominently features pictures of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Source: Madison Press (Ohio)
March 7, 2009
Sixty-five years after his plane went missing over northern India, the mystery of what happened to a Madison County airman from World War II is likely solved.
In recent days, surviving relatives of U.S. Army 2nd Lt. John W. Funk Jr. learned that a nonprofit organization founded by Arizona businessman Clayton Kuhles located the wreckage of Funk’s long-missing C-87 transport last fall on a jungle-covered mountain in India’s Arunachal Province.
Kuhles is the founder of MIA
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 7, 2009
Controversial historian David Irving has set up a website selling Nazi memorabilia which he claims includes a piece of Hitler's bone and strands of his hair.
Dubbed 'Naz-eBay' by Holocaust groups, the site also offers a walking stick used by the German dictator and a christening present given by SS leader Heinrich Himmler to Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering's daughter.
Irving, who was jailed in Austria for Holocaust denial, 'authenticates' the relics and displays t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2009
A painting that may be the only surviving portrait of William Shakespeare made in his lifetime will be unveiled.
The picture, from 1610, six years before the playwright's death, has been in the possession of the Cobbe family since the early 18th century.
It was initially kept at a property in Hampshire but more recently in Hatchlands, the family house in Surrey, which is run by the National Trust.
For three centuries the family was unsure of the identity
Source: CSMonitor
March 8, 2009
SELMA, Ala. -- Across this largely African-American city, there are signs of hope. Faces light up at the mere mention of President Obama. Even the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Alabama state troopers attacked defenseless civil rights demonstrators on "Bloody Sunday" 44 years ago this month, seems somehow to lead to a better place – if not yet to the promised land.
In Selma this past weekend, people gathered to honor the leaders and achievements of the civil rights era of the
Source: AFP
March 8, 2009
NEW DELHI -— India is preparing legislation to prevent more of Mahatma Gandhi's belongings being auctioned off abroad, after a recent sale sparked outrage, the Press Trust of India reported Sunday.
A senior official at the ministry of culture told the news agency that the government planned to obtain injunctions in advance in European and US courts against possible auctions of Gandhi's possessions.
"We want to pre-empt any auction of Gandhi items in the future by m
Source: Mormon Times
March 7, 2009
OREM, Utah -- Discussing one of the darkest events in Utah's history in a civil manner was one of the goals of a panel discussion at Utah Valley University on Thursday evening. Will Bagley, an independent historian; Forrest Cuch, executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs; and Richard E. Turley Jr., assistant LDS Church historian participated in "Perspectives on a massacre: A panel discussion on Mountain Meadows."
Moderator Alex Caldiero, poet and scho
Source: Free Press
March 8, 2009
Some students used drawings of Presidents Barack Obama and George Washington, while others wrote essays or poems that spoke of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The message of each entry in the "I Am Making History" contest was clear: Black History Month is a time to remember the past and be hopeful for the future.
Kroger, which sponsored the contest, awarded 80 winners Saturday with scholarships, iPods and computers for their representations of what Black History Month means to
Source: NYT
March 7, 2009
MORE than 60 years after Adolf Hitler died, the details of his private life still grip the public imagination. Some additional glimpses emerged from a British intelligence report sold last week by the English auction house Mullock’s. Written by an unnamed British agent and dated May 3, 1945 — three days after Hitler’s death — it summarizes the interrogation of a German lieutenant colonel who was a staff member at Hitler’s headquarters in Berlin during World War II. Known only as “PW” (prisoner o
