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: Bloomington Pantagraph
August 9, 2008
The reasons behind the infamous 1908 riots that rocked Illinois’ state capital, the history that followed, and how race relations remain an issue a century later are at the heart of a current exhibit in Springfield and talks planned this fall in the capital and Bloomington.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum offers in-depth analysis of the three-day riot with its exhibit, “Something so Horrible: The Springfield, Illinois, Race Riot of 1908.” It runs through October.
Source: Asian News International
August 9, 2008
London, Aug 9: Late Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's malevolent side has been exposed in a letter criticizing Russian historian Zhores Medvedev.
In the letter he sent to The Times, the year of his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, Solzhenitsyn panned the 83-year-old historian branding him an apologist for the regime and making public statements that served the Soviet empire better than the "whole Soviet propaganda apparatus".
Howev
Source: BBC
August 8, 2008
Genealogists now believe the US presidential hopeful is descended from an 18th-Century Dublin businessman.
Previous records found Mr Obama's fourth great-grandfather was a shoemaker in the midlands village of Moneygall, whose son Fulmuth Kearney left for the US in 1850.
But researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, delved further into the would-be-president's colourful past to find his sixth great-granduncle was a prominent Dublin businessman in the 1700s.
Source: Independent
August 9, 2008
Police are trying to trace the owner of a handwritten letter from the wife of Winston Churchill, which was recovered during a drugs raid.
Officers executing a warrant last month at a house in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, found the letter, and three cheques mounted on a card, inside a plastic sleeve with a quantity of heroin.
A 55-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of theft and possessing class A drugs at the property. The woman's 32-year-old son and her sister, 41
Source: Independent
August 9, 2008
The families of some victims of the Omagh bombing, in which 29 people died, have announced that they will boycott a ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of the atrocity.
The decision introduced a note of discord to attempts to provide a dignified commemoration of the event in 1998, which is regarded as one of the worst incidents of the Troubles.
The size of the death toll, and that it took place as the Northern Ireland conflict seemed to be subsiding, means it has st
Source: China Daily
August 3, 2008
Eleven-year-old Jacob Walen from the Netherlands looks at a reconstructed skull of Torvosaurus at Lourinha museum in Lourinha, near Lisbon August 2, 2008. Walen found an original jaw bone of a dinosaur in Lourinha on July 27, 2003. Portuguese paleontologists presented a reconstructed skull of Torvosaurus, a giant prehistoric dinosaur they say is the largest known terrestrial predator of the Jurassic Period. Reconstructed from parts of a cranium, including a jaw bone with a 5.1 inch (13 cm) long
Source: Guardian
August 8, 2008
Strands of DNA recovered from the fossilised leg bone of a Neanderthal have shed light on the fragility of the ancient population and pinpointed when they first split from what were to become modern humans. The 38,000-year-old bone was unearthed in a cave in Vindija in Croatia, and has since become part of a landmark project to read the entire genetic sequence of an ancient human ancestor, a feat scientists believe will help reveal how modern humans evolved into the world's dominant species.
Source: CNN
August 8, 2008
Twenty years after it violently suppressed a bid by more than a million peaceful protesters to restore democracy, Myanmar's military junta was on high alert Friday with riot police guarding the country's main city and detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's home.
While no protests were reported in Myanmar itself, activists around Asia planned to mark the 20th anniversary with demonstrations at the embassies of both Myanmar and China, a key ally of the junta that critics sa
Source: The Boston Channel
August 8, 2008
A bone believed to be from one of the 12 apostles was stolen from a Greek Orthodox church in Lowell earlier this week.
Police are hoping some public attention will help track down a 2,000-year-old relic.
"It's a relic of St. Andrew --- a very small, small bone of the saint," said the Rev. Demetrios T. Costarakis, of the Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church.
