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: AP
July 28, 2008
The [National Park Service] has proposed restoring a block of the barracks [used to house interned Japanese-Americans during WW II in Idaho] to
recreate the living conditions that roughly 13,000 ...
experienced at the camp. The initiative is part of an overall plan to
preserve sections of Minidoka, which became a national historic site seven
years ago and now sits mostly deserted
But most of the barracks found so far are ghosts of their former selves,
long since converted into homes,
Source: AFP
July 29, 2008
Laos has halted plans for new hotels in the town centre of
the ancient royal capital Luang Prabang after receiving a warning from
UNESCO about its World Heritage status, media reported Tuesday.
The city's heritage office chief, Manivone Thoummabouth, said the
provincial government had decided not to allow foreign investors to turn
any more state buildings into hotels, the Vientiane Times reported online."There are many hotels in the city and if more are built, the area would
be
Source: http://www.theargus.co.uk
July 29, 2008
Land soon to become a new housing estate has yielded an unexpected
treasure – a 2,000- year-old skeleton, believed to be that of a prince, a
warrior or a priest.
Planning permission has been granted for more than 600 houses in open
fields at North Bersted near Bognor.
But before the work could go ahead, an archaeological survey had to be
carried out on the site to check if there was anything of historical
interest under the topsoil.
What the team from the Thames Valley
Source: http://www.charleston.net
July 27, 2008
Charleston has long made its fortune by bringing people here. Centuries ago, it was slaves. Today, it's tourists.
Both have been thriving industries, though Charleston promoters have long dressed up or covered up the legacy of human bondage in the Lowcountry.
Two centuries since the importing of human cargo was banned in this country, the long-neglected history is a source of new interest for visitors searching for the antebellum South. The carefully preserved plantatio
Source: Contra Costa Times
July 28, 2008
How many students know that a 1946 California court case on segregation actually set a precedent for the widely heralded Brown v. Board of Education?
The case of Mendez v. Westminster is one of the great triumphs in California legal history - five Latino parents challenged a white private school in court for admission and won, leading to desegregation of all schools in the state.
"All Californians should be proud that we were the first state in the nation to dese
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2008
More than 40 women typhoid sufferers were locked up for life in a mental asylum to prevent them spreading the disease, according to newly-found records.
The patients, all women, were taken to Long Grove in Epsom, Surrey, between 1907 and its closure in 1992.
Although they were sane when admitted many went mad as a result of their incarceration, nursing staff said.
Virtually all had recovered from typhoid but were still considered a public health risk becaus
Source: Telegraph
July 28, 2008
The rock, which was found on a beach during a family holiday by Peter Parvin, 74, a former policeman, was taken in for testing after it was suggested it might be more than just unusually-shaped.
Mr Parvin, who is now deputy mayor of Maidstone, Kent, mentioned the stone in a conversation with a constituent who works at Maidstone Museum, during a surgery at The Ten Bells pub in Leeds village. The constituent said Mr Parvin should submit the rock for testing by Dr Ed Jarzembowski, a ke
Source: Telegraph
July 28, 2008
The animal's remains have been brought to the surface after a 12-year operation to clear an entrance blocking where they lay.
It was found in 1995 by cave divers exploring the two mile-long stream cave Uamh an Claonaite in the network of caves at Assynt in Sutherland.
It took the cavers from the Grampian Speleological Group until the end of last year to unblock an old 100ft-deep entrance shaft and provide a dry way into the cave.
The group removed the sk
Source: Daily News (Sri Lanka)
July 29, 2008
A United Nations committee meeting has determined that two Baha’i shrines in Israel possess “outstanding universal value” and should be considered as part of the cultural heritage of humanity.
The decision today by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee means that the two most sacred sites for Baha’is - the resting places of the founders of their religion - join a list of internationally recognised sites like the Great Wall of China, the Pyaramids, the Taj Mahal, and Stonehenge.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2008
While common acts of desecration have in the past included vandalism and graffiti, indecent photographs and videos are increasingly being shot around the magnificent structures built during the post-war years to remember the fallen.
The latest incident saw a French couple given a four-month suspended prison sentence for making a pornographic video at the Vimy Ridge memorial near Arras.
After being found guilty of exhibitionism, they were fined £400 each and ordered to p
Source: Independent (UK)
July 27, 2008
Sitting in her little house near Tarbes, in the French Pyrenees, Marie-Pierre Manet-Beauzac is talking about her ancestry.
