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: National Geographic News
July 17, 2008
Disemboweled and decorated with scarlet paint, metal eye plates, and a
tattoo, an exquisitely preserved, thousand-year-old mummy has been
discovered in Peru. (See photos.)
As anthropologists gingerly removed the layers of ancient textiles
swaddling the thirtysomething elite male last month at a Lima lab,
offerings both strange and familiar came to light—slingshots, corn, a
figurine in identical dress.
Taken together, the artifacts, the mummy, and the excavation site suggest
t
Source: AP
July 18, 2008
Mexican archaeologists have found the remains of what appear
to be four U.S. soldiers who died in 1846 during the Mexican-American war,
the government announced on Thursday.
Experts said skull and bone measurements, as well as two half-dollar coins
and other artifacts found at the site of the Battle of Monterrey in
northern Mexico, indicate the bodies belong to U.S. war casualties.
Mexico's national archaeological agency said the skeletal remains were
uncovered in digs between
Source: msnbc
July 18, 2008
Thursday night, a moving monument to the Vietnam war comes home to Indiana. The Moving Wall is a scaled-down replica of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington.
Over 58,000 names have come to represent one of America's most costly and divisive wars. Those are the names of the military men and women who fought and died in Vietnam. The Vietnam Veterans memorial in Washington is the permanent monument.
There is also the Moving Wall - a half-size replica that has bee
Source: Yahoo
July 3, 2008
Three out of five Americans think the U.S. Constitution is fine as is, but 39% fear it doesn't place enough restrictions on the government, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
As the nation's July 4 birthday nears, 91% say they would vote for the Constitution as the fundamental law of the United States. Just 2% would vote against it.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters say the 219-year-old "living document" should be left alone, while anot
Source: Moscow Times
July 18, 2008
A sweeping government audit has revealed that up to 50,000 pieces are missing from Russia's museums — everything from pre-Revolutionary medals and weapons to precious works of art, a member of the survey team said Thursday.
Former President Vladimir Putin ordered the survey after his government was deeply embarrassed in 2006 by hundreds of thefts from St. Petersburg's Hermitage museum.
More than 1,600 museums have been inspected since then, and most of them have items m
Source: Moscow Times
July 18, 2008
Tens of thousands of Russians commemorated the 90th anniversary of the slaying of the country's royal family with a religious procession Thursday, starting out before dawn from the site where the last tsar and his wife and children were gunned down in a basement room.
Pilgrims from across the country have flocked to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg to commemorate the death of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family, whose murder months after the Bolshevik Revolution helped ushe
Source: Slovak Spectator
July 14, 2008
SLOVAKIA’S heritage received a welcome boost when eight rare wooden churches were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on July 7. The churches join six other Slovak sites already on the list.
The World Heritage Committee added two Roman Catholic churches, three Protestant churches, and three Greek Catholic churches built between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The Roman Catholic churches are in Hervartov and Tvrdošín; the Protestant churches are in Kežmarok, Hronsek and
Source: LAT
July 17, 2008
NAIROBI, KENYA -- During an emotion-packed visit to his father's homeland in 2006, Sen. Barack Obama took time from family reunions and official visits to chastise Kenya's government for failing to stem corruption and tribalism, irking his hosts in the process.
It wasn't the first time an Obama had taken Kenya's elite to task. Forty years earlier, a rising star named Barack Obama -- tall, elegant and impeccably dressed -- attacked the nation's post-independence government, accusing
Source: AHA Blog
July 16, 2008
Over ten years ago Congress called on the National Park Service to investigate Revolutionary War sites and War of 1812 sites, evaluate their significance, and identify any threats to them. The resulting report, the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Historic Preservation Study, is now available online ....
Within this report the National Park Service looks at 243 battlefields and 434 historic properties. Of those, 170 are considered threatened (often by development nearby).
Source: Jordan Times
July 18, 2008
Tucked away into the lush hillsides in the north of the Kingdom, Tal Ziraa is quietly becoming one of the most important archaeological sites in the Kingdom.
The hill is located in Wadi Al Arab, an archaeologically rich area some 5km southwest of Um Qais where the borders of Jordan, Syria and Israel meet and where over 100 sites boast a treasure trove of diverse artefacts, telling a complex story mirroring the rise and decline of different cultures and rulers in the region.