He said that the relic was passed down through many generations and that the church acqu
Source: LAT
August 8, 2008
Alot worse things have happened in Iraq, but the removal of the Baath Party archives from the country -- 7 million pages that undoubtedly document atrocities of the Saddam Hussein regime -- is significant. The documents were seized shortly after the fall of Baghdad by Kanan Makiya, an Iraq-born emigre who teaches at Brandeis University and heads a private group called the Iraq Memory Foundation. Despite protests from the director of Iraq's National Library and Archives, the documents were shippe
Source: National Coalition for History
August 8, 2008
Before leaving for its summer recess, Congress passed and sent to the president a bill (H.R. 4137, H. Rept. 110-803) reauthorizing federal higher education programs. It marks the first time in over a decade that Congress had reauthorized the Higher Education Act. The bill includes a new “American History for Freedom” initiative to establish or strengthen postsecondary academic programs or centers that promote the teaching of “traditional American history, free institutions and the history and ac
Source: History Today
August 8, 2008
Archaeologists have unearthed what is thought to be Shakespeare’s first playhouse and one of the earliest in London. Museum of London Archaeology made the discovery in Shoreditch during the construction of a new theatre by the Tower Theatre Company. One of London’s first playhouses, The Theatre was established in the area by James Burbage in 1576 but the exact location has never been found. William Shakespeare’s first plays were enacted here and he also performed there with The Lord Chamberlain’
Source: CathNews
August 8, 2008
In a newly published book, American scholar Joseph Pearce concludes that William Shakespeare was a Catholic.
Projo.com reports that academics have increasingly noted links between Shakespeare and the persecuted Catholics of his times.
A new book by Joseph Pearce, The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome lays out the case that Shakespeare was indeed a believing Catholic who, for the sake of his career and his neck, kept that a secret.
Source: History Today
August 8, 2008
DNA tests on two foetuses from the tomb of Tutankhamun will determine if they were the children of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, said the results should be known by December and also if the grandmother was Queen Nefertiti. It is estimated the foetuses were stillborn up to seven months into pregnancy; they were discovered in 1922 when Howard Carter opened the Luxor tomb of the ‘Boy King’ (c.1333-23 BC). They have been kept in the Cairo
Source: International Herald Tribune
August 7, 2008
Win Min has spent the past 20 years trying to recover a moment of hope in Myanmar, when it seemed that the people had defeated their brutal military rulers and freedom lay ahead.
Friday is the anniversary of a huge popular uprising, on Aug. 8, 1988, that was crushed by soldiers at the cost of some 3,000 lives, leaving the country in the grip of a military junta and setting the course of Myanmar's history ever since - and very likely well into the future.
"We had a
Source: Telegraph
August 7, 2008
A damning report has accused France of knowing that a genocide was being planned as early as 1990. It also claims that French soldiers took part in rape, sexual harassment and torture during the period in 1994 when 800,000 people were killed in ethnic violence.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Rosemary Museminali, the Rwandan Foreign Minister, said that the people responsible for the murders still needed to be brought to justice.
Rwanda cut diplomatic ties with Fra
Source: Telegraph
August 7, 2008
The Anglo Saxon artefact is set with red gemstones and might have originally held a relic such as bone from a Disciple or fragment of the Cross.
Measuring just over an inch long, the 18 carat gold cross has been decorated with fine detail and is thought to have been worn as a pendant.
It is English made with gold that was probably melted down from Merovingian French coins.
Two of the red cabochon gemstones are missing as is the relic that would have been
Source: Washington Post
August 7, 2008
Government officials asserted yesterday that a troubled bioweapons scientist acted alone to perpetrate a terrorism scheme that killed five people, a case that centered on a near-perfect match of anthrax spores in his custody and a record of his late-night laboratory work just before the toxic letters were mailed.
Federal investigators uncovered e-mail messages written by bacteriologist Bruce E. Ivins describing an al-Qaeda threat that echoed language in the handwritten letters mail
Source: Boston Globe
August 7, 2008
Officials at Plimoth Plantation today offered a reward of $1,000 and a lifetime membership to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of vandals who struck the replica 17th-century Colonial village Friday.
“The total damage and losses will exceed $10,000,” said Paula Peters, a spokeswoman for the living museum. The invaders, described as a group of kids, allegedly stole a range of items, most notably beaver and muskrat pelts, as well as two steel piec
Source: BBC
August 7, 2008
Pakistan's ruling coalition parties say they will begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf.
Party leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif made the announcement after three days of talks. They would need a two-thirds majority to impeach.
Mr Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
He gave up control of the army last year and his allies were defeated in February's elections but he retains the power to dissolve parliament.
