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: Daily Mail (UK)
February 17, 2009
Hitler had 'shocking' table manners, gorged on cake in his bunker and suffered from a digestive disorder that might have resulted in flatulence, it has been revealed.
The dictator also bit his fingernails at meal times and nervously rubbed his index finger back and forth across his moustache, according to newly-discovered documents.
The top secret papers also state Hitler believed Joseph Goebbels' own propaganda about himself, genuinely believing he was the 'greatest mi
Source: UPI
February 17, 2009
Political sources say former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is bitter that President George Bush wouldn't pardon Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Cheney pushed Bush so hard to pardon Lewis that Bush refused to discuss the matter any further before he left office Jan. 20, The New York Daily News said in an exclusive published Tuesday. "He's furious with Bush," said a Cheney aide.
In an interview with The Weekly Standard last month, Cheney denounce
Source: Civil War Interactive
February 13, 2009
A student at Miami University has discovered what experts say is a fingerprint belonging to Abraham Lincoln from nearly 150 years ago.
Lydia Smith, a first-year psychology major from Granville, Ohio, was transcribing a letter written by Lincoln on Oct. 5, 1863, for a class project when she noticed a smudge that she suspected could be Lincoln’s thumbprint.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, a project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and Abraham Lincoln Presidenti
Source: The State ( South Carolina)
February 13, 2009
A 6-pound cannonball found in the Broad River this week likely was fired by Confederate troops in the effort to slow Gen. William T. Sherman’s march on the city 144 years ago this week.
Wednesday’s discovery of the cannonball was announced Friday by the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum.
The museum plans to conserve the cannonball — which contained no explosives — to stabilize it from corrison, Roberson said.
The discovery adds to the evidence
Source: Rocku Mount Telegram
February 16, 2009
It could be one of the nation’s oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the CSS H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the blockade ship USS Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 then disappeared.
The Hunley’s fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific researc
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 17, 2009
Stuart Manley, who owns Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, liked the red and white Second World War propaganda poster much that he framed it and hung it up in his shop. It is one of only two original prints known to have survived after the Government reconsidered releasing the poster and pulped the original print run.
To his astonishment, Mr Manley was inundated with customers desperate to have a copy or buy the original.
He decided to make and sell a facsimile v
Source: Discovery Channel News
February 12, 2009
The world's largest online collection of Civil War materials, including photographs, slave manifests and rare letters, has just been launched by Ancestry.com to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
The collection helps to document the lives of more than 12 million individuals affected by the Civil War. It reveals some harsh realities of the time, such as chronicling the movement of thousands of slaves to New Orleans to work in the booming cotton industry
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
February 16, 2009
It may look like just another hole in the ground, but this is no ordinary hole in the ground - it contains the remnants of one of the earliest watermills ever found.
The mill, which dates back to the 12th century, was discovered at Greenwich Wharf as developers prepared the way for a new building.
It has been preserved against centuries of damage by riverside peat deposits. Carpenters' or millwrights' assembly marks are clearly visible on the timbers.
Thi
Source: Guardian (UK)
February 16, 2009
Not all treasure thieves tiptoe through the shells of Iraqi museums or churn up the deserts of Peru in their hunt for valuable antiquities. Nearer to home "nighthawkers" are using metal detectors and online auctions to strip rural Britain of its archaeological riches, and their illegal activities are proving every bit as destructive.
English Heritage has been so concerned about the extent of the depredation that it commissioned a study, which revealed that what was once an
Source: BBC
February 16, 2009
China is to lend 29 treasures to Taiwan for an exhibition - the first such cultural exchange in 60 years.
The artefacts from Beijing's Palace Museum date from the Qing Dynasty, and will be shown for three months at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
Between them, the two museums are believed to have the world's most precious collection of Chinese relics.
A huge collection has been kept in Taiwan since nationalists headed there when China's civil war e
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 17, 2009
Wilm Hosenfeld, the German officer made famous by the film 'The Pianist', has been recognised by Israel for his role in helping Jews.
Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, recognised Hosenfeld posthumously as "Righteous Among the Nations", an acknowledgement for those who aided Jews during the Holocaust.
Hosenfeld was made famous by Roman Polanski's celebrated 2002 film The Pianist, which was based on the true story of the Polish musician Wlady
Source: Deutsche Welle
February 16, 2009
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland's special representative for relations with Germany, met in Berlin with Merkel on Monday, Feb. 16. There was no news conference, but he told Polish reporters later he was "fully calmed and satisfied."
Tension had earlier flared after Polish diplomats reportedly heard that Association of Expellees President Erika Steinbach, 65, would be appointed to the board of the planned Berlin center, which is to depict how ethnic Germans had to flee many
Source: BBC
February 16, 2009
But simmering nationalistic emotions are being brought to the surface by painful memories.
Hoang Thi Lich, 72, remembers vividly the morning of 17 February 1979, when she and her family woke to a suffocating sense of panic in the mountains of Cao Bang.
As dawn broke, China launched attacks on a number of positions in Vietnam's northernmost provinces with a staggering display of so-called "human waves" and artillery power.
Mrs Lich's family was
Source: BBC
February 17, 2009
Kosovo has been striving to secure its borders and develop its economy in the face of opposition from Serbia, which refuses to recognise its independence.
Prime Minister Hashim Thaci says it is building a homeland for all its people.
But correspondents say parts of northern Kosovo remain tensely divided between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.
MPs from the Serbian parliament in Belgrade are due to hold a committee meeting in Kosovo in protest against the anni
Source: BBC
February 16, 2009
The Council of State said the state had permitted or facilitated deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution without being coerced by the occupiers.
But the council also found reparations had since been made "as much as was possible, for all the losses suffered".
Correspondents say the ruling is the clearest such recognition of the French state's role in the Holocaust.
Between 1942 and 1944 some 76,000 Jews were deported from France by th
Source: Rasmussen Reports
February 16, 2009
It’s a good thing today’s holiday isn’t Father’s Day because the Father of our Country sure isn’t getting much respect.
George Washington is a distant second to Abraham Lincoln in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey asking Americans which of the men whose birthdays we honor on Presidents’ Day has had the more lasting impact on U.S. history.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) say Lincoln, the 16th president who served from 1861 to 1865, while 23% say Washington, our
Source: The Local (Sweden)
February 15, 2009
New documents have emerged that Swedish finance minister, Ernst Wigforss, approved secret Swedish bank credits to Nazi Germany in 1941. The documents were recently uncovered in a filing cabinet at the finance ministry.
Historian and ambassador Krister Wahlbäck and cabinet office archivist Bo Hammarlund reveal the existence of the documents, which indicate Wigforss' approval of loans to Hitler's Germany, in a full page debate article in Dagens Nyheter on Sunday.
The loan
Source: BBC
February 16, 2009
The Royal Navy has unveiled its plans for celebrations to mark the centenary of British naval air power.
The anniversary will be celebrated throughout the year with a series of flypasts, concerts and other events.
On 7 May, 1909 the Admiralty put aside funds for its first airship, changing the face of warfare to come.
One hundred years later, the navy's Fleet Air Arm can boast more than 250 aircraft and helicopters - a third of the UK forces' air strengt
Source: BBC
February 16, 2009
A study has concluded that many of the UK's historic sites are under threat from illegal metal detector users. History enthusiasts are frustrated that little is being done to prevent the damage.
One landowner tells of discovering a gang armed with bicycle chains and other weapons, as well as dozens of maps, highlighted with sites of historical interest.
Responsible metal detectorists, as they are called, are just as angry about what the criminal minority do in their n
Source: BBC
February 14, 2009
It is 20 years since Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses.
The novel's release led to widespread protest by Muslims who regarded it as blasphemous, including public burning of the book.
Rushdie had to live in hiding and under special protection for several years.
And while he is now able to live a more public life, he says the affair remains "an albatross around his ne