Source: Deutsche Welle
July 17, 2008
The French state and a private Franco-German foundation on Thursday signed an agreement paving the way for compensation payments to some 5,800 surviving World War II forced-labor victims from the Alsace-Lorraine region.
A convention was signed by French Minister of State for War Veterans Jean-Marie Bockel and the Foundation for German-French Understanding in Strasbourg on Thursday, July 17. It creates a fund of 4.6 million euros ($2.9 million) from which the compensation payments wi
Source: Deutsche Welle
July 17, 2008
A monumental war history in German, which has just been completed after 30 years of work, explores a question that preoccupies modern Germans: why Nazi Germany fought on, defying all military logic, to the bitter end.
The government-funded military historians who researched the series are thoroughly anti-Nazi, but at the same time were curious about the strategy and mindset that drove their grandfathers' generation.
The findings can be set alongside existing histories o
Source: Spiegel Online
July 17, 2008
It was a sort of official crack in the Berlin Wall, one of the few places where East Germans could meet West Germans. Now it's doomed to demolition. The Michendorf rest stop on the outskirts of Berlin is to be knocked down next Monday to make way for an expanded highway.
During the Cold War it had been a place where West Berliners driving through East Germany could grab a cheap bite or share a beer with some East Germans before crossing the border into the US sector of the divided c
Source: AP
July 17, 2008
Grave robbers, a curse of burial grounds
for centuries, are back for new valuables: metal ornaments that can be
melted down for quick cash as copper and other metal prices climb.
In West Virginia, it was vases bolted to headstones. In Washington State,
it was bronze markers on veterans' graves. In Chicago, Illinois it was
nearly half a million dollars' worth of brass ornaments.
"It's a crisis of the times," said Ruth Shapleigh-Brown, executive
director of the Connecticut Gravesto
Source: Guardian
July 16, 2008
The Battle of Hastings is over. More than a century after her death, the
young English woman accused of vandalising the most famous cartoon strip
in the world, the Bayeux tapestry, recording the downfall of Harold and
the triumph of William the Conqueror in 1066, has been cleared.
As a major international conference on the tapestry opens at the British
Museum, archaeologist Michael Lewis has named the real villain who snipped
a souvenir fragment from the border of the priceless texti
Source: Murfreesboro Post
July 16, 2008
Some 40-50 artifacts were recovered July 12 near the Stones River
Battlefield on the first day of the Harding House Civil War History
Survey, a geospatial/archaeological project that is being conducted this
month on land slated for development this summer.
Dr. Tom Nolan, director of MTSU’s Laboratory for Spatial Technology, along
with archaeologist Zada Law, led the all-volunteer team on its first day
of the survey, which yielded Civil War-era artifact finds such as lead
shot, a min
Source: BBC
July 17, 2008
Cambodia and Thailand moved more troops into an ancient border temple, as
a stand-off triggered by a territorial dispute entered its third day.
Four hundred Thai troops and 800 Cambodian soldiers are now stationed at
Preah Vihear temple, a Cambodian military chief said.
Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen urged his Thai counterpart, Samak
Sundaravej, to withdraw his troops in a letter.
The two sides have agreed to hold talks on the issue early next week.
The Internat
Source: http://www.charleston.net
July 16, 2008
Congress appears poised to renew the Civil War Battlefield Preservation Act, a move that could help the Lowcountry secure its historic sites, even if they're not as endangered as some in other states.
U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., has worked toward the bill's approval in the House, which could come this week.
"In just three years, America will commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War," he said. "(The bill) would help in the pre
Source: Times (UK)
July 16, 2008
He sent millions to their deaths in the gulag, but that has not deterred Russians from voting en masse for Josef Stalin as the face of their nation.
The Soviet tyrant and Second World War leader is battling Tsar Nicholas II for first place in The Name of Russia, a domestic version of the BBC series Great Britons. Stalin had been well ahead in the online vote until the show's producer appealed to members of a popular Russian social networking site to back Nicholas II.
Th
Source: AP
July 16, 2008
The first archaeological dig at one of the nation's oldest cathedrals has turned up a mix of new finds in the heart of the French Quarter. Discoveries behind St. Louis Cathedral include a small silver crucifix from the 1770s or 1780s and traces of previously unknown buildings dating back to around the city's founding in 1718.