For most people this would be agreeable, perhaps even pleasurable. For the 40-something mother-of-three, the story of her bloodline is marked with a unique sadness: because she belongs to an extraordinary tribe of hidden pariahs, repressed in France for a thousand years.
Marie-Pierre is a Cagot.
If the word "Cagot" means nothi
Source: China Daily
July 22, 2008
DALI, Yunnan -- More than 2,000 wooden poles recently unearthed at a site in Jianchuan county, have been found to be more than 3,000 years old.
The poles, still standing, were dug 4.5 m into the ground.
Archaeologists said carbon tests showed the poles were from the Neolithic age, and were probably the foundations for a structure built by a community that existed at the time in southwest China.
Source: Times (UK)
July 27, 2008
The possibility of a Palaeolithic human presence in Ireland has once again presented itself. A flaked flint dating to about 200,000 years ago found in Co Down is certainly of human workmanship, but its ultimate origin remains uncertain.
Discovered at Ballycullen, ten miles east of Belfast, the flake is 68mm long and wide and 31mm thick. Its originally dark surface is heavily patinated to a yellowish shade, and the lack of sharpness in its edges suggests that it has been rolled aroun
Source: Canada.com
July 24, 2008
Indulgences, which give Catholics time off Purgatory for good behaviour, are making a comeback under Pope Benedict XVI.
In the past year, the Vatican has granted them for World Youth Day, the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's apparition at Lourdes and, most recently, the 2,000th anniversary of St. Paul's birth.
The renewed enthusiasm for the controversial practice is being felt here. Ottawa's archbishop, Terrence Prendergast, is encouraging area Catholics to celebr
Source: Evening Sun
July 17, 2008
The man whose plan to build a casino near Gettysburg drew national attention and significant local opposition in 2005 and 2006 said Wednesday he has the financial backing he needs to take a second shot at securing a slots license for Adams County.
LeVan said he intends to do exactly that if a license becomes available - something that seems increasingly likely....
This time around, LeVan's proposal will include plans for a horse-racing facility and be located somewhere
Source: Charlotte Observer/AP
July 19, 2008
Morris Island, made famous by the charge of the black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and once considered one of the nation's most endangered Civil War battlegrounds, has been protected from development.
The City of Charleston, working with the Trust for Public Land, purchased the property last month from developer Bobby Ginn in a $3 million deal. Now the city is working with the public on how to interpret and provide public access to the 800-acre island on Charleston Harbor.
Source: Charlotte Observer
July 21, 2008
Wary Clyburn, the Confederate army veteran, puts a new face on an old standard for which we can measure our character. He was brave and loyal.
Clyburn was a slave.
He was born about 1841 in Lancaster County, S.C., records show. He died in 1930 in Union County, where he moved after the war.
He was honored as a Civil War hero Friday during a ceremony at Hillcrest Cemetery in Monroe. Members of N.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans sponsored the event, along with
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 23, 2008
The copper box, tarnished green from seeping water, tells the story.
Most everything inside this time capsule, entombed in 1917 in the granite base of a Civil War monument in Stillwater, succumbed to moisture.
"Mucky, basically," is how senior objects conservator Paul Storch of the Minnesota Historical Society described the contents when they arrived in his St. Paul laboratory last summer. "It's fairly common when they use copper boxes that have been sold
Source: Tampa Tribune
July 27, 2008
TAMPA - They sat at the same tables inside Alessi Italian Bar & Grille on Saturday, but those who support and oppose a giant Confederate battle flag to be flown within view of Interstates 4 and 75 appear as divided as ever.
In April, the Sons of Confederate Veterans plan to fly the 50-foot-by-30-foot flag that inspired rebel soldiers atop a pole half as tall as a football field is long. The flag is part of a Confederate memorial that includes a lighted park and 30 bronze plaques set i
Source: LAT
July 27, 2008
It was a crime so improbable that many had trouble believing it could have happened at all: Three black soldiers stood accused of lynching an Italian prisoner of war, found dangling from a wire on an obstacle training course at Ft. Lawton in the middle of World War II.
The subsequent trial of the three men, along with 40 other black enlistees charged with rioting, became the largest and longest Army court-martial of the war, and the only recorded instance in U.S. history in which bl
